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New Buzzscope/PopCulture Shock Column

As mentioned before, my Comics by the Numbers column has migrated over to Buzzscope/PopCulture. The new one is up now so if you haven’t already, go there straight away and read. This one is my year in review column and perhaps a bit more numbers heavy than I’d normally go as a result. But it was fun to write anyway. Hope you enjoy it. Hang around the site for a while after you’re done and read a few other columns. Heck, there’s tons of great stuff so pack a lunch and leave comments.   

The Great Comic Blogger Poll of 2005

Time for a little navel gazing. First and foremost, thanks to Chris Tamarri for arranging the whole deal and for the analysis that he and Ed Cunard followed it up with, which is far more interesting than what you’re about to read here. Assuming you continue reading after an intro like that.

My plan going in was to choose three awardees for each category and divvy up the ten points among them. I didn’t want to get into spreading out one point here or there, figuring that would dilute the ratings for the titles/people I felt strongest about and, well, I’m lazy. That plan went out the window almost immediately, but I still managed to not get spread too thin.

I started my selection with the books because that was somehow easier. My choices for Best Ongoing were FABLES, SHAOLIN COWBOY, GOON, and CAPTAIN AMERICA. I basically gave each the same amount of points - or would have if half points were allowed. So two of them got two points and two got three. Can’t remember which. I was glad to see all of my choices received points from people other than myself. This is really about validation for me – I just want to fit in. I wasn’t at all surprised to see ALL STAR SUPERMAN so high but I had only read the first issue at the time of my voting and couldn’t justify awarding a point on that. I suspect that will change if we do this next year. I probably could have given a point or two to FELL or DESOLATION JONES or both, but I knew they would get a boatload of votes from other bloggers and figured I’d save mine for other titles. That may not have been in the best spirit of things. FABLES was tricky for me as I actually read it collected but think of it as an ongoing series. In the end I decided to put it here instead of in the collection category.

Best OGN was pretty easy since I read only three that were actually published this year: TOP TEN: FORTY NINERS, SALAMANDER DREAM, and BONE SHARPS, COWBOYS AND THUNDER LIZARDS. This is where my time away from comics catches up to me as I spend a lot of my reading on older books most other bloggers have probably read already. SCOTT PILGRIM, CAPOTE IN KANSAS and WIMBLEDON GREEN are all on my read list, but I haven’t gotten to them. I gave most of the points to the TOP TEN book and a few to BONE SHARPS – which was apparently only read by me. That’s too bad, but at 23 bucks it was kind of expensive. SALAMANDER DREAM did nothing for me, but I’m pretty thick.

Best Collection was a category I could have spent more time on. I read a lot of titles collected but often I’m playing catch up from two or three years ago. In most cases I couldn’t remember what was collected from this year or last or the year before that. I could have looked up this information but as mentioned, I’m lazy. I’m very comfortable with the two I gave points to: WE3 and THE BEST OF THE SPIRIT. I think I gave more to WE3 – but I might have split them. If I had it to do over I’d probably give a couple of points to the ADAM STRANGE PLANET HEIST and MADROX TPB’s. Those were darn good. For whatever, reason it never even occured to me to include the Showcase books for consideration.

Best Mini or One-Shot was the hardest because there were approximately forty seven thousand to choose from. Thankfully I only read about half of them. I gave the most points (4, I think) to VILLAINS UNITED, and then spooled out points to FF/IRON MAN BIG IN JAPAN, BATMAN AND THE MONSTER MEN and ASTRO CITY: THE DARK AGE. I considered giving some points to INFINITE CRISIS but I’d only read three issues and that title has the potential to get derailed faster than my train of thought. If it holds course I’ll happily reward it next time around. Now that I’ve seen the results there were several titles that I probably should have given points to, including ELK’S RUN, NEVERWHERE and THE QUESTION. Ah, well.

I almost felt guilty voting for a Best Artist as I’m a lousy judge of this. But I ended up splitting the points between Simone Bianchi, Bryan Hitch and Jock. Those were the three who’s art I looked at and thought, “Cool!” the most. I guess I don’t hold Frank Quitely with the same reverence as most everyone else.

