The meme theme continues with a challenge from plok to create a premise for a new television series about time travel.
The problem with loving time travel stories and reading every one you can find and then trying to think of an original idea is that you keep recognizing what's already been done! Heinlein did that already. John Varley covered that. I had one idea I really liked before realizing Trey Parker beat me to it. (South Park is surprisingly fluent with its time travel episodes.) What I've ended up with instead is a knowing and deliberate homage/rebuttal to one of my all-time favorite stories: "Vintage Season" by C.L. Moore and Henry Kuttner. Also a fair bit of influence from stories by William Tenn, namely "Child's Play" and "Errand Boy."
This one is called "Tourists."
Four people arrive at JFK Airport. Nothing about them gives any clue where they're from. They speak flawless unaccented English -- and, it turns out, every other language they encounter, with equal perfection. The first is an incredibly successful artist, hungry for authentic sensation and experience to be transmuted into her future work. The second is a jovial and friendly old man who has retired from his life's work and now indulges his passion for learning. The third is a graduate student in history whose trip was paid for by a wealthy patron. The last is their somewhat stiff-necked tour guide, showing the rest around and pointing out things of interest. His three charges look around gaping, awestruck by the sheer strangeness of their surroundings. They're charmed by how primitive and pastoral this airport and its inhabitants are. So many people! The jumbo jets -- people actually get inside those huge rickety things? How delightful!
They're a tour group from the distant future visiting the present day, here to fully experience the last phase of our culture before...that really bad thing happened and it all fell apart. Centuries later it simply isn't discussed in polite company but everyone knows how awful it was. The hints of it are all around but no one living at the time sees where it's going to lead. It's quite touching and tragic, really, how blithely they dance on the edge of the precipice without ever realizing it's there.
The behavior of the tourists is much like that of the wealthy person visiting the Third World today. They're friendly to the natives and absolutely charmed by our strange primitive customs and quaint way of life...but with a smiling condescension rooted in the assumption they're better and smarter than we are.
As they explore New York City, the group is supposed to stay together...but the student wanders off on her own. She's spent considerable time in the ruins, of course, but actually seeing the place when it isn't submerged under the ocean is amazing. Anyway, a history major certainly knows the rules of chronal disengagement and she hardly needs that supercilious Guide to instruct her on how to behave. She befriends a poor inner city child and asks the little girl to show her around, to see the 21st Century through the eyes of a typical crecheling. As a reward, the student entertains the little girl with a demonstration of some future gadgetry: the pantograft, the attolens, the gravisend -- it's so sweet how the simplest things dazzle them! -- and that's when the others catch up. The flustered Guide gives the student a warning on not contaminating the past with anachronistic displays of technology. They argue over what constitutes harmless fun.
This foreshadows the growing conflict within the tour group. As they travel around the world, the history student gets increasingly involved with our time: seeing how basically innocent and naive we are, and so totally undeserving of...well, you know, what's coming. How can decent people just stand by and watch? The kindly old man is sympathetic, but he also knows sometimes you just have to let things happen as they will. The conceited artist is unsympathetic: she needs to take in more unmediated misery and suffering in its purest form to make truly powerful art. Come on, people, there's a horrible famine going on: you can't honestly expect her to miss that! The Guide is caught in an awkward position: each of his charges represents serious power and wealth, and his impulse is to be subservient and win favor. Any one of these people could wreck his career and ruin his life if they become displeased; he has to act as referee without offending any of them.
The student, who's on our side and wants to help us, is essentially the bad guy here: she's talking about changing history, or at least helping ease the suffering of individuals if they must leave the vast flow of events intact. But how can she know what's acceptable meddling and what's too much?
Structurally I see this as episodic, not a story arc building up to a huge climax a la Heroes or The 4400, but still with continuing threads and character building. The student's desire to get involved develops slowly over a series of episodes, as does her conflict with the artist: the two of them would finally get fed up and have a big actual fight with future technology and gadgets, so ray blasts and force fields and anti-grav circuits ahoy...but it wouldn't really solve anything.
We would never get to see the future the tourists come from, getting our picture of it solely by implication from the things they say. (The budget department is welcome to send me flowers.) Weirdly enough, given the premise of this challenge, we don't ever see time travel take place: the tourists have just arrived as the story opens, and time travel itself is so expensive and power-expending that it isn't done lightly. You set off on your tragical history tour -- ha ha ha, I crack myself up! -- and you had bloody well better be finished when the Guide activates the recall signal that brings the group home.
And finally, we do not see or find out much about the big event that's so terrible in our future. That would erode the premise and destroy whatever mystique it originally had. The tourists will leave before it arrives, no fools they. (Whether or not the student decides to stay, marooning herself to eventually die here, is another matter. Or will she resign herself to the past being inevitable? Will the artist learn empathy? Will the old man find out something shocking about an ancient ancestor? Will they meet other visitors from the future? Are there contemporary people who know about the time travelers and serve as native bearers?) The real point here is to look at our culture and ways through the eyes of visitors who know how it all turns out, and give us the opportunity for poignant or humorous or satirical commentary on our failings...and while we're at it, to show how America and the West in general treats other cultures in our own time.
So whaddya think, sirs and madams?
Friday, June 15, 2007
Wednesday, June 13, 2007
Just what I needed
The following meme comes from PJ via Ben Varkentine: search for “[your name] needs” on Google and see what comes up.
Richard needs...
...your votes
Some campaign donations wouldn't go amiss either.
...forgiveness
Constantly.
...to have life ordered and predictable
It's a coping mechanism because so much of my life has been neither of those things.
...to finish grade school
That's not very nice.
...to give out the coupons to the orchestra
Please stand in an orderly line, woodwinds in front, then brass, then strings, then percussion.
...Elizabeth right now
Last name please! I've known a lot of Elizabeths.
...Nick
Nick, you know Elizabeth, right? I hope you two get along.
...his red horse
Whee!
...a Mac
Sure, I'm always looking to upgrade.
...100 new bandanas for his fitness class
They'll conceal my physique and make me look fabulous.
...serious help
Hey!
...to get a better editor
To my editors: this is not true, I love you all.
...the mud people to call a council of seers
I know if we all work together, we can develop this "shower" thing.
...coffee now, or he’ll slip away
So very true.
...to shower because he has a stink about him
Man...only a stranger will tell you, huh?
...the audience as an outlet in a world where he is alone
Welcome to my whole freaking life!
Having found these, it occurred to me that I might be tampering with meme karma somehow by using my given name rather than the name I blog under. So I tried again:
RAB needs...
...help, says leading psychologist
Yeah, yeah, we got that already.
...to be modified
I've heard that before as well.
...writers
Now that's just mean. I do the best I can.
...support
I'm looking for something that will lift AND separate.
...defined procedures and a mission and goals that are clearly stated and understood by all participants
Step one, steal underpants. Step three, profit. What could be clearer?
...to just read the Plain Dealer
Mainly I just use it to cover my head in the rain.
...to understand the power of horcrux to view destroying it as essential to Voldemort's destruction
Surely you're thinking of someone else.
...a car
And a driver's license.
...to calm down
Aren't there pills for that?
...a detox
Okay, maybe the pills weren't such a good idea.
...to learn how to spell
If you keep throwing made-up words like "horcrux" and "gillyweed" at me, naturally there will be the occasional mistake.
...to buy new cymbals
Buy your own damn cymbals. Bad enough I had to lug your old ones around for all those years.
...to be seen in perspective
I'm more worried about my vanishing point...
*
Richard needs...
...your votes
Some campaign donations wouldn't go amiss either.
...forgiveness
Constantly.
...to have life ordered and predictable
It's a coping mechanism because so much of my life has been neither of those things.
...to finish grade school
That's not very nice.
...to give out the coupons to the orchestra
Please stand in an orderly line, woodwinds in front, then brass, then strings, then percussion.
...Elizabeth right now
Last name please! I've known a lot of Elizabeths.
...Nick
Nick, you know Elizabeth, right? I hope you two get along.
...his red horse
Whee!
...a Mac
Sure, I'm always looking to upgrade.
...100 new bandanas for his fitness class
They'll conceal my physique and make me look fabulous.
...serious help
Hey!
...to get a better editor
To my editors: this is not true, I love you all.
...the mud people to call a council of seers
I know if we all work together, we can develop this "shower" thing.
...coffee now, or he’ll slip away
So very true.
...to shower because he has a stink about him
Man...only a stranger will tell you, huh?
...the audience as an outlet in a world where he is alone
Welcome to my whole freaking life!
*
Having found these, it occurred to me that I might be tampering with meme karma somehow by using my given name rather than the name I blog under. So I tried again:
RAB needs...
...help, says leading psychologist
Yeah, yeah, we got that already.
...to be modified
I've heard that before as well.
...writers
Now that's just mean. I do the best I can.
...support
I'm looking for something that will lift AND separate.
...defined procedures and a mission and goals that are clearly stated and understood by all participants
Step one, steal underpants. Step three, profit. What could be clearer?
...to just read the Plain Dealer
Mainly I just use it to cover my head in the rain.
...to understand the power of horcrux to view destroying it as essential to Voldemort's destruction
Surely you're thinking of someone else.
...a car
And a driver's license.
...to calm down
Aren't there pills for that?
...a detox
Okay, maybe the pills weren't such a good idea.
...to learn how to spell
If you keep throwing made-up words like "horcrux" and "gillyweed" at me, naturally there will be the occasional mistake.
...to buy new cymbals
Buy your own damn cymbals. Bad enough I had to lug your old ones around for all those years.
...to be seen in perspective
I'm more worried about my vanishing point...
Tuesday, June 12, 2007
Out from under
For the first time in months I have no pending writing jobs or deadlines hanging over my head. Now I can do stuff like, I dunno, watch a DVD instead of...watching a DVD and feeling guilty about it because I should be writing that thing instead. Of course I'll still be writing every night, but without the crushing guilt and shame. Except for the crushing guilt and shame that's with me every waking moment -- but that's another story, doctor.
The biggest thing on my plate this past month was an essay for an upcoming book on the Legion of Super-Heroes being compiled and edited by Tim Callahan, who is both author of Grant Morrison: The Early Years and my close personal friend.
I got an early copy of Tim's book -- the first of a promised three volumes, corresponding to three phases of Morrison's career to date -- at NYCC this year. I've read it all the way through more than once since then...most recently while trying to get in the right frame of mind to write in a similarly analytical manner about old Legion stories from Adventure Comics. Tim strikes a very good balance in writing about comics from a literary perspective without getting mired in lit crit jargon. He hasn't got anything to prove; if you're reading a book about Grant Morrison in the first place, presumably you're already of the opinion that Morrison's comics are worth writing about and stand up to close reading. If you're that sort of person, and I am, this book is well worth a look. The sample pages at the sequart.org link above as well as this appreciation of Morrison's early "Future Shocks" from 2000 AD will give you a good idea of whether or not the book is for you.
Do not think for a moment that my appreciation of the cultured and urbane Mr. Callahan is in any way influenced by the fact that a piece of my writing is now awaiting his approval. The last thing I would ever want would be for his objective evaluation of my work to be swayed at all by my deep and heartfelt admiration for the brilliance of his critical insights. Fortunately, a man of such high moral and ethical caliber as Mr. Callahan would not allow his head to be turned by mere flattery. Truly a paragon among men, and one whose example we can all but hope to emulate.
Writing at length about the Legion of Super-Heroes was a trip and a half. I was heavily involved with organized Legion fandom back in the day, but that day was a long time ago. Doing the essay was partly an act of personal archaeology. I tried to look at those stories more objectively than I ever did before in a way that I hoped would satisfy the editor (mere words cannot do justice, I am unworthy to offer praise) and maybe even persuade a few readers that those stories were a bit cooler and more innovative than they might seem from a distance of more than forty years. It's probably a safe bet that anyone reading a book of essays about the Legion already thinks that, but who can say for sure?
About a hundred times while writing it, I wished comics scholar supreme Richard Morrissey was still around so that I could check my facts with him and get some historical insight...and then a hundred times I would realize that if he were around I wouldn't have been writing it in the first place, because he was better qualified for the task.
Anyway, that's all done with, and I'll be starting on a new round of pitches and query letters soon. Here's a thought, maybe I'll write some blog posts too...
The biggest thing on my plate this past month was an essay for an upcoming book on the Legion of Super-Heroes being compiled and edited by Tim Callahan, who is both author of Grant Morrison: The Early Years and my close personal friend.
I got an early copy of Tim's book -- the first of a promised three volumes, corresponding to three phases of Morrison's career to date -- at NYCC this year. I've read it all the way through more than once since then...most recently while trying to get in the right frame of mind to write in a similarly analytical manner about old Legion stories from Adventure Comics. Tim strikes a very good balance in writing about comics from a literary perspective without getting mired in lit crit jargon. He hasn't got anything to prove; if you're reading a book about Grant Morrison in the first place, presumably you're already of the opinion that Morrison's comics are worth writing about and stand up to close reading. If you're that sort of person, and I am, this book is well worth a look. The sample pages at the sequart.org link above as well as this appreciation of Morrison's early "Future Shocks" from 2000 AD will give you a good idea of whether or not the book is for you.
