Uncanny X-Men 413

After a long absence, I'm back, for what feels like the hundredth time... I'm going to fall back on the cliched "life got in the way" excuse again. Plus, well, my own personal laziness.

I figured I jump right back into my issue-by-issue musings on Chuck Austen's run. I just recently reread Jay Faerber's Generation X run, as I wanted to read something X-Men related before I went to see Days of Future Past (excellent movie, by the way). That lead to me reading the Brian Wood/Warren Ellis run that followed on the book, which lead to me wanting to read the Bill Jemas "Nu-Marvel" era of the main X-Men books, specifically Uncanny and New X-Men. I just recently started Austen's run on Uncanny, and it's amazing how much it contrasts with Casey's run, having now read all of Casey's run. Chad Nevett's already said all that needs to be said about Casey's work on the title over on his Graphicontent blog, but I do want to say that the contrast between Casey's high-concept work and Austen's more workman-like approach is startling and refreshing. Casey spends about a year of issues rehashing old ideas and tropes (and I have to agree with Mr. Nevett, I think some of this was intentional) before doing a pair of issues and an annual that read like an ad for his Wildcats comics. Meanwhile, Austen tries a back to basics approach, with the emphasis on interpersonal dynamics. While he gets mixed results over the course of his run, it does pay off for him a lot more often than it did Casey.

So, without further ado, my thoughts on this issue:

First of all, I want to say that not hiring Sean Phillips full time on Uncanny X-Men was a HUUUUUGE missed opportunity. After having read Casey's Wildcats plus his Uncanny issues (man, this Casey guy keeps popping up in my post...), I have to wonder how different this period of Uncanny would turned out had he been the main artist on the book. Maybe Casey would have put a little more effort into his run if he'd gotten to work with the artist that he wanted, maybe his run would have been longer I wouldn't be writing these posts? Knowing now that Marvel assigned more "traditional" artists to Casey, despite his protests, makes me wonder if that might have inspired the overuse of cliches in his run. Whatever the case, Phillips is a great storyteller, and he does a more than decent job on this issue. It's easy to read, and the body language and facial expressions of the characters are especially well done.

Another thing that I liked was having Annie narrate the issue. Austen does keep overusing the same lines with her narration, but it does help set up what I think is a nice last-page reveal. Whatever ultimately ends up happening with Annie's character, she does have some potential as the bigoted mother of a mutant living at the X-Mansion. It's certainly a lot more interesting than her Florence Nightingale thing with Havok. Speaking of Havok and Annie, they're the source of another scene I really enjoyed in this issue, which also involves Charles Xavier. Now, I'm a big Xavier fan, so a lot of things I absolutely hate have happened to him in the past decade or so. Having a scene that establishes how much Xavier cares about his students, his fellow mutants, his coexistence philosophy, and how much his own failings hurt him is something that I appreciated,, because these scenes will be come few and far between in the not too distant future. It's a well-executed scene that gives a good glimpse of everything you need to know about Xavier, while also setting up Havok's return to the X-Men. The last thing that I really liked was Juggernaut. Seriously, every time he shows up in the issue, he's just plain entertaining; there's even a disappointing scene where he helps make it just a little more bearable (which I'll get to later). Overall, this Lobdell-esque quiet issue (with its emphasis on interpersonal dynamics, characterization, and Xavier) is probably the best work Austen's don on this series so far. That's not to say he's perfect though.

As I said, there's a particularly disappointing scene, which involves Angel, Husk, and Stacy X. I know Austen has said in interviews that he wanted to bring back some of the Claremont's soap opera elements to the title, however he goes a bit too far with this cat-fight scene. That's really the best way I can describe it. It's a bit less than that though, and Austen's goal is admirable; here, he's trying to better establish a plot point Casey may have hinted at slightly, which is an Angel/Stacy X romance, while also bringing in Husk as a third element. He tries to develop Stacy X by having her reveal her jealousy, and while all of the dialogue itself is well-executed (in addition to the art), Stacy and Husk, a newcomer to the series, are essentially fighting over a man. Knowing about the claims of sexism against Austen, it's hard to ignore this blatant attempt at the cliched love-triangle, and the whole thing reads a little too much like an exaggerated, cartoonish attempt at doing a Days of Our Lives plot. Also, knowing where Austen eventually takes Angel's love life doesn't help this scene either.

Still, the issue is pretty good for Austen. I don't want to say it's all downhill from here, as I've read similarly good issues of his run that are later in the series. I'll get to them eventually, but so far, so good.

Uncanny X-Men 412

This issue concludes the first arc of Austen's run, and it's pretty much of the same quality as the past two - somewhere slightly north of mediocre overall, with some small exceptional bits. This issue is also the first to feature a highly-stylized anime cover, in this case it's a rather striking image of Nightcrawler. The linework is decent, but it's the coloring that really makes it stand-out - it looks like it came straight out of a Madhouse production. I wish I could find out who did this and the following three covers, as they're all pretty good looking and their personal style is slick. Speaking of art though, Ron Garney kind of phones it in with this one. The layouts are fine, it's just that the detail lines from the first two issues aren't there and the characters start looking bland and lumpy. It doesn't ruin the issue, but it's disappointing after he started off so well.

As for the story, there's nothing much to say about it. The X-Men regroup with Xavier and fight off Black Tom. There's some good action bits that take advantage of the team's powers and show them off, plus Stacy X doesn't come off as annoying (she's still a chore to put up with, but not as much; I'm glad she's leaving the book soon). The real bright spot in this issue is, once again, the Juggernaut. We get a couple of very well-written scenes where Juggs has to face his oldest friend (who now sees him as an enemy), and his longest and most hated nemesis (who will from now on be his ally). You can see how much it breaks Cain's heart to turn on Tom, and the passive aggressive tone he takes with Charles makes his scenes with him a real treat. Austen just gets Cain; from the dialogue, to the emotion, motivation, etc. - it's solid character work, and it'll be one of the things that keeps me reading as things get... weirder. There's also the denouement with Juggs getting rescued by Fishboy, convincing him to stay with Xavier. It's a decent scene, and an important one that sets up the two characters' friendship, but it comes off as a little sappy.

And speaking of sappy, we get more Annie in this issue. Like I said, i don't mind her; in fact, Austen actually gives he some strong moments, but that comes in later arcs. Right now she comes off as a bit of a psycho with her obsession with Alex, but I guess I can see how if you were feeling lonely and you were spending all this time around a coma patient, you might start talking to them and develop an attachment. It's still weird, but I guess I can understand it. I can admire Austen trying to work in a strong single mother character, plus the logic that he puts forth for why she's not a misogynistic character makes sense(basically everybody can be lonely, everybody wants someone, it's not limited to just men or women). Also, I do like the bit where she tells Scott that Alex will still need a nurse - it's a solid 9-panel grid page that works as a storytelling device. I just love the craft side of that scene.

Anyways.... This arc wasn't a bad way to start a run. Like any writer starting on the X-Men, his first story had some flaws, but you have to give the guy time to find his feet. The story also had some strong points, and he set up some promising subplots that he will pay off down the road, which is more than I can say for some past X-Men writers.

Uncanny X-Men 411

This is part two of Austen's first arc, and it's a step up in some ways from the last issue, and continues to plant more seeds that Austen will get some decent material out of down the road.