Writers. I gave Morrison a slight nod over Ellis and then dolled out roughly a point a piece to Andy Diggle, Gail Simone and Bill Willingham (I think.) The last three all wrote books I gave high points to in other categories so it seemed right to cast a nod here as well. Sort of a Best Picture/Best Director sort of thing. I should probably have given some run to Ed Brubaker, Kurt Busieck and Eric Powell. (As to the latter, I think it was mentioned elsewhere but I’d have no problem with a best ARTIST/WRITER combo as a place to give guys like Powell, Matt Wagner or Charles Burns more recognition.) I like Brian K. Vaughan’s work just okay -- he doesn’t seem to be able to maintain momentum very well -- and Alan Moore’s output was too limited. I was surprised Bendis (or his books) didn’t make much of a showing since he was the best selling writer by light years. I'm not saying he should have received more votes (he got none from me) but somebody is buying all those books.

The process was fun and it made me think. I’m sure I’ll spend more time this year thinking about how various books fit in my own internal polling. There were certainly titles I read early this year that didn’t register in January. Next year I’ll be right on top of it.

Stream of Comicness Wednesday

I really hate it when work gets in the way of blogging. Between bill-paying efforts and the hours and hours of end-of-the-year number crunching I did for my first Comics by the Number contribution to PopCultureShock -- which should be available as soon as Saturday -- it’s been about a week since I’ve really paid attention to what’s going on in comics. I feel so disconnected. Here's some rambling randomness while I catch up.   

I’m a business geek. I may be more of a business geek than I am a comics geek. I love reading about how businesses run and Brian Hibbs’ latest Tilting at Windmills is at the intersection of my two geeky obsessions. If you want to understand how Diamond works and the implications of the current distribution model on the Direct Market, this is a must read. It’s probably a must read for anyone who has ever complained about not being able to get a certain book from their LCS, which is to say, all of us. Here are my two initial thoughts in response:

1) I really think the DM will have an alternative to Diamond for small press distribution in the near future. And by near future I mean the next five years or so. And by alternative I mean potentially a variety of alternatives serving specific niches or regions. One inevitability is that the alternatives are going to require more work on the part of the LCS’s. I’ve got a number of thoughts on how this might go, and will happily lay them out at which time as I should decide not to pursue them myself.

2) Hibbs made the point (at least twice) about how “precarious of a situation it is when 2 of your suppliers are 70%-ish of your sales” in regards to Diamond’s dependence on Marvel and DC. But this is standard for most businesses. Talk to anyone who sells to Wal*Mart or Costco. It’s called Pareto’s Principle, or more commonly, the 80-20 Rule: simply, for this situation, 80% of your revenue is generated by 20% of your suppliers. Diamond’s reliance on the big two, or even the superhero genre in general, doesn’t strike me as a particularly risky one given the exclusivity they’ve been able to secure. As long as competition exists between Marvel and DC (which should ensure that at least their products meet certain quality and marketability standards) Diamond can rest relatively easy. Who should be worried? Well, it strikes me that it’s actually the retailers who have all their eggs in one basket (and I understand they have little choice) and as such they’re probably who should be working most actively towards developing alternatives. 

Who wants to be a superhero? I’m going to predict right now that they’ll have three times as many people lining up for Who Wants to be a Supervillain? And Stan Lee’s involvement is obvious, but wouldn’t it be great if they had a big half-circle dais with a bunch of people dressed like Legionnaires giving the thumbs up or down. I used to love those issues where they’d let Gas Girl or Chlorophyll Boy try out. Or maybe they could get Bruce Campbell to drop a car on the finalists, and then yell, “Sidekick!”

BlueTights.net is the official fan site for Superman Returns. You’ll find Bryan Singer’s video journal there and tons of exclusive clips and goodies. Be wary, you can kill a few hours in a hurry. (And why is there such an urge in the movies to put Luthor in a toupee?)

Okay, I’ve gotten a few emails about how to get on my blogroll. As you can tell, it’s not too difficult. I don’t subscribe to the “limit your blogroll” school of thought, although I have no problem with those who do. (And apparently my excessive linkage devalues this site’s Blogshares in some way, which is just dumb.) For the record, I have two criteria: You need to blog primarily about comics – other stuff is okay but the majority of it needs to be comic book related; and you need to post at least once a week. Pretty simple really. If you only occasionally write about comics I probably won’t link your site. Doesn’t mean I won’t read you -- I read tons of sites not linked here -- or that I’m uninterested in what you have to say, it’s just a comics thing. Sorry in advance for being such a pedant about  it. If you feel you belong in such an exclusive club simply drop me an email. On the flip side, if you don’t link me you are a schmuck and may you die a death by a thousand denial of service attacks. No, not really. Link me, don’t link me, it’s your blog, do with it as you will. Know that I appreciate it if you do and usually don’t notice if you don’t. Whew. That should take care of all the housekeeping for another six months. 