Do not think for a moment that my appreciation of the cultured and urbane Mr. Callahan is in any way influenced by the fact that a piece of my writing is now awaiting his approval. The last thing I would ever want would be for his objective evaluation of my work to be swayed at all by my deep and heartfelt admiration for the brilliance of his critical insights. Fortunately, a man of such high moral and ethical caliber as Mr. Callahan would not allow his head to be turned by mere flattery. Truly a paragon among men, and one whose example we can all but hope to emulate.
Writing at length about the Legion of Super-Heroes was a trip and a half. I was heavily involved with organized Legion fandom back in the day, but that day was a long time ago. Doing the essay was partly an act of personal archaeology. I tried to look at those stories more objectively than I ever did before in a way that I hoped would satisfy the editor (mere words cannot do justice, I am unworthy to offer praise) and maybe even persuade a few readers that those stories were a bit cooler and more innovative than they might seem from a distance of more than forty years. It's probably a safe bet that anyone reading a book of essays about the Legion already thinks that, but who can say for sure?
About a hundred times while writing it, I wished comics scholar supreme Richard Morrissey was still around so that I could check my facts with him and get some historical insight...and then a hundred times I would realize that if he were around I wouldn't have been writing it in the first place, because he was better qualified for the task.
Anyway, that's all done with, and I'll be starting on a new round of pitches and query letters soon. Here's a thought, maybe I'll write some blog posts too...
Thursday, May 24, 2007
A giving thing
Courtesy of Stuart Immonen:
If you're like me, and have wanted to donate to the fund to assist the family of the late Tom Artis, but are unable to write a cheque in U.S. funds, Tom Spurgeon has announced on the Comics Reporter that he is collecting PayPal funds for a single mass donation on Memorial Day.
More on Tom Artis from his friend and collaborator Peter B. Gillis here and here.
I can't afford a large donation myself, but being able to contribute even a small amount via PayPal lets me feel like I was able to do something. All the more so if mentioning it here can help encourage other people to chip in a tiny bit: maybe it all adds up. Tom Spurgeon says he's sending a check to the Artis family on Monday, so there's still time if anyone reading this also wants to join in.
I know what it's like to be at home as a full-time caregiver to a terminally ill family member. My situation wasn't comparable to the one Kim Artis and their children were in, or are in now...but when I think of how psychologically devastating it was, in addition to the simple material demands, I can only guess at how overwhelming it must be for the Artis family now, and how brave that woman has to be in facing these additional financial woes with two children to raise on her own.
I didn't know hardly anything about Tom Artis before he died: reading the reminiscences of Peter Gillis made me feel like I really missed something there. Here was a guy who loved the comics medium and chose to work in it despite considerable risk and little reward, and that makes us part of the same family. So I made the small donation I could manage, and encourage you to do the same.
Sunday, May 20, 2007
Doctor Wayne
Since "The Black Casebook" mentioned in Batman #665 has received favorable mention (here for instance) as an example of Grant Morrison refusing to throw away even the bizarre and goofy bits of Batman history, I thought it might be interesting to look at the little-known part of the Batcave where Bruce Wayne might store that particular volume.
From JLA Classified #1 by Grant Morrison, Ed McGuinness and Dexter Vines:
Let's have a closer look. He's got what appear to be Thanagarian police wings, he pulls out a Kirbyesque-looking "Boom Tube Gauntlet" for travelling through spacetime, and there are a few other items I can't identify but which look familiar...and oh yeah, over there on the right...
...Batman keeps a freaking Dalek in his "Sci-Fi Closet." Presumably captured during the Dalek Invasion of Gotham City. Which he stopped all by himself. Didn't even need a sonic screwdriver. That's how tough he is. Goofy wandering Time Lords are advised to stay out of his city.
Was this JLA story never reprinted? Why not, when it provides significant information on the backstory to Seven Soldiers?
From JLA Classified #1 by Grant Morrison, Ed McGuinness and Dexter Vines:
Let's have a closer look. He's got what appear to be Thanagarian police wings, he pulls out a Kirbyesque-looking "Boom Tube Gauntlet" for travelling through spacetime, and there are a few other items I can't identify but which look familiar...and oh yeah, over there on the right...
...Batman keeps a freaking Dalek in his "Sci-Fi Closet." Presumably captured during the Dalek Invasion of Gotham City. Which he stopped all by himself. Didn't even need a sonic screwdriver. That's how tough he is. Goofy wandering Time Lords are advised to stay out of his city.
Was this JLA story never reprinted? Why not, when it provides significant information on the backstory to Seven Soldiers?
Friday, May 11, 2007
Congratulations are presumably in order
My old friend and former drinking buddy Neil Gaiman reports:
It's always touching when pornographers get married, isn't it? No, I kid. I kid because I love pornography nearly as much as I love Moore's and Gebbie's comics.
The prospect of marriage has always seemed very strange and foreign to me -- I felt that way even when I was actually engaged and wondering what it would feel like to go through such an alien ritual, though as it happened I never did find out -- but I'm sure it's a lovely thing for them what are keen on it. And if Alan Moore or Melinda Gebbie were reading this blog, I'd offer them my best wishes.
See, this is why you don't want me as best man at your wedding.
I have to fly to the UK this afternoon, for Alan Moore and Melinda Gebbie's wedding on Saturday. There's too much travelling involved in the next few weeks, especially when I just want to stay home and walk the dog and write before the madness of the summer, but this one trip I'm doing because I want to, and I'm looking forward to it. Alan says he's going to wear a blue bowler hat for the wedding, and frankly that's worth flying across the Atlantic to see.
It's always touching when pornographers get married, isn't it? No, I kid. I kid because I love pornography nearly as much as I love Moore's and Gebbie's comics.
The prospect of marriage has always seemed very strange and foreign to me -- I felt that way even when I was actually engaged and wondering what it would feel like to go through such an alien ritual, though as it happened I never did find out -- but I'm sure it's a lovely thing for them what are keen on it. And if Alan Moore or Melinda Gebbie were reading this blog, I'd offer them my best wishes.
See, this is why you don't want me as best man at your wedding.
Tuesday, May 08, 2007
New universes will be born from ours
Not a quote from the last issue of 52, but a headline from the New Scientist a few weeks ago:
What gruesome fate awaits our universe? Some physicists have argued that it is doomed to be ripped apart by runaway dark energy, while others think it is bouncing through an endless series of big bangs and big crunches. Now these two ideas are being combined to create another option, in which our universe ultimately shatters into billions of pieces, with each shard growing into a whole new universe.
Maybe this has happened already, and our universe is just one among of billions. Why should our universe occupy any privileged position of being the first and only, simply because we happen to be in this one? I'm just saying...
Parallel universes and alternate Earths have always been my favorite science fictional concept...all the more so since I started learning they had some scientific plausibility, or at least theoretical respectability: parallel universes have been well established in the fields of quantum physics and cosmology for the past century.
I first encountered the concept in The Flash #179, cover dated May 1968. Knocked into an alternate Earth where he exists only as a comic book character, the Flash visits Julie Schwartz at the offices of DC Comics, seeking his help to build a Cosmic Treadmill that will bring him back to his own Earth...itself a world where a man named Gardner Fox wrote comic books about a Flash named Jay Garrick, not Barry Allen. Then came Justice League of America #64, set entirely on Earth-2 and introduced the new Red Tornado to the Justice Society of America -- my first introduction to any of those characters. I was fascinated not because I found these new characters inherently more interesting than the JLA I'd already been reading about, but because these were counterparts to them. Not quite duplicates, but conceptual analogues. And then, just a month later, was Avengers Annual #2 in which the Avengers meet themselves from a parallel universe altered by the time machinations of the Scarlet Centurion.
These three comics came out within a span of five months, so I was getting a concentrated heavy dose of...um, "parallelism" there. And I developed a heavy bias for the kind of story that didn't just focus on the alternate history -- What if...Spartacus had flown a Piper Cub? What if...Joe McCarthy had become vice president? -- but that brought counterparts or alternates together, in which we see how the Northerner reacts to a world where the South never fell or you get to meet your own double from an alternate Earth. How do people react to learning that things aren't the way they are because that's the way they are and there's no alternative, and in fact things could have been very different?
Because I was so keen on this kind of story, I did a bit of reading on quantum physics, and discovered Schrodinger's mocking dismissal of parallel universes by putting an imaginary cat in an imaginary box and thereby making the cat even more imaginary, and thought that when Heidegger asked "Why is there something rather than nothing?" he might also have phrased it as "Why does one thing happen rather than another thing?"
So I always wondered why Marv Wolfman resorted to such extraordinary means to eliminate all those wonderful parallel Earths from DC Comics. The original concept had real science (well, scientific theory) behind it, but this new single DC Universe was a manifestly illogical and internally inconsistent construct. (For that matter, I'm still always a little bit thrown by the anal-retentive impulse in comics writing that says "I don't like this story element, so I'll devote huge amounts of time and energy to explaining it away and eliminating it so that no one else can use it" instead of, you know, just simply not using it in stories.) And now I wonder why the last issue of 52 had to employ such convoluted and baroque means to bring back those same universes, shoehorning it into the last issue...especially when Infinite Crisis teased us with the same reveal and then chickened out. I'd have been just as happy if Rip Hunter or someone turned up and said "No parallel universes? Are you nuts? They've been here all along! Oh, except for this weird vibrational anomaly that kept us from visiting them for the past few years. Fixed now!"
But whether by chance or by reading that same New Scientist article, the writers of 52 found the correct image of universes shattering into new ones, and that counts for something. The notion that there are only 52 of them is still unnecessarily constricting...but it can easily be ignored by subsequent writers, who can say very simply that the process doesn't end, that new variant universes must always be splitting off and forming all the time. The question comes down to "can we tell interesting stories?" rather than "how tidy does this look on somebody's wall chart?" and anything that increases the number of possibilities and options rather than decreasing them is a good thing.
Some readers may be welcoming back the multiple Earths because that's how things were when they started reading comics -- as I've said, there's a fair bit of that in me -- just as some folks may now be a bit peeved because they started reading DC comics since 1985 and this isn't the setup from their childhood. But I'm gonna say there's another reason to welcome this change, beyond mere nostalgia. It's the same reason I fell in love with the concept way back when, the same reason parallel universes and alternate histories fascinate me in real life: letting the tyranny of "this is how things are" be replaced by the possibility of "...and things are every other way too."
Tuesday, April 17, 2007
Headline news
Virginia Gun Dealers Taunt NY Mayor
"The truth is, if Bloomberg hadn't picked on Virginia, we wouldn't have gotten involved. But he made the mistake of stepping into Virginia with this," said Philip Van Cleave, president of the pro-gun Virginia Citizens Defense League and mastermind of the giveaway, which has boosted business for the two participating store owners.
Oh, wait...that was last month. Right about the time the governor of Virginia signed a bill to keep those nosy parkers from interfering with gun dealers even if they're doing something illegal.
And now?
Not even the worst campus massacre in American history is about to stop Bob Moates Sports Shop of Midlothian, Va., from going ahead with its big Bloomberg Gun GiveAway. The winner will receive a Para-Ordinance Model 1911 .45 automatic, silver and no less deadly than the black pistol a witness says the Virginia Tech psycho used. The 1911 is part of the company's new line of "Gun Rights" pistols, which carry the guarantee the company will donate $25 to the National Rifle Association for every one sold.
"The drawing is April 19," a man at Moates said yesterday.
More here.
Thursday, April 12, 2007
Everything was beautiful and nothing hurt
When I was nine years old, the local PBS channel aired a science fiction special called Between Time and Timbuktu and it scared the hell out of me. I mean the particular type of scared you get when you're about nine years old and something so totally blows your mind that you can't stop thinking about it no matter how much you'd like to stop, and you're up all night afraid to go to sleep for fear that you'll start dreaming about it.
Amateur poet Stony Stevenson wins the Blast-Off Space Food Jingle Contest, with the prize of being the first human launched into a Chrono-Synclastic Infundibulum in space: a space-time warp. After passing through the Infundibulum, he meets himself and then reappears on Earth, where he passes through a variety of weird and disturbing possible futures -- scenarios (I later discovered) taken from assorted novels and stories by Kurt Vonnegut. Stony meets Bokonon from the novel Cat's Cradle just as soldiers arrive to assasinate the religious leader; he visits a cryogenics laboratory where world leaders are frozen and a substance called ice-nine could cause the end of all life; he visits an overpopulated world in which the government provides "ethical suicide parlours" and body-numbing pills to eliminate the pleasure of sex; he witnesses a dissident trial in a machine-run dystopia; he sees a future in which the drive for equality has gone wild and citizens are forced to wear debilitating handicaps to make sure no one is superior to anyone else in intellect or looks or physical ability. Finally he visits Heaven, where he befriends a little girl killed by an ice cream truck on her birthday. And then the image of Hitler shows up to make everyone disappear and destroy Heaven...before Stony works out the ultimate secret of everything he's experienced and gets some friendly advice from God.
Any one of those sequences would have been unsettling to my young mind...but the cumulative effect of them all concentrated into a single broadcast depicting so many different nightmarish possible futures was terrifying. The underlying message of atheism and skepticism, sadness at human failings and mockery of our pathetic vanities balanced with affection for human kindness and imagination -- the whole thing was itself like seeing a message from the future and being introduced to fears and disappointments and even hopes of a sort that maybe I shouldn't even have been thinking about. But obviously on some level I was ready for all that, because it resonated so deeply with me I couldn't stop thinking about it.
