PinkKryptonite.com

Stocking Stuffer: Dispatches From Wondermark Manor

2011-12-13T15:48:48Z

Some years ago it was possible to purchase and read three novella-ish chapbooks of tongue-in-cheek steampunky Victorian adventure prose parody from the store of Wondermark. Those chapbooks are long gone but this year David Malki brought them back in one very large paperback called Dispatches From Wondermark Manor: The Compleat Trilogy. This massive tome, so very true to the "feel" of Wondermark, is over 500 pages in length and beautifully illustrated in his signature parody-Victorian style.

If you don't read Wondermark, at least give it a glance so you can see how it's put together. Malki painstakingly rescues half-destroyed print material from that era and, through physical and digital tools, rescues specific images, old fonts and anything else that looks like it could be salvaged and recycled rather than left to continue recycling itself in the back of a library book sale. There are those who have criticized him for destroying the materials he used for one specific project and his posted response reveals a thoughtful, cherishing, even nurturing view of the materials he uses in his work and makes for interesting reading by anyone who enjoys visual storytelling, a medium almost universally inherently rife with derivation and reuse.

That same gentle touch is reflected time and again in Malki's work, even when it's about needless violence. His sense of humor is as often subtly kind and quietly wry as it is absurd and unexpected. One of his most popular gags is a man bent over a rock, a piece of paper and a pair of scissors, screaming, "Stop fiiiightiiiing," a joke which is nothing less than a shouted appeal for peace. The catalogue text for Dispatches From Wondermark Manor: The Compleat Trilogy mentions that this book includes "casual mass murder" and I have no doubt that is true; half the joke of it is how surprised so many characters are by their own participation and their ironic glee.

This is highly recommended for anyone in your life who's way into the steampunk fad, especially if you're kind of sick of hearing about it from them.

Stocking Stuffer: Alter-Ego Prints by Danny Haas

2011-12-07T19:31:38Z

Let me guess: the comics fan in your life already has all the books you can think to get them and they don't need more; worse, you are the comics fan in your life and those shopping for you have no idea what to pick up in a comics shop or online. Solution? Something classy that they almost certainly don't have or to which they can easily be directed: alter-ego prints by Danny Haas on Society6.

The attractive Spidey sample to the right is a personal fave but there's really only one that doesn't work for me somehow. Almost all of them show great taste in art and design and they are easily recognized by anyone who's consumed popular culture in the last several decades. The purchase options are varied, too: everything from an iPhone skin for a few bucks up to a framed 26"x38" print for many, many more bucks than the iPhone skin. Way too hip to display anything other than stretched canvas? They've got you covered, though I note that not all options are available for all designs. Haas has a bunch of different pieces and by no means is he the only artist on that site. I particularly like the various riffs on popular culture being done by artist Powerpig though I confess that the name does elevate an eyebrow.

Stocking Stuffer: Promethea

2011-12-05T18:55:06Z

Say what one may about Alan Moore's current ongoing role as The Genius Who Hates Everything Including His Own Genius, he is widely lauded for his past work and rightly so. He also has a ton of work that has not yet been dragged into the mainstream and of which the comics fan in your life might never have heard. I had never heard of Promethea, anyway, when The Boyf pulled out a TPB of the first volume and said, "Oh, here's a book you might like." Like? I burned more midnight oil on this book than on any other in the last decade. I'll go ahead and link to all the books right here: Promethea: Book 1, Book 2, Book 3 and Book 4.

Promethea is about a woman who finds herself possessed (or channeling, or manifesting, or perhaps graduating into) a super-powered alternate persona and struggling to understand how and why this is happening. In some ways it's a retelling of Wonder Woman and in others it's a spiritual/psychological mirror held up to the bulging physicality of Thor. It's got everything: action in the streets, cross-dressing, a slightly dystopian future, previous incarnations shoving their way onto the page and chapter upon chapter of spiritual journey. Best of all, it's all intricately and hypnotically illustrated by none other than J.H. Williams III.

I'd argue that Williams' art on the new Batwoman book is more mature in some ways, yes, but when I read that current title I can easily see his work on Promethea reflected in the big two-page spreads. I can't imagine a better gift for the Kate Kane fanatic in your life.

Stocking Stuffer: Hark! A Vagrant

2011-12-02T15:00:21Z

You're reading Hark! A Vagrant, right? It's in your RSS feed or your Atom feed or maybe you just sit there refreshing the page obsessively, day after day, with a calendrical reminder in case you forget, right?

OK, maybe that's just me.

My first semester of grad school is over and NaNo is over and that means back to reading and thinking about comics, online and off. It's also time to spend money as a demonstration of affection and that means the return of Stocking Stuffers at Pink Kryptonite! Behold as I combine them all by recommending Kate Beaton's most recent collection of new and previous work: Hark! A Vagrant.

Beaton's work is "cartoony" in the very best sense: evocative and expressive and deceptively simple. It's also incredibly sharp and literate, a bit like Bugs Bunny with an advanced humanities degree. I cannot get enough of it - some favorites are here, here, here, here and here, though this one is also pretty freaking great and more than a little delightfully queer - and this book features work we've seen before and work that is totally new! I am especially pleased when some brilliant corner of the Internet colonizes fleshspace. Give it, now, to the person on your shopping list who wryly smiles when you allude to Nancy Drew.

A Waste Of Time/ Casanova Avaritia II/ An Apology, And A Love Note

2011-10-22T20:44:24Z

I try my hardest to remove myself from my reviews on comics. Analysis works best with a sense of objectivity, especially when the object under review is laden with the creator's personal intimations, as comics often are. Most cinema is made with an attention to the collective viewing experience - and all of television too - but with comics, especially in creator-owned titles, there is only you, passively receiving what the author wants to tell you.

Autobio comics can amplify this effect, as direct reportage of the creator's life story, like heat-seeking empathy missiles that might hit close to home, or at the very least, dazzle you with their alienated force. In Rick Worley's collected A Waste of Time (graciously given to me by the fine guys at the NYCC Prism comics booth, thanks y'all) the diary-like webcomic of the same name re-formats the strip into an epistolary to all of Rick's twink groupies. But it's more than some San Fran gay's catalog of lovers. Its extra-wide presentation allows the four-panel strip to breathe, so that when the seamlessly-integrated full-page portraits make their appearance, it's as if you were flipping through Rick's actual sketchbook. To see the characters talk about the preparation for a sketch, followed by the sketch itself, you're struck with a feeling of veracity. Take the authenticity of Pekar's American Splendor, and blend it with classicist artcomix values, and you get an idea of the beauty behind Rick's book. He even goes so far as to invite all his readers so moved by his work to contact him and be his groupies. Literally fucking with your audience. It's genius.

Fan interaction has been present in comics since the days of the letters columns, but it's come to a head with the reprints of Matt Fraction's Casanova. So far the backmatter has regaled us with Matt's tales of drug addiction and recently, the psychological impact of an accident in his youth. The 2.5 volumes we've seen have always been a post-modernist backlog of Fraction's favorite comics-cultural references, but the most recent issue, Avaritia II, straight up features Fraction himself, interacting with fans at a con before his creation comes to shoot him down. Casanova Quinn's mission is to eradicate all instances of his arch-nemesis Newman Xeno across the multiverse, and wouldn't you know it, a surrogate for Matt himself falls on the hitlist. Newman recurs as a creative type in any universe, and Fraction uses this to explore some very personal insecurities involved in the creative process, whether or not they apply to him directly.