The biggest positive development has to be Juggernaut's introduction. He was teased on the last page of the previous issue, but we get to see him in full glory here and man, is it good. Out of all the characters Austen has written, Cain is probably the one he had the best grasp of. The issue starts off with a classic comic book "misunderstanding" fight between the wounded X-Men and Juggs, and not only do we get some decent action out of the scene, but also some legitimately funny/bad-ass banter between the two groups (and once again, Garney draws the crap out of this). We then are introduced to the true threat, and that is Cain's longtime ally and friend, Black Tom, who last time we saw him was slowly being take over by his plant powers. At this point, he's gone full-on plant, and it's actually an interesting development which I like because it builds on established continuity. We also see just how much of a friend Juggs is to Tom, as we see some touching moments of concern from him for his friend and that he was willing to go to his most hated enemies for help.It's very strong work with the character, and a good sign that things won't completely suck as Austen's run goes on.

That said, the issue also plants the seed for one of the more... eccentric character arcs, which is the introduction of Annie Ghazikhanian and the return of Havok. Now, this isn't to say this is a purely bad development, but we will get some weird moments out of these characters down the road, to say the least. There are some good things about this development though; for one, I never liked the way Marvel removed Havok from the rest of the X-Men, so at least now Austen is working him back into the mix of things, which will at least make him available to other writers down the road. Also, I like Annie; I know a lot of people hate on her, but, while she has some truly terrible moments, she does get used pretty well as the non-mutant POV character in this run, pointing out just how crazy the X-Mens' lives are to these people who've gotten way too used to the insane things that go on around them. Also, she's a pretty unique character as a single mom raising her kid around meta-humans (she might just be the only one in comics...), and is even more interesting now that I know Austen grew up with a single mom. Still, the Florence Nightengale syndrome she displays here is a little disturbing and cliched, plus the bit with Alex's picture showing up in the newspaper she's reading is contrived as all hell. Also, Stacy X continues to be whiny and annoying in fights. Even with these flaws, though, it's a solid issue that advances the story and sets up some important subplots.

Uncanny X-Men 410

So there's been a bit of a delay with the X-Men Year in Review post, but I should have that up soon. In lieu of that, here's the beginning of my issue-by-issue review of Chuck Austen's X-Men run.

I have to say, I rather liked this issue. It gets by a lot on the "Lobdell Quiet Issue" template, with the Squid-boy scenes, and as an introduction to a new character, it's not bad. I actually like how Austen plays him up as this kid who's in total awe of the X-Men and how Xavier is a genuinely decent person. After years of people shitting on his character, it's nice to go back and read these stories where he's not a total jerk. There's also some legitimately funny dialogue bits in the X-Jet (once again, more quiet issue stuff), and the fact that we don't see the "villain" of the story until the last page is impressive, especially when you take into account where Austen will eventually go with the character. This is his first issue, and the conflict of the story centers on a new character and an unseen enemy; this was a bit of a gamble, and I think it works. It also helps that Ron Garney drew the issue, and at this point he's got a bit of an Kubert Brothers look, which I really like. He's usually better with action heavy plots, but he doesn't drop the ball with the quieter, dramatic bits going on here.

Now that I've talked up the good stuff, it's time to get down to what doesn't work so well. First, there's the fact that Austen really seems to gloss over the fact that Squid-boy was contemplating shooting up his school. He manages to sell pretty well his motivation, but then it's dropped pretty quickly once Xavier shows up. There's also the scene after the X-jet crash that are way too melodramatic. It's not necessarily terrible, so it doesn't ruin the issue, but this kind of melodrama a pretty good example of one of Austen's more annoying traits and a sign of what's to come. Still, as debuts go, it's a solid story. Nothing to write home about, but still enjoyable.

Inhuman and Joe Madureira

So yeah, I'm not excited about this to say the least. Now, don't get me wrong, I love Mad's work and I'll be picking up this Inhumanity tie-in, but I'm not expecting much out of this besides some awesome pencils. I'm only supporting this series because I'm hoping Marvel gets the message that it's worth it to them to make it worth Joe's while to continue penciling their comics. Also, I haven't seen much about this mini besides the creative teams, that it's the main tie-in to the upcoming crossover, and it's supposed to feature the important stuff that can't fit into Inhumanity. Based off the cover of the first issue, I expect it will focus on the new Inhumans that are supposed to be popping up during the crossover. Other than that, I have no idea what it's going to be about.

I also figure, based off the recent work Mad has done on Savage Wolverine (and Avenging Spider-man a while before that), it'll be 3-4 issues long. I like this, since it's not a huge investment on my part to get the whole thing, and it'd be short enough that there shouldn't be delays (however, I wouldn't be shocked if we still had delays). I could also see them releasing a new issue every two months, which would make for an easier schedule on Joe and it would wrap up around the same time as Inhumanity (which I expect to last around 7-8 issues). When it comes to positives about Inhuman, I've listed all of mine, which doesn't bode well.

As for negatives? Well, there's the fact that Fraction doesn't have a good track record with crossover events, to say the least (remember Fear Itself? Yeah, I've tried repressing my memories of it too). This isn't even the actual event mini, either, this is a tie-in which means it clearly isn't as high a priority for him as Inhumanity is. Now, maybe I'm biased, but when you manage to get what might just be the best artist currently working in the industry on your payroll, you don't assign him to a tie-in that will be written by a guy with higher priority projects from a genre he kind of sucks in. It's a waste of talent.

Then you have the fact that the concept for this event is pretty weak too. Basically, Fraction is turning the Inhumans into the mutants. So not only did Fraction have to have a terrible run on Uncanny X-Men that almost killed the franchise (sales for Second Coming aside; what worked about that crossover came entirely from the other writers' chapters), but he now has to steal their shtick for his event? So what will happen to the X-Men as a metaphor for minorities/oppressed/disgruntled youth now that the Inhumans will be given a big push with that as their main subtext? Oh, because the Inhumans have a royalty aspect, that apparently changes everything. Yup, totally different. If Fraction couldn't write the X-Men, how is adding a king and a queen going to change that? And on a side note, way to go Marvel, you've managed to go and undercut what should be your flagship franchise. Again.

Finally, there's the compatibility factor - what about Joe Madureira made Marvel think Matt Fraction? The fact that they've both worked on Uncanny at some point? That Salvador Larroca (Fraction's main collaborator on his Iron Man run), at one point, used to have a bit of an anime-inspired look? Seriously, I'm not sure I could think of two creators least suited for each other. Joe Madureira is an anime guy, he draws explosive, dynamic action sequences that just don't show up in Fraction's scripts. Madureira has drawn padded issues before, but they were padded with some amazingly choreographed fights (padding which, in comics, is ok). Joe can also do quiet character moments and talking heads, but he works best when he's able to write mostly action, with enough quiet moments and dialogue to keep things from getting monotonous. This is why he worked so well with Zeb Wells - he was a good writer who could make the scripts uniquely his while also writing to Joe's strengths.

On the other hand, Fraction only seems to write pointlessly dragged out conversation scenes that a) don't have any of the characters actually in character, b) they don't contribute anything to the character, and c) they don't contribute jack to the plot. Fraction may just be the worst offender of writing for the trade. Don't get me wrong, when done right writing for the trade can work, but Fraction's mainstream work exemplifies all of the flaws with that style while having none of its positive attributes. This mini is most likely going to be 90% unnecessary dialogue exchanges, 9% actually relevant/important dialogue, and 1% what Joe does best (so basically, Fraction's going to take several issues to tell a story that could be much better done in 10 pages). Now, I'm all for getting people to work outside their comfort zone as it gets them to improve their craft, but Joe already puts out very little work - why can't he just what he's good at? Fraction's the one who could stand to hone his craft quite a bit more, plus he writes multiple books a month; it's not as big a deal for him to write outside his comfort zone, since he can do one book that way and the rest of his books can be done more to his strengths.

