Critical Failure

I honestly have no idea what I think of the Luna Bros.' Sword.

I don't think there's a case that it's good. I think it probably achieved quite close to what it was trying to achieve, so it's not bad in the sense of incompetent. I think there is probably a case that what it was trying to achieve is unattractive, if not as reprehensible as Girls appeared to be.*

Maybe it was just full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

*Disclosure: I did not finish Girls.

Winners and Losers at CCI 2010

Now that my inaugural trip to the San Diego Comic Con (or Comic Con International if you swing that way) is done, some quick winners and losers. Note that these are only things I personally witnessed/experienced in some way. That means there's little Marvel content, as I've found the Marvel panels are not worth going to all that much.

• WINNER: DCU Online. It received a lot of buzz, especially after they premiered a trailer for the game that features the storyline the game will follow as well as a companion comic book.
• LOSER: Wonder Woman's new look. Jim Lee took no end of crap for the redesign, although it looked quite good on this young woman who sat next to JMS during the DC Nation panel.
• WINNER: Tron. The line for Hall H the morning of its session stretched beyond comprehension. You may claim they were there for the earlier Megamind panel, but I have it on good authority that hardly anyone stirred from their seats in Hall H until after the Tron panel was complete. And the Tron trailer received applause after every time it was shown throughout the Comic Con trailer park.
• WINNER: Scott Pilgrim. Lots of buzz, lots of people waiting in line all day at Hall H to see its panel session (and sticking around after the Abrams/Whedon session earlier in the afternoon), lots of applause after each showing of the trailer.
• WINNER: Joss Whedon. The line stretching endlessly for Ballroom 20 on Friday was not due to Caprica and The Big Bang Theory (although both were popular). Everyone was waiting to see the master himself. Oh, and there's that little thing about that Avengers movie...
• WINNER: Hawaii Five-O. Nothing like having people wanting to claim their spot early to give you a full room for your premiere panel.
• WINNER: Grant Morrison, Superman, and Batman. The line for the Grant Morrison panel stretched through multiple hallways even after it began, and people kept adding to it to try to get into the Batman and Superman panels.
• LOSERS: Batman fans with limited budgets. Grant Morrison announced yet another new Batman book, Batman, Inc., which will be his new playground while Peter Tomasi takes over Batman & Robin. This is on top of the new book that David Finch will be doing.
• LOSER: JMS. Thanks to Matt Idelson, you can now call him "Bubbles".
• WINNER: Paul Levitz. Hosted a very popular panel on the history of DC (promoting his upcoming coffee table tome), was the subject of his very own special panel session (which was also quite popular), and had a fan come up to him and say, "Thank you for my childhood." (No, it wasn't me.)
• LOSERS: The makers of the films Drive Angry, Skyline, and Super. Guess what? No one cares. When there's someone actually out on the sidewalk begging people to come into Hall H, boy, you are in trouble.
• WINNER: Paul Cornell. He's just so damn lovable, even when trying to talk his way past a security guard into a panel session he's supposed to be in. Every other question asked of him during that panel started with the sentence, "I absolutely loved your Captain Britain and MI-13 series."
• WINNERS and LOSERS: The makers of the Green Lantern film. Oa looked awesome. The ring effects looked awesome. Tomar-Re(!!!!) looked awesome. But no footage of the suit, and statements that it was being "tweaked". Oh, and bonus WINNER points for the revelations that Kilowog, Stel, Bzzt, Salaak, and The Green Man will all be shown. Bzzt is apparently director Martin Campbell's favorite Lantern.
• LOSERS: GL fans who don't like Parallax. Ryan Reynolds confirmed the entity will be showing up.
• WINNER: Ryan Reynolds. Absolutely charmed the audience, doing the oath for a little boy and then giving away the prop GL ring he was wearing to a lucky audience member. Perhaps we can all forget about Wolverine and Blade: Trinity...
• WINNER: Tom Felton. Draco Malfoy himself showed up solo to bask in the love of all those Potter fans, present an extended trailer for Deathly Hallows (which looked incredible), and draw a lucky number for a fan giveaway.
• LOSERS: The rest of the Harry Potter cast. Where were they?
• LOSER: Zack Snyder. A good chunk of the Hall H crowd left after the Harry Potter preview and while Zack was trying to pitch his new movie, Sucker Punch. The buzz after the panel and preview was not positive.
• WINNER: The makers of the horror movie Let Me In. The panel and trailer had a good many people actually excited about a Hammer horror flick!
• LOSERS: Jack Black and Ben Stiller. Don't look now, guys, but your trailers for Gulliver's Travels and Little Fockers were booed. Twice.
• LOSER: M. Night Shyamalan. The trailer for Devil, which you wrote, received neutral to positive reception by the audience until your name appeared on screen. You are poison, my friend.
• WINNERS: The makers of Paul. The preview for the film starring Simon Pegg and Seth Rogan received a standing ovation. It was that damn funny.
• WINNER: Jon Favreau. The man knows how to work Comic Con. They've only been shooting Cowboys and Aliens for four weeks, but he managed to cut together enough finished footage to get everyone's blood pumping *and* he produced the moment of the Con (even compared to The Avengers cast coming out) when he had Harrison Ford led out in handcuffs for the panel session. This was the first time Mr. Ford had ever been to Comic Con.
• WINNER: Marvel Studios. They received a lot of good will despite not really showing anything. The Captain America footage was costume test footage (plus one scene with Hugo Weaving sans Red Skull mask) and the Thor trailer was almost all talking. Any other movie preview like that would not have received nearly the same positive reaction.
• LOSER: Kevin Feige. He took the hit (and the boos) from the audience regarding the Edward Norton debacle. And it's not clear that it was his fault.
• LOSERS: The two idiots who got in a fight over one of them sitting to close to the other in Hall H on Saturday, resulting in one stabbing the other with a pen. Someone needed a good tasing.

