Batman panel at CCI

Well, the San Diego Comic Con International (CCI) has long since overtaken my hometown con as the world's largest (even though we still get Joss, Jeph, and Kevin Smith), so it's the preferred forum for publishers big and small to make announcements.

Two things irritated me about DC Comics' Batman panel:

The first is that everyone, including the normally astute Comic Book Resources, seems totally oblivious that Sin Tzu, the master of military strategy and tactics, is almost certainly the Batman villian behind the events of the upcoming "War Games" crossover. I mean, this was obvious (to me, at least) as soon as I heard the title of the story. Perhaps I shouldn't be so hard on the guys at CBR, since I was probably one of three people who played Batman: Rise of Sin Tzu AND actually paid attention when the developers said the Jim Lee-created villain would eventually be introduced into the comic book continuity - explaining the panel's "yeah, kind of" response to questions about whether or not the crossover would introduce new characters. (He's new to the books, but not new to the Batman metamythology.)

The second is the announcement that Judd Winick has been named as the "permanent" writer on Batman. As I'm sure is obvious to even the most casual reader of this weblog, Batman is my favorite comic, and I thoroughly dislike Winick's writing. I didn't like it on Green Arrow, I never read it on Exiles or Green Lantern, and I don't like it on Batman. I also dislike the fact that he took a mediocre cartooning gig at our alma mater's student newspaper (Judd and I spent overlapping stints at the same university) combined with pseudo-fame from being on MTV's The Real World and used it to get his break in comics. For me, that - plus the fact that I just don't like his writing - makes his assignment to Batman unearned. I know that it's self-defeating of me to let a writer's background distract me from what should be my favorite comic, but what can I say? I'm protective of my favorite character.

One MILLION dollars

Want to know what US$1 million in comic books (according to the Overstreet Comic Book Price Guide) looks like?

Have US$250,000 laying around and feel like buying a collection that not only inlcudes Batman #1, Superman #1, and Amazing Fantasy #15, but also EVERY ISSUE of Amazing Spider-Man, The Avengers, Captain America, Daredevil, Fantastic Four, The Incredible Hulk, Iron Man, Thor, and the Uncanny X-Men - plus 10 copies of Giant-Sized X-Men and 60 copies of the Frank Miller Wolverine Limited Series (among many others) thrown in?

This auction at e-bay has you covered. (At least go look at the pictures and drool.)

Carey and Elektra

Mike Carey, whom we've posted about once or twice, is taking an unusual twist from his DC exclusivity and the metamythological Lucifer to write Ultimate Elektra (a 5-part miniseries) for Marvel Comics, and the linked article hints of an ongoing series.

Elektra was written as such a compelling character while in the gifted hands of Frank Miller, but has been trivialized into a meaningless "female ninja showing a lot of skin" by lesser writers. I have a lot of respect for Carey and his work on Lucifer - he took the seeds of a character planted by a master like Gaiman and did the unthinkable... he made the character better. Here's to hoping that lightning strikes twice and he can do the same with Miller's creation.

No reading comics while legislating!

Desiree pointed me to this article in the Chicago Tribune (free registration required) explaining how Japanese PM Koizumi had to reprimand some of the junior lawmakers in his party for reading comics and sending instant messages during legislative sessions, which struck me as very funny for some reason.

Gaiman vs. McFarlane

I had no idea this was going on, but now that it's over, I'm happy with the result.

It seems as if there was a royalties dispute between two of the most incredible comicbook creator/writers ever. Gaiman had written a guest issue of Spawn and introduced the following characters: Angela, Cogliostro and Medieval Spawn. He later decided to give the characters to McFarlane in exchange for another character he had helped create.

McFarlane backed out of the deal later, leaving Gaiman in the lurch.

For Dan...

Gaiman won the legal battle...I'm just sorry to see these great minds, who worked so well together, come to blows.

Criminalized manga

The BBC has an article about a Japanese court ruling which asserts that the manga Honey Room was obscene.

The judge's standard for this ruling was that "bodies were drawn in a lifelike manner with little attention to concealment (of genitalia), making for sexually explicit expression and deeming the book pornographic matter". Hell, that description could easily be applied to any of the manga I've read. (Well, except for the Batman manga.)

I wonder what's going on here - has Japan singled out Honey Room arbitrarily in an isolated incident, or is this representative of a larger cultural shift looming on the horizon?