And here's the thing - he might be doing that. Fraction might actually change his style up to suit a superstar like Joe Madureira. I'm all about giving the creators the benefit of the doubt (except Greg Land. Fuck that guy), so I'm willing to give Fraction another shot. I know this sounds like BS, but I really want Fraction to succeed with this. I don't actively wish for a creator to bomb, I want good stories, especially when they feature artwork from my favorite penciller of all time. It would be great to not only buy more Madureira drawn comics, but for those comics to also be a half-way decent read. I've listed my concerns going into this story, but I'm hoping Fraction will surprise me.

Chuck Austen and other comics tomfoolery

I know this has happened before, but I'm back after a long hiatus from this blog. Life managed to get in the way again, though hopefully this time I won't stop posting after a week. Like last time, I have plan for how I'm going to put up regular content, and I'm hoping this will give me incentive to stick around.

Basically, I'd like to examine a topic no one seems to have touched in a while, and that is Chuck Austen's X-Men run. Like Liefeld, the internet loathes him and I don't really understand why. I constantly see his name brought up as the one guy that makes Lobdell's run look decent, which is odd to me because not only am I a huge fan of Lobdell's X-Men work (especially the Joe Madureira issues and Generation X), but from the scattershot issues of Austen's run, I didn't think he was that bad either. His work clearly had flaws, but he did get some things right: Juggernaut joining the team, Fishboy, he brought Havok back into the fold, he worked with some talented artists and he had a pretty good grasp of dialogue.

Specifically on the artists point, he was the one guy who seemed to see the direction pop-culture was going in at the time, which was anime and manga. I'm a huge Joe Madureira fan, so I love the blend of X-Men and anime/manga. Seeing a writer make the attempt to bring that look back by working with artists who either had a background in it or had a style reminiscent of it gets a huge plus in my book (it also helped that the artwork these guys produced was, in my opinion, very good).

However, my assessment hasn't even taken into account the context of the times in which these issues were released. From the time Austen took over until he left was also around the same time of the anime explosion in the United States. I was a die-hard Toonami and Shonen Jump fan, both of which I believed reached their peak viewership and readership from around '02 through '06 or so.  You can't deny that both of those venues took something whose primary audience in the US were kids and cult fans, and turned it into a pop-culture phenomena for a while. Austen, who is also a fan of the genre, saw this and tried to tap into this market by applying it to the X-Men. It had worked before with Madureira, plus the X-Men as a concept are much more open to a wide variety of interpretations than any other comics franchise (it's part of why I like them so much - there's so much you can do with them and it still feels like X-Men), so I'm shocked that it didn't really catch on. I'd much rather see the UDON-style Salvador Larocca of Austen's X-Men v2 issues doing art on Cable and X-Force than the Larocca that drew Fraction's bloated Iron Man run.

Austen was, I believe, a man that was much smarter and more talented than people give him credit for. I'm not saying he was on the level of Aaron, Morrison or Claremont, but there is a huge disconnect between the reputation his run has garnered and the actual quality of that run. I have recently come into possession of the issues of his that I'm missing, and it's given me the idea to do a series of reviews on this highly controversial run. I'm hoping that by reviewing it on an issue by issue basis, I can maybe do something to remedy this.

Before that though, I'd like to put up my thoughts on the past year or so of the past years worth of X-Men books and my take on the news that Joe Madureira will be drawing the new Inhuman mini-series; I'd like to get those posts up by the end of the week, but who knows if I'll get around to it? Part of the reason I'm doing this is because right now I'm at school and I don't have access to the issues I'd need to start doing my reviews.  The other part is that I have a lot to say about the current X-Men books and good ol' Joe Mad. Once I have those topics out of the way, I want to get down to business.

I'll be back soon.

Comics Pitch #2 - Spider-Clone Boogaloo

I’ve never understood why characters are killed off. Well, that’s not true; I understand why, what I don’t understand are the reasons used to justify it – drama, cheap pathos, sales, etc. My feeling is, if the character’s not worth keeping around, then killing them isn’t going to mean shit to the reader, and if they are worth keeping them around, then keep them around. Why kill off a character you can tell more good stories with. Especially with corporate owned characters, this bugs me; just because the current writer on the book can’t think of anything to do with the character doesn’t mean the next writer won’t. So a lot of the reasoning for my first pitch was to create an environment at Marvel that could remedy these problems.

The first two characters I thought to bring back this way were two characters I thought were horribly wasted just because a writer wanted to make way for a different love interest and another that was killed as some kind of twisted penance for a well-meaning storyline that got out of hand because of overzealous marketing executives. I am of course talking about Gwen Stacy and Ben Reilly, the last real sacred cow of dead characters and a cult favorite that is till reviled by at least half of Spider-man fans. Already I can see that I’m losing you, but please give me a chance to explain. These were two characters killed WAAAAAY before their time, with countless stories left to tell with them. With them also exists a way to get back the early 70s status quo Joey Q is so in love with, without requiring Peter Parker to regress as a character.

Let’s get to the Spider-clone first, since he is the driving force for all of this. He’s Peter minus all the continuity baggage, but twice the emotional baggage, which is what we all love. We like to see things go bad for Peter, but like with Charlie Brown and the football, the gag gets old. If you’ve seen it once, you’ve seen it a million times, and at some point, he has to kick that football. Peter did get to do this by becoming a member of Horizon Labs, and hopefully he’ll be back there when this Superior Spider-man experiment is over. He’s a great fit there, and having him there for Ben’s tenure as Spider-man will be vitally important. Back to Ben, he’s a guy who’s been on the road for so long that it makes sense his version of settling down would be getting an apartment, get a day job, and start dating. After being a nomad for so long, Peter’s life circa 1970 probably seems like heaven.

So here’s what happened to Ben instead of dying:

Basically, rip of the end of the Clone Saga mini from a couple of years back; instead of dying, Ben survives the encounter with Norman Osborne and goes on the road again to process all the shit he’s been through since coming back into Peter’s life. This time, instead of brooding about finding his own life and what it means for him to be a clone like he did in the Lost Years, he’s just trying to find something that fits for him. This gives Marvel an excuse to do another Lost Years series and they can let J.M DeMatteis write it. This is a bittersweet journey for him; yes, he’s the clone again, but he starts to realize that it doesn’t matter, because he’s got a family now with his brother Pete back in New York and he has a chance to reconcile with Kaine. He’s a human being with his own emotions and desires, now he just needs to find a purpose. He checks in with Peter every now and then over the phone, and maybe even retcon in some team-ups they had when he occasionally came back to New York for a visit.

After this journey, though, he comes to the inevitable conclusion that he has to go home and do what he was always meant to do – become Spider-man. New York is his home, it will always be his home, there’re just too many good memories there to outweigh the bad and it’s where the closest thing he ever had to brother lives. Also, being a hero is in his blood; as he said in the Lost Years, they may have been Peter’s memories, but he can’t help but be inspired by Uncle Ben’s words of wisdom. He needs to be a hero. So at a time when Peter’s back is against the wall, he’s getting broken down by his responsibilities as an Avenger, a Horizon Labs technician (perhaps he gets promoted to head up the new York office while the founder sets up a new lab in LA?), and Spider-man to the point he’s Batman in Knightfall, Ben returns to shoulder some weight. Maybe he could show up to save Pete’s bacon from the Sinister Six?