After probing their authors, both these works turn the bloody forceps on us, and ask to dig a little deeper. There's a bit in universe 9.999 (The Fraction/Xeno reality), where, realizing disappointment in an encounter with a fan, pseudo-Faction/pseudo-Newman despondently claims, "OH GREAT." "YOU'RE GONNA GO HOME AND BLOG ABOUT THIS OR WHATEVER". Which describes, too perfectly, my reaction last year to my meeting with series artist Gabriel Bá. This is precisely when comics are at their most beautiful. When the story gets all bug-eyed and sentimental and all you can mutter is "but...me too...". Whether you're inspiring your readers to draw nudes of their boyfriends, or bitching about how hard it can be to write stuff, those are the moments where the emotional investment pays off. Thank you Rick. Thank you Matt. Thank you comics.

Field Report: Dragon*Con 2011

2011-09-30T17:30:00Z

Oh, honey, my feet are still tired. I have finally administered myself enough medicinal martinis to get back in the game, though, and I have to tell you I had a pretty freaking fabulous time at Dragon*Con 2011. I did take pictures and you remember that part where I said my phone camera was good enough? Yeah, not so much. Next year I'm sucking it up and taking the real camera. That I am already thinking about next year should be taken as a sign of the kind of time I had, though: a very good time, indeed. The Rainbow Flag Party was packed and lots of queer cosplayers were happy to pose for your intrepid reporter; the gaming track was fantaaaaaaaaaaaastic OHMYGODSOMUCHFUN and I only got in one shoving match with other Con-goers which, given my redneck roots, I count as something of an accomplishment.

Read on for the skinny on this year's trip! Oh, and here's an early caveat: the con staff themselves were extremely and very personally rude to me this year so I feel no real compulsion to be nice for niceness' sake. Every opinion expressed in this post is (a) mine alone and no one else's and (b) as honest as it gets.

]]> Tracks To Watch Out For

Gaming, gaming and gaming were my three favorite tracks. Seriously, the Gaming Track was amazing. I left Atlanta more inspired to run games than I have been in a decade. The content at every single panel I attended was so good that I found myself taking notes. After the Indie Games panel I went up front and actually talked games with Eloy Lasanta, the mind behind Third Eye Games. I'm not emphasizing that in a starfuckery way; I'm emphasizing it because we weren't talking about his games, we were talking about other games we both enjoy. My experience of the Gaming Track was, universally, that the people and resources they had brought in would be enthusiastic, knowledgeable and accessible.

The Gaming Track's various panels wound up containing a wealth of information that was new to me. I picked up five new RPGs and resources that are all completely new to me and my group as a direct result of interactions in the context of that track: Wu Xing, Apocalypse Prevention Inc., Fiasco, X-treme Dungeon Mastery and a convention-only story module for games of Lovecraftian horror. A group of us has already tried out Fiasco, which is a GM-less, RP-heavy game of ill-considered ambition so unbelievably fun to play that one of my compatriot players had sent me two emails about future games by the time I woke up the next morning. It turns out that Fiasco is written by Jason Morningstar, with whom my boyfriend did some theatre work years ago and who lives in my town.

The same endless good stuff turned out to be true of the actual games themselves, I should note. I was in all honesty scared silly to game with strangers at a con for fear that it would be me trying to roleplay while a bunch of Alpha Geeks scoffed at me across spreadsheets, but no, out of three games - Savage Worlds fantasy, Savage Worlds superheroes and a post-apocalyptic D20 Modern game set in the region where I was raised - all three were incredibly fun to play and introduced me to really genuinely nice, fun, funny people. I had such good experiences with the games and the gaming content that, seriously, they could be reason enough to go back all by themselves.

The other great fan tracks were the BritTrack and the Science Track. Between the "Gay Themes in Dr. Who" and "Mad Scientists For A Better Tomorrow" panels they brought some great content to the table. PK reader Jason Schneiderman was on the latter panel and had some fantastic stories about the research he does - mental note: buy enough magnets to turn off another person's morality - and a MIND-BLOWING video of tremendously fun bad ideas for ways to destroy things using a super-magnet. The BritTrack is also of course home to the Rainbow Flag Party which was a little more subdued than last year but still a tremendous amount of fun. Oh, Batman and Superman in your underwear, where were you? I was hoping to be a staring creeper again. (Oh, damn, did I say that aloud?)

The final really stand-out event for me was the show by Atlanta Radio Theatre Company. There were some technical bobbles early on but these folks put on a great show: funny, creepy and technically fascinating to see how the sausage gets made. I honestly would not have guessed that there was so much conventional stage acting in a radio company's performance, but there were costumes and body language and lots of other non-obvious ways in which the actors presented their performances. I loved every part of it and would seriously consider driving to Atlanta for a weekend just to see more of their shows.

There were some other fun events over the course of the weekend, beyond these, but it's time for some harsh realities: there were also some tracks and panels that were simply terrible.

Let me tell you something, darlings: Dragon*Con is not a con. It is an umbrella organization overseeing a couple of dozen cons happening in one place at the same time. Every track has its own staff, its own management and its own way of doing business and as a direct result of that one can have a really fantastic time in one event and walk across the hall into a time-wasting nightmare of boredom and poor direction. For specific examples, look no further than the Alternate History and Skeptic fan tracks. Every attempt to participate in something managed by either of those tracks resulted in at best boredom and at worst a sense of teeth-grinding frustration.

The first problem I have with the Alternate History Track is that it really needs to be renamed the Steampunk Track. I don't have a problem with Steampunk - I think a lot of that stuff looks really neat, in fact - but every event I attended claimed to be about something else and then got J-turned into a steampunk event in the first thirty seconds no matter what else it was supposed to be about. It would be annoying enough if that topic had dominated at panels that were meant to include it among other topics but the panels weren't hijacked by one or two guests; they were examples of false advertising, plain and simple. One event claimed to be about the Weird West but got turned into a Steampunk costuming panel by the person who literally took over after the intended moderator abandoned her post five seconds into things. Even their headline guest - author Mike Resnick - got openly testy about being railroaded into a topic he didn't like. The night before my friends and I had tried to attend an event described as pub-style trivia for geeks. No sooner did we sit down than the moderator announced that she had decided to run a comedic steampunk game show instead and that the prizes were copies of her self-published steampunk adventure books and Cafe Press t-shirts advertising the same. We got up and walked out. Having it happen once is understandable, I'm sure even the Gaming Track managed to crank out a dud over the weekend, but that kind of thing happened at every Alternate History panel. If they want to have a Steampunk Track, great! There is obviously a huge market for that in fandom as a whole. Just don't waste people's time and lie to them to get there, for Space Jesus' sake.

In the case of the Skeptic Track, the only event I attended was their "Psychic Demonstration" with Mark Edward. I was looking forward to seeing a demonstration of cold reading by an acknowledged practitioner and he turned out to be very talented and entertaining but the panel was set up such that we only got five minutes or so of the stuff that brought us there in the first place. Rather than an extended demonstration or one-on-ones we had to sit there while the crowd grew increasingly hostile towards Edward because he refused to reveal how he did what he does. I had a lot of respect for him as he stood his ground - his philosophy is simply that cold reading is entertaining and he would rather live in a world that can still contain entertaining illusions than have everyone know how it works - but the SkepTrack staff on hand did essentially zero to manage the exchanges. Instead, they were busy videotaping everything and photographing themselves videotaping. Seriously, they had a photographer in the room who spent the entire hour taking photos of the tech crew working the cameras. They were photographing... photographers. The room was dark to begin with and the photographer they were using set off an extremely bright flash every ten or fifteen seconds. I didn't leave early out of boredom; I left early because I thought my skull was going to split open and my brain would fall out pulsing with pain.