Your Best Trivia Questions, Please

This year's San Diego Pro/Fan Trivia will have Len Wein, Kurt Busiek and Mark Waid going up against Tom Galloway, David Oakes, and Michael Grabois, with the questions being asked by Peter David.

We're still looking for questions for it, which should be sent to fanprotrivia@gmail.com with this year's theme being significant DC pre-Crisis events.

Specifically, we're looking for questions about significant DC stories from 1956-1986 (essentially the Silver Age and Pre-Crisis). For example, characters' origins, deaths, marriages, and significant firsts. To give an idea, if you think you'd need to include something about the story in a character's Who's Who entry, that's the level of significance we're looking for. Also, stories which were considered events of the time; JLA/JSA or other Earth-1/Earth-2 team-ups, the really important Imaginary Stories like Superman-Red/Blue, Superman-Flash races, the multi-part Virus X story in Action or Aquaman's search for Mera, etc.

There are two types of questions in the match, toss-ups and bonuses. You should mark your questions with what type you think they are. Toss-ups can only be answered by individuals, while the full team can consult on the latter. The latter can thus (and should) be both harder and perhaps a bit more complex in terms of a correct answer. In general, questions requiring more than one answer ("Name seven of the villains who appeared in the story about Reed and Sue's wedding") should be bonuses, not toss-ups. If a question does require multiple answers, it should state how many answers are needed. For example, "Name all characters other than the original members who've belonged to the Fantastic Four" isn't good. "Name the 6 characters who've been members of the Fantastic Four, not including the original four" is (and I pulled "6" out of thin air there, so don't bother trying to figure out if it really has been 6 : -)).

Ideally, I think 90% of toss-ups should be answered correctly, while around 50-70% of bonuses should.

Questions should not ask for issue numbers (they can be included in the question, but try for more descriptive set-ups than just "Who was the villain in Forbush-Man #3?") or creators. We're interested in story content. Also, unless it was fairly memorable, please don't write questions on the order of "In Superboy #158, Lex Luthor revealed a particular fondness for what Martian dessert?" where this was never mentioned again outside of that one panel.