After Ben gives Peter a reprieve, perhaps replacing him in all his appearances for a couple months while Peter heals from a particularly gruesome wound incurred during the battle where he needed a rescue, Peter realizes something – he can’t be Spider-man forever. At some point, he’s going to have to hang up the webs. He’s done his best to honor Uncle Ben’s memory, but at a certain point he can create a better legacy by focus his talents elsewhere, like improving society with his lab work. He can feel a lot less guilty about this if he knows someone will pick up his superhero slack, so he asks Ben, who gladly agrees, sporting that awesome Dan Jurgens designed costume (if you don’t like it, then fuck you I say). This doesn’t mean Ben takes over completely; no, that would cause a fan outcry and it’s unnecessary when you have a better alternative. Peter continues to be Spider-man, but in a smaller capacity; instead of being on the Avengers, he web-swings around town stopping street-level crime during his free time outside of work and interacting with his own supporting cast. Ben takes to the Avengers and fighting all the classic Spidey foes on a daily basis, because it gives his life meaning and he enjoys it.

How is he able to do all this? Because he gets paid to be Spider-man, specifically he gets paid for the pictures he takes. That’s right, the Daily Bugle is back (in some capacity), and JJJ is heading it up again after a distinguished couple of terms as mayor. His credentials get the financial support and investors needed to get the newspaper off the ground. He needs staff though, and one position he needs to fill is staff photographer. He calls up Peter, not to offer him a job (he can’t after Peter doctored those photos), but to see if he knows anyone who would be adequate for the job. And besides, Peter is much happier at HL. However, he does suggest Ben; after all, he has experience and he would be a nice fit there. Peter vouches for Ben in order to get the position, and now we have the classic supporting cast back. We can get some drama, too, because while Ben has memories of these people, they have no memories of him. This makes things awkward for a while as he tries to settle in.

And as he settles in, he rediscovers his passion for photography, something he didn’t realized he missed until he got the chance to do it again. While he is good at inventing things, he doesn’t really have the credentials for science work, and besides, that’s Peter’s thing now. He’s the accomplished scientist; Ben would rather make it at his own thing. Peter tried a stab at being a professional photographer but it never took because his passion was always science. Ben didn’t get to do that much with science when he was on the road, it became a hobby for him, something he tinkered with when he had spare time and equipment. Now that he’s Spider-man full-time, he has many more opportunities to take pictures too, and hone his craft. The more he does it, the more he likes it. Plus, he’s not just getting photos of Spider-man, he’s getting photos of the Avengers, the Fantastic Four, etc. He covers by this for being the Daily Bugle’s official superhero paparazzo; his hero buddies cover for him by saying they let Ben tag along to take pictures after he signed a waiver. Boom – plothole covered.

I’ve covered Ben, but what about Ms. Stacey? I don’t have as much for her because I’ve just recently gotten into her character from reading the Marvel Masterworks ASM collections, unlike Ben Reilly, who I’ve been a fan of for a while and been thinking about things to do with his character for a couple of years now. But I do have ideas.

For one, we’re going to say the whole Sins Past thing never happened; it’s lame and unnecessary, so it can go. Instead, we’re going to revamp her character a bit, adapting traits from the Spectacular Spider-man cartoon and the Amazing Spider-man movie. These are good adaptations of her character, adding an intellectual and girl-next-door aspect that makes her more Peter’s type, only she won’t be dating Peter (I’ll get into that in a second). We’re going to say she was studying particle physics at ESU, and after a traumatic experience where Peter was just barely able to save her from the Green Goblin, she graduated and went to Bern to work as an assistant at the collider. She partly left for her career, but also because she found out Peter’s secret and the shock was too much for her. She was going to try to make it work, but Peter decided to go noble on her; he broke it off, seeing that it made her uneasy being with the man she’d blamed for her father’s death for so long and that being around him, knowing his identity may put her in harm’s way. She became a distinguished scientist through her work at the collider, and while both her and Peter moved on, they still have some lingering feelings for each other. This makes sense, they were each other’s first loves.

She returns to New York when Max offers her a position at Horizon, coming back into Peter’s life at a time when he’s getting back with MJ; she’s a bit sick of the jet-setting life and Peter is trying to wind down his superhero career, it’s the perfect time to start again. While Gwen can create some romantic tension, ultimately Peter has to choose MJ because they have so much more history and despite the fact that he’ll always love Gwen, he did move on. His relationship with MJ was robbed from him, she was the one he was always meant to end up with.

This doesn’t mean she won’t be dating a Parker; no, there’s going to be some attraction between her and Ben. He’s always visiting Pete at work, asking for tips on fighting villains, getting tech support for new web-shooter stuff and one off-suits, and just to hang out in general. While there, he runs into Gwen, someone he still has feelings for because of Peter’s memories. Meanwhile, to Gwen, he’s just like the Peter she remembers – quippy, but still a bit of a loner. Where he differs from Pete is that he’s a lot more worldly, plus he’s got an alternative rocker thing going on that we’ll say she finds sexy (and who doesn’t?). He’s essentially a single artist living in the city, and he’s got a glamorous thing going on as the high-profile photographer of everything spandex in NYC. With the two of them, you have what was going on between MJ and Peter in the old days, the scientist and the celebrity, only the roles are reversed.

Now, I don’t want to pull a Silver Age Superman Red/Superman Blue; no, Gwen’s going to have some competition. Matt Murdock was able to get Elizabeth Tyne off the hook by proving what she did was in self-defense, and she’s ready to come back to NYC and pick up where her and Ben left off. Felicia Hardy becomes taken with this new Spider-man who seems to prefer the webs to his civilian life; this is a Spider-man more to her taste, and Ben, who is trying to remain single while he figures himself out, isn’t going to mind her constant flirting since he knows she’s open to a less traditional relationship. I haven’t figured out which way I’d like to go with all of these potential love interests yet, but there’s a whole realm of interesting possibilities by playing them off one another.

So there it is, my Spider-man pitch. You could easily get three Spider-man books out of the deal: ASM, which would cover Peter and his fellow scientists at Horizon. He can hang out with Gwen and MJ, plus Ben would show up once in a while, too. You’d get Spider-man, which would cover Ben’s exploits as a hero, plus his love life and shenanigans at the Daily Bugle. Finally, you’d get Spectacular Spider-men, a book that is all about Ben and Peter hanging out, being brothers, stopping crime together and talking shop while they grab some coffee at the Daily Grind. Not too shabby, I’d say; when it comes to the Retcon Two-Step, I’m a tap-dancing fool.

Comics Pitch #1

One of the things I’ve always liked about DC over Marvel is their ability to rewrite their own history, whereas Marvel does a lot of these soft retcons. They may be a little more subtle, but they don’t do a lot to get rid of some of the bigger problems. Just look at what Geoff Johns has been able to do with characters like Hawkman and Hal Jordan. I may not like Hal all that much, but I have to give credit where it’s due – he pulled that off his redemption magnificently. It comes from DC having a history of wiping the slate clean, starting with the beginning of the Silver Age and retconing all the Golden Age stuff to a separate universe, and then Crisis on Infinite Earths decades later combined those Earths into a universe that worked so well (minus some hick-ups) for over twenty five years, that people are still bitching about how DC changed it with Flashpoint. And despite that criticism, I’d still say the New 52 has worked out pretty well so far, opening up potential for even more stories.