Sometimes, a Track just didn't seem that well organized to begin with. I attended a panel in the YA Literature Track that purported to be about alternate sexualities but mostly it was authors talking about how books for queer youth need to stop being about coming out stories. I get that, yes, but don't they still need... coming out stories? It's a lot more possible for a queer 8th grader to be comfortable and confident in who they are these days, yes, but a lot of kids still struggle. Authors on the panel seemed annoyed that there are still coming out stories being told and seemed to want to avoid questions about coming out stories when they were posed by attendees. They also seemed to lack a general knowledgeableness about the topic. When one attendee asked for recommended books about transgendered youth the panelists were almost wholly at a loss and at least one author's response suggested those books don't exist; then the next five minutes were spent with attendees generating a long list of suggested titles about transgendered and generally gender-queer youth. It was an example of a panel that didn't seem equipped to discuss an ambitious and interesting topic and that's too bad; they should have known that attendees for a panel like that are going to show up with some experience with the topic.

My last enormous disappointment was hoofing it over to the Marriott for the astronomy demonstrations only to find out that the astronomy club running the event never bothered to show up. The opportunity to sit outside and relax for five minutes was welcome, certainly, but I showed up for telescopes.

The Best & The Not-So-Best, Again

Mostly, these are unchanged from last year. The good? Easy:

The variety of topics and experiences. Gods, but a geek can lose herself in Dragon*Con. I say that in a tone of awe and wonder, though. I got to game, talk Cthulhu stuff with a vendor, buy new dice, talk White Wolf stuff with a competing publisher, find out an old acquaintance of my boyfriend wrote The Game Everyone Is Talking About, go to a dance party, talk Dr. Who, watch a video about giant magnets destroying office furniture, make fun of Laurel K. Hamilton, hear Howard Hesseman talk about being on Dragnet, watch a hottie ride a robot around a hotel lobby and see a live radio adaptation of a Lovecraft story... in one day.
Friendly faces & new friends. Most of the attendees with whom I interacted were simply great folks to get to meet. I loved striking up a random conversation about a shared love of Cowboys and Aliens in line to see the so-called "Weird West" panel only to have that guy turn up at the Rainbow Flag Party later that night. I loved showing up to a Savage Worlds superheroes game and being randomly assigned a character who had a Loyalty Hindrance fixated on the character of a total stranger and getting to roleplay that out. I loved waking up the morning after my first D20 Modern game and realizing that I was thinking about what I would do next session even though that was a one-shot. I loved hearing people leap from their seats to give impassioned speeches on Captain Jack's fluid sexuality and the differences between American and British or European fiction. There are people I expressly hope to see at the gaming table next year. I am sufficiently shy that I don't find myself saying that of strangers very often.
Many patient and helpful convention staff and volunteers. Pissed as I was about the press pass thing - more on that in a bit - there were a lot of people who really did go out of their way to make the experience better for attendees and I genuinely appreciate that. If I were the one sitting behind the desk giving directions for the seventy thousandth time I would be pretty done with people. A lot of the Dragon*Con people were nothing but smiles and a desire to help.
The one hour queue rule. Last year I had to pick my way across and around five-hour lines that formed for the big events to get to things that were my actual destinations. This year the con staff instituted a rule that no one could formally line up for anything more than an hour before the event. That made it possible to get into things without sacrificing the whole day to do so and it made it possible for the rest of us to get around. A most welcome change!

The bad:

Con staff who couldn't keep it in check. Last year the mask didn't start to slip until Sunday. This year I'm not sure it was ever applied in the first place for a lot of people. Being literally screeched at about my badge when I am wearing it on my lapel, in the open, at eye level of the person doing the shrieking, does not make me feel like my presence is valued. Last year the hotel staff were the ones who didn't seem to give a damn whether we showed up or laid down in the street to die; this year the hotel staff were all very friendly and the Dragon*Con staff minding the doors for events and vendor areas acted like every single one of us had shown up just to piss them off.
Overcrowding. Last year I felt like there was a healthy bustle for most of the weekend. This year I felt like we were jammed together, nonstop, without any room to move. I know the hotel restaurants were loving it because they were the only places we could sit down and breathe for two seconds. Oh, and there were the bars, but they were all jammed the entire time.
Enthusiasm shading into aggression. At one point we were walking through a hotel lobby when someone in a gorilla suit ran up and punched my boyfriend in the gut. I don't mean that they bumped into him, I mean that they ran up and punched him in the gut, period. Staff watched this happen and did nothing. When I (rather politely, actually) asked what the heck that was about then I got a response that seemed to indicate the person thought they should be excused because they were engaged in Rise of the Planet of the Apes cosplay. Um, that's nice honey, but you punched my boyfriend in the gut. I saw a lot of that kind of thing this weekend: a lot of shouting, a lot of running, several instances of people shoving or getting shoved. There was a surprising sense of too much pent up something in the air. Maybe it's the economy, maybe it's politics, maybe it was all the overcrowding I mention above, I dunno. I'd say it was a full moon, but it wasn't. It didn't seem to come from people trying to bully each other, either. It seemed to come from people being too crazy into everything and go go go.

The Best Laid Plans

How did my bag-packing plan work out? I ended up contradicting all my plans in almost every way but it all worked out fine. I went with a backpack instead of a messenger bag and I didn't pack fresh from scratch every day but I did stick to last year's spare-shirt-and-deodorant rule and it did me and everyone around me some real good. I brought a bunch of healthy snacks and those carried me through a lot of trips between hotels. The rule I set for myself that really did make a huge difference was that of only bringing one thing to do to entertain myself: one book, no more, and no huge pile of comics. I wound up spending a lot more time chatting with people in line, talking to friends of mine and in general taking in the experience as a whole instead of trying to distract myself from it. Going en masse and having someone with me for almost every event this year really did make a difference. Rather than being burnt out and ready to kill someone by Sunday afternoon I was still going to panels right up until the last minute on Monday evening.

The unanticipated lesson: there really is strength in numbers. For real, take friends and stick with them when you can. Everyone needs a little alone time in such a crazy, crowded environment, myself included, but spending more time with friends than away from them made the moments that were not fun a lot easier to endure.

The big part of my plan that turned out to be a major win was staying at a hotel that was (a) an overflow hotel but (b) was within walking distance of the con hotels and (c) had a gym. I hit the treadmill three or four times over the course of the weekend and had the gym gloriously all to myself. An hour watching Craig Ferguson and walking uphill at 3.5 mph helped me sweat out a lot of con funk and left me feeling refreshed rather than exhausted. The hotel itself was full of con-goers but the Atlanta Marriott Downtown was comfortable and quiet and the staff were phenomenal. It turned out to be the best hotel experience I've had in many, many years. I cannot recommend it enough.