Greg Rucka

The Oregonian has a good interview with Greg Rucka. He talks (among other things) about how he broke in to the comic book business, his approach, and the pressure of being the first author to write Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman simultaneously.

Neal Adams revisiting Neal Adams

The Washington Times has a story about the new Batman Illustrated, which reprints some of Neal Adams' groundbreaking work. The article also talks about Adams himself and the controversial decision to redo some of the work found in Batman Illustrated. His explanation:

"If you guys are going to [fiddle] with this stuff," Mr. Adams says he told DC, "at least let me [fiddle] with this stuff." He added: "I'm trying to reach a new audience, while saying to my old audience, 'Had it been done properly the first time around, this is what it would have looked like.' "

Clerks and Marvel Fans alike...rejoice!...

...and enjoy this! :)

This is a fabulous Flash movie (complete with alternate ending!) set in the Clerks settings and starring some of our favorite Marvel heroes. Most notably we have Silver Surfer filling in as Jay, and Galactus making a surprising appearance as Silent Bob...requesting Moon Pies to satiate his world devouring hunger. :)

Enjoy!

Happy Birthday, Bob

Bob Kane, the creator of Batman, would have been 88 years old today.

Manga exports

Ahh! I'm caught in a self-referential loop! I recently read (the English-language version of) Batman: Child of Dreams, which was billed as the first Japanese manga to star an American comic book character. It was released in Japan (and in Japanese) first, then translated and exported to the U.S. Now Fimoculous has a link to a Japanese story about exporting manga to the U.S and Europe...

So, let's see if I got this right - an American iconic character, written and drawn in Japanese manga style, translated and adapted back for an American audience, helping to establish manga's newfound viability in foreign markets - a topic that's now been discussed by a Japanese periodical (written in English). My head hurts; I think it's because I just ran face-first into William Gibson's vision of cultural globalization.

The academic interest in comics

The Charlotte Observer is running an article about a couple of recent donations to North Carolina universities - 26,000 comic books were donated to UNC's library, and 50,000 comic books were donated to Duke's library, underscoring the interest in cultural anthropology and english departments alike.

JLA #83 redux

To follow-up on a story we posted previously, Gravity Lens has posted a link to a surprisingly civil discussion between Joe Kelley and Joshua Elder regarding the political content of JLA #83.

WizardWorld 2003

We had fun at the WizardWorld con this past weekend, although we spent most of our time shopping and not a lot of time with panels or events. Comic Book Resources has most of the good stuff - highlights of Joe Quesada's Q&A session, a profanity-laced wrap-up of the Kevin Smith session, and probably most interesting (to me, anyway) the Ultimate Marvel panel, where Ultimate Fantastic Four was announced and plans for Bendis' run on Ultimate X-Men were partially exposed.

Coolest visual of the con: the Vertigo corner of the DC area was adorned with a couple of gigantic Sandman: Endless Nights posters (my guess: 40-feet tall) featuring all of the Endless. Very nice.

Superman hates America?

This incomprehensible argument offered by a conservative web publication tries to explain how Justice League of America #83 proves that Superman is being used as "a mouthpiece for the antiwar Left" and is "a shill for murderous tyrants".

Huh?

Comics for Kids

So I was glancing through a recent issue of Better Homes and Gardens (don't ask) and I came across a surprising article..."Comics with Class", comics that are good for you and your children.

Their list of "must reads" include:
Astro City
Bone
Batman in the Fifties (heh..none of that Dark Knight stuff, eh? :) )
Books of Magic (I was surprised to see a Gaiman book on here)
Goodbye Chunky Rice (huh?)
Justice League Adventures
Little Lit
Marvel Essentials
Ruse
Spirited Away (I might want to look for this one)
Star Wars
Superman for All Seasons
Ultimate SpiderMan

The article also listed comics that were "good for girls". I've pretty much never heard of any of them. Me? Give me a good Tank Girl or Alias any day. The grittier the chick, the better. :)

Loeb and Sale exclusive to DC

There was a lot of news coming out of the San Diego Comic-con this weekend, but this was one of the most interesting to me: Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale will be exclusive to DC for "years". The linked story at Comic Book Resources also talks about the next Loeb/Sale project, Catwoman: When in Rome, which takes place in parallel with their last DC project, Batman: Dark Victory.

Carey interview

Gravity Lens has posted another link to a story about Mike Carey, who authors the best-written comic book currently in production - Lucifer. (You can find our link to the old story here.)