I guess it’s the idea that DC can do a cosmic level event that allows them to cherry pick all the best moments of their past and put them together into one Greatest Hits continuity. Now, they’ve never really lived up to that potential with their rewrites and retcons, but the potential is still there. I can admire Marvel saying that their continuity isn’t broken, but how can they say that with a straight face when they’ve published stories like Avengers Forever and One More Day? If they didn’t genuinely feel they had moments in their past that they’d like to change, why do they still publish these stories. They haven’t fucked up their characters quite as much as DC tends to do, but that’s far from having a clean record. What I’ve never understood is why they haven’t tried something like COIE at least once; those kinds of stories are fun, readers like them when the effort is put into them to make them halfway decent.  And they have the perfect character to set this kind of story up.

So here’s my pitch to Marvel, and this is an idea that I feel may have been one of MGK’s Dr. Strange pitches so I’m sorry if there’s a lot of similarities to it, it’s been a while since I read those pitches so I don’t know if this is original or if I’m being subconsciously influenced by something I read six months ago. You have Kang, the time warrior, a guy who can travel to the past and does frequently in order to destroy his foes the Avengers. His problem, though, is that he chooses to fight them after they’ve gotten their powers. This time, however, Kang has developed a Magguff-I mean device that lets him skirt around the Gruenwald Law of Marvel time travel.

 He will exist outside the time-stream and he can alter the 616 universe’s past without it creating an alternate timeline. He uses this device to go back and start making subtle changes; now, instead of getting a chest full of shrapnel in a warzone, Tony Stark is rescued by a particularly bad-ass special forces soldier so that in the present, he’s still an arms manufacturing asshole. Instead of Bruce Banner sacrificing himself to save Rick Jones, a brave lab assistant volunteers, and now Bruce is still a gamma ray scientist in the present, married to Betty and has a passive aggressive relationship with his father-in-law. T’Challa’s father is rescued by a loyal guardsman who kills Klaw, so that T’Challa can finish his studies in America and focus on becoming his father’s ambassador to the UN. The list goes on and on, but the alterations are not seamless.

In the present, the Avengers watch as member after member disappears. Nick Fury is the first to realize what’s going wrong and gathers the rest of the surviving Avengers, a group of classics and cult favorites, so that he can send them to the source of the cronal disturbance in the future using experimental SHIELD tech. There they capture Kang’s time device after a long battle, and travel to the past to stop Kang at every moment he alters. This has a negative effect on the timestream though, which starts to warp because of the constant abuse.

While the timestream is restored after a climactic battle, there are minor changes; instead of some things happening the way they used to, now they happened differently. Basically, this gives marvel an excuse to trim out stuff they don’t feel helps the iconic status of their characters, or changes decent moments that didn’t quite hit the mark. It also gives them the opportunity to make some What If things canon. They could do a whole mini-series chronicling all the changes. They could hold a writers summit to brainstorm the things they want to change and the things they want to keep, and then come up with a plan to take those things forward over the next few years. Not only do I think this is an exciting story premise (and does something useful with what I would describe as an underrated villain), but it opens up a world of possibilities. I can think of two changes I would love to make that I think help streamline some of Marvel’s weaker moments. One opens up potential for stories going forward, setting up a status quo for a character they’ve been trying to get for decades, and the second makes one of the most confusing moments in Marvel history suddenly make sense. I’ll get into these changes as time goes on.

Tony Harris might be a gigantic asshole...

... but I can see where he was coming from. Now, I'm not going to launch into an expletive-riddled misogynistic rant about fake-cosplay-girls, but I can understand why he would be skeptical of girls at cons, especially after the realization I came to today. Let me explain - I was riding the bus back to my dorm after picking up comics today, and I was reading the latest issue of Wolverine and the X-Men to kill the twenty minutes of time until I got back to Akers. When I got on the bus, it was relatively empty, but a bunch of people got on at a later stop. Bus is kind of crowded now, but I still have two seats open to my left on the bench I’m sitting on. The bench opposite from me has four of its five seats taken up, with the middle one open. A girl sits down in the open seat farthest from me on my bench, and I glance over because the movement out of the corner of my eye distracts me. It’s a glance that maybe takes a half-second, but we make eye-contact. I may be a little socially awkward, but I’m not that awkward that I was the cause of what happens next.

She literally sat down for a second, sees what I’m reading, and opts to get up and sit on the opposite bench. She saw me reading a comic and she had to get up because she couldn’t even sit on the same bench as me. It’s not like I was reading an Image swim-suit special or something equally sexist, this was Wolverine and the X-Men, a comic that I would think would appeal to the largest number of demographics out of what the Big 2 publish. After I finish reading and we get to another stop, more people get off and more get on, and this time both seats next to me are taken up by women.

Now, I’m not going to pull a Dante and start making broad generalization about broads, but this isn’t the first time something like this has happened; after two years here at school and riding the bus, it’s become a familiar occurrence. I’ve noticed that men don’t have as much of a problem sitting next to a guy reading comics on the bus, but women do; not all women, there have been times when women haven’t avoided me because I happened to reading the latest issue of Justice League. My point is that there is a stigmata associated with comics, specifically in the minds of women. To say there isn’t is just being naïve. So I can understand why Mr. Harris would be skeptical of girls at cons, and how his suspicions would be “confirmed” by asking a cosplay girl about the source material for her costume and finding out she doesn’t know the difference between Cassandra Cain and Barbara Gordon.

That said, there’s a lot he’s not taking into account. For one, cons are a mecca for geeks, and you don’t have to be a comic nerd to be considered a geek in general – it’s a pretty large umbrella that people can fit under. My practice has been to attach an adjective – videogame geek, comic geek, costume geek, etc. So saying these women are there just for the male attention is a baseless accusation since most of these skimpy costumes are also incredibly elaborate; you’d have to be obsessed with them enough that you’re a geek for costumes. You’re technical know-how in this area would be well beyond the average person’s, the same way a comic geek’s knowledge of continuity and characters would also be well beyond that of the average person’s. Both groups have equal right to be there. If you’re going to use the justification that because they don’t know jack about the character they’re cosplaying as, they shouldn’t be allowed to be there, then a reverse argument can also be used. I’ve seen a lot of photos of male cosplayers who look like they bought their costumes, so if you don’t know jack about making costumes, you shouldn’t be allowed to cosplay. Is that fair?

Now, I’ve never been to a con, mostly because I don’t want to spend a minimum of three hours on the road to go to pay a bunch of money to get into a packed convention center, where I’m probably interested in less than 10% of what’s there. Just not worth it for me right now. From what I’ve heard though, it seems like not only are the number of women to men cosplayers is highly disproportionate, with more women than men, but out of the number of women at cons, most of them are cosplayers too. Maybe if the ratio of cosplaying women to non-cosplaying women was more equivalent to the male ratio, Tony wouldn’t feel the way he does. Not to say he’s correct in feeling the way he does (although everyone is entitled to their opinion, no matter how moronic it is), but it would probably be a good sign for the comics industry if they could draw more female fans who are purely obsessed with the source material the way the male audience is, instead of just bringing in costume geeks.