Somehow I had to conquer the fears that tv show woke up in me. And I did that by reading all the Kurt Vonnegut books my parents had on their bookshelves. That's how The Sirens of Titan became the first adult novel I ever read. It was swiftly followed by Cat's Cradle, God Bless You Mr. Rosewater, and Slaughterhouse-Five as fast as I could read them. I don't think I understood a fraction of what was in those books, but I had to master them as best I could. Over time, I came to feel the viewpoint of these books represented the truest and most objective view of the world I'd ever encountered, and my horror at a world stripped of meaning and without a benevolent patriarch who was always right in charge was replaced by fascination. And the writing was by no means unsophisticated, but it had a particular sort of straightforward simplicity that made it accessible to anyone who cared to read it. Vonnegut wasn't out to dazzle us with the brilliance of his language, but to convey ideas he felt were so important they needed to be expressed as plainly as possible. Before then I didn't realize books for adults could be like that. When Breakfast of Champions was published the following year, I insisted to my probably bemused parents that we had to get it right away.
More than thirty years later, I've never found a writer who saw the world so clearly and accurately (or so it seems to me -- obviously my entire view of the world has been so thoroughly shaped by that early exposure to Vonnegut's work that I still judge everything else by those values on a level I can't possibly examine objectively) nor a writer who was so utterly determined to communicate something to his audience rather than impressing them with his erudition. And more than thirty years later, I still feel sad when I think of that poor girl Wanda June and the ice cream truck, and shiver when I hear the word "ice-nine."
I haven't even mentioned all the other Vonnegut books, or the other translations of his work to the screen. Between Time and Timbuktu isn't available, but if you're curious to see what Vonnegut is like without cracking open a book, I recommend checking out Slaughterhouse-Five and Mother Night. (Bonus points for the first person to mention Vonnegut's hilarious cameo appearance in a Rodney Dangerfield film...)
Update 1: Matt Brady has written an overview I wish I had written of Vonnegut's work.
Update 2: Check here for more information on Between Time and Timbuktu.
Amateur poet Stony Stevenson wins the Blast-Off Space Food Jingle Contest, with the prize of being the first human launched into a Chrono-Synclastic Infundibulum in space: a space-time warp. After passing through the Infundibulum, he meets himself and then reappears on Earth, where he passes through a variety of weird and disturbing possible futures -- scenarios (I later discovered) taken from assorted novels and stories by Kurt Vonnegut. Stony meets Bokonon from the novel Cat's Cradle just as soldiers arrive to assasinate the religious leader; he visits a cryogenics laboratory where world leaders are frozen and a substance called ice-nine could cause the end of all life; he visits an overpopulated world in which the government provides "ethical suicide parlours" and body-numbing pills to eliminate the pleasure of sex; he witnesses a dissident trial in a machine-run dystopia; he sees a future in which the drive for equality has gone wild and citizens are forced to wear debilitating handicaps to make sure no one is superior to anyone else in intellect or looks or physical ability. Finally he visits Heaven, where he befriends a little girl killed by an ice cream truck on her birthday. And then the image of Hitler shows up to make everyone disappear and destroy Heaven...before Stony works out the ultimate secret of everything he's experienced and gets some friendly advice from God.
Any one of those sequences would have been unsettling to my young mind...but the cumulative effect of them all concentrated into a single broadcast depicting so many different nightmarish possible futures was terrifying. The underlying message of atheism and skepticism, sadness at human failings and mockery of our pathetic vanities balanced with affection for human kindness and imagination -- the whole thing was itself like seeing a message from the future and being introduced to fears and disappointments and even hopes of a sort that maybe I shouldn't even have been thinking about. But obviously on some level I was ready for all that, because it resonated so deeply with me I couldn't stop thinking about it.
Somehow I had to conquer the fears that tv show woke up in me. And I did that by reading all the Kurt Vonnegut books my parents had on their bookshelves. That's how The Sirens of Titan became the first adult novel I ever read. It was swiftly followed by Cat's Cradle, God Bless You Mr. Rosewater, and Slaughterhouse-Five as fast as I could read them. I don't think I understood a fraction of what was in those books, but I had to master them as best I could. Over time, I came to feel the viewpoint of these books represented the truest and most objective view of the world I'd ever encountered, and my horror at a world stripped of meaning and without a benevolent patriarch who was always right in charge was replaced by fascination. And the writing was by no means unsophisticated, but it had a particular sort of straightforward simplicity that made it accessible to anyone who cared to read it. Vonnegut wasn't out to dazzle us with the brilliance of his language, but to convey ideas he felt were so important they needed to be expressed as plainly as possible. Before then I didn't realize books for adults could be like that. When Breakfast of Champions was published the following year, I insisted to my probably bemused parents that we had to get it right away.
More than thirty years later, I've never found a writer who saw the world so clearly and accurately (or so it seems to me -- obviously my entire view of the world has been so thoroughly shaped by that early exposure to Vonnegut's work that I still judge everything else by those values on a level I can't possibly examine objectively) nor a writer who was so utterly determined to communicate something to his audience rather than impressing them with his erudition. And more than thirty years later, I still feel sad when I think of that poor girl Wanda June and the ice cream truck, and shiver when I hear the word "ice-nine."
I haven't even mentioned all the other Vonnegut books, or the other translations of his work to the screen. Between Time and Timbuktu isn't available, but if you're curious to see what Vonnegut is like without cracking open a book, I recommend checking out Slaughterhouse-Five and Mother Night. (Bonus points for the first person to mention Vonnegut's hilarious cameo appearance in a Rodney Dangerfield film...)
Update 1: Matt Brady has written an overview I wish I had written of Vonnegut's work.
Update 2: Check here for more information on Between Time and Timbuktu.
Sunday, March 18, 2007
Shagadelic, baby
Here, Amanda Connor describes a scene from the upcoming Terra miniseries:
Connor related a story about a scene in the beginning of the second issue of the mini-series. “Terra is running around ‘clothes-free’ and she’s in Doctor Midnite’s lab, not knowing how she got there. I had to be very ‘Austin Powers,’ trying to strategically hide things here and there.”
It's been a long time since I saw Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery, but my recollection is that during the scene in question scene both Mike Myers and Elizabeth Hurley are meant to be naked and both are the subject of sight gags concealing their nudity. It was an equal opportunity joke -- a joke on censorship and filmic conventions and audience expectations, not especially prurient.
But DC just doesn't roll that way. Once again, it's as if their first priority was figuring out how quickly they could get the female character naked. At least Michael Turner isn't drawing it...but it's a shame Amanda Connor has to do stuff like this.
On a related note, I think Ami Angelwings is some kind of genius. I'd like to set her loose in the DC offices to bash some heads in.
Saturday, March 17, 2007
Thursday, March 15, 2007
Last night
So this happened about two blocks away from my front door last night.
Someone who heard the shots said at first they sounded like gunshots...but then there were so many of them that it seemed absurd, over the top, like something out of a movie, so it couldn't really be gunshots. You get a lot of weird sounds in this neighborhood. A truck exhaust backfiring, or firecrackers -- I remember one gas main eruption on the street that sounded exactly like a machine gun. So you filter it out. That may be why I didn't hear the shots, or at least consciously register them: it was just more random street noise. And then the police cars showed up in force to close off the street. And the helicopters, shining lights into apartment windows all over the neighborhood.
The helicopters were upsetting. I'm not sure what they were meant to provide, other than an overwhelming show of police presence at a crime scene. As it turns out, the lone assailant was killed before the copters could have arrived. But this week has been a bad one for police in the city, and a bad one for tensions between police and the public, and my immediate reaction -- fairly or unfairly -- was that the copters were here to demonstrate that the police were not going to take any shit from us. People outside their homes when the police arrived weren't being allowed to go inside, so I was glad to be indoors just then.
(I went through that once when my dad was still alive, arriving home one evening to find the house cordoned off and surrounded by police because a totally spurious bomb threat had been phoned in for the building next door. Standing behind the barricade, I tried explaining calmly and respectfully to an officer that I was the primary caregiver for a paralyzed seventy-year-old man, and if there was a credible bomb threat and the building needed to be evacuated, my presence would be required to move him. It wasn't so much that he was unsympathetic but that the words glided right past him, as if I was trying to explain quantum physics to him in Urdu. So I stood there and waited for half an hour -- pretty sure that the whole bomb threat thing was bogus, but still having no idea if they would go ahead and order the area evacuated anyway. Ultimately they didn't. That wasn't the only ridiculous bomb scare we had that year either.)
So this time I'm inside, and staying inside as the streets as being closed off, and not especially keen to go up on the roof either as there's no way to tell what's going on, or what the cops think is going on. New York's 24 hour cable news channel has nothing, the local broadcast channels have nothing, the radio has nothing. It's all happening right that moment, and there hasn't been enough time to report anything. You could get live updates on Anna Nicole's death or O.J.'s high speed chase as they happened, people all around the world saw the Twin Towers fall at the same time I did, but good luck trying to find out what's happening two blocks away. And then different local websites starting picking up the Associated Press feed and running it verbatim...but the story was changing every five minutes. There was a shootout at the Lion's Den bar. A bartender was killed and a group of gunmen had fled out the back, and were now on the streets. No, it was another bar. No, wait, it wasn't a bar but a pizzeria. No, it was a different pizzeria, no it was an italian restaurant and the bartender got shot, there were three shooters, there was one, one auxiliary policeman was shot and another injured by broken glass, the gunmen were shooting out windows, no they weren't...
When eleven o'clock arrived and the local news channels picked up the story, they all had interviews with the same two eyewitnesses and still didn't have an accurate description of what had actually happened. And now the police helicopters were joined by news choppers so that we could see our street cordoned off. Why? We didn't know. Just that something bad had happened and we had to wait until the smoke of police reaction and bad reporting cleared to find out what.
You'd think there'd be a better way to handle this sort of thing, wouldn't you?
Someone who heard the shots said at first they sounded like gunshots...but then there were so many of them that it seemed absurd, over the top, like something out of a movie, so it couldn't really be gunshots. You get a lot of weird sounds in this neighborhood. A truck exhaust backfiring, or firecrackers -- I remember one gas main eruption on the street that sounded exactly like a machine gun. So you filter it out. That may be why I didn't hear the shots, or at least consciously register them: it was just more random street noise. And then the police cars showed up in force to close off the street. And the helicopters, shining lights into apartment windows all over the neighborhood.
The helicopters were upsetting. I'm not sure what they were meant to provide, other than an overwhelming show of police presence at a crime scene. As it turns out, the lone assailant was killed before the copters could have arrived. But this week has been a bad one for police in the city, and a bad one for tensions between police and the public, and my immediate reaction -- fairly or unfairly -- was that the copters were here to demonstrate that the police were not going to take any shit from us. People outside their homes when the police arrived weren't being allowed to go inside, so I was glad to be indoors just then.
(I went through that once when my dad was still alive, arriving home one evening to find the house cordoned off and surrounded by police because a totally spurious bomb threat had been phoned in for the building next door. Standing behind the barricade, I tried explaining calmly and respectfully to an officer that I was the primary caregiver for a paralyzed seventy-year-old man, and if there was a credible bomb threat and the building needed to be evacuated, my presence would be required to move him. It wasn't so much that he was unsympathetic but that the words glided right past him, as if I was trying to explain quantum physics to him in Urdu. So I stood there and waited for half an hour -- pretty sure that the whole bomb threat thing was bogus, but still having no idea if they would go ahead and order the area evacuated anyway. Ultimately they didn't. That wasn't the only ridiculous bomb scare we had that year either.)
So this time I'm inside, and staying inside as the streets as being closed off, and not especially keen to go up on the roof either as there's no way to tell what's going on, or what the cops think is going on. New York's 24 hour cable news channel has nothing, the local broadcast channels have nothing, the radio has nothing. It's all happening right that moment, and there hasn't been enough time to report anything. You could get live updates on Anna Nicole's death or O.J.'s high speed chase as they happened, people all around the world saw the Twin Towers fall at the same time I did, but good luck trying to find out what's happening two blocks away. And then different local websites starting picking up the Associated Press feed and running it verbatim...but the story was changing every five minutes. There was a shootout at the Lion's Den bar. A bartender was killed and a group of gunmen had fled out the back, and were now on the streets. No, it was another bar. No, wait, it wasn't a bar but a pizzeria. No, it was a different pizzeria, no it was an italian restaurant and the bartender got shot, there were three shooters, there was one, one auxiliary policeman was shot and another injured by broken glass, the gunmen were shooting out windows, no they weren't...
When eleven o'clock arrived and the local news channels picked up the story, they all had interviews with the same two eyewitnesses and still didn't have an accurate description of what had actually happened. And now the police helicopters were joined by news choppers so that we could see our street cordoned off. Why? We didn't know. Just that something bad had happened and we had to wait until the smoke of police reaction and bad reporting cleared to find out what.
You'd think there'd be a better way to handle this sort of thing, wouldn't you?
Thursday, March 08, 2007
It stems from the waves of the mind
Sweeeeeeeet.
This has been in the works for a long time, but it's good to have these details come out. Especially the introduction by Grant.
At the very least, I take it as a good sign that DC's using a currently popular writer for the introduction, rather than an artist -- Kirby's visual strengths have never been questioned, unless you're Art Spiegelman, in which case you're a miserable bastard and I don't want to know you -- or someone who'll damn him with faint praise as an "idea man" who needed a collaborator to crush all the life out of his work. You know the drill: great characters, shame about the writing, what we need here is a steady workman like Gerry Conway to hammer it into shape because Orion needs an insignia on his chest to be a proper superhero...