The destructive power of "the code"

The Springfield News Sun has an article about the comic book industry's self-inflicted - and nearly fatal - wound: the Comics Code Authority. Joe Quesada talks about how Marvel stopped seeking code approval for its books two years ago, and (in a sadly predictable turn) the American Family Association is up in arms about the state of comic books, declaring that "sex, violence and 'blasphemous' themes in comics are at an all-time high."

Superman / Batman

Comic Book Resources has a story about Jeph Loeb's new series, starting in August: Superman / Batman.

Comics in the mainstream

ctnow.com, the online version of the Hartford Courant, has published a lengthy article about the history of comic book adaptations to other media - film, television, and (oddly enough) a Broadway musical about Superman.

A pretty solid overview, with the obligatory mention of Gilliam's desire to make a Watchmen film and some interesting tidbits about films in production - this was, for example, the first time that I'd heard that Ray Park will be playing Danny Rand in an Iron Fist movie. It's also nice to see mention that Neil Gaiman is planning to direct a film adaptation of Death: The High Cost of Living for which he also wrote the screenplay (as discussed occassionally in his online journal); newspaper reporters must read weblogs too!

State of the comic book industry

I found an interesting article in the Minneapolis Star Tribune about the general health of the comic book industry - and it's far from the doom and gloom that's usually associated with those analyses. Things are looking up for comic books, and the article offers a couple of opinions as to why: the recent glut of megamovies based on comic books, and new, high-quality writing talent.

Personally, I'd go one step further and suggest that the writing is not only better, but it shows a greater awareness of comics' aging fan base - and when your fan base is aging from a group that has to spend its allowance in order to get a couple of books to people with jobs, that's a good thing. Still, you need a segment of comic books that are going to appeal to a younger audience as well, lest you cannibalize your future for your present.

Among some of the other salient statements in the article is that revenues in the comic book industry are up 10-14%, the Jeph Loeb/Jim Lee run has made Batman the #1 selling comic book of the moment (w00t!), John Cleese - yes, that John Cleese - will be contributing to Superman. This is probably nothing new to the people who read the trade rags, but it's (good) news to me!

WizardWorld Chicago 2003

Note to self (and Desiree): WizardWorld.

We missed last year's con for the first time in several years - a mistake we won't be repeating again.

Lucifer (and the men that created him)

Jeff over at the consistently excellent Gravity Lens posted this link yesterday to an article about Mike Carey, the author of the Vertigo comic Lucifer, which has been a favorite of Desiree and I since it began its run. No, we're not devil-worshippers... we just love the excellent, literate storytelling and the sheer imagination of the metamythology that serves as the setting for this faithful (yet wholly unique) rendering of the Lucifer character introduced in Neil Gaiman's original Sandman series. While Lucifer is probably the furthest thing you can imagine from a superhero comic book (as are most of Vertigo's titles), one of the things that's so interesting about Lucifer is that there is still an examination of the the same issues that get raised in books about the spandex set (albeit more subtlely). Good versus evil - why and how do they come into conflict? More interestingly, where do they overlap? What is the impact of choice (i.e. free will) both with and without responsibility, even when that choice is to submit to a predetermined destiny? These stories are made of great stuff, and they're pretty darn entertaining to boot.

Speaking of Neil, he will be revisiting the Sandman universe fresh on the heels of his award-winning, best-selling novel American Gods. As Jason and Clader have noticed, DC Comics (who have a snazzy new site, by the way) will be publishing 7 new Sandman stories by Gaiman, one of which will be illustrated by Bill Sienkiewicz, my personal favorite comic artist. Woo hoo!

But what's really puzzling is Gaiman's new project with Marvel Comics and Andy Kubert, 1602. I have no idea what the heck is going on based on this teaser, other than it has to do with superheroes (which I'm not sure we've seen Neil do since The Martian Manhunter appeared in an early Sandman issue). Seems completely bizzare, which probably means Desiree and I will love it.

Free comic book day - May 3rd

Free comic book day is May 3rd. Just go to a comic book store and take one, true believer.

Marvel Sues Sony

Hmm...I wonder what this is about...

Stan Lee sues Marvel

As a geek, I'd like to think I know a thing or two about math. When you gross over US$400 million on a movie and (by all reasonable accounts) couldn't have spent more than US$150 million on making and promoting it, to me, that would seem like you've made a profit. Not so, according to Marvel Comics' lawyers, who say they've yet to turn a profit on the recent Spiderman film - at least by the definition of "profit" in Stan Lee's contract with the company he helped create.