Crunchy & Good With Ketchup

All that aside, how was the rest of the con? Crowded, and the overall con staff didn't seem able to put off cranky screaming fits quite as long this year; I saw staff who looked tired of being there as early as Saturday morning. Do I envy them their jobs? Heavens no. Do I blame them for being human? Good grief, never. Do I wish they hadn't consistently been dicks? Yeah, actually.

I do not feel great about paying money to support their ongoing efforts when they seem so fucking annoyed to see people show up. Every now and then I would encounter a member of the Dragon*Con staff who would be pleasant and professional - the staff of the information booth in the Sheraton, the person who handled my check-in and badge pick-up at registration and some of the door-minders along the way were all quite nice - but this year they decided to be pricks before I'd even bought my ticket. When I applied for a press pass I received more than a simple rejection: I got a personalized insult from whoever handled my application. I applied knowing that Pink Kryptonite is not exactly a large operation and that it probably didn't have much chance of being accepted but I hadn't anticipated the openly antagonistic wording of what could have been a simple "no". When I read it to the owner of my local comics shop he said, "Wow, they could have just sent some canned text and that would have been better than a big 'fuck you' like this." I just couldn't believe how petty and personally hurtful someone had decided to be towards (a) another human being who (b) was asking for the opportunity to make them look good. There are a lot of ways to tell someone no without making them feel like they're beneath one's notice but whatever jackass handled my press pass application didn't feel it necessary to spend a cycle or two choosing one and that set my impression of the organization as a whole before I'd even arrived.

I knew the content would be good and the experience would be worth it, though, so I bought two tickets and a hotel room and I went anyway. I'm glad I did, too. Make no mistake, no matter how often the staff and volunteers of the overall umbrella organization turned out to be jerks, the experiences I had there were very rewarding. Am I going back next year? Absolutely. Pissed as I was about my press pass application, I tried to make reservations for next year while checking out of my hotel on Monday morning; and, in all honesty, that's how the Dragon*Con people themselves get away with being so unpleasant so much of the time. They've got a good thing going and they don't have to be nice to anyone to get them to come back for more. Sad but oh-so-true.

So, were you there? What did you think? Did I experience an anomalously rough edge of the overall scene or was it really harsher, angrier and shoutier than last year for other people, too? And was anyone else surprised to learn that the Gaming Track could turn out to be the best refuge from crowds and the best way to make new friends? If you were there I'd love to hear your experiences!

Review: Stormwatch #1

2011-09-08T18:30:00Z

Stormwatch #1, the first of DC's new 52 to feature LGBT characters (before the reboot, at least) is out to add a new cosmic dimension to the post-Flashpoint universe. There isn't much to be said for our beloved broship yet (though the last page shows a handshake between Apollo and Midnighter and promises a "Big Bang"), but the issue is a great gauge for whether or not you'll want to stick with the series to see the romance purportedly unfold.

]]> The narrative of Stormwatch tries to cover a lot of ground in its debut issue, staging three conflicts across four settings and introducing us to its multitudinous cast in a way that JL #1 apparently didn't. The text strains under too-explicit exposition with some characters and really tries to club into your skull that these are not superheroes. Projectionist, one of Cornell's new characters, gets a page demonstrating her utility and concludes by redundantly declaring "See, that's what I do... I'm vital to this team." While her powers fit beautifully into the Ellis Authority mold, a less heavy-handed approach would've suited her far better.

For the rest of the casts' lack of subtlety, Apollo seems to exhibit the most nuanced features. He's a down-low guy. He doesnt "do huge causes". It's a great way to distinguish the character from Superman, and should pay off immensely if the two ever square off.

Though I find the team aspect lacking, the book's projected plot, the story of a sprawling omnipresent planetary protectorate, had me hooked immediately. There's no shortage of cosmic weirdness (I'm especially partial to "The lunar surface is attacking me!", followed by depictions of some Kirby-shaped moon golems). Perhaps being the pages where Cornell can have more fun, these weird interdimensional moments are where the pencilwork shines brightest. Sepulveda's art lags when the script calls for simple human confrontation (I take issue with his character anatomy, in particular), but calling for a giant eyeball or a tube worm gets you something far better than typical animist thoughtlessness. His panelization keeps to an apparent cinematic storyboarding mandate, except that his splash pages don't bleed to the edges, making portraitpanels that don't throw off the story's pacing.

While my limited experience with the new 52 shows that lots of books are adopting an angsty teen theme in these formative weeks, Stormwatch stands out for the universal scale it strives for. Apollo's hero-reluctance matches Superman's fuck-the-man sentiment in Action Comics #1, but suits the character better when put in contrast with unconventional heroes like Jack Hawksmoor and Mr. J'onzz. I'm guaranteed to stick around through the first arc, and with the promise of an Apollo & Midny collaboration on the horizon, I'd certainly hope to stay longer than that.

Dragon*Con: Thriving Amongst The Throng

2011-08-30T14:53:37Z

Last year's Dragon*Con was my first time ever at a truly packed convention. I'd been to a couple of very small local conventions and to HeroesCon 2010 but they in no way prepared me for just how crowded Dragon*Con could be. How people survive things like San Diego Comic-Con or PAX is just beyond me. I did some reading up ahead of time for tips on convention survival and I consulted with my old guild leader from WoW - who's done the BlizzCon thing in heels - and I knew to go prepared.

I'm pleased to say that I had some pretty good ideas on surviving any given day but I'm an engineer, a tinkerer, a hacker; I can't resist making a few upgrades to my con survival kit so that my trip remains fun instead of taxing. The thing to keep in mind in enormous public events like this is that it is really easy to have a bad experience of other people and it is equally easy to create a bad experience for someone without realizing it. A little mindfulness in advance really can help you and everyone around you have a better time at the convention. When I go to HeroesCon I just drive down for the day and hang out for a while and that takes nothing in the way of preparedness. Four days in one place, however, is a whole other matter.

]]> My plan for any given day of Dragon*Con is broken down into six core requirements and priorities:

start the day with something nutritious and substantial
be prepared to kill time
be prepared to record the fun
be ready to change plans on a moment's notice
stay fresh, healthy and positive
pack light to move quickly

Piece of cake, right? I know, it sounds like a lot but a little sensible packing is making all the difference.

Eating Well: I'm taking a six day supply of my usual vitamin supplements plus 1000mg/day of Vitamin C. Overkill? Maybe so, but I have no time in my work life for a bout of con crud after taking several days off in the first place to go to the con. Better safe than sorry. I plan to give my body every advantage I can. As for food supply, I'm staying at an overflow hotel with a restaurant that serves breakfast. I plan to overlook the pricing and get there early every day to make sure I'm off on the right foot. I also know already that I will get so busy during the days and evenings that access to lunch and dinner may be haphazard. There are tables throughout the con that sell hot lunches but those are mostly hot dogs, hamburgers and chips. I've been on an intensive exercise and diet routine this year, losing more weight than I'm willing to say in public at the moment, and for me those are not attractive options. I'm packing a handful of healthy snacks in my bag every morning: low-calorie bars that are high in protein but low in sugar, some fancy dried fruit and maybe some roasted almonds or cashews. The con can be an extremely high-calorie experience; calories will never be in short supply. Healthy calories, on the other hand, will definitely be at a premium.