I've been waiting a long time for Jack Kirby to be fully appreciated as a writer by other comics writers -- while watching folks I otherwise respect, such as Steve Englehart or Gail Simone, utterly trash him for not being sufficiently "naturalistic" for their unaccountably narrow tastes -- so far Peter Gillis is one of the few writers to step up to the bat and get what Kirby's writing is all about. But by all indications, Grant gets it too. It'll be interesting to see what he says.
This has been in the works for a long time, but it's good to have these details come out. Especially the introduction by Grant.
At the very least, I take it as a good sign that DC's using a currently popular writer for the introduction, rather than an artist -- Kirby's visual strengths have never been questioned, unless you're Art Spiegelman, in which case you're a miserable bastard and I don't want to know you -- or someone who'll damn him with faint praise as an "idea man" who needed a collaborator to crush all the life out of his work. You know the drill: great characters, shame about the writing, what we need here is a steady workman like Gerry Conway to hammer it into shape because Orion needs an insignia on his chest to be a proper superhero...
I've been waiting a long time for Jack Kirby to be fully appreciated as a writer by other comics writers -- while watching folks I otherwise respect, such as Steve Englehart or Gail Simone, utterly trash him for not being sufficiently "naturalistic" for their unaccountably narrow tastes -- so far Peter Gillis is one of the few writers to step up to the bat and get what Kirby's writing is all about. But by all indications, Grant gets it too. It'll be interesting to see what he says.
Sunday, March 04, 2007
The read balloon
I'm starting work on a new script, which invariably means "seeing a thousand other things more interesting than working on a script and spending all my time finding excuses to avoid working on the script." Actually, when I get into the groove of a script there's really nothing else I'd rather do, and I definitely enjoy the work...but there's always those first few days when I struggle with getting started. One useful trick for getting into the proper mindset is reading other people's scripts and thinking about their techniques. I'm definitely what's called a process junkie and absorb all the behind-the-scene info and discussion I can find. This isn't a search for ideas to swipe -- though occasionally that happens as well -- but instead, a way of triggering my brain to loosen up and start spewing words.
In the course of that search, I just came across a terrific comment by Eddie Campbell from a few months back:
In the course of that search, I just came across a terrific comment by Eddie Campbell from a few months back:
The 'thought' bubble (or balloon) is one of the few inventions truly indigenous to the twentieth century comic strip and it would be sad to reject it in order to make comics more like movies (see comments on this theme under 'Things' two days back), or because it is somehow pictorially unseemly for a tough heroic figure to have fluffy clouds around his head. When you tell an anecdote orally it's commonplace to say 'I thought' and 'she thought' etc., and perfectly logical to codify that on paper in a thought bubble. And if it makes your character less heroic, try taking the pole out of his ass.
I've always liked Eddie Campbell's comics work well enough...but I absolutely love him as a comics historian and theoretician. And this point in particular is something comics writers argue about a lot. I think Campbell's got it exactly right.
Panel 1. RAB sits at his computer, frowning in thought, his chin resting in one hand.
RAB (thought): Maybe the chronic inferiority complex of comics creators is to blame for this.
RAB (thought) 2: It's like a child trying to look adult by eliminating anything that seems childish.
Panel 2. Looking up from street level as the anarchist character V leaps from a rooftop in a scene from V FOR VENDETTA as drawn by David Lloyd. Something like this image.
CAPTION: Alan Moore and Frank Miller made comics look "cool" and "adult" by not using thought balloons. Or sound effects.
CAPTION 2: They made comics look like movies -- like "grown-up" entertainment.
Panel 3. A shot of the Marvel S/M fetish character PENANCE with his fists clenched in a moment of supreme angst.
CAPTION: It worked for them as individuals...but in general, what could be more childish than trying to look all "serious" and "adult"?
CAPTION 2: You just end up looking silly.
Panel 4. RAB gets up from his desk, leaving the computer behind.
RAB (thought): Most old people would give anything to be young again.
RAB (thought) 2: Real maturity goes beyond that, to an appreciation of good things from both childhood and adulthood.
Panel 5. RAB sitting in the living room, in front of a television set. In one hand, he has a remote control pointed at the screen to turn the tv on.
RAB (thought): Comic books don't have motion, they don't have music, they don't have the sound of human voices. They're not movies or television.
SFX: *click!*
Panel 6. On the tv screen, we see KIM POSSIBLE talking into her Kimmunicator.
RAB (thought, off-panel): With all these limitations, it's stupid to throw away some of the few tricks we have out of some misplaced desire to look more "grown up"!
KIM (voice from television): So what's the sitch?
Thursday, March 01, 2007
Consumerism
Part 3 of 3
Some brief verbal snapshots of blurred figures in motion to fill out the picture...
Adam Philips, Manager of Marketing Communications at DC Comics, used to be my editor. This was back in the days when Mark Waid was a wide-eyed fanboy looking for an opening to break into the comic book business and Kurt Busiek was best known as writer of the Red Tornado miniseries. I was still reeling from the surprise appearance of Jon Browne (mentioned a couple of posts back) when Adam greeted me by name at the DC pavilion. I'm stunned that I made enough of an impression that Adam remembered me even though we hadn't been in touch for twenty years. But I always remembered Adam as one of the nicest and most all around competent guys I ever knew in comics. Getting caught up with him was surrealistically wonderful.
Redhead Fangirl has already described our encounter with Gail Simone and her husband Scott -- I refer you there for a fuller account plus photos of RF with Gail, RF with her friend PhillyGirl, and RF consorting with lots of other people. No photos of me, however, which is a great comfort.
Simon Pegg lookalike Drew Melbourne signed a copy of the collected edition of Archenemies, his miniseries from Dark Horse, along with penciller Yvel Guichet and letterer Jim Keplinger. This in turn led to meeting Jeffery Stevenson, best known as author of the webcomic Brat-Halla but an old acquaintance of mine from the Writers Forum at Digital Webbing.
The crowding was intense in the upper mezzanine reserved for pros giving autographs and sketches dubbed "Artists' Aerie." I didn't even attempt to visit there on the first day, thereby missing any glimpse of Stephen Colbert. When I did make it up there the following day, I immediately spotted my good friend Richard Howell of Claypool Comics...and the flow of people moving past was so strong I was literally swept away from his table before I could even catch his eye. I had to make an entire circuit of the area, caught in the crowd, until the traffic led me back to the beginning and I could stop to chat with him.
Richard introduced me to the affable and charming Chris Wisnia, creator of the Doris Danger comics which pay snarky tribute/loving parody to Jack Kirby with special emphasis on his 1950s monster and SF comics. I know Kirby's work and I've seen a lot of Kirby homage over the years...and I have to say Chris stands out for capturing aspects of Kirby's style like no one else and combining it with his own offbeat absurdist humor. I read these comics that night and had to come back to his table the following day to rave about how much I enjoyed them. Highly recommended!
Another unexpected win was scoring a pre-release copy of The Art of ReBoot, beautifully produced by Jim Su and lavishly illustrated with original concept art and character designs from Brendan McCarthy. The book is also filled out with behind-the-scenes comments and insights from McCarthy as well as co-creator Gavin Blair and story editor Dan Didio -- the same fellow now at DC Comics -- packing a surprising amount of information into such a slim volume. It was everything I could have hoped a book on ReBoot would be. Surely an acquisition to make Mark jealous of me, if only for a moment.
I'd be remiss if I didn't offer a shout out to Tim Callahan, Legion of Super-Heroes fan of note and all-around swell person, who signed a copy of his book Grant Morrison - The Early Years and then mentioned that he's read this blog. Gosh! (Whatever else I do in life, I may forever be known for that one post.) Our conversation turned to Adam West -- it made sense at the time, but you probably had to be there -- and we never even mentioned the LSH. Next time, maybe?
Oops, almost forgot to mention Friday evening's dinner with Brian and the gang from Comics Should Be Good, held at the surprisingly affordable Hudson Yards Cafe just one short block away from the Javits Center. Given its proximity to the con, I'm surprised Brian was able to reserve it: it would have made a fine location for a con party hosted by some publisher. Good thing Brian -- who is "not a convention person" and didn't even attend the NYCC at all -- was able to get it instead.
Going into the convention, I expected my time would be spent on sober networking and cultivating professional contacts...but it turned out to be an occasion for geeky excitement and fun of a sort that I haven't had at a convention in many years. The folks I've named here and in the preceding posts are all to thank for that. I hope they all enjoyed themselves as much as I did.
Some brief verbal snapshots of blurred figures in motion to fill out the picture...
Adam Philips, Manager of Marketing Communications at DC Comics, used to be my editor. This was back in the days when Mark Waid was a wide-eyed fanboy looking for an opening to break into the comic book business and Kurt Busiek was best known as writer of the Red Tornado miniseries. I was still reeling from the surprise appearance of Jon Browne (mentioned a couple of posts back) when Adam greeted me by name at the DC pavilion. I'm stunned that I made enough of an impression that Adam remembered me even though we hadn't been in touch for twenty years. But I always remembered Adam as one of the nicest and most all around competent guys I ever knew in comics. Getting caught up with him was surrealistically wonderful.
Redhead Fangirl has already described our encounter with Gail Simone and her husband Scott -- I refer you there for a fuller account plus photos of RF with Gail, RF with her friend PhillyGirl, and RF consorting with lots of other people. No photos of me, however, which is a great comfort.
Simon Pegg lookalike Drew Melbourne signed a copy of the collected edition of Archenemies, his miniseries from Dark Horse, along with penciller Yvel Guichet and letterer Jim Keplinger. This in turn led to meeting Jeffery Stevenson, best known as author of the webcomic Brat-Halla but an old acquaintance of mine from the Writers Forum at Digital Webbing.
The crowding was intense in the upper mezzanine reserved for pros giving autographs and sketches dubbed "Artists' Aerie." I didn't even attempt to visit there on the first day, thereby missing any glimpse of Stephen Colbert. When I did make it up there the following day, I immediately spotted my good friend Richard Howell of Claypool Comics...and the flow of people moving past was so strong I was literally swept away from his table before I could even catch his eye. I had to make an entire circuit of the area, caught in the crowd, until the traffic led me back to the beginning and I could stop to chat with him.
Richard introduced me to the affable and charming Chris Wisnia, creator of the Doris Danger comics which pay snarky tribute/loving parody to Jack Kirby with special emphasis on his 1950s monster and SF comics. I know Kirby's work and I've seen a lot of Kirby homage over the years...and I have to say Chris stands out for capturing aspects of Kirby's style like no one else and combining it with his own offbeat absurdist humor. I read these comics that night and had to come back to his table the following day to rave about how much I enjoyed them. Highly recommended!
Another unexpected win was scoring a pre-release copy of The Art of ReBoot, beautifully produced by Jim Su and lavishly illustrated with original concept art and character designs from Brendan McCarthy. The book is also filled out with behind-the-scenes comments and insights from McCarthy as well as co-creator Gavin Blair and story editor Dan Didio -- the same fellow now at DC Comics -- packing a surprising amount of information into such a slim volume. It was everything I could have hoped a book on ReBoot would be. Surely an acquisition to make Mark jealous of me, if only for a moment.
I'd be remiss if I didn't offer a shout out to Tim Callahan, Legion of Super-Heroes fan of note and all-around swell person, who signed a copy of his book Grant Morrison - The Early Years and then mentioned that he's read this blog. Gosh! (Whatever else I do in life, I may forever be known for that one post.) Our conversation turned to Adam West -- it made sense at the time, but you probably had to be there -- and we never even mentioned the LSH. Next time, maybe?
Oops, almost forgot to mention Friday evening's dinner with Brian and the gang from Comics Should Be Good, held at the surprisingly affordable Hudson Yards Cafe just one short block away from the Javits Center. Given its proximity to the con, I'm surprised Brian was able to reserve it: it would have made a fine location for a con party hosted by some publisher. Good thing Brian -- who is "not a convention person" and didn't even attend the NYCC at all -- was able to get it instead.
Going into the convention, I expected my time would be spent on sober networking and cultivating professional contacts...but it turned out to be an occasion for geeky excitement and fun of a sort that I haven't had at a convention in many years. The folks I've named here and in the preceding posts are all to thank for that. I hope they all enjoyed themselves as much as I did.
Wednesday, February 28, 2007
Conviviality
Part 2 of 3
An hour before the NYCC 2007 Venture Bros. Spotlight was due to start, a small crowd had already begun to gather outside the room designated for the panel. A few minutes later it became a huge line, stretching around a corner and down a long corridor.
Venture Bros. creators Jackson Publick and Doc Hammer turned up early to view the scene surreptitiously and seemed happily surprised by the turnout. A few fans recognized them (Doc Hammer in particular is an immediately recognizable guy for his hairstyle alone) and greeted them warmly but discreetly, while most of the crowd gathered to see them may not have realized who they were before they appeared on stage: one of the quirks of being famous for a cartoon.
The panel wasn't held in one of the largest meeting rooms; when the doors finally opened, it turned out to be standing room only and I felt lucky to have a seat.
Besides Publick and Hammer, the panel featured most of the main voice actors: James Urbaniak, Michael Sinterniklaas, and Steven Rattazzi -- pretty much the whole regular cast, apart from the absent Lisa Hammer and Patrick Warburton.
