This month's reader helps to put Loki's horns in context.
I've been reading PK for a few years now and really appreciate the work that you folks do! I'm always excited to read your New Comic Book Wednesday posts and Klarion's review of X-Factor #200 inspired me to work through my ridiculous childhood loyalties and pick up a Marvel book for once!
Name: Brandon B
Age: 31
Where you're from: Texas, originally ... but I've settled in Western Massachusetts
Are you L, G, B, or T (or just friendly): Queer
Relationship Status: Seeing Someone
What's on your pull list: Secret Six, Birds of Prey, Wonder Woman, Batman & Robin, Supergirl, everything Superman, Detective Comics (but only until The Question second feature wraps up), JLA, JSA, Power Girl, everything Green Lantern, Brave & the Bold, anything with Batwoman, anything with the Young Avengers, The New Mutants TBPs, various X-Men TBPs, and anything related to Love and Rockets
Favorite story: It's hard to pick just one, so I'll pick three. The Rucka/Williams run with Batwoman in Detective Comics was incredible. The art blew my mind and Rucka really wowed me with Kate's origin story. I also have a special place in my heart for Gail Simone's totally creepy and twisted Secret Six "Depths" story ... I've had that panel of Artemis saying "I've got some bastards to kill" as my wallpaper ever since. And, finally, say what you will, but the George Perez run on Wonder Woman was my first true comic book love. I thought Perez brilliantly (and subtly) exposed the modern dynamics of sexism through the eyes of a naive but courageous young Diana. And, in Diana, I found a hero I could relate to and grow with.
Superpower you'd most want to have: Tactile telekinesis (including flight)!
More about you: I work as a college educator/administrator and occasionally get to geek-out with students over comics. I'm particularly interested in the ways in which comic books have helped to expanded our national discourse on issues of identity, power, and social justice. After doing a few workshops about this with students, I set up a website to start more discussion on the topic (www.SocialJusticeinSpandex.com). I'm also really into ancient queer history and queer mythology ... did you know that Odin was into ritualistic homo sex and Loki was a nelly gender-swapper? If Marvel went there, I'd add Thor to my pull list in a heartbeat.
If you would like to be featured as one of PK's loyal fans, check out this post to join the love fest.
A brief interview with Darwyn Cooke has been making the rounds recently, where he discusses the pitfalls of modern comics storytelling, maligning the mature themes and drastic character modifications, supposedly because these actions take the fun out of the industry and make them less accessible for everyone. Numerousthreads have gone up in arms taking offense to his statement, which deserves a careful examination.
DC put out a preview this morning of Knight & Squire #1, an upcoming series about the British Batman and Robin analogues. Paul Cornell works on the script, who I've come to appreciate as one of Britain's more accessible writers for detached, tourist-y consumers, so I couldn't think of someone better suited for such a UK-centric book. In the short preview, we get a glimpse at a bar full of fresh new rogues, including the silver-age inspired "Milkman" and the "First Eleven", a multinational corps who hail from Britain's former colonies, though no American was keen on taking part. What really caught my eye, after noting a sign for "Tights and Capes Disco every Thursday", was the new figure Faceoff, who adamantly introduced himself with a statement about his sexuality and made sure no one went around slingin' slurs about it.
Various low-class rogues meet up at a bar where rowdiness eventually ensues? That's the single most effective comics pitch ever to appeal to me. I'll be buying the series once it kicks off in October.
The enticing $1 "What's Next" series from DC is an exemplary promotional tool that got me into The Walking Dead series. A single dollar investment that led to a frantic search for the collected editions and gave me a new series to get excited about. It's a simple rule; You advertise a good product, people will line up for the real deal. What follows are my own mini-promotions, the working elements that bought my interest as a reader and have me awaiting the AMC series with great expectations, all spoiler-free.
Graeme McMillan has an excellent post over at CBR concerning the reputation of literary comics, and how readers may be unwilling to approach certain graphic novels because of the notoriety that surrounds them.
It's more than a little embarrassing to admit, but up until a couple of years ago, I'd pretty much successfully gone out of my way to avoid reading anything by the Hernandez Bros., and it was almost entirely because of the reputation of their work. Surely, I thought, nothing could stand up to the probably-hyperbolic praise thrown in their direction!