For a record of 2003's match, including all questions and whether and who answered them correctly, see here.

I'll just note that ones I think were probably too easy were Tossup #10, Bonus #11, and Bonus #13. Ones I think were probably too hard were Tossups 2, 8, and 20.

There's an streaming audio recording of the 2008 match here.

Finally, if possible, try to add a bit of style to the questions, so they're not of very basic forms like "What's the Top's real name?" "Who fought Forbush-Man in Forbush-Man #1?", etc. I like Tossups 3 and 14 from the 2003 match in this regard.

The match'll be Sunday the 25th, 3:00, in Room 4.

Comics in the Classroom: Marc Singer edition

I meant to blog this a while ago, but I've been sick. So sue me.

Over the spring semester, award-winning comics scholar (and Curmudgeon Emeritus) Marc Singer taught a course at Howard University on ""Genres in American Literature: Comics and Graphic Novels". Because this is the 21st century, of course he blogged about it.

His introductory post from January gives the syllabus:

• Scott McCloud, Understanding Comics
• Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons, Watchmen
• Art Spiegelman, Maus vols. I and II
• Kyle Baker, Nat Turner
• Alison Bechdel, Fun Home
• Gilbert Hernandez, Human Diastrophism
• Chris Ware, Jimmy Corrigan, the Smartest Boy on Earth
• Gene Luen Yang, American Born Chinese
• Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely, We3

Discussion of the individual works, and the reactions of his class to each of them, can be found under the "Teaching" tag on his site. Lots of crunchy analysis and fun to be had there.

(This reminds me, indirectly, of a fun story from the 2009 Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association conference in New Orleans, which was my first chance to actually meet Marc. One session had a paper about Watchmen focusing on the "Watchmaker" chapter--Dr. Manhattan's origin story, issue 4. During comments after, a woman in the audience asked the author if he could explain more about what the chapter was like, because she'd never read it. I stood up and said, "Come on. This is a room full of comics readers. Someone here must have a copy of Watchmen on them--it's the law!" And sure enough, someone had a scanned set of it on his netbook, so the woman sat and read the issue while the discussion moved on. There are a lot of things I love about living in the future.)

Death of a Comic Con

What if you scheduled a comic con and no comic pros showed up?

Today kicked off Philadelphia Comic Con 2010 (formerly Wizard World Philly). The shenanigans Wizard has been perpetrating with respect to con scheduling and the resultant response from the publishers may have signed the death warrant for this con, based on the paucity of action I observed this afternoon.

None of the major publishers are here. While it's not unusual for Marvel and DC to skip having booths at the smaller cons, there are no panel sessions for the companies (or for any of the publishers in the second tier). From my best count, none of the exclusive talent at the Big Two are here, either. I've not been to a "major" con that hasn't had at least a couple panel sessions from the big companies.

The dearth of exclusive talent has impact beyond the panel sessions. While there are two rows of aging professional wrestlers to talk to, along with another row of post-heyday sci-fi stars to ask for autographs, artists alley is somewhere between a third to a half of the size it's been in previous years.

My Color Theory Is You Suck

In the first issue of Zatanna, as in so many other Zatanna specials, one-shots, mini-series, and strips, a cop meets Zee at a performance and brings her to a crime scene for a consult.

Along the way, he says:

I thought I'd warn you that after stepping inside the Nob Hill Chop House, you'd never want to look at red meat again.

Ominous. What's in there must be pretty awful, huh? Anarthrous writer Paul Dini is counting on the art team to make this pay off. Penciller Stephane Roux turns in a suitably macabre scene. Inker Karl Story realizes the pencils in print-ready perfection.

And colorist John Kalisz turns in this:

Diamond Disaster Predicted (Again)

Via Dave Rawson: Checker, a re-publisher of a bunch of good comics projects, has withdrawn from Diamond and believes Geppi (and hence Diamond) to be financially unsound.