If you're familiar with the show, you know the sense of humor the panelists all demonstrated. They really are that funny in real life. James Urbaniak in particular kept things moving with rapid-fire wit and devastating sarcasm worthy of Thaddeus Venture. It's impossible to report on the panel in any sort of coherent linear way -- the audience were generally filling their boots and wiping tears of laughter from their eyes. I was left coughing my guts out from laughing so hard.
I subsequently learned from Adam Philips of DC Comics and other witnesses that the sheer force and volume of our laughter disrupted the simultaneous Crossing Over: How the Comics Boom is Changing Entertainment panel in the next room, and everyone on the DC panel was left wondering what the hell we were doing in there.
(When this news was later passed along to Jackson Publick, he was pumped that we'd been able to stick it to DC: they'd refused to grant the show permission to mention "Batman" in a script, forcing Hank to make references to "the Bat" instead.)
The panel opened with a video promo for the Venture Bros. season 2 DVD set with an offbeat "sexual mind control" theme, promising more "off-topic commentary" and "confusing menus" and clips of the live-action supplemental footage that enhanced the season 1 collection. Then Jackson Publick announced that a third season has been confirmed by Adult Swim, with a very strong possibility of a fourth. (Hammer dismissed this as "the empty promises of a lover.")
After that, the panel was turned over entirely to audience questions -- Publick and Hammer freely admitted they had nothing prepared and were winging it, and feared the possibility of long awkward silences. This turned out not to be a problem.
I couldn't possibly detail the range of questions, nor convey the tenor of the answers. Any question about the new season, unresolved cliffhangers, or the reappearance of favorite characters was rebuffed with sarcastic bluster. "Don't you want to watch the new episodes? Aren't you intrigued? The whole idea of having a cliffhanger is so that you show up for the next season. You are hanging on a proverbial hook! Tune in! We’re not Lost! We’ll tell you!"
A question about how they kept pop culture references from dominating the scripts prompted a surprising answer from Publick: that the pop culture references should be allowed to completely take over the story rather than being held back. He pointed to the episode "Love-Bheits" in which the leads are costumed as Star Wars characters, and this becomes a driving force in the plot. When the references are an organic part of the story and contribute to the action, it works; when they're tacked on as an irrelevance, you get Family Guy. (And I recall a story on South Park making this exact point...)
My favorite question had to be the 11-year-old boy (!) who asked if the Scrotal Safety Commission really exists and paid for the episode “Are You There, God? It’s Me, Dean” -- opining that a real doctor was unlikely to write something like that. Doc Hammer, who suffered a case of testicular torsion in childhood, sternly explained to the boy that "You should be worrying about this. In fact, it's likely you'll suffer this condition..." And so on, to increasing audience hysteria, until Hammer finally called for security to escort the boy away -- he was clearly pleased to have been on the receiving end of this tirade, I must add.
Another firsthand account of the panel can be read here, and a few photos here. (Update: if I'd known someone was going to post videos of the panel I wouldn't have spent all this time trying to describe it!)
After the panel ended, Doc Hammer and Jackson Publick could be found checking out the convention floor and mingling with anyone who approached. I was especially glad of the opportunity to praise their cover of "Hard Candy Christmas" -- one of the musical numbers they've released online each year as a holiday gift to their fans -- both provide vocals in character as the Monarch and Henchmen #21 and #24, while Doc performs the score. This led to Doc expressing his passion for the film version of The Best Little Whorehouse In Texas...and I warn you, do not say anything disparaging this film in his presence, nor even hint you've never seen it, as he is a fierce advocate on its behalf.
I've been torn between wanting to provide a coherent description and giving in to breathless fanboy gushing here, because I'm genuinely in awe of these guys. Jackson Publick is a writer in the direct lineage of Joss Whedon and Ben Edlund as well as being a gifted performer, and one of the most self-effacing and approachable people you could hope to meet, genuinely grateful that people like his work and willing to show fans how much he appreciates their support -- in stark contrast to the rock star affectations you might expect from someone with a devoted cult following. The same goes double for Doc Hammer, who is not only those things but a talented musician and a frighteningly skilled painter; it just makes you want to spit with disgust that someone can be so competent at so many things at once...and steadfastly refuses to be conceited about it. As collaborators, they're a sort of Lennon/McCartney pair, in the sense of two equals who are challenged by one another to do their best work while being mutually supportive. Just on a technical level the Venture Bros. scripts are densely structured and I'm consistently amazed by how much they fit in. To finally attach their names to real people was a treat; those people turning out to be such great guys was a thrill.
In our final installment: I drop more names of the "comic book famous" and spend lots of money!
An hour before the NYCC 2007 Venture Bros. Spotlight was due to start, a small crowd had already begun to gather outside the room designated for the panel. A few minutes later it became a huge line, stretching around a corner and down a long corridor.
Venture Bros. creators Jackson Publick and Doc Hammer turned up early to view the scene surreptitiously and seemed happily surprised by the turnout. A few fans recognized them (Doc Hammer in particular is an immediately recognizable guy for his hairstyle alone) and greeted them warmly but discreetly, while most of the crowd gathered to see them may not have realized who they were before they appeared on stage: one of the quirks of being famous for a cartoon.
The panel wasn't held in one of the largest meeting rooms; when the doors finally opened, it turned out to be standing room only and I felt lucky to have a seat.
Besides Publick and Hammer, the panel featured most of the main voice actors: James Urbaniak, Michael Sinterniklaas, and Steven Rattazzi -- pretty much the whole regular cast, apart from the absent Lisa Hammer and Patrick Warburton.
If you're familiar with the show, you know the sense of humor the panelists all demonstrated. They really are that funny in real life. James Urbaniak in particular kept things moving with rapid-fire wit and devastating sarcasm worthy of Thaddeus Venture. It's impossible to report on the panel in any sort of coherent linear way -- the audience were generally filling their boots and wiping tears of laughter from their eyes. I was left coughing my guts out from laughing so hard.
I subsequently learned from Adam Philips of DC Comics and other witnesses that the sheer force and volume of our laughter disrupted the simultaneous Crossing Over: How the Comics Boom is Changing Entertainment panel in the next room, and everyone on the DC panel was left wondering what the hell we were doing in there.
(When this news was later passed along to Jackson Publick, he was pumped that we'd been able to stick it to DC: they'd refused to grant the show permission to mention "Batman" in a script, forcing Hank to make references to "the Bat" instead.)
The panel opened with a video promo for the Venture Bros. season 2 DVD set with an offbeat "sexual mind control" theme, promising more "off-topic commentary" and "confusing menus" and clips of the live-action supplemental footage that enhanced the season 1 collection. Then Jackson Publick announced that a third season has been confirmed by Adult Swim, with a very strong possibility of a fourth. (Hammer dismissed this as "the empty promises of a lover.")
After that, the panel was turned over entirely to audience questions -- Publick and Hammer freely admitted they had nothing prepared and were winging it, and feared the possibility of long awkward silences. This turned out not to be a problem.
I couldn't possibly detail the range of questions, nor convey the tenor of the answers. Any question about the new season, unresolved cliffhangers, or the reappearance of favorite characters was rebuffed with sarcastic bluster. "Don't you want to watch the new episodes? Aren't you intrigued? The whole idea of having a cliffhanger is so that you show up for the next season. You are hanging on a proverbial hook! Tune in! We’re not Lost! We’ll tell you!"
A question about how they kept pop culture references from dominating the scripts prompted a surprising answer from Publick: that the pop culture references should be allowed to completely take over the story rather than being held back. He pointed to the episode "Love-Bheits" in which the leads are costumed as Star Wars characters, and this becomes a driving force in the plot. When the references are an organic part of the story and contribute to the action, it works; when they're tacked on as an irrelevance, you get Family Guy. (And I recall a story on South Park making this exact point...)
My favorite question had to be the 11-year-old boy (!) who asked if the Scrotal Safety Commission really exists and paid for the episode “Are You There, God? It’s Me, Dean” -- opining that a real doctor was unlikely to write something like that. Doc Hammer, who suffered a case of testicular torsion in childhood, sternly explained to the boy that "You should be worrying about this. In fact, it's likely you'll suffer this condition..." And so on, to increasing audience hysteria, until Hammer finally called for security to escort the boy away -- he was clearly pleased to have been on the receiving end of this tirade, I must add.
Another firsthand account of the panel can be read here, and a few photos here. (Update: if I'd known someone was going to post videos of the panel I wouldn't have spent all this time trying to describe it!)
After the panel ended, Doc Hammer and Jackson Publick could be found checking out the convention floor and mingling with anyone who approached. I was especially glad of the opportunity to praise their cover of "Hard Candy Christmas" -- one of the musical numbers they've released online each year as a holiday gift to their fans -- both provide vocals in character as the Monarch and Henchmen #21 and #24, while Doc performs the score. This led to Doc expressing his passion for the film version of The Best Little Whorehouse In Texas...and I warn you, do not say anything disparaging this film in his presence, nor even hint you've never seen it, as he is a fierce advocate on its behalf.
I've been torn between wanting to provide a coherent description and giving in to breathless fanboy gushing here, because I'm genuinely in awe of these guys. Jackson Publick is a writer in the direct lineage of Joss Whedon and Ben Edlund as well as being a gifted performer, and one of the most self-effacing and approachable people you could hope to meet, genuinely grateful that people like his work and willing to show fans how much he appreciates their support -- in stark contrast to the rock star affectations you might expect from someone with a devoted cult following. The same goes double for Doc Hammer, who is not only those things but a talented musician and a frighteningly skilled painter; it just makes you want to spit with disgust that someone can be so competent at so many things at once...and steadfastly refuses to be conceited about it. As collaborators, they're a sort of Lennon/McCartney pair, in the sense of two equals who are challenged by one another to do their best work while being mutually supportive. Just on a technical level the Venture Bros. scripts are densely structured and I'm consistently amazed by how much they fit in. To finally attach their names to real people was a treat; those people turning out to be such great guys was a thrill.
In our final installment: I drop more names of the "comic book famous" and spend lots of money!
Tuesday, February 27, 2007
Concatenation
This and the next couple of posts will be stream of consciousness rambling as I try to piece together disjointed memories of NYCC 2007...
Here's a general tip for convention-going: you may see more of the convention by moving around...but you meet more people by staying in one spot and letting them come to you. Provided it's the right spot, mind you, and you aren't actually working. I spent a lot of time with the hospitable Randy Hoppe of the Jack Kirby Museum and Research Center and his charming wife Lisa as well as comics scholar and author George Khoury at the TwoMorrows Publishing booth, which became a regular check-in point and refuge from pacing the convention floor.
And who can blame me, given the caliber of visitors it attracted? Besides all the pros and exhibitors and dealers who stopped by, sticking around that table enabled me to chat with fellow Jack Kirby fans such as Tom Kraft, Scott Sheaffer, and James Romberger (who was eloquent on the trials of being a Kirby devotee while studying with noted Kirby-hater Art Spiegelman) as well as Jon Cooke and his brother Adam, both working on what promises to be a terrific documentary on Will Eisner.
The biggest surprise of the day by a wide margin was the sudden appearance of Jon Browne, proprietor of the comics shop They Walk Among Us in the London suburb of Richmond. This was my local comics shop back when I lived in the UK...but we hadn't seen each other in seventeen years. And yet Jon recognized me immediately from a distance and greeted me by name while I was still trying to figure out who he was.
I knew something of what Jon had been up to lately -- namely raising money for diabetes research with a 500 km bike ride along the Mekong from Saigon to Angkor Wat in Cambodia. The most interesting people run comic shops, didn't you know? But seeing him at the con was the last thing I expected. I spent most of our conversation moving my jaw and trying to make words come out. Which was pretty much how I always acted back in the day, so no big surprise there. It must have been like stepping through a time machine for him.
I got a special kick from hearing that Pete Townshend is now one of Jon's customers. Pete lives in the same area; I used to walk past his house and studio on my way to the shop. Pete never used to read comics -- though as it happens, one of his best friends is a comic book writer and editor -- but he loved The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay and was inspired to check them out. What could increase my delight at seeing Jon again after all these years? Finding out that Pete Townshend owns a book I worked on.
The Comics Blogging panel on Friday afternoon started at 2:30 PM...an hour and a half before the convention opened to the general public, limiting attendance to those with industry, exhibitor, or press badges. The focus of the panel was inevitably on the mainstream news sites that cover sales figures and industry trends, rather than us scruffy amateurs who offer only opinions and analysis. And yet, from a show of hands, more than three-quarters of the audience had blogs of their own. I think there's room for a whole different discussion of blogging by individuals, rather than just portal sites and old media web presences, but this wasn't that panel.
When the panelists were asked to name their favorite non-industry, non-insider comics blogs, Chris Butcher of Comics 212 demonstrated good taste by citing Jog for his mad writing skills, and Ron Hogan of Galleycat chose Chris's Invincible Super-Blog for its high fun quotient. Those were the only two "outsider" blogs mentioned in the whole panel; panelists Heidi MacDonald and Johanna Draper Carlson each declined to name a favorite, sensibly pointing out that not having to remember all the sites they recommend is why blogrolls were invented.
It was comforting to learn that both Heidi and I get a surprisingly large number of hits from the search term "Disney sex" -- at least I once actually wrote something vaguely related to that phrase, and no I will not tell you where to find it, you filthy pervert -- aaaaaaand now those hits will at least double, what with me mentioning it again just now.