Which is an aspect that I believe most regular comics readers have sensed before. Certainly, price and availability are a huge factor in whether or not I buy a comic, or even if I'll try flipping through it at the bookstore café, but there are definitely books that have been bumped down on my "must-read" list based on hear-say or prejudices formed through other peoples' readings of a comic. A big one for me is The Dark Knight Returns. I feel like I've missed its moment of temporal poignancy, that I can't appreciate it after reading from a comics industry that's already taken so much from it. I'm not much of a Frank Miller fan anyway, with its dirty cops and neon cityscapes, but it's the weight of the book's name that keeps me from reading it. But Graeme concludes, correctly, that this self-restriction is a folly:
I was an idiot every single time I got scared of a book because of its reputation. For one thing, it's comics - You read it and it clicks or it doesn't, and that's the end of it
I wholly believe that we learn by taking in things from outside our established comfort zone, and I'm really impressed by this point. Guess I'll be picking up TDKR sometime soon, then. Anyone else avoiding the top shelf out of a silly fear?
Jim McCann takes on the "Alpha Flight" crew in a one-shot coming out this November. Personally, I'm not too well acquainted with the team outside of their appearance in the Ultimate universe, where they were mostly "the pricks that nearly killed Northstar". But pre-release interviews indicate that he'll be playing up the team's dysfunctional tendencies, and McCann's become my go-to guy for Marvel team-ups with his ongoing Hawkeye & Mockingbird, a book that's keen to show its characters' faults without the usual level of bordering-on-absurd grittiness that's come to characterize psychologically sensitive comics. Look for a review once Chaos War hits later this year.
I've never seen someone malign Greg Rucka's work, but a news piece that broke today makes him look damn-near prophetic. Pinknews.co.uk reports on the story of Katherine Miller:
A lesbian cadet offered her resignation this week to top US military academy West Point over the "don't ask, don't tell" policy...
Which is perfectly reflexive of a plot point in Rucka's Detective Comics #859, a book you should've read a half-dozen times by now. It's a credit to the author that he can create characters so true that their stories exist in reality (though undoubtedly there have already been other gay cadets in the same position), but Rucka exhibits a real mastery for their motivations and moral stances. If you'll remember, Katherine Kane bowed out in reverence to the West Point cadet honor code, "A Cadet Will Not Lie, Cheat, Steal, Or Tolerate Those Who Do." Katherine Miller had this to say about her own resignation,
"In short, I have lied to my classmates and compromised my integrity and identity by adhering to existing military policy."
She may be no Batwoman, but Ms. Miller is certainly an object of admiration for me. And Rucka, well, I'm sure this won't be my last chance to gush at the women he "invents".
Just what you've always wanted, folks, Wonder Woman is getting her own makeup line! What's that? You couldn't care less? Well, I'm hardly the makeup-wearing type myself, but I think the announcement speaks volumes for where the Amazonian stands in contemporary culture.
Wonder Woman certainly has a degree of social prominence; Most Americans can identify her, even if they're pulling from memories of the Lynda Carter TV series, and she's definitely a member of DC's Trinity- where, like Superman and Batman, she was important enough to get dragged into Blackest Night's tie-ins and then left to her own devices once the event concluded. But her comics aren't respected quite as much as her compatriots'- she has no spinoff titles, she's not part of DC's "Earth One" graphic novel incentive, and worst of all, she has no movie.
Though by 2011, she'll be right there on the Macy's racks alongside Britney Spears perfumes and Cyndi Lauper-sponsored watches. I fear that Wonder Woman is especially vulnerable to comics' ever-growing integration into the mainstream. Not that this is a bad thing, the girl could certainly do with more exposure, but if all this publicity works as planned and Diana is catapulted into the spotlight as a symbol of righteous womanhood, where will the new fans go who want to explore her in original form? Perhaps she'll expand into multimedia more as a pop element, a feat that even Superman couldn't accomplish. Batman has arguably been able to escape comic-tropes and expectations only recently though his Nolan movie incarnations- I think Wonder Woman and her mythology might be DC's prime candidate for attracting attention now that comics are only just the springboard for a character's fame.
I've gone on the record as an enthusiast for DC's animated DVD releases. Most of the times, they're a great platform for synthesizing various strands of continuity to give the audience a unique superhero tale that can be both fan-pleasing and entertaining for those less emotionally involved. It should be a bonus, then, that Judd Winick wrote the "Under the Red Hood" movie, given his previous and ongoing work with the resurrection of Jason Todd. What we get with this movie is an oddly disfigured retelling of his death and rebirth, paying more attention to the dynamic between characters, namely Jason, Batman, and the Joker, that will entertain most but certainly not all of its viewers.