This is a problem the industry has had trouble correcting, historically speaking. While I’m glad that there are people who love these costumes enough that they’re willing to spend months creating one to wear for maybe three days at a con, I don’t see a reason why they shouldn’t also be in love with the continuity and characters too; I’m not saying they have to, I’m saying the industry needs to do more to get them into the source material. These cosplayers obviously have an interest in these comics, but they don’t want to read the comics, and who would blame them considering how much we as fans bitch about the schlock that gets pumped out? Marvel and DC need to take a hard look at this phenomena because it shows just how much they’ve failed to draw people in, but also that there’s hope for their properties because they’re that iconic and enduring that they can still draw people’s interest despite the crap. Sometimes it’s not even that they’re producing crap – Marvel is publishing an excellent X-Men comic with Wolverine and the X-Men, but its sales are dropping off despite this – why? Maybe it has something to do with the fact that they’re more pushing books like All-New X-Men, which only appeal to the same shrinking audience (that’s my theory), when they coud be embracing series with wider appeal like WatXM, X-Factor or the recently cancelled New Mutants.

Comic Reviews for Last Week

Comic Reviews for 11/20/12

I know these are technically comics from two weeks ago (or older), but they were the comics I picked up from my pull last Wednesday.

Bloodstrike #32 – This was another solid, enjoyable issue from Tim Seely and Franc Gaston. This book really is the unloved middle child of the “good” Liefeld revamps; Prophet is the intellectual with a scholarship to Harvard, Glory is the athlete playing quarterback at LSU, and Bloodstrike is the one that graduates with a 3.5 from a state university and ends up with a high five-figure job – respectable by anyone’s standards, but definitely in the shadow of the other two (Supreme is that friend you make on a family vacation that you know you’ll never see again and Youngblood is your three-legged dog that you have to love just for hanging in there).

Seely delivers some melodrama, action, dark humor, actually witty banter, and a legitimately shocking reveal while also throwing in some of that Alan Moore-ish Silver Age meta-commentary; he’s done this in the past with the Slingstone flashbacks, but it’s especially prevalent here. It was sort of like because he was using Suprema, he had to work in some references to these guys’ less shady pasts in the 1960s. It works though, and the mystery does draw you in. Gaston serves up the usual clean, animation-style art; everyone’s costumes look detailed without looking detailed, if you understand what I’m saying.

It’s a shame Seely’s run is coming to an end after two more issues, since he’s put out some genuinely enjoyable comics, plus Keatingue’s run on Glory ends one or two months after that – Liefeld’s reboot books were surprisingly good, so it’s sad that this new era at Image is basically at an end. One thing I hope happens before the end of the run is that I get to see Seely kill off that annoying Born Again director; one of the better characters he’s written, he’s a slimy fuck that you really come to hate. I’m praying that he’s been saving a particularly gruesome, karmic and cathartic (for the reader) demise for this bastard in his last issue.

Grade: 3.5/5

World’s Finest #6 – This issue should be called “Huntress costarring Powergirl and Robin,” because this is really all about her. This isn’t bad, because Powergirl got the focus earlier on in the series when they were fighting the much more cosmic level threat of Hakou, while this issue introduces a street-level team-up with Damian. Levitz gets some mileage out of the “heroes have a misunderstanding and fight” trope, which actually works here. Helena has “borrowed” some money from this Earth’s Bruce Wayne once or twice, and Damian catches her in the act, which leads him to believe that she is the person who’s been siphoning funds from his accounts every week. They fight, and it’s kind of cool to see how Levitz plays with the idea that these characters are not-really-but-still-kind-of siblings. Powergirl also discovers some mysterious Apocalypse stuff, and the issue ends with everybody teamed up.

The plot feels a little thin, but the interaction between Damian and Helena is worth it because of the strong scripting, plus it’s gorgeous as all hell thanks to Kevin Maguire. Perez turns in some pencils that are a little weak, but this issue is mostly Maguire so it’s not a huge problem. Not much else to say about the art, if you don’t know who they are you should look them up.

Grade: 3.5/5

Earth 2 #6 – This is a strong conclusion to Robinson’s first arc on the book. The cast finally has a team dynamic going on and the dialogue is the usual above-average quality. The only real problem with the plotting is that if you tried to jump in with this issue, it’d be pretty hard to figure out what the hell was going on since it just throws all the information at you in the beginning. It’s not impossible to understand (in fact, he does a better job catching you up than most writers do these days), but it does make you question if these issues needed to be so padded. The twist (or maybe I should say twists) at the end do decent job of getting Grundy out of the way and setting up the next arc; Alan’s decision makes sense, and the Atom obviously has to honor his commitments to the military before he could realistically join this team. I’m very interested to see where Robinson goes in the next few months as he gets this team together.

The art is what really shines, though; Nicola Scott has an interesting style, sort of like if Ivan Reis was doing a Jim Lee impression. It looks great during the action scenes, where her figures have Reis’ grace but the action itself exudes Lee’s dynamism. This isn’t to say that she can’t do dialogue scenes, because the talking heads pages have just as much energy. Everybody looks like they’re doing something in an environment where there’s stuff to do. This is hard to pull off, but Scott succeeds magnificently.

Grade: 4/5

Scarlet Spider #11 and Venom #27 – I’m reviewing both of these at the same time (AT THE SAME DAMN TIME!) since they’re parts four and five of the Minimum Carnage crossover. Not much to say about the crossover itself, the whole thing is kind of meh, with Venom and Kaine chasing Carnage into the Microverse in order to stop him from destroying the Macroverse. The action scenes are have some cool bits, Kaine gets some character growth, but overall I don’t care at all about the Microverse or its inhabitants. It’s just a boring setting with boring characters. About the only enjoyable parts are the fights with our heroes and Carnage or Kaine’s Yost-written dialogue exchanges.

The art is pretty good through-out though. Declan Shalvey is a guy that I’ve come to like because of this crossover; he’s not from any particular style I recognize, but it’s a nice clean-yet-rough  cartoony style, so I hope he continues to get work. Khoi Pham only has a few pages in the Scarlet Spider issue, but they are rough, and not in the good, non-traditional artist way (I suspect this has something to do with him trying to pencil Cyberforce AT THE SAME DAMN TIME!). No, the real surprise is Reilly Brown, who does the bulk of the issue. He does a passable Ryan Stegman impression, which I like because ever since he left the book they’ve still used covers from him. My feeling is that if you’re going to have Stegman covers, it doesn’t hurt to bring on a penciller who can draw like him to do interiors. I guess he’s only doing a couple more issues before Pham is back full-time, but Marvel should look into getting him on SS as the main penciller.

Overall, not a bad bunch of issues, but I’m looking forward to seeing Kaine back in Houston next month.

Grade: 3/5

Uncanny X-Force #33 – Not much to say about this; it was good. Once again, Rick Remender brings the heat with another installment in his “Final Execution” arc. There’s a lot of strong character work throughout the issue; Deadpool seems more 3-dimensional in this one issue than in the combined last three years of his solo series and all its spin-offs. It’s also a bit more natural for Nightcrawler to be a little more selfish with his motivations; he betrayed the team last issue to get his revenge on Blob, which is followed up here in both hilarious and horrifying fashion. Wolverine and Daken’s exchange is also a little heart-wrenching; Wolverine’s appeal to his sone feels genuine rather than an attempt at cheap pathos by the author, and the conclusion to their conversation is natural too. Also, I like the meta-aspect to Daken’s death-trap for Logan; this is something fans on the VS. boards have been saying for years, but I won’t spoil it here.