There was a potentially interesting but too-brief discussion of the hazards in reviewing the work of people with whom you interact socially. Johanna opined that "Just because I don't like one of your stories doesn't mean I don't like you." To which any writer -- Johanna included -- would have to reply "But that's much worse! What you think of my work is much more important than what you think of me as a person!" I only wish I'd thought to say that at the time.
It turns out I missed the chance to meet bloggers David "hermanos" Brothers and Geoff Klock, both of whom were in the audience. However, by a staggering coincidence, friend of this blog Redhead Fangirl took the seat directly behind me and didn't realize it for the entire panel. And yet Jon Browne recognized me after seventeen years...!
In our next installment: the shocking link between The Best Little Whorehouse In Texas and the Scrotal Safety Commission!
Here's a general tip for convention-going: you may see more of the convention by moving around...but you meet more people by staying in one spot and letting them come to you. Provided it's the right spot, mind you, and you aren't actually working. I spent a lot of time with the hospitable Randy Hoppe of the Jack Kirby Museum and Research Center and his charming wife Lisa as well as comics scholar and author George Khoury at the TwoMorrows Publishing booth, which became a regular check-in point and refuge from pacing the convention floor.
And who can blame me, given the caliber of visitors it attracted? Besides all the pros and exhibitors and dealers who stopped by, sticking around that table enabled me to chat with fellow Jack Kirby fans such as Tom Kraft, Scott Sheaffer, and James Romberger (who was eloquent on the trials of being a Kirby devotee while studying with noted Kirby-hater Art Spiegelman) as well as Jon Cooke and his brother Adam, both working on what promises to be a terrific documentary on Will Eisner.
The biggest surprise of the day by a wide margin was the sudden appearance of Jon Browne, proprietor of the comics shop They Walk Among Us in the London suburb of Richmond. This was my local comics shop back when I lived in the UK...but we hadn't seen each other in seventeen years. And yet Jon recognized me immediately from a distance and greeted me by name while I was still trying to figure out who he was.
I knew something of what Jon had been up to lately -- namely raising money for diabetes research with a 500 km bike ride along the Mekong from Saigon to Angkor Wat in Cambodia. The most interesting people run comic shops, didn't you know? But seeing him at the con was the last thing I expected. I spent most of our conversation moving my jaw and trying to make words come out. Which was pretty much how I always acted back in the day, so no big surprise there. It must have been like stepping through a time machine for him.
I got a special kick from hearing that Pete Townshend is now one of Jon's customers. Pete lives in the same area; I used to walk past his house and studio on my way to the shop. Pete never used to read comics -- though as it happens, one of his best friends is a comic book writer and editor -- but he loved The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay and was inspired to check them out. What could increase my delight at seeing Jon again after all these years? Finding out that Pete Townshend owns a book I worked on.
The Comics Blogging panel on Friday afternoon started at 2:30 PM...an hour and a half before the convention opened to the general public, limiting attendance to those with industry, exhibitor, or press badges. The focus of the panel was inevitably on the mainstream news sites that cover sales figures and industry trends, rather than us scruffy amateurs who offer only opinions and analysis. And yet, from a show of hands, more than three-quarters of the audience had blogs of their own. I think there's room for a whole different discussion of blogging by individuals, rather than just portal sites and old media web presences, but this wasn't that panel.
When the panelists were asked to name their favorite non-industry, non-insider comics blogs, Chris Butcher of Comics 212 demonstrated good taste by citing Jog for his mad writing skills, and Ron Hogan of Galleycat chose Chris's Invincible Super-Blog for its high fun quotient. Those were the only two "outsider" blogs mentioned in the whole panel; panelists Heidi MacDonald and Johanna Draper Carlson each declined to name a favorite, sensibly pointing out that not having to remember all the sites they recommend is why blogrolls were invented.
It was comforting to learn that both Heidi and I get a surprisingly large number of hits from the search term "Disney sex" -- at least I once actually wrote something vaguely related to that phrase, and no I will not tell you where to find it, you filthy pervert -- aaaaaaand now those hits will at least double, what with me mentioning it again just now.
There was a potentially interesting but too-brief discussion of the hazards in reviewing the work of people with whom you interact socially. Johanna opined that "Just because I don't like one of your stories doesn't mean I don't like you." To which any writer -- Johanna included -- would have to reply "But that's much worse! What you think of my work is much more important than what you think of me as a person!" I only wish I'd thought to say that at the time.
It turns out I missed the chance to meet bloggers David "hermanos" Brothers and Geoff Klock, both of whom were in the audience. However, by a staggering coincidence, friend of this blog Redhead Fangirl took the seat directly behind me and didn't realize it for the entire panel. And yet Jon Browne recognized me after seventeen years...!
In our next installment: the shocking link between The Best Little Whorehouse In Texas and the Scrotal Safety Commission!
Saturday, February 17, 2007
Below the fold
This one goes out to all the Grant Morrison fans out there. You want an example of something from The Invisibles happening in real life? Then clock this article from the New Yorker by Susan Orlean about a physicist turned origami expert:
And as origami became more complex it also became more practical. Scientists began applying these folding techniques to anything — medical, electrical, optical, or nanotechnical devices, and even to strands of DNA — that had a fixed size and shape but needed to be packed tightly and in an orderly way. By the end of the Bug Wars, origami had completely changed, and so had Robert Lang. In 2001, he left his job — he was then at the fibre-optics company JDS Uniphase, in San Jose — to fold paper full time.
No mention of using origami for time travel, but give the guy a few years. Since string theory and its cousin brane theory call for as many as 10 or 26 dimensions, most of which are compactified (essentially, folded in on themselves) to such a small level we can't detect them, it's not entirely inconceivable that the mathematics Lang uses for his origami could have some application to describing the shape of spacetime. And if I were the likes of Morrison or Ellis, I'd have turned that idea into a four-issue miniseries already.
Also, it turns out that the history of origami in the West has an odd connection to the history of comic books: social critic and Kinsey Institute researcher Gershon Legman, who joined Fredric Wertham in attacking comic books starting in the late Forties, makes a surprise appearance in the New Yorker article:
In the mid-nineteen-forties, the American folklorist Gershon Legman began studying origami. Legman was a man of diverse inclinations: he collected vulgar limericks, wrote a book about oral techniques in sexual gratification, and is credited with having invented the vibrating dildo when he was only twenty. After becoming interested in origami, he made contact with paper-folders around the world — most significantly, Akira Yoshizawa, a Japanese prodigy who, before being recognized as an extraordinary talent, made a meagre living by selling fish appetizers door-to-door in Tokyo. What made Yoshizawa extraordinary was that he presented the art for the first time as a medium that could be creative and expressive — he devised tens of thousands of models, and was particularly famous for his gorillas. In 1955, Legman organized an exhibition of Yoshizawa’s work at the Stedelijk Museum, in Amsterdam.
Legman and Wertham are interesting people, much more than the stereotypes we remember them as today. Both of them were what we'd call "liberal progressives" who were deeply concerned for the welfare of children...and both had a heartfelt, genuine, and utterly misplaced dread of the evil effects that comic books had on young minds. Both were totally opposed to censorship...except when their fear overtook them, and they lent their support to a crusade to eradicate something they saw as an even greater evil, even if it meant impinging on our civil liberties and freedom of speech. Fortunately we're so much more enlightened than that today.
So, Legman helped crush the comic book industry in ways from which it still hasn't recovered...but he also helped introduce us to origami.
Tuesday, February 13, 2007
Things to do at the NYCC
If you saw or read about the madhouse that was last year's inaugural New York Comic Con -- complete with surprise appearance by the fire marshals -- this year promises to be even more ludicrously overpopulated. And I'm just talking about the featured guests.
Really, have you seen the guest list? Wes Craven. Kevin Smith. Stan Lee and Feedback. Stephen King. J. Michael Straczynski. Four cast members from Buffy. The cheerleader from Heroes. And if that weren't enough, some people I'm actually interested in seeing.
Anyway...even though the convention is still more than a week away, given such a packed schedule it seems logical to start making plans for how to fit in everything I want to do during the con. Ordinarily I don't like being in a room with more than six people in it, so gearing up for an event like this requires an almost military level of advance preparation.
This is my current to-do list:
And finally: ask Stephen Colbert if his new Ben & Jerry's ice cream will be a great flavor...or the greatest flavor?
Really, have you seen the guest list? Wes Craven. Kevin Smith. Stan Lee and Feedback. Stephen King. J. Michael Straczynski. Four cast members from Buffy. The cheerleader from Heroes. And if that weren't enough, some people I'm actually interested in seeing.
Anyway...even though the convention is still more than a week away, given such a packed schedule it seems logical to start making plans for how to fit in everything I want to do during the con. Ordinarily I don't like being in a room with more than six people in it, so gearing up for an event like this requires an almost military level of advance preparation.
This is my current to-do list:
- Ask Hayden Panettiere if she still has her Dot costume from A Bug's Life.
- Attend Comics Bloggers panel and try to pick up pointers on how to be a better blogger. Also, try not to cry when Estoreal is named as "an example of what not to do."
- Ask Redhead Fangirl how I can be more creepy, because creepy guys get all the girls.
- Staple myself to my seat for the Venture Bros panel. Try not to go all stalkerish on Jackson Publick. I once had an e-mail from Doc Hammer; I do not need another restraining order to add to my collection.
- Attend the tersely-named African American panel and ask why they think there are no black female comics creators. And for my next impression, Jesse Owens! (Explanation here and here.)
- Hide wrist-slitting sharp implements from attendees leaving The Truth About Breaking Into Comics panel.
- Test Brian Cronin on Yiddish words. Bonus points for asking him if he's attending The Jewish Side of Comics panel. (Note: to find this funny, you'd need to know that Brian Cronin is more Jewish than anyone in my family and any of my Jewish friends...and yet he's not actually Jewish. Or so he says.)
- Compliment Jeff Brady on his beard. Another non-Jewish fellow with a fine beard. I am disturbed by this trend.
And finally: ask Stephen Colbert if his new Ben & Jerry's ice cream will be a great flavor...or the greatest flavor?
Wednesday, February 07, 2007
This is the day
In honor of my first blogaversary and the fact that Blogger insisted on switching me from old Blogger to new Blogger -- sorry, blogger formerly known as plok, they done bushwacked me -- I'm taking the opportunity to tidy things up around the place, update the blogroll, and generally make things more blogtastic in an effort to use the prefix "blog" gratuitously as many times as possible in this sentence. Other than that, it'll be pretty much business as usual.
(The blogroll at right only contains about half the comics blogs I'm subscribed to, as well as a few which aren't comics related. And then there are the political blogs and news blogs and entertainment blogs and about five dozen Macintosh blogs. Yes, I have a sickness. More links to come as I get around to them.)
Over the past year I haven't been able to maintain the steady flow of posts nearly as much as I'd like. Part of it is work-related distraction and part of it is natural inclination. I envy those bloggers who are natural essayists. I am if anything more of a natural ranter, capable of going on at frightening length when something has raised my ire, much like a belligerent drunk walking up to strangers in a bar, fixing them with an unsteady accusatory finger, and delivering an impassioned speech about what exactly is wrong with that bastard Giuliani and why a man with his abhorrent political history and frankly disgraceful marital history should retire from politics and never again seek higher office...
Which is all well and good when the red mist rises...but I'm far less verbose when I'm feeling calm. And, worse luck for my lovely readers, I've been working on maintaining my inner peace and equanimity in the face of outrageous provocation. Oh, I get plenty of other writing done in those happy moments of serenity...just not the sort of stuff which makes entertaining blog posts.
(And I look forward to being able to talk about those other things I've been working on, once they're done...but I am not at liberty, national security is at stake, official secrets act, et cetera and so forth.)
So anyway, here's to a much more talkative second year of blogging. Because somehow, I don't think the world will fail to give me plenty of things to rant about.
Can you believe they're using a song by The The as the incidental music for an M&Ms commercial? That's just insane! I cannot wrap my head around the complete and utter wrongness of this...
See what I mean?
(The blogroll at right only contains about half the comics blogs I'm subscribed to, as well as a few which aren't comics related. And then there are the political blogs and news blogs and entertainment blogs and about five dozen Macintosh blogs. Yes, I have a sickness. More links to come as I get around to them.)
Over the past year I haven't been able to maintain the steady flow of posts nearly as much as I'd like. Part of it is work-related distraction and part of it is natural inclination. I envy those bloggers who are natural essayists. I am if anything more of a natural ranter, capable of going on at frightening length when something has raised my ire, much like a belligerent drunk walking up to strangers in a bar, fixing them with an unsteady accusatory finger, and delivering an impassioned speech about what exactly is wrong with that bastard Giuliani and why a man with his abhorrent political history and frankly disgraceful marital history should retire from politics and never again seek higher office...
Which is all well and good when the red mist rises...but I'm far less verbose when I'm feeling calm. And, worse luck for my lovely readers, I've been working on maintaining my inner peace and equanimity in the face of outrageous provocation. Oh, I get plenty of other writing done in those happy moments of serenity...just not the sort of stuff which makes entertaining blog posts.
(And I look forward to being able to talk about those other things I've been working on, once they're done...but I am not at liberty, national security is at stake, official secrets act, et cetera and so forth.)
So anyway, here's to a much more talkative second year of blogging. Because somehow, I don't think the world will fail to give me plenty of things to rant about.