Angry Herds: In the spirit of packing light I'm taking one paperback that I haven't started reading yet. I doubt I'll read much of it, if any at all, but if I have to wait in line like I did for Adam Savage last year then I'll be glad I've got it. I've also got a phone full of games to play and podcasts to which I've yet to listen. I don't want to bog myself down trying to pack one sample of every hobby I pursue "just in case". I want to be able to amuse myself briefly at a moment's notice and I'm already carrying a nearly complete entertainment system in my pocket. If I have a long wait there is never a shortage of things to look at and my hotel room will be an easy walk.

Memento Mori: Is my phone as good of a camera as my DSLR? No, but neither does it weigh a thousand pounds and require a shoulder strap. My phone is more than good enough to grab a few photos that I can touch up later, especially since I bought Camera+: for 99c it gives me all the in-camera fiddling and on-phone photo editing I can possibly need in the short span of a con. On the other hand, I know there are going to be times when I don't want to make everyone wait while I fiddle with the aperture settings. For those times the gods gave us cheap, disposable cameras and a 1-hour photo in every pharmacy in the land. If you really want to save yourself a headache, go low-tech in the camera department and pay a few bucks to have them developed at home.

Versatility Is Key: Any amount of scheduling and planning can be defeated by the chaos of the con. I certainly experienced the faultless disappointment of showing up to an event to find it cancelled, already filled or otherwise unavailable to me. This year Dragon*Con has produced a convention app for smartphones and I'm using it to mark every event that's of any interest to me in every time slot. I'm using its event descriptions to add my "official" schedule to my phone's native calendar and the in-app calendar as a handy list of shortcuts for when I want to know what's happening right now that I know is interesting but isn't on my mind. This year when I show up to something and find it closed to me I'll be able to check the in-app calendar and see everything else that has struck my fancy in some fashion and change up plans without digging out my pocket guide and flipping through it for ten minutes.

Body Heat: The con is a laboratory and my body is a petri dish. No amount of personal glamour is proof against the facts of sweat and heat and flesh and noses. Every day my bag will include a stick of deodorant and an extra t-shirt. I don't necessarily trust myself to detect my own stank, either; I plan to change shirts every afternoon regardless of how delicately dewy-fresh I think myself in the moment. At the same time, I'm not going to kid myself that attending the con is exercise and I know myself well enough to realize that four days without some fitness activity or another will leave me cranky, bloated and feeling all blurf. One of the many draws of the hotel for me is that it has a 24-hour gym accessible with a room key. Every night before bed I intend to spend some quality time on the treadmill watching Netflix on my phone and working off the day's toxins and other crud. It will help wind me down from a day of excitement and it will help me get some rest in what little sleep I manage. Most of all, I plan to try to be as nice and pleasant and smile as much as I possibly can. I am generally something of a misanthrope and I hate crowds. The easiest way for me to have a better time is (a) to choose to have a good time and (b) to help the people around me have a good time. It's all about attitude. That sounds cheesy but it works.

Dodge + Mobility + Spring Attack: I now confess that I am addicted to messenger bags. I own more than I actually remember, in all honesty, which means I have a few spares around the house. I'm going to grab a favorite, empty it completely and - mise en place, like a wise chef - pack the following as my daily foundation:

a paperback
a small notebook and two pens for notes + scribbles + whatever
a disposable camera
a few small snack items for variety
a small bottle of ibuprofen
a fresh pack of my favorite mint gum
a small refillable water bottle
$20 in cash for random incidentals (take more for special events)
a spare t-shirt
and a stick of deodorant

That's it. I'm not taking my laptop with me. I'm not even taking my iPad. For what would I use them? I've got my phone for checking email and Twitter. I'll never want or need to look at the Internet so long that my phone won't suffice. The less I carry with me the easier it will be to navigate the crowd and for the crowd to navigate around me. Trust me, I did not have to get stuck behind many people seemingly kitted out to hike the Appalachian Trail in order to realize how easy it is to become an obstacle.

So, that's my plan so far. Anything I'm forgetting? Anything that seems unnecessary? I know this probably seems desperately over-thought but as I said, I'm an engineer. Planning is what keeps me sane in the face of the tidal wave of humanity into which I'm about to hurl myself headlong.

Dragon*Con 2011!

2011-08-26T20:54:21Z

Holy Mother Madonna and Her Sacred Cones! Is Dragon*Con 2011 really only a week away? The husboyfner and I are attending along with two of our dear friends. The very center of my calendar is the Rainbow Flag Party on Saturday night, courtesy of the ever-fabulous OutlantaCon and the Brit Track. Last year it was the absolute highlight of the weekend and I am expecting even greater things this year! Other things high on my to-do list: losing my convention gaming virginity and stalking Garrett Wang.

I know there are PK readers who go - including one who may be doing a presentation at a panel? If you're going to be there, look for me; I'll be the goateed tall guy with the badge that says KlarionPK. If you're going to be running or participating in any special events or you want to meet up with some fellow queer fans for coffee and convo, speak up and let us know to attend! If by wild chance you're also signed up to play Savage Worlds or D20 Modern this weekend, especially give me a shout! You can email me at klarion at pink kryptonite dot com or you can hit me on the tweets as @KlarionPK. If all else fails, leave a comment here and I'll try to check it.

If I don't see you then have a great time, play safe and remember to take a snack so you don't get cranky. I'm not trying to be your mother, I'm just trying to be mine.

Magneto In Drag? Why Would You Cut That?

2011-08-25T19:55:23Z

X-Men First Class made a pretty strong case for consensual sexual tension between James McAvoy's Professor Xavier and Michael Fassenber's Magneto, but this deleted clip from EW's Inside movies blog let's you get into Angel's (among other fangirls') head by revealing Lt. Hicox in all his transvestite glory. The clip is pretty sparse, in that you don't get to see much besides what's captured in the screen grab, but the slash fiction crowd will be glad to have some bonus material to work with.

Reflections On X-Men: First Class

2011-08-16T15:47:00Z

Months ago, the boyf and I got together with friends to watch X-Men: First Class. I've seen plenty of comic book movies this year but that's the one I keep thinking back on. It was an excellent movie by any number of measures: as an adaptation of comics characters to film, as an action movie in its own right and as a metaphor for the inner struggle of minority populations divided by competing desires to assimilate and to retain their cultural niche. It was big and fun and stuff blew up real good, sure, but it also involves an admirable portion of character, character development and clever ideas. There were things I didn't love, to be sure, but this isn't actually a review so I'm not going to bother spending significant time talking about what I think did and didn't work. I think it worked really well, overall, and inasmuch as it's no masterpiece (The Dark Knight) it's also no relentless atrocity (The Green Hornet).

No, the concerns and perspectives of a review piece aren't what keep bringing me back to it at all. What keeps haunting me is that, deep down, it made me think. Specifically, it made me think that Magneto was right.

]]> Some background, if you'll indulge me: I graduated from high school in 1992 and moved to a college town slap full of progressives only to discover an unanticipated irony: the outspoken activism in that town had led what fundies there were to redouble their own efforts. The naïveté of youth prevented me from comprehending the disconnect between the efforts of queer activists - a monthly newsprint magazine, a few parties, speaker panels - and the aggression we saw in response. For the crime of publishing and speaking aloud we were targeted with break-ins, harassment, vandalism, anonymous letters to families and worse. There was a strong sense that we had to be the bigger women and men, though. It was emphasized many times by my friends that descending to the fundies' level would do us no good. I certainly never did anything to "get back" at the people who lashed out at us but my response to every crime was anger nonetheless. I could never muster the cool maturity of the other students around me. In the end I expressed it by volunteering to work security at Pride marches and dressing to provoke a response. I sought out opportunities to be confrontational but never violent. I maintained a posture of being ready - even eager - to push back were I ever pushed.