Power Pack

One of my oldest son’s comic book purchases last year was a cartoonish kid’s book from Marvel called POWER PACK. I assumed Power Pack -- four superpowered siblings conveniently carrying the surname Powers -- to be a relatively new creation, but then I ran across these as I was sorting through in ill-advised eBay acquisition (which I mentioned sometime back):

Power Pack has been around for over 20 years! Yes, I'm out of touch. But I think we all knew that.

I read a few of these and they really aren’t bad although it is difficult to figure out for which market the book was aiming. The plots and narrative are a bit too abstract for young kids (at least in places) but it’s difficult to imagine an adult (particularly your garden variety superhero comic book reader) interested in the ongoing adventures of four children. But hey, the book ran for seven years, so what do I know?

The books are extremely dialog heavy, with constant bickering a major theme. As a father of three youngsters I can attest to the accuracy of this but the various writers never quite capture how creative young kids can be in their verbal assaults. And then one of the kids will toss of a line like, “The probability is so small as to be infinitesimal,” or utter some age-old exclamation along the lines of “good grief” or “for pete’s sake” - somewhat different than the "nooo, you poopy-head" and "stupid macaroni-brain" I hear tossed around my household. Art-wise, the books start out decent enough -- June Brigman in particular has a knack for drawing children -- but deteriorates dramatically as the series progresses. Every issue seems to end with the group being captured by a lizard-like alien race who don't like the Powers kids because they're somehow connected to a cute, horsey-like alien race. It all has greater intergalactic ramifications that my six issue sampling doesn't begin to explore. 

An interesting Power Pack note is that it was the first Marvel comic entirely created by women, coming from writer Louise Simonson and artist Brigman. Has there been one since? Not sure what Simonson is up to these days, but Brigman currently draws the daily Brenda Starr strip.

Given Marvel’s recent plans to develop their own movie properties, Power Pack seems a likely choice for an animated treatment. (Apparently there was a live action pilot created back in 1991.) I think it would do well with the Powerpuff/Power Ranger set, particularly if it were an ongoing series. The all-ages comic pictured in the center above was by far my two sons favorite among several we picked up over the summer. Kids like stories about other kids, especially superPowered ones.

Honor Roll – Week of January 9, 2006

The Honor Roll is a weekly column where I rundown five interesting posts, comments or developments that are buzzing about the comics blogosphere. This isn’t about  events in the books themselves – we all know what happens there – merely a bit of navel gazing. Worse, it’s subject to my own myopic interpretation of what’s interesting or funny. Enjoy.

5) Ye Olde Comick Booke Blogge is actually a new comic book blog, spun out of 2 Guys Buying Comics. Jake does a pretty good job tracing a boatload of Bendis crep back to the infamous Powers Monkey issue, and then attributes it to Bendis’ evil twin. I think Jake is on to something. If nothing else he’s carving a nice little niche in the comic blogosphere as our answer to Oliver Stone. Soon we’ll see him on Larry King holding up two photos of Bendis, “You see, in this picture…”

4) Irrelephant. Heh.

3) Jon Cormier of hypnoray provides Eleven reasons for new comers to check out The Best of The Spirit. I have this collection sitting on a shelf – time to read that baby. 

2) As to Ian Brill’s open question to everyone who has at any time left comics: what brought you back? Well, I’ve answered this question in too much detail already, so I begged off leaving my own lurid story. But I was shocked, shocked I say, at how many people have quit comics for a fairly extended periods and then returned. My nearly 25 year gap may yet hold up as the record though.

1) Finally, I’d be remiss if I didn’t offer up congratulations to the comic blogosphere’s highest profile contributor, Dave Campbell of Dave’s Long Box, on the recent addition to his family.

Team Zero #1 (of 6)

Wildstorm
Script: Chuck Dixon
Art: Doug Mahnke & Sandra Hope

In case you missed the memo, westerns and war stories are back in vogue. And you could find worse books to satisfy your need for military-tinted bloodlust than TEAM ZERO. Okay, there’s probably no more blood in this than any number of other comics, but why pass up an opportunity to use a great word like “bloodlust.”