The art is also adequate; Phil Noto has kind of a poor man’s Steve McNiven thing going on, where his characters seem a bit rubbery. I like it though, and the coloring is, as always, great in making the whole series feel consistent despite the multitude of artists on the title.

Grade: 4/5

Green Lantern #14 – Same with UXF, there’s not a lot to say here. I love Mahnke’s art, and Johns continues to develop Simon Baz into a very smart, nuanced character with a lot of background to him. His relationship with his sister is a refreshing change from the usual supporting characters you see in comics (basically they’re just fellow heroes, love interests, friends and employers). I also really liked the play on the old trope of “new superhero fights the veterans,” it seems a whole lot more logical than the usual “misunderstanding;” of course he’s going to try to reason with them, they’re the Justice League. When the ring tries to defend itself though, I thought it made sense what followed. Simon doesn’t try to fight them, he tries to run away because he knows they’re going to ask questions he doesn’t have the answers to, and lets not forget that this Justice League is a bit more douchey; I wouldn’t want to stick around either.

 That said, I don’t care about the Rise of the Third Army crap, it doesn’t make a lot of sense and it takes up space that could have been better spent on the much more interesting Baz.

Grade: 3/5

Batman #14 – Once again, I don’t have a lot to say (maybe if I had the issues in front of me right now?) It’s another solid installment in Death of the Family; you see a bit of detective Bruce and, and I like the Joker’s “Greatest Hits” approach to this crime. I also saw a bit more of Romita Jr. in Capullo’s pencils; I’ve always looked at his art on this book as Frank Miller doing a riff on Batman TAS, but I’ve seen hints of Jr. in Capullo’s work too, and especially in the splash-page in the tank. On the other hand, this story lacks a bit of the adrenaline and Lovecraftian horror of Snyder’s last arc, which definitely hampered my enjoyment of the issue. It’s still a well-paced issue, but it lacks that element of mystery Snyder is so good at.

Grade: 3.5/5

Detective Comics #14 – It’s ironic that Ethan Van Sciver is going to be taking over art chores once David Finch wraps up in December, because I would describe Jason Fabok’s pencils on this series so far as Van Sciver doing a finch riff. That is to say, he tempers some of the better moody and stylistic tendencies of Finch with the detailed and competent draftsmanship of Sciver. Layman also continues to build on his impressive start from last month. He’s got an ear for dialogue, which is always a bonus in my book, plus he seems to have a better grasp of the Penguin and Bruce than Tony Daniel did (not to disparage his solid work, which I enjoyed). I like the subtle approach to the Penguin, too, which works better with Batman than the flashy floating casino we’ve mostly seen him in before. This isn’t to say that Layman doesn’t bring some flash to the script – the fight scene at the beginning reminds me a bit of the one in Batman #2, where Bruce (not Batman) fights off the Talon, and it’s conclusion brings a promising twist.

The back-up is forgettable, though. It’s not bad, but not great either so yeah: forgettable.

Grade: 4/5

X-Men First Class #1-2 – This was… disappointing. I figured this mini-series wouldn’t be that great since it was basically trying to cash in on the success of a two-year old movie, only with more Wolverine, but it’s drawn by Neal Adams. This isn’t particularly bad, it’s just that it’s not all that engaging. The plot is that Wolverine decides to start the X-Men before Xavier… because? I guess he sees a mutant die and the Feds act shady, so he decides to get a group of mutants together. It just gets weaker from there. His first recruit is Sabertooth (I wonder if that will come back to haunt him, he says sarcastically…) and then we get a scene that is directly ripped off from the First Class movie where Magneto kills some Nazis in Argentina, only this version lacks all the subtlety. Then they pick up a Yeti, a holo-projectionist, and the dead mutant from the beginning. The scene where they try to recruit Magneto is actually pretty good, plus the action is very well done, but this isn’t enough to save these issues.

Also, you’d think with an all-star like Neal Adams drawing this, everybody would look bad-ass, but you’d be way off. Wolverine and Holo are decent, but the rest of the cast looks pretty lame, especially Magneto. I’ve seen Magneto with a mullet before, and Jim Lee actually pulled that off, but here? Every time you see him, it takes you right out of the comic because this thing is hideous. He’s got like a widow’s peak going on, and his hair is all stringy… it just doesn’t look good. You throw in the Victorian cape he sports too, and the guy looks like that kid who sat alone in the lunchroom reading Warcraft novels.

Grade: 2/5

Why is comic art sexist?

CBR just had an interview last week with Tony Daniel, where they asked him about drawing female characters, and I thought this was interesting:

Tony Daniel: That's a tough question, because I love all the characters, but I'd say Wonder Woman is probably my favorite to draw. She's always been a character I'd like to tackle, along with Superman and Green Lantern. She's strong, beautiful and I like trying to capture all that with my art. Plus, drawing women comes easier for me than men. I don't tinker as much and things just move faster for me. It makes my day easier when drawing female characters. After Wondy, I'd say Superman, for obvious reasons

That bolded bit is something I’ve believed about most artists for a while; when people talk about sexism in comics, they talk about how it’s a boys club, that these drawings of women are what guys like to see, that they can sell the original artwork for more money with skimpy outfits and pron poses, etc. but I think this is the main reason artists draw such sexist shots of women – it’s easier. For one, it requires less detail, second, there’s a lot of artists who’ve drawn these clichéd poses and what-not in in the past, so there’s a lot of reference material for drawing it. Porn-women require less detail, while Ross Campbell’s Glory probably has more detail to it than the average male character.

Also, we need to factor in internet porn – as Linkara has pointed out in several of his videos, people don’t buy comics for fan-service anymore. Maybe manga, because the largest demographic for that medium is like 10-15 year olds (or at least is was when I was that age reading manga), but look at the demographic for comics – it’s not only targeted at 18 year olds and older, but the majority of people buying them are 20-35 year olds. These are men who are old enough to own their own computers with their own privacy settings; they can walk into an adult movie store – they don’t need to get their jollies from superhero comics when they can find actual porn parodies online of their favorite comics.

Plus, I doubt the average artist makes all that much from selling their original art, considering how many pages they put out a year and the average price of a page. Besides, if you really need a sexy Tony Daniel-drawn shot of Catwoman, wouldn’t it just be easier to pay him to draw a commission where you can have him drawing her doing whatever you want? Not that I’d ever want something like that…

Basically, artists need to put just a little more effort into their craft instead of tracing the same damn Jim Lee Rogue scans every time the script requires them to draw a woman.

Here’s the rest of the article if you’re curious:

http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page=article&id=42197

It's still porn...

Okay, so... where to begin?

If you went to CBR's homepage at anytime today until around five minutes ago, you would have noticed a very ironic thing hanging in the background - a giant ad for Next Crisis, or whatever the hell it's called. If you don't know what I'm talking about, it's this website that does live-action videos of admittedly attractive women in skimpy superhero outfits getting tied-up and tortured by supervillains - it's essentially superhero S&M porn. There's no nudity (from what I've heard; you have to pay to watch and this guy doesn't pay for what he can get for free. Ohhhhh, yeah!), and I guess George Perez designed some of the costumes.