Can you believe they're using a song by The The as the incidental music for an M&Ms commercial? That's just insane! I cannot wrap my head around the complete and utter wrongness of this...
See what I mean?
Wednesday, January 31, 2007
Prophet of doom
Being some disjointed ranting on the state of mainstream comics...
According to The Beat's analysis of DC Comics monthly sales here, the best selling comic of December 2006 was Justice League of America #4 at over 130,000 copies. The top comic of the year was Justice League of America #1 which broke 200,000 copies.
The typical DC superhero book seems to be orbiting in the range of 20,000 to 40,000 in sales. In the early Seventies -- when I was a child and therefore everything about life was perfect -- Jack Kirby's "Fourth World" books (New Gods, Mister Miracle et al) sold in the neighborhood of 200,000 to 300,000 copies and were cancelled as failures.
It would have been typical for an issue of Superman to sell over 400,000 copies during the early Seventies. That would be an average regular issue, mind you, not a "first issue" or "special event" issue. More historical perspective on patterns in comics sales can be found here.
(Why were Kirby's books considered failures? This is a source of great contention among Kirby fans -- ah, but what isn't? -- but the general impression is that it was because his books were selling less than 50% of their print run. DC could simply have lowered the print run to match demand...but the real problem was that their expectations had been unrealistically high in the first place. If you're expecting the absolute biggest success in comics history and get merely a respectable success, it seems like a failure. But I digress.)
You may rightly point out all the other ways today isn't like 1971 -- comics cost more, they aren't sold at newsstands, I'm old enough to shave, and there's now such a thing as "waiting for the trade paperback" instead of buying mothly issues. Be that as it may: we still have an idea that the current "universe" of mainstream monthly comic book readers is going to be something considerably above 100,000 readers.
According to The Beat's analysis of DC Comics monthly sales here, the best selling comic of December 2006 was Justice League of America #4 at over 130,000 copies. The top comic of the year was Justice League of America #1 which broke 200,000 copies.
The typical DC superhero book seems to be orbiting in the range of 20,000 to 40,000 in sales. In the early Seventies -- when I was a child and therefore everything about life was perfect -- Jack Kirby's "Fourth World" books (New Gods, Mister Miracle et al) sold in the neighborhood of 200,000 to 300,000 copies and were cancelled as failures.
It would have been typical for an issue of Superman to sell over 400,000 copies during the early Seventies. That would be an average regular issue, mind you, not a "first issue" or "special event" issue. More historical perspective on patterns in comics sales can be found here.
(Why were Kirby's books considered failures? This is a source of great contention among Kirby fans -- ah, but what isn't? -- but the general impression is that it was because his books were selling less than 50% of their print run. DC could simply have lowered the print run to match demand...but the real problem was that their expectations had been unrealistically high in the first place. If you're expecting the absolute biggest success in comics history and get merely a respectable success, it seems like a failure. But I digress.)
You may rightly point out all the other ways today isn't like 1971 -- comics cost more, they aren't sold at newsstands, I'm old enough to shave, and there's now such a thing as "waiting for the trade paperback" instead of buying mothly issues. Be that as it may: we still have an idea that the current "universe" of mainstream monthly comic book readers is going to be something considerably above 100,000 readers.
DC has a number of books that start above the average in sales and then lose one or two thousand readers per month. A lot of them seem to have had a surge from the "jumping on board" aspect of the "One Year Later" scheme...but failed to hold those readers, and didn't continue bringing in new readers to replace those defections.
Here's a really important clue for comics publishers: "Jumping on" issues don't work, and if you have to have one in the first place, you're already doing something wrong. People do not mind coming into the middle of a story, if it's a good story and being told well. You catch the tenth or twelfth episode of a TV series and say "Wow, this is really good, I gotta start watching this"? Or flip the channels and come across the middle of a movie that hooks you, and you realize you want to watch it from the beginning? These things happen all the time. I've opened up novels at random in the middle and gotten an impression of the writing that made me want to get the book. Not knowing who the characters are or what the situation may be offers no impediment to the newcomer provided you see some spark of entertainment that makes you want more. All your "jumping on" issue does is service the new reader who already knows this is a "jumping on" issue -- which assumes a higher level of familiarity with that title among people who aren't already reading it than one ought to assume -- or the few who happen upon it that particular month by chance. You expect every potential reader is that person? What manner of god are you, comics publisher, that you may control destiny thus?
Several of the lowest sellers are Cartoon Network tie-ins. Krypto the Superdog is selling under 10 thousand copies. Scooby Doo is under 5 thousand. Looney Tunes under 3 thousand. CN Block Party less than 2 thousand. These numbers are appalling. If I were a higher-up executive at Warner with no interest in comics, looking at DC's performance with these books that are essentially getting constant free advertising on television, I'd have to conclude DC was incapable of selling bowls on a day when it was raining soup.
Kids who watch the cartoons are not going into the comic shops and/or not finding those comics. I'm not saying the comics aren't there; I'm saying the kids aren't finding them. And you know what? If I were a parent, I wouldn't let my kid go into a comic shop alone. Assuming there was even one in our town, which (statistically speaking) there probably wouldn't be.
But every time I go to one of the supermarkets in my neighborhood or to the local K-Mart, my attention is always fixed by the rack of Disney and Archie comics digests in the impulse purchase racks at the checkout lines. They look appealing, they look affordable, and they look parent-friendly. Attention DC, another clue approaching: put your Cartoon Network tie-in titles into digests and do whatever it takes to get them onto those racks! I bet you'd sell more than 2000 freaking copies.
(Update: Kevin gently points out something I have overlooked about this in the comments section.)
There are two issues raised in the above: one is how small the total universe of current comic book readers has become relative to its size in the past, and how the mainstream publishers have failed to enlarge it...and the other is how well or poorly that shrinking universe has been served by the publishers. Price and availability are the keys to the first issue. Blaming video games as competition for reader dollars doesn't really cut it. There are always things competing for your prospective customers' wallets, and there always will be. Suck it up and accept that; don't use it as an excuse for failing to get your product in front of people. And if there's so much pricey competition, how does continually raising the price help? As to the second issue...
It's not an artistic or aesthetic value judgement to say that Marvel and DC are simply not giving the existing comics reading audience what they want. It's a statement of objective fact, demonstrated empirically by sales figures. This is axiomatic when you see two thousand more people each month saying "you're not giving me what I want in this comic" and an equal number aren't replacing them. Finding out what it is they want and giving it to them is the job of publishers and editors and their creative personnel. And it's a job the majority of them just aren't doing.
Thursday, January 25, 2007
I'm having another flashback...
While I've been AWOL from blogging, the good folks at Flashback Universe -- about whom I've written previously -- released three new comics in fairly rapid succession. It was a long wait since their first release way back in August and I'm glad to see that logjam broken...not least because if you're trying to build a new business model for comics publishing (or anything else) it's good to give your audience reason to keep coming back on a steady basis rather than giving people a brief taste and then allowing them to drift away, with the novelty and initial enthusiasm slowly dissipating.
This is a problem also facing ComicSpace -- about whom I've also written previously -- having gone through massive initial growth following a plug from Warren Ellis and a surge of promotion on countless blogs, only to leave its users saying "great, we're here, now what do we do with the damn thing?" Well, look, building new things isn't easy, especially when you have no way of judging in advance what the public response will be and you want to have a slow, careful rollout. And success is delicate, especially online: this year's MySpace or ComicSpace could be next year's Tribe...or even Friendster. You can be poised to take over the world a la Google, and then make one bad decision that drives away your users en masse and destroys all the buzz you've developed. Whether you do too much or too little, too quickly or too slowly, people are fickle. I'd urge everyone to be patient with ComicSpace: it's there, it has untapped potential, and uses for the site that its creator never foresaw may well bubble up from the user base. A little slow deliberation on his part is no bad thing.
But I digress; we were talking about Flashback...
I can't claim to be remotely unbiased, for reasons that will be obvious to the keen-eyed reader who takes a look at their download page...but I genuinely enjoy the books they've released. When they made their debut, the format and distribution method seemed like the most interesting thing. Comics designed to be downloaded and read on screen, with transitions and storytelling techniques that just wouldn't be the same in print, and readable at your leisure from your hard drive rather than through the intermediary of a website. And the downloads are free, the whole venture being supported by voluntary donations. Jim Shelley says he's broken even on the first issue, which isn't something many (if any at all) self-publishers of print comics can ever say. Is reading a comic book onscreen inherently less good than reading a paper comic book in your hands? Well, having highly affordable comic books on really cheap newsprint was better too. Having 25 cent comics on sale at every newsstand was better too. Come on, grandpa, comics have to reach a freaking audience somehow! Cost and lack of widespread availability is smothering the medium, and I don't think the remaining comics readers realize just how bad the crisis has become.
So: Flashback has come up with most of the pieces of the solution -- I await the day when they add more potential revenue streams, like Flashback t-shirts and caps and action figures, not to mention the day when Hollywood buys the animated film rights -- and they've used the format in a way that capitalizes on its strengths, vis the storytelling techniques alluded to above...but you'll have to read the comics themselves to get a sense of that. (Come on, it's as free as reading this blog. Could it hurt to give it a try?)
What really drew me in, though, is the unashamedly retro joy that Jim and his Quebecois artist Pierre Villeneuve bring to the stories. It's something that can't be faked. Too many attempts at "comics like they used to be" are tainted by archness or self-conscious irony. (This is what spoiled Alan Moore's 1963 for me; the sense that it was a pastiche whose message was "look how loveably awful those grand old comics were," an effect achieved by making stories that were deliberately more awful than the best of those old comics actually were.) Or they're done by people who turned to "retro" style by default because they weren't quite skilled enough to pull off more modern styles, or out of a rigidly conservative refusal to admit there might be some good in comics other than the ones you read when you were twelve. My point is, these guys are doing this style out of a genuine affection for the comics of the late Sixties and early Seventies -- the same impulse which informs the very different Astro City -- and their affection isn't at all condescending. As comics mature as an artform, there has to be room for us to go back to approaches from the past and try them on...not for pastiche or homage, but to find what may still work and what can be brought back to revitalize the future. Particularly when I look at Marvel these days, I have to wonder where mainstream comics may have gone off the rails and wonder how we might retrace their path and get things going in a more healthy direction.
My friend Howard just read one of the recent Flashback titles -- it was the League of Monsters story "By Butterfly Betrayed" -- without reading any of the backstory of the characters or additional info on the site, and he compared the in media res experience to picking up, say, a random issue of Marvel Team-Up from the mid-Seventies, and trying to figure out who all these characters were and what was going on. The mere fact that he can get that feeling from one of these books -- and doesn't feel the same way when picking up a random Marvel or DC book of today -- tells me that Flashback is definitely onto something here.
This is a problem also facing ComicSpace -- about whom I've also written previously -- having gone through massive initial growth following a plug from Warren Ellis and a surge of promotion on countless blogs, only to leave its users saying "great, we're here, now what do we do with the damn thing?" Well, look, building new things isn't easy, especially when you have no way of judging in advance what the public response will be and you want to have a slow, careful rollout. And success is delicate, especially online: this year's MySpace or ComicSpace could be next year's Tribe...or even Friendster. You can be poised to take over the world a la Google, and then make one bad decision that drives away your users en masse and destroys all the buzz you've developed. Whether you do too much or too little, too quickly or too slowly, people are fickle. I'd urge everyone to be patient with ComicSpace: it's there, it has untapped potential, and uses for the site that its creator never foresaw may well bubble up from the user base. A little slow deliberation on his part is no bad thing.
But I digress; we were talking about Flashback...
I can't claim to be remotely unbiased, for reasons that will be obvious to the keen-eyed reader who takes a look at their download page...but I genuinely enjoy the books they've released. When they made their debut, the format and distribution method seemed like the most interesting thing. Comics designed to be downloaded and read on screen, with transitions and storytelling techniques that just wouldn't be the same in print, and readable at your leisure from your hard drive rather than through the intermediary of a website. And the downloads are free, the whole venture being supported by voluntary donations. Jim Shelley says he's broken even on the first issue, which isn't something many (if any at all) self-publishers of print comics can ever say. Is reading a comic book onscreen inherently less good than reading a paper comic book in your hands? Well, having highly affordable comic books on really cheap newsprint was better too. Having 25 cent comics on sale at every newsstand was better too. Come on, grandpa, comics have to reach a freaking audience somehow! Cost and lack of widespread availability is smothering the medium, and I don't think the remaining comics readers realize just how bad the crisis has become.
So: Flashback has come up with most of the pieces of the solution -- I await the day when they add more potential revenue streams, like Flashback t-shirts and caps and action figures, not to mention the day when Hollywood buys the animated film rights -- and they've used the format in a way that capitalizes on its strengths, vis the storytelling techniques alluded to above...but you'll have to read the comics themselves to get a sense of that. (Come on, it's as free as reading this blog. Could it hurt to give it a try?)