Like any good World War II action tale, TEAM ZERO dives right in with our hero, Collins - codenamed “Deathblow”, attempting to take a secret Japanese military station. Fun that it is, it’s just a prelude to Deathblow’s actual mission which will involve extracting German scientists -- and intel -- from Peenemunde, preferably alive (a real life place and set of event, likely not involving someone named "Deathblow", wonderfully explored by James Michener in Space), but hey, if it’s a choice between letting the Ruskies have all the eggheads…

So Deathblow is going to put together a Dirty Dozen-like team and go to work. The various codenames are reminiscent of some long-standing Wildstorm characters, but it appears most will have only the name in common. Still, it seems smart to leverage the characters, however loosely, allowing them to be recognizable yet expendable, which we all know is critical to any good war story.

Chuck Dixon’s taken his share of abuse (and praise) over the years but so far he’s kicked this story off with a good sense of pacing and a nice feel for the genre. Doug Mahnke’s work is a good complement, including a solid telling of the initial mission and a deft feel for the era (or at least what movies would leave us to think the era was like), making for a complete package. But the story really has yet to start in issue one and there is a lot of room in a something like this to lose the narrative to stereotypes and predictability. Here's hoping Dixon avoids all that and delivers the goods. Stay tuned.

Day of Vengeance Infinite Crisis Special #1

DC Comics
Script: Bill Willingham
Art: Justiniano, Walden Wong, Wayne Faucher

“Bleat your final inanities quickly! Your doom has come!”

Sadly, I’ve yet to find the proper social circumstances to utter these lines. But the year is young.

This forty eight pager would probably have made more sense as issue seven of the mini-series rather than a stand alone one-shot, but then I’m sure doing that would have messed up whatever passes for a trade paperback strategy at DC these days. Regardless, Willingham moves the DOV/INFINITE CRISIS plot forward at much greater lengths here than in the whole of the six issue mini.

Here we have the Shadowpact attempting to put the wraps on the Spectre and retrieve the seven deadly sins as well as the rock of eternity. It’s fairly entertaining and well-depicted stuff – predictable, but not wholly so. At the end of things the Spectre problem is resolved although we aren’t yet made aware of the new host (there’s a hint it may be a female one this time around) and Dr. Fate takes a bit of an unexpected trajectory, likely to be explored further in the One Year Later reboot. Finally, there’s implications for Captain Marvel, with the outcome of that still in question. The sum of things was to answer some questions while simultaneously raising new ones, which has been the basic trend for the entire crossover event.

The handling of events in this issue probably gives us a good primer for how many of the IC related characters, particularly secondary ones, will be handled as the storyline winds down. Willingham adeptly set up Dr. Fate and the Spectre for an easy Grant Morrison (or whoever) repurposing. (He’s also done us the favor of apparently removing an ill-conceived Hawk and Dove rehash.) I’m hopeful the rest of the changes are handled as smoothly. All-in-all a worthwhile addition to the IC chain of events.   

Digital Comics and the Sony Reader – Follow up

I don’t usually do this, but in my earlier post on this topic Ryan Steans (League of Melbotis & Nanostalgia) left a comment that I found myself responding to in enough depth that I thought, “Hey, this is a post.” So rather than put this in the comments section, here it is.

Firstly, here’s Ryan’s comment:

I think the Sony Reader is fairly nifty, but as for comics...

Comics are a collector's medium. Even back in the old days of buying comics at the Piggly Wiggly spinner rack, we all knew Action Comics #1 was worth more money than we'd ever be able to afford, and we all hoped that next issue of West Coast Avengers was going to help pay our way through college. How much is a comic worth if it doesn't exist?

Back issue value aside, your format issues aren't just from device to device, but may pose problems from generation to generation of software and hardware. I paid how much for Zork for my Apple IIe back in the day? I am fairly certain my iMac can't play the game now. Given the serial nature of comics, back issues ARE important to the story.

Lastly, how would anyone make money off of this? Kids, 'tweens and college kids don't pay for any of the music they have now. I don't foresee them willing to pay for their digital copy of Tri-Gun when they can download it from India.

I'm not saying that I think the format is unreadable or unusable, but I think paper comics have a long life ahead of them due to the packrat nature of the comic collector. The potential risk to the publisher can't help the process, either.