I confess that attitude resurfaced for me over and over again while watching X-Men: First Class. Professor X really does think that the world will reconcile itself to the assimilation of mutants if they simply play nice. Oh, that's an oversimplification, I know, and he is under no illusions regarding the sacrifices they may have to make to win a little acceptance from the world around them, but he makes that choice and sticks to it. Magneto's anger, on the other hand, is so very understandable, so very human, and I sympathize utterly with why he's incapable of taking what a mainstream viewpoint would consider the high road. It's sobering, to say the least, to view the dichotomy they illustrate through the lens of history. The friendship and rivalry of Magneto and Professor X, and their divergent paths regarding the same very personal concerns, form a perfect metaphor for the 1960's in America. It's the decade in which peaceful resistance reached its apex and it also gave us the Black Panthers, the Weather Underground and countless other groups. That's a huge part of why the movie works so well: the setting and the story are perfectly suited to one another. That certainly isn't the only time those philosophies have wrestled one another, however.

I came along just in time to know that ACT UP existed but not in time to participate in the local group. It makes a pretty good analogue to the Brotherhood of Mutants when blown up to comic book proportions and the Gay Men's Health Crisis might work reasonably well as Professor Xavier's School for the Gifted - with all of the real and legitimate good it does in Marvel's universe - on the other side of that highly exaggerated coin. I went in knowing that the film had been written by people conscious of its potential to present a metaphor for queer communities as well as a metaphor for other minorities and their concerns: Jewish identity, for instance, and the concerns of the many minority immigrant groups that have been and still are being branded as Unwanted Other by whatever self-identified "real America" is trying to repackage its racism as identity at any given time; but as the movie unfolded it just kept slotting itself perfectly into place alongside my fuzzy, decades-old memories of what it was like to be a gay kid in a world full of different approaches to gay identity. I wasn't really ready for that. I wasn't really ready to be reminded of all the indignities - tiny in the grand scale of life and compared to the suffering of others, but intensely personal at the time - I felt like I faced or with which I felt I was threatened at that young age. X-Men: First Class is much more a movie about Magneto than about anyone else, and as his quest for revenge unfolds and it becomes more apparent that he is someone for whom peace is unpalatable, the part of me that's still 17 and angry cheered. Viewed in the context of the rest of the X-Men narrative, it turns out he's right.

Before Senator Kelly, before Sentinels, Magneto is certain that some portion of humanity will always seek to eradicate mutants and no matter how small a proportion that might be it will be enough. In some ways it pains me to say it but after the movie I simply couldn't deny that a part of me agreed with him. Even though the boyf and I bought a house in suburbia and settled down years ago into lives bounded by professions and pets and Toyota hatchbacks and social circles inclusive of people queer and non-, that teenager is still back there somewhere in my head. He's never quite out of shouting range and no matter how long it's been since the Pride march became a Pride parade or how many turkeys I carve at my mother-out-law's Thanksgiving table - or how genuinely awesome the rest of me thinks that is when I get to do it - that angry teen sometimes gets close enough even to whisper. The rest of me can't help but hear.

What does he say? He says that I can never let down my guard. He says I can never relax into thinking there's no such thing as queer identity. He tells me to keep one fist clenched even if I extend the other to shake a neighbor's hand. He tells me to cause trouble, to find a fight and win it. He reminds me that people still say and do hateful, harmful, crazy things. I still don't give in and try to "get back" at such people but neither am I any more capable after twenty years of resisting the urge to confront, to maintain that posture of readiness to push back, and neither has that voice disappeared. Inner Angry Teen Klarion never runs out of source material to expose the ongoing aggression against us by one or another faction of the radical right.

Of course, I say all this from the plush, happy end of an intervening history that illustrates Inner Angry Teen Klarion is wrong. ACT UP is essentially long gone except for specific places but the GMHC has continued to grow and expand and has saved and improved countless lives. Twenty years ago I could have been fired from my current job had I come out in the workplace but now there are institutional policies in place to protect me. Twenty years ago I was afraid to hold another guy's hand in a movie theater. It's a different world and it didn't get that way by being burnt to the ground. When I hear of people rejecting "gay identity" because it doesn't seem necessary or helpful or useful to them, oh, a part of me just boils... but a part of me wonders if that isn't what I was working for in the first place. Did we march to claim who we were or so that we wouldn't have to march in the future? Are those necessarily mutually exclusive? Is it even possible to answer any of those questions?

I don't know. If I had answers I don't suppose those questions would still pick at the back of my brain. The X-Men don't seem to have any answers, either, as Magneto and Professor X have been deconstructed and reinterpreted enough times to prevent any pat answers from offering themselves to the consumer of that myth. We've seen Professor X, arguably the bravest mutant of all, wind up dead, exiled, kind of crazy and still uniformly in charge. Different individual writers and iterations of his character might attempt to give him specific narrative endpoints but none of them seem to stick, do they? In the collective mind of readers and viewers he's still a viable figure, still struggling to figure out whether peace is possible, still precariously balanced between hoping no one notices that the school is there and shoving most of its staff into a super-science plane and sending them to blow shit up. He doesn't coalesce into anything that can tell us what to do with our own struggles but he does a great job of modelling them.

And yet Inner Angry Teen Klarion still tells me Magneto was right.

The DCnU 'N Me

2011-08-03T19:11:45Z

My local comics shop is so ready to rob me blind in September: they got their hands on some beautiful, colorful order forms for the DC relaunch and have made them available to customers so that suckers like me can give them all our money next month. I am extremely glad they've done so, too, because there are some comics I seriously want - and some comics I seriously want to avoid.

After the jump, I list all the comics to which I'm subscribing in the new world of DC comics and why. Am I missing anything good? For that matter, am I dissing anything good?

]]> On-Going Subscriptions

Some books I simply know I'm going to want every month, at least for a while.

Action Comics - Grant Morrison wrote the only interesting Superman of the last twenty years when he gave us All-Star Superman a few years ago. I'm not sure someone can like DC and not read this book. (OK, Red Son was also fantastic, but that's kind of a different character.)

Batman - It's Scott Snyder, writer of the always-amazing American Vampire and the current Detective Comics. Anything with Snyder's name on it is worth a subscription. He could be writing a book titled Samurai Pizza Cats Go To Jersey Shore and I would subscribe.

Batman & Robin - Bruce Wayne and Damian - wait, Damian? Aha, so maybe it's not such a "total" reboot. Anyway, yes, I love Damian Wayne for being a minor and an assassin. He's not quite as creepy as Hit Girl but he retains that dissonant flavor. I'm in.

Batwoman - Fucking finally.

DC Universe Presents - I love serials, yes, but I also love one-shots. A series of one-shots? Sold from the get-go.

Demon Knights - Reading his work on Knight & Squire has made me a huge Paul Cornell fan. This is an easy pick for me. I wasn't as impressed with his work on some other titles, to be honest, so this may wind up being an infatuation but there's only one way to find out.