Name: Mark.F Age:20 Where you're from: England Are you L, G, B, or T (or just friendly): Bisexual Relationship Status: Single What's on your pull list: Amazing Spiderman, Four Eyes, Ultimate Spiderman, The Avengers, Astonishing X-Men, Invincible Iron Man, Buying the Authority, The Sandman and Lucifer trades... oh and Scott Pilgrim Favorite story: The Planetary storyline Superpower you'd most want to have: Telekinesis More about you: I am a university student doing sociology and for my third year project i will be doing LGBT representations in comicbooks. Not all uber geeky though i am a gym nut and do love Tae Kwondo. Saying that i am eyeing up spiderman designs for my fourth tattoo so i am a pretty hopeless case by this point :P. And in terms of Manga it has to be Tri-Gun all the way. That or FLCL.
P.S. Yes that is me and Eddie Izzard in that photo it was awesome!
Hawkeye & Mockingbird #1 was an excellent introductory issue for the new Heroic Age series, so I found my curiosity revamped this week in seeing that the issue had been adapted for the various iDevices, and was available for free download. To have that portability- to carry an issue around and get friends and coworkers to look at a comic on the fly-that's one of an ereader's most redeeming factors, so I was glad to have that option made available. But my skepticism of the digital format remained- what intrinsic differences arise from reading a comic this way, having already devoured the issue in all its glossy goodness? Would I really want to expose my pals to a paper edition first? A few thoughts on the digital reading experience...
Most Comixology-derived readers take the audience on a guided walkthough of the panels and narrative boxes, as if the "camera" were on a track that pans and zooms across the page. This act itself is disconcerting as a reader, as you're now physically interacting with the page at least once per panel, if not more, instead of the simple act of flipping every 2 pages. Even then, this break-up of the page seems arbitrary at times, restricting what you read to whatever portions the editor deems relevant. H&M's title page is a perfect example. In the digital copy, we're guided to a small opening caption, zoom out to the splash image and credits, and resume the plot by zooming in on the narrative boxes towards the bottom of the page. Penciler David Lopez filled the single picture with smaller, intimate moments, taking the time to show each nameless thug in reaction to the Pym arrows, but in the digital edition, you'll have to manually scroll around the page to observe this. When I first read the issue on paper, it forced my eye to follow the arch of the arrows from bow to target. Here, the frame kills any fluidity in the image.
Likewise, pages with creative paneling don't suit a rectangular screen well. It's a great idea to frame Bobbi's dreams with her bedsheets, but no ereader can suit irregularly-shaped panels without elements of the surrounding picture cutting into the frame. Digital-exclusive comics could pull this off well by playing with the cut, or in being aware that the Phantom Rider overlaps into the next screen and writing around that fact. This awkwardness in translation will continue to exist in all comics that aren't presented in strictly rectangular format, or aren't made with the ereader in mind, and no work of art should have to compromise its intent of presentation for its mode of presentation.
With digital adaptations, it's almost exclusively the art that suffers. The supplementary backstory at the end issue is the only part of the issue that's improved upon when digitized- having a guide through the myriad text boxes ensures that you read them in proper order and within context, though it requires a page with a 200+ word count to be find a measure of efficacy. There's nothing particularly wrong with digital formatization, and the uninitiated will likely enjoy a digital issue as much as a floppy one, but if I'm left with an option, I'll opt for the edition that'll permit a looser, freer reading of the material. Without the synchronicity of artwork and prose, you get a flurry of text followed by an oddly-sized image that ultimately kills the open-endedness of actual reading experience.
Irony can be a powerful tool, as the anti-Westboro church demonstrators showed yesterday outside of SDCC, but Matt Fraction and his wife Kelly Sue DeConnick found a better way to cancel out Phelps' bigotry. Organized under the #godlovesbatman hashtag on twitter, the duo set up a pledge
...in the spirit of love, we are pledging to donate $50 to amfAR if Phelps and his crew actually show up (often they don't) and $10 an hour additional to amfAR for every hour they stay. And we'll make our donation in Fred's name.
Frankly, the politest kick in the nuts I've ever seen, as it essentially turns the protest into money earned toward a cause he opposes, like AIDS reseach. Phelps and crew ended up making a poor show of it anyway, ditching the San Diego streetside in under an hour, presumably to wash off the smell of defeat by Bender's shiny metal ass. Truer to their word, the couple made up for the church's rather limp appearance with a $100 donation each to amfAR. The noble endeavor is still taking personal donations, and acts of kindness done in the name of the project should continue regardless of Phelps' presence. If you want to find a way to help, or to check out recommended funds, check Kelly Sue's blog for details.
Review: Avengers: The Children's Crusade #1
I literally clapped my hands together and said OhMyGodYesssss when the friendly staff member at my regular shop held this book out to hand it to me. Allan Heinberg and Jim Cheung finally - finally - return to this title with a nine issue limited series. I will spare you paragraphs of pontification and cut to the chase: it's not just good, it's the best thing Marvel has going, period. Read on for the pontification and petty quibbles!...