To this day I don't know how comic artists who abandon paper for the web make any money, if they make money at all. Donations? Subscriptions?

And I’m with you Ryan, to a point. I don’t see a time in the near future where floppies go away, for exactly the reasons you described and because it’s going to be a while before there's  a product providing a reader experience of a quality commensurate to paper. But I think the trend will be towards at least part of the industry or part of the distribution taking place digitally. And I don’t equate the current situation as much to music as I do to photography.

Honor Roll – Week of January 2, 2006

The Honor Roll is a weekly column where I rundown five interesting posts, comments or developments that are buzzing about the comics blogosphere. This isn’t about  events in the books themselves – we all know what happens there – merely a bit of navel gazing. Worse, it’s subject to my own myopic interpretation of what’s interesting or funny. Enjoy.

Boy, so much to choose from this week. It looks like the holidays managed to recharge everyone’s batteries. This week I'm going to focus on the theme of creating comics, sinse that's always a popular one for the comics blogger set, especially this time of year as we set our agendas for the next twelve months.

5) So, if your resolution is to write for comics then you ought to consider Jason Rodriguez’s offer to review 40 word story pitches. What better starting point could you have? I’d advise you to move quickly though. Once Jason picks up his Eisner you’ll be lucky to get a response from the assistant to his assistant.

I thought about going this route but it turns out that I probably suck, so, you know, forget that. But as to the rest of you…

4) Can’t think of what to submit on? How about a Silver Age-ish horror story? Monster and horror are all the rage now and Chris Sims over at the Invincible Super Blog has provided a handy primer on this genre. 

3) As you probably know, once you finish your comic Speakeasy is no longer an option as a publisher, as their focus is now on internal properties and licensing. Guy was musing the other day about what properties were actually out there worth licensing. And then he answers his own question over at PopCultureShock with the announcement that Rosario Dawson will be writing a comic for the beleaguered publisher this spring. Well, at least it answers part of the question.

2) If you’re female and you want to get into “mainstream” comics, you’ll want to give it some serious thought before plunging forward -- and not just because mainstream comics may never be considered mainstream entertainment (or maybe it will – who won that argument anyway?) -- but whatever you decide, be sure to Ronee’s recent piece over at PopCultureShock. (Yes, I’m an unapologetic shill.)

1) Finally, read Mark Fossen’s post for a little perspective on the women in comics situation.

Young Avengers Special #1

Marvel Comics
Script: Allan Heinberg
Art: Michael Gaydos and a cast of thousands

The Secret Origins issue!

At first glance I thought this book was titled YOUNG AVENGERS SCHOOL since Giant-girl’s head - alright, Stature (horrible) – obscures the word “special” in the masthead. In hindsight an issue showing the Young Avenger's receiving some superhero-type training might have been more entertaining than this turned out to be. 

Instead, this is a guided tour of how the Young Avengers came to realize their powers, with Jessica Jones and Michael Gaydos providing the narrative and visual anchors. Gaydos draws the Jones sequences with an impressive array of talent filling in the flashback origins. I like Gaydos’ work and would have had no problem with him drawing the whole shebang, but then our focus might have been drawn to the actual text of the issue, and to crib from Gertrude Stein, there’s no there there.

We didn’t really need an origin issue. In a general sense we know how these characters got started because we know how characters like these usually get started. We understand the mythology that the genre dictates so detailed origins aren’t a requirement and the origins provided give us very little insight into these characters. If anything this may detract from them as what we’re presented with is series of predictable, pedestrian origin stories that left me wondering if that was really the best they could come up with. 

The whole thing is in service to Marvel’s renewed love affair with Annuals and Specials. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing -- many of us have fond memories of these issues and some of these recent attempts have been quite good -- but this falls flat and leaves me feeling that Marvel is going through the motions simply because they can or perhaps because someone thinks it’s expected. Equally, I can imagine them thinking that readers are anxious to explore every inch the Young Avengers lives, past and present, after all their appeal is a humanist one that relies a great deal upon who these characters are when they aren’t in costume. But Heinberg had been slowly, successfully dishing this information out in the regular series making this book feel that much more forced and needless.

Specials and Annuals provide opportunity to explore a title’s characters and themes outside the continuity of the ongoing series and they should be fun. This book fails on both fronts.