It is not what I would call well-written. And Checker (as much as I cherish my Supreme reprints) is a pretty minor player; I doubt they have any special insight into Diamond financials.

Back to Twitter

There's a new gang in town in Chicago. Although there are always little shows popping up here and there, for too long we've had only one major con: the ever-diminishing Wizard World/Chicago Comic Con (or whatever Gareb Shamus is calling it these days) out in the suburbs. This weekend, Reed Exhibitions, who've set up New York's NYCC to great success, are presenting their inaugural (and much more urban) Chicago Comic & Entertainment Expo (or C2E2 to its pals).

Always Creative Kirby

Unused Kirby characters from his days at Ruby-Spears. There's an accompanying slideshow which is pretty terrific.

Via SciFiWire.

In Righteous Day...

Brad Guigar has an especially good riff on the spectrum of power rings in today's Evil, Inc.

Our History

Curmudgeon webmistress Ginger passes along this link to The Rise and Fall of the Comic Industry's Direct Market and Other Stories

Interesting. Fairly Comics-Journal-centric, but the Herb Trimpe story is excellent.

A Few Words on Love and Capes

Thomas F. Zahler's Love and Capes is a fun superhero romantic comedy. Volume 1 is available now and volume 2 will be out shortly. About the first half of the first book is online, so you can sample it for free.

The characters are sensible and interesting to spend time with. They're also rational even when they're emotional. The conflicts don't arise from carrying the idiot ball, which in itself is reason enough to recommend a rom-com. The superheroing is not bogged down in its own self-importance. it's just there to make an effective contrast.

The cartooning is enjoyable. I like the size difference between the leads Abby and Mark; it makes romantic gestures easy, as well as concretizing the difference between normal Abby and super Mark.

I also like Abby's impressively Roman forehead. You don't see too many characters with an obtuse facial angle. Combined with her hair, her head points forward and up, which makes directing the action in a panel easy; Abby just points in the direction you want the eye to take.

That Is Some Art

If you're following Questionable Content -- and who among us isn't -- then I commend to your attention panel 3 of this strip. One of the pleasures of following QC is the evolution of Jeph Jacques' art. Day to day or through the archives, he's gotten better, more confident; he's never coasted, never been afraid to try something new.

Panel 3 in this strip is, I think, just amazing. I expect her to start moving like a rotoscoped character in an animated film. The posture, the proportions, it's astonishing. You would never have imagined that the artist of strip #1 would ever be able to produce art like this. I am in awe.

This is the second Golden Age of comic strips, and Jeph Jacques is one of its masters.

More on the Pogo Delay

Ah, finally found a statement from Kim Thompson of Fantagraphics on Pogo:

Although Ohio State U has scans of all the Sunday strips, some of them are missing one central panel (because the "vertical" format version has one panel less than the "horizontal" and OSU has only the vertical versions) and literally no collector in the world appears to have the horizontal version with that panel. Fortunately Walt Kelly's daughter, who is helping us with this, has BW repros of the first year's Sundays with those panels, which we're going to have to scan, insert and digitally color to match the rest of the strips (faking the blotchiness and resistration problems of the surrounding strip as needed).

(Nov 16, 2009)

Tracking back on 2009 predictions

To kick off 2009, Doug asked us, "What Lies Ahead?". I responded with ten predictions, tongue firmly in cheek. Still, considering all sorts of odd things occurred this year, I wondered how did I do?

Why They Lost Their Powers

Podcast of Jess Nevins' paper: "Those Who Cannot Remember Doc Savage Are Condemned To Repeat Him: The 20th Century Backlash Against Posthuman Bodybuilders".

Jess knows WAY a lot more than anybody else about the popular culture of the fantastic that led directly to the superhero comics we love. In this paper he talks about the broader cultural backlash that led to the depowerment, deemphasis, or domestication of superheroes that we're all familiar with from the end of the Golden Age, among other things.