Frankenstein, Agent of S.H.A.D.E. - I fell utterly and completely in love with Frankenstein during Seven Soldiers. More Frankenstein is good Frankenstein even if it turns out to be bad Frankenstein.

Justice League - To be honest, I think Geoff Johns is a pretty terrible writer. A childhood love for Superfriends is what makes me pick this up. I figure it's worth a few issues to see if it can possibly be good.

Stormwatch - And again I say fucking finally. Apollo and The Midnighter are, like, the best gay couple ever written in comics. They may also be the last of Warren Ellis' truly great creations.

Swamp Thing - Scott Snyder strikes again! How does this guy write so much, so well?

Wonder Woman - For the first time in my life I am subscribing to this title. I know, I know, I am the worst queen. My loyalty to Lynda Carter knows no bounds, people, but the comic book has waffled between great and utterly dreadful for years.

First Issues Only

Some titles I want to try out but no way am I ready to commit.

All-Star Western - I'm no special fan of Westerns in general but I do have a tremendous soft spot for the whole Weird West thing. I'm buying the first issue in hopes that it demands I subscribe.

Batgirl - I'll say it: I'm pissed that she isn't Oracle anymore. I'll give it a shot but I'm making no promises no matter how much Gail Simone loves us queers.

Batwing - Why the hell not?

Birds of Prey - Gail Simone's iteration has a lot of street cred around these parts. I'm willing to give this one a chance.

Captain Atom - "A hero without limits"? I'm in just to see if it's as personal and intimate as I think a comic about a limitless hero could be.

Catwoman - That cover is a joke, right? It has to be. It's so tacky I downgraded this from a "subscribe" to a "first issue" on sight. Catwoman might be my favorite DC character of all time but that cover is tacky.

Detective Comics - I'm unforgiving in my grief over the departure of Dick Grayson from these pages. Also, another serial killer? Wow. Some things (apparently) never get old. Actually, now that I think of it, did I put this on my subscribe list out of sentimental loyalty? Damn. I guess I'll find out in September.

Green Arrow - I know I'm supposed to like this character more than I do, so I'm giving the reboot the chance to pull me in.

Grifter - I love a story about a con game. I love shows like White Collar and Leverage and my favorite episodes of Rockford Files are the ones where he pulls out his little business card printing machine and passes himself off as various glib professions to get his foot in the door. I'm willing to give this a chance.

I, Vampire - I am legally required to at least sample anything involving vampires due to my history as a goth in the '90s. That cover's pretty tacky, though, so I'm only giving it a nibble.

Justice League Dark - Zatanna! I love her. I'll see if it's worth putting up with everyone else.

Justice League International - Booster Gold! I find his larger story really genuinely affecting for reasons I don't fully comprehend. I have to know how much of that is surviving the reboot. This is a one-issue buy, though, because the whole conflict-within-the-team thing is so completely played out, run down, beaten to death and then ground to a fine powder already.

Legion of Super-Heroes - That cover totally works for me. I'm not sure why. I figure, hey, it's $3.

Mister Terrific - He's the third-smartest man on Earth? I find that really interesting; the phrase "science gone mad" doesn't hurt, either.

Resurrection Man - Constantly-changing powers could make for a really interesting story, or a really boring series of monsters of the week. We'll see.

Static Shock - I actually have basically zero interest in this character but I want to show John Rozum some love.

No Way, No How

Some titles I'd turn down if they were free.

Aquaman - Geoff Johns + Aquaman = ZZZ.

Batman: The Dark Knight - I'm open to being convinced by counter-buzz, but there is such a thing as too much Batman and I just can't take yet another Bruce Wayne book reminding me how good things were when Dick Grayson was in the suit. I KNOW, I'LL SHUT UP SOON. Maybe.

Deathstroke - That name just cracks me up every time. Yes, I'm twelve years old.

Green Lantern - I am sure this reveals an inherent character flaw of some sort but I have just never given a damn about Green Lantern or any of the associated Lantern Corps. Blackest Night really pushed me over the edge into open disapproval.

Red Lanterns - Because what the world needed was Green Lantern crossed with Natural Born Killers.

The Savage Hawkman - I am not sure I can express how much I hate the character of Hawkman. Ugh.

Suicide Squad - Everyone on the Internet has already said it but it's true: turning Harley Quinn into the queen of the Juggalo(e)s is not an improvement.

I know that some of those opinions are pretty shallow, but they're also an honest report of what I think when I look at the list of titles. I'm not going to devote a whole section to the titles I don't see, but I will note a few of them here: Xombi, Zatanna, Batman Inc. How awesome would an ongoing Batman Inc title in which we simply get a DC Universe Presents-style one-shot of one or another of the international Batmen going on an adventure be? It would be completely awesome. I realize that DC's publishing in September and beyond is not limited to this list, either, and that I am at least partially engaged in the same silly prejudgemental whining I decried just a few weeks ago. I take as my counterpoint that I'm publicly stating that I'll be spending nearly a hundred bucks on DC comics next month, well over three times what I currently spend.

So what's on your list? What did I get completely wrong?

Powerful Allies: Generation Hope #9, On Teenage Suicides

2011-07-23T04:01:56Z

Tyler Clementi's suicide last year led to one of the most tumultuous times on campus I've seen during my tenure as a Rutgers student. It was a time of vigils and executive emails to the entire student body, it sparked debates among friends and lent momentum to the "It Gets Better" campaign. This is the landscape emulated in this week's Generation Hope #9, with the mutant-as-gay-allegory featured prominently, and in my opinion, with its most appropriate usage in recent memory. Though I haven't had any previous exposure to the Generation Hope series, there was never a doubt that the Gillen/McKelvie collaboration would handle the issue with delicacy and poise. What I didn't expect was the faithfulness in the recreation of those emotions I felt during the real-life tragedy, rendered with such raw power so as to elicit flashbacks to last September.

]]> The issue succeeds in the way it exposes the reader to the visceral reality of the suicide phenomena - we are firsthand witnesses to the fetishization of the tormented mutant boy; The ostracism that turns a friend into a perverted object happens within the span of a few panels. That shame of the victim which news reports failed to capture is put on display when we see the video and its degrading title. We hear the frenzied response when Zee finds out how many hits his video has collected, with Jamie McKelvie rendering the off-panel anguish with his characteristic cleanliness. The narrative lends a voice to the pain of figures like Quentin Compson and Tyler Clementi, whose perspectives can be so easily ignored. Gillen makes it so that when Hope's team fails to reach Zee in time, the hurt is all the more palpable.

In the silent scene that follows the team's arrival, the helplessness I felt was a mirror for the pain I felt last year, knowing that the tragedy unfolded in a dorm just a mile away, Hope's claim that "We have to be better" expresses the desperate sentiment of an entire population, with the hint of militancy that any ally would feel. Her teammate Zero works the other side of the debate, acting in a vengeful rage. His decision outlines of the morality of the story, encouraging a pacifist message without dismissing the harshness of reality. Despite the setback of the atrocity, you don't walk away from the issue feeling nothing is achieved; If for nothing else, the cameo at the end, with the character's dissuasive words of wisdom, will leave you cracking a hopeful smile and glad to have found such powerful allies within the X-men. By far the most pertinent comic addressing LGBTQ issues released in a long while, the sensitivity and quietness it presents ensure it as one of the stories worth revisiting in humanity's continuing struggle for equality.