What really drew me in, though, is the unashamedly retro joy that Jim and his Quebecois artist Pierre Villeneuve bring to the stories. It's something that can't be faked. Too many attempts at "comics like they used to be" are tainted by archness or self-conscious irony. (This is what spoiled Alan Moore's 1963 for me; the sense that it was a pastiche whose message was "look how loveably awful those grand old comics were," an effect achieved by making stories that were deliberately more awful than the best of those old comics actually were.) Or they're done by people who turned to "retro" style by default because they weren't quite skilled enough to pull off more modern styles, or out of a rigidly conservative refusal to admit there might be some good in comics other than the ones you read when you were twelve. My point is, these guys are doing this style out of a genuine affection for the comics of the late Sixties and early Seventies -- the same impulse which informs the very different Astro City -- and their affection isn't at all condescending. As comics mature as an artform, there has to be room for us to go back to approaches from the past and try them on...not for pastiche or homage, but to find what may still work and what can be brought back to revitalize the future. Particularly when I look at Marvel these days, I have to wonder where mainstream comics may have gone off the rails and wonder how we might retrace their path and get things going in a more healthy direction.
My friend Howard just read one of the recent Flashback titles -- it was the League of Monsters story "By Butterfly Betrayed" -- without reading any of the backstory of the characters or additional info on the site, and he compared the in media res experience to picking up, say, a random issue of Marvel Team-Up from the mid-Seventies, and trying to figure out who all these characters were and what was going on. The mere fact that he can get that feeling from one of these books -- and doesn't feel the same way when picking up a random Marvel or DC book of today -- tells me that Flashback is definitely onto something here.
Monday, January 15, 2007
A page from history
From Justice League of America issue #57, cover dated November 1967. Script by Gardner Fox, art by Mike Sekowsky and Sid Greene.
"Asked what reward he wanted for saving the life of a wealthy garments manufacturer -- Joel Harper, a young Negro, requested only -- a job!" we learn from the Flash as this story opens.
"I'd sure like to know why -- of all things he could have had -- Joel settled for a job!" wonders Snapper Carr.
Not much of a job, either; when we meet Joel after this introduction, he's pushing a wheeled rack of menswear along a street in the garment district. Way to show your profuse gratitude, mister wealthy garments manufacturer!
And then, mister wealthy garments manufacturer turns around and fires Joel for helping a temporarily blinded Flash stop a quartet of bank robbers...because the rack of clothes got ruined in the melee. And you blame Joel for his bitterness? The Flash, however, is impressed with Joel's powers of observation...and suggests his friend Barry Allen will help Joel get a job as a policeman in Central City.
However it may look to modern eyes, this was pretty heady stuff for comics in 1967...when Dr. King was still alive and still considered a subversive threat by the establishment (as much for his opposition to the Vietnam War as for his views on race relations) and having a black person on the cover of a comic book seemed like an invitation to having that comic banned in large segments of the country.
Also in this story, Green Arrow helps an Apache boy, and Hawkman assists a philanthropist trying to aid impoverished people in India against local opposition. All for the sake of helping Snapper finish his term paper on National Brotherhood Week...
Wednesday, December 13, 2006
Because I'm a people person...
...and whore myself out for nearly every social networking site dangled in front of me, you can find me on ComicSpace. That photo is nearly a year old and doesn't really look like me anymore...but it was one of the less repellent ones I had available. Really seems like it cries out for a funny caption, though. Like "RAB tries to induce a moment of psychic nosebleed zen in himself by sheer concentration." Or "RAB enters the Zach Galifianakis lookalike contest." Or "Step away from the Interrositer, Doctor Meacham." Please feel free to suggest more captions in the comments section.On a related note, my friend Mark from Northern Ireland writes to ask, "So, what didja think of ENDLESS WIRE then?" A fair question, young man, and one which in recent weeks has been much on my mind. I've been meaning to write something about the new Who album, and the reason I haven't done so is simply that I haven't decided what I think of it yet. And the weird part is, in the past year we've also had AERIAL from Kate Bush and LOVE from The Beatles, and I haven't entirely figured out what I think of those yet either!
A span of twelve months saw new releases from the artists who were the biggest formative influences on my musical tastes ever since I was a teenager...but none of these totally fulfilled my hopes and expectations in the way that a new release (or a remastering, in the case of the Beatles) would have done in the past. I have to withhold judgement a little because it might just be the misguided conservatism of the "true fan" who only wants his favorite artists to plow the same furrow over and over again, and complains when they go off in a different direction. Or it might be that they've lost the plot somewhere along the way and need a kick in the ass to get reminded of what made them great in the first place.
(With the Beatles album it's obviously a whole different question. I can't decide if I find the new versions too radical or too faithful to the original...but it's the one of the three I like the most, and Paul and Ringo kept their distance from it.)
Anyway, I have more to say about these albums, but perhaps I should save it for another post...
Sunday, December 10, 2006
What the...?
Lisa at Sequentially Speaking posted about this and I've ranted about it there, but I've still got a bit of rant left in me and need to get it out of my system.
Back in July, the Skiffy Channel broadcast Who Wants To Be A Superhero? -- a six episode "reality series" so obviously scripted and contrived that the word "reality" itself might be able to sue the producers for defamation -- in which Stan Lee supposedly auditioned contestants who competed to become the new superhero featured in a comic book to be published by Dark Horse. Stan himself has real charisma on screen, and in spite of my contempt for the idea and the silliness of its execution, the show became one of my guilty almost-pleasures during its mercifully short run.
Months later, with the show almost entirely forgotten, Dark Horse has announced that the resultant comic book allegedly written by Stan Lee, originally due to come out in October, will ship in January. And they provide this cover preview:
Logic says the cover should be a photo of the winning competitor. Not an awkward pose (and that is one seriously awkward pose there) on a white background! Even the shoestring budget of the the tv version managed to produce more interesting visuals, including a mockup cover featuring the character that was pedestrian, but still more interesting than this. And that mockup had the considerable benefit of actually having been shown on the program itself.
I have no idea what the ratings were on the series -- apparently high enough that a second series is being planned -- but let's assume that the show had genuine fans who, even at this late date, would still be interested in the comic promised by the very premise of the show. I mean, that's the presumed target audience here, right? So why not do everything you can to appeal to that audience and get their attention? By not using a photo of the guy, or the cover that appeared on the air, Dark Horse has possibly thrown away thousands in sales.
And what else is missing here? Stan Lee's presence was a big part of the show, and his name was prominently mentioned in all the publicity, and the comic is purportedly written by Stan. Anyone who watched that show certainly came away knowing the name "Stan Lee" if they didn't before. And his name doesn't appear on the cover? They passed up a chance to put the name "Stan Lee" in honking giant letters across the cover when it would have been entirely right and appropriate to do so? That's, what, maybe thousands more in sales lost right there.
(Some comics have blazoned a famous creator's name on the cover with less reason or even no reason at all.)
Let me make it clear that I had no interest in the comic itself; what bothers me is seeing something done poorly when it could just as easily have been done well. Dark Horse publishes a lot of good comics and has most of the best creators in comics available to them...and they've been very canny about integrating with other media for cross-promotion. To see them doing something this amateurish is disappointing.
I mean...they didn't even put Stan's name on the cover? What's up with that?
Back in July, the Skiffy Channel broadcast Who Wants To Be A Superhero? -- a six episode "reality series" so obviously scripted and contrived that the word "reality" itself might be able to sue the producers for defamation -- in which Stan Lee supposedly auditioned contestants who competed to become the new superhero featured in a comic book to be published by Dark Horse. Stan himself has real charisma on screen, and in spite of my contempt for the idea and the silliness of its execution, the show became one of my guilty almost-pleasures during its mercifully short run.
Months later, with the show almost entirely forgotten, Dark Horse has announced that the resultant comic book allegedly written by Stan Lee, originally due to come out in October, will ship in January. And they provide this cover preview:
Logic says the cover should be a photo of the winning competitor. Not an awkward pose (and that is one seriously awkward pose there) on a white background! Even the shoestring budget of the the tv version managed to produce more interesting visuals, including a mockup cover featuring the character that was pedestrian, but still more interesting than this. And that mockup had the considerable benefit of actually having been shown on the program itself.
I have no idea what the ratings were on the series -- apparently high enough that a second series is being planned -- but let's assume that the show had genuine fans who, even at this late date, would still be interested in the comic promised by the very premise of the show. I mean, that's the presumed target audience here, right? So why not do everything you can to appeal to that audience and get their attention? By not using a photo of the guy, or the cover that appeared on the air, Dark Horse has possibly thrown away thousands in sales.
And what else is missing here? Stan Lee's presence was a big part of the show, and his name was prominently mentioned in all the publicity, and the comic is purportedly written by Stan. Anyone who watched that show certainly came away knowing the name "Stan Lee" if they didn't before. And his name doesn't appear on the cover? They passed up a chance to put the name "Stan Lee" in honking giant letters across the cover when it would have been entirely right and appropriate to do so? That's, what, maybe thousands more in sales lost right there.
(Some comics have blazoned a famous creator's name on the cover with less reason or even no reason at all.)
Let me make it clear that I had no interest in the comic itself; what bothers me is seeing something done poorly when it could just as easily have been done well. Dark Horse publishes a lot of good comics and has most of the best creators in comics available to them...and they've been very canny about integrating with other media for cross-promotion. To see them doing something this amateurish is disappointing.
I mean...they didn't even put Stan's name on the cover? What's up with that?
Saturday, December 02, 2006
An idle thought
This one's for comics fans who watch The Daily Show, which I assume is a fairly large overlap:
If they ever made a film version of American Flagg...
...wouldn't Rob Riggle be perfect casting to play Reuben Flagg?
From the first time I saw this guy on the air, all I could think was "Holy crap, it's like he stepped right off a Howard Chaykin page!"
What do you think...too obvious?
If they ever made a film version of American Flagg...
...wouldn't Rob Riggle be perfect casting to play Reuben Flagg?
From the first time I saw this guy on the air, all I could think was "Holy crap, it's like he stepped right off a Howard Chaykin page!"
What do you think...too obvious?
Friday, December 01, 2006
A secret power none of us can match
I've wanted to say something worthwhile about Dave Cockrum for days now...but I just can't find the words. So many things are caught up in this: the way in which Cockrum's career intersected with a shift in the way comics companies treated their creators...what comparing X-Men and The Futurians says about the challenges of creator-owned comics versus corporate properties...and what it says about the tension between comics writers and artists...why Cockrum's advent on the Legion of Super-Heroes and the X-Men had so much impact at the time...how much I loved those Superboy issues...how the death of a once-favorite creator makes me feel like a treasured part of my own life has just been put away in a sealed box, never to be opened again to prove that I'll never be able to go back to it again...
...and something about the condescending and inappropriate "Story Highlights" from the AP coverage, affirming every crass stereotype of comic books as kid stuff and comics creators as overgrown kids, though when I reread them in just the right skewed angle they reveal something oddly touching.
But do I really have anything worthwhile to add that hasn't already been said? Fortunately, Charles Yoakum does, from both the perspective of a fan who knows what Cockrum's presence meant in comics and the perspective of an artist who actually worked with the guy and got to interact with him. I don't know that I ever met or even saw Dave Cockrum in person, even at a convention; it seems like I must have, given the years of my convention-going coinciding with the peak of his convention appearances, but if so, why don't I remember it? Possibly I saw him and was too shy to say anything, not being able to find the words to convey what a big fan I was...which is right where I find myself now.
Grant Morrison has said in interviews that for him, Superman is more real than Grant Morrison: Superman existed long before he was born and will exist long after he's gone, and is known to many millions of people who'll never know the name of any of his writers. The same goes for DC and Marvel themselves. Characters like Nightcrawler and Storm and Colossus and Wildfire are more real than the tiny publishing houses which put out comic books featuring them. It doesn't matter that these characters owe their fame to commercial exploitation by publishers -- however they got out into the world, they're out there now, and they have an independent life in the minds of people all over the world. No action or policy by a publishing company can undo that. Those characters are effectively immortal. A company -- a collective entity of contracts and licenses and copyrights and marketing strategies -- doesn't create immortality, but a person can. Dave Cockrum, with his intuitive sense of what would catch the eye and work its way into our brains, was that kind of person.
Anyway, go read what Charles has to say.
...and something about the condescending and inappropriate "Story Highlights" from the AP coverage, affirming every crass stereotype of comic books as kid stuff and comics creators as overgrown kids, though when I reread them in just the right skewed angle they reveal something oddly touching.
But do I really have anything worthwhile to add that hasn't already been said? Fortunately, Charles Yoakum does, from both the perspective of a fan who knows what Cockrum's presence meant in comics and the perspective of an artist who actually worked with the guy and got to interact with him. I don't know that I ever met or even saw Dave Cockrum in person, even at a convention; it seems like I must have, given the years of my convention-going coinciding with the peak of his convention appearances, but if so, why don't I remember it? Possibly I saw him and was too shy to say anything, not being able to find the words to convey what a big fan I was...which is right where I find myself now.
Grant Morrison has said in interviews that for him, Superman is more real than Grant Morrison: Superman existed long before he was born and will exist long after he's gone, and is known to many millions of people who'll never know the name of any of his writers. The same goes for DC and Marvel themselves. Characters like Nightcrawler and Storm and Colossus and Wildfire are more real than the tiny publishing houses which put out comic books featuring them. It doesn't matter that these characters owe their fame to commercial exploitation by publishers -- however they got out into the world, they're out there now, and they have an independent life in the minds of people all over the world. No action or policy by a publishing company can undo that. Those characters are effectively immortal. A company -- a collective entity of contracts and licenses and copyrights and marketing strategies -- doesn't create immortality, but a person can. Dave Cockrum, with his intuitive sense of what would catch the eye and work its way into our brains, was that kind of person.
Anyway, go read what Charles has to say.
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