Review / Lament: Xombi #3

2011-07-13T18:14:41Z

I am woefully behind on my comics. I don't know any other way to say it: I am so behind that I am full of woe. Can you hear my lamentations? No, but you can read them. The bottom line is that I am a staff member at a university which is a bit like working tech in a stage production: when the lights are up the and the curtain is down is when things backstage are positively bustling. My point here is that summers are a busy time and this summer especially so. I did find time to sit down and steal an hour the other day during which I read the most-dated unread issues of my current favorite comics: American Vampire, Detective Comics, Ruse and the absolutely magnificent Xombi.

Does that last title make your pulse quicken? Does it bring a flush of desire to your cheek? It should. Good gods but it should. It is absolutely this year's American Vampire: a bolt-from-the-blue shock of stark quality. It's a comic so good it makes one look at the other books on the shelf and wonder what the hell their creative teams are doing all damn day. Issue #3 came out in May and issue #4 is sitting on the shelf right now and if you have anything like a soul you will go buy them from a store that deserves your dollars to show some pittance of gratitude for what we're being given in its pages.

I am also absolutely terrified for Xombi's future. I don't mean I fear the contents of its narrative; I mean that a part of me is pretty sure it's getting quietly cancelled in the September reboot.

]]> As with many of my favorite comics - wow, now that I think about it, kind of a lot of them - I have no idea what's going on in this book. Happily, neither do the characters. This issue includes more than one mention by the heroes that they have no idea who the Big Bad is or what he wants even though they do, by the end, know his name and something of what he wants. I don't care, though. This book is a big, beautiful, metaphysical acid trip. It's nuns with guns and rabbis with golems and pyrokinetics with stolen cars and the mournful ghosts of the dead speaking for the first time. Every single issue of this book has managed to give me goosebumps. Every single one of them. Of how many books can I say that? Countless books scare or thrill or entertain me but few of them produce a sense of wonder or awe or sorrow. Excitement is easy for a good comic, nothing more than a few warm-up scales, but empathy is what they manage when they're really good and Xombi has done that to me every single time. When the dead gather around David as he's healing, that's good stuff; even great stuff. What's amazing though is the body language of the dead when they first are acknowledged and explained by the others. What do the dead do when they gather in the world of the living? They check out the cars, hold hands, gaze at the sky. I had to go back and look at that panel three times. I loved it more than I think I can actually explain.

Standing as I am - as we all are - in the looming shadow of The September Bomb it's awfully hard for me to give a damn about most of the comics in my bag(s). Should I pick through Detective Comics for subtle threads of storytelling when it's all going away in two months? It's shockingly difficult to get it up and say yes. I love Scott Snyder and I did go out of my way to make time for that very title this week but I did so with a lump in my throat. I did so certain that my favorite Batman iteration, Dick Grayson, is going away. The growing sense of mourning I felt for that book even as I read it diminished my desire to keep reading. I am not ready to let go of that reading experience and to some degree I resent that there won't (I assume) be more of it. I'm tempted to buy and leave unread the tail end of Grayson's run in much the same way I've never read the last 20-ish pages of Farewell My Lovely because I am not ready to live in a world that contains no more Raymond Chandler for me to read.

I've gone through the list of titles for September and have it mostly squared away though there are a few I keep remembering that I've forgotten when I'm somewhere other than the comics shop. I keep rereading that list to see if Xombi is on it and it isn't. I know that list isn't the list of all the books DC will publish but I also know Rozum is going to be on Static Shock and I know the sales figures for Xombi have seemed pretty weak to my untrained eye. At my local shop only two of us - a staff member and myself - are subscribed to it. That kind of thing takes the wind right out of my sails. It's such a beautiful book. I don't need to understand it. I don't need it to impart information. I get lost in the art and the story makes me feel things other books don't. There's a delightful little frisson of cognitive dissonance every time I realize that: a book about a hero who's something of an outcast among heroes because his powers are so purely physical generates an emotional experience no other book can accomplish.

I would, as always, love to be wrong. There are other theories out there, to be sure: that it's far enough outside of the mainstream DCU (even though it is in the DCU now) that it doesn't need to be addressed; that it's too new to get rebooted so it just continues on; that it's got some other lease on life. I hope so. I really, really do hope so. I asked Frazer Irving on the tweets if he could confirm/deny Xombi's future fate and he said he couldn't speak of it. Despite my earlier chin-up post, I fill that data vacuum with an oily cocktail of raw dread and encouragement to you to go and buy this book while you can.

DC Digital: The Breakdown And The Let Down

2011-07-08T23:46:28Z

With DC's September initiative to publish their comics digitally on the same day as they're available in print just two months away, I felt it appropriate to have a look at their digital strategy as it stands now, before the big shakeup. What territory have they claimed with their mobile device delivery system, just over a year since it was first introduced? It seems they've made little headway in cornering the future of the comics market, actually, partially due to their partnership with Comixology, their digital publishers.

]]> The universal iOS and Android comic distributor's sales this past 4th of July weekend provide the basis of my argument; I would like to assert that I have no formal knowledge of the underpinnings in DC's partnership, and what I may label as an understanding is nothing more than the sum of observations I have made regarding the two distribution apps. Comixology (which has a dedicated "DC Store" section, but functions separately from the official DC application) featured a 99 cent sale from this past Saturday into the Monday holiday on select, newly-digitized Vertigo titles such as Preacher, Animal Man and our beloved American Vampire (comics now available at the questionable standard price of $2.99) This sale was exclusive to the issues purchased through Comixology, and are straight up unavailable through their native DC app, barring a handful of promotional #1's. While the future of Vertigo remains dubious at best, Comixology's lording over of the the imprint is a demonstration of the power they currently have over DC's digital strategy. Comixology rakes in from the commission of purchases, much like Groupon and Thwipster, with the added advantage of product exclusivity that such sites could only dream of.

Come September, DC will issue out a more organized model, with their comics available through either storefront at a standardized price. They've even gone so far as to set a standard for discount comics, in both price and time-frame (All of the "New 52" comics will be cut to a reasonable $1.99 one month after initial availability). The move should turn Comixology into a more balanced digital edition of Diamond Distributors, whose sale prices are primarily dictated by the publisher. It's a smarter move for DC in the fiscal sense, even if recent numbers show that the uptake to digital comics has been limited. I can only speak for myself when I say that my disdain for digital comics comes almost entirely from Comixology's implementation, even though I'm not the only person to malign the Guided-View algorithm. In general, I find the app to be a bloated, unwieldy thing: In the time it takes to boot up, update its inventory (and there are always unblockable updates), find and load an issue's main page, crash the app (After multiple restarts of the app, Comixology continues to have a higher crash rate than the DC app, so I'll assume this is based on the app design's incompatibility with its sheer volume) and finally download the comic, I might have well have just walked to the comics shop down the street. Granted, not everyone lives 3 blocks from a comics shop, and such customers would ideally be Comixology's target demographic, yet the interface remains a fumbling annoyance that inadvertently keeps me rooted at my brick and mortar store. I've been dying to read Animal Man and Preacher, and would've likely bought every on-sale issue, if Comixology hadn't been so impossible to use. Digital Comics are seen as a opportunity to put a comic in everyone's hands, a task that their largest distributor is nearly working against. I'll warmly welcome same day digital comics hand-delivered from DC, so long as they don't begin to emulate their distributor when the oncoming glut finally arrives.