However... it's still porn. That's all it is. And porn that's very insulting to women (so at least it's a lot like the comics that inspired it...) I read an article in Wizard a couple of years ago, back when this thing was taking off, and they mentioned that the female heroes never win; because the men don't want to see that.

What makes this so ironic is that not too long ago you had Tony Harris shoot his idiot mouth off about female cosplayers, saying some very misogynistic things. this was followed up by a lot of bloggers pointing out how much of an idiot he was and how his sentiments are not representative of all the fans or creators of the medium. A lot of these posts were on CBR. So what does CBR do? They let a sexist porn site dominate their homepage with the main background ad. Classy.

Edit: So I guess it's called Next GLOBAL Crisis, and the ad is still up, depending on what you click on. Have a look, it's just bunch of shots of the girls in provocative poses and costumes. Yeah, totally not offensive to women. And they wonder why women say they feel like comics are a boys boys' club...

Reviews For last Week's Comics

It took me a while to figure out how I was going to grade these things (that’s why this is up so late, plus the fact that this took longer than I thought it would), but here’s my first stab at comic reviews. Basically, I’m just going to review what I pick up at the shop Wednesday and try to have the reviews up by Friday. I figure I can have them read by Wednesday afternoon, let my thoughts stew for 24 hours, and then have something up every Friday. But we’ll find out if this works in actual practice as we go.

Okay, so first I want to cover a bunch of back-issues I picked up since they were on sale.

Cyberforce #1 – Yeah, I have no idea what the hell is going on here. Is the writer trying to go for a “Days of Future Past” angle? Is the dystopic future we see through-out the issue the horrible future that the red-headed chick is warning us about? Or do things get worse? And while I’m sure she mentions her name at some point in the story, I still don’t know what it is. Also, who the hell is she talking to in the narration? Don’t get me wrong, I’m used to the internal dialogue-thing comics use instead of an omniscient narrator, but the girl is literally having a conversation with someone we never see. A lot of stuff is thrown at you with extremely vague details, so that you’re not even sure if the writer knows where he’s going with the plot.

This actually feels like a good example of what people mean when they say, “Shitty ‘90s Image writing” – mysteriousness for mysteriousness’ sake, so that when you take that away, it’s nothing but padded action sequences. I’ll say this for the comic, the art is actually pretty good. Clear storytelling, plus it is some of the better pencils I’ve seen from Khoi Pham; while you never learn much about anyone in this comic, they’re at least rendered well.  Plus, there’s the cover and two extra pages of pencils from Marc Silvestri, a guy who I’m always happy to see work from. Also, this comic was free because of a Kickstarter campaign, so I have to give Top Cow props for that.  Still, it’s safe to say I won’t be picking up issue two.

Grade: 2/5 (and that’s only because it was free)

Avengers #13-17 and New Avengers #14-16 – I know this is kind of a cheat to grade them all as one lot, but I think this works because A) they’re all tie-ins and B) they’re all too old for anyone to give much of a fuck about the single issue grades; people picking these issues up are probably getting them in trade, so it doesn’t hurt to approach them like that. But on to the review…

These issues are a perfect example of a writer who doesn’t understand his craft, which is weird since I think Bendis started out as an artist. He uses the weirdest damn structure for both series, where he’ll have a page or two of talking heads followed by a couple pages of action with no dialogue.   I get that he’s trying to incorporate his Oral History of the Avengers bit into the comic itself, but he does it in the most awkward way. For one, he actually shows a better way to do it than the one he uses the most in the comics, by having both the talking head panels and large action splash pages all on the same page, with the people in the small dialogue panels describing the way they saw the events that were going on action panels. This works, it adds a retrospective element that can maybe even provide a glimpse into the character’s psyche. But when he segregates the panels, it just becomes… boring.

 And Bendis, you had Mike Deodato, JRJR and Chris Bachalo! Why not play up their strengths at rendering action scenes? This is more for Deodato and JRJR than Bachalo (who can make talking-head comics fun, if he’s given the freedom to do what he wants, but he’s too tightly regimented and given way too many talky-pages to even save his issues). You can see that all of these guys give an honest try at these pages, but after a while you can see where they just say, “Fuck it, he wants talking heads? That’s what he’ll get, but he never said they had to look different.”

Negatives aside, the art is still very good. All three guys do a great job on the few action bits they get to draw, and before they start to get as bored with the talky-pages as we are reading them, they make an honest attempt to liven them up some, which does help. Bendis does also make some of the fights feel like they’re on an epic scale, and he does a solid job with characterization (I especially like the beginning of the Hawkeye Spider-woman romance in these issues). Plus, Squirrel Girl got a freaking spotlight issue, which is always tops in my book.

Grade: 3/5 (if not for the art, these wouldn’t have even qualified for 2/5)

X-Men #38 – This was actually pretty good. I had my doubts that anyone would be able to follow Brian Wood’s excellent run, which I still wish would have lasted a lot longer, and may have saved this book from getting cancelled. That said, Seth Peck’s first issue was a nice little team-up issue. I’m shocked a team-up with Domino and Daredevil works as well as it does, but that is a testament to how good a writer Peck is. He really sells it with the banter; it’s very charming. Seeing these two characters play off each other makes me want to see them interact more. In fact, while I wasn’t keen on the whole “X-Men Team-Up” aspect this book had for the first thirty or so issues, if they’d been as well handled as this issue, it could’ve worked and ths title wouldn’t have felt so superfluous up until the latter half of Gischler’s run.

The plot itself moves along rather nicely, it sets up why these two characters are in the same place rather quickly and then gets right to the action. Seeing Domino’s luck powers in a casino is a rather fun bit (something I’ve actually thought about more than you’d think), and the art from Paul Azaceta serves this kind of story very well. Paul has a more old-school, maybe even indy style that is less about flash and more about storytelling, which is clear at conveying one action to the next, plus doing a nice job of supplementing Seth’s strong character work with great facial expressions and body language. This is definitely a collaboration where the two parties mesh to enhance the other’s work. It really is a shame this book is ending two issues from now, but at least it’s going out on a high-note.

Grade: 4.5/5

Wolverine and the X-Men #20 – This series continues to grow on me, and I thought the first issue of it was practically revelatory, too. There are a lot of reasons why this is my favorite book every month, but I think the most important one is character work – Jason Aaron is a master when it comes to pitch-perfect dialogue that not only captures the essence of a character, but can also reveal a lot of what’s going on with their current mental state at the same time. When a character does something, it’s not because the plot demands it, but because it’s the only natural course of action for them. That holds true for this issue, which continues to catch us up on what Warren’s personality and powers have evolved into since the end of the Dark Angel Saga, while also introducing a new mutant, Shark Girl (picture Wolfsbane, but with scales, fins and lots more teeth). Jason also works in a couple of members of the Invisibles, a group he introduced at the end of his Wolverine run.

The whole issue works really well as a bit of a riff on the first appearance of Kitty Pryde, where several X-Men have to fight it out with some Hellfire Club goons and The White Queen, all over who got to recruit Kitty. It’s well paced, and the dialogue is snappy. If I have any gripes with it, it’s the art and what he does with Angel. Steve Sanders is a talented artist, and his cartoony style not only fits well with the style of past artists on the book but also does a more than decent job of getting across action and emotion. That said, his Beast just looks goofy (although his Shark Girl looks pretty freaking amazing), plus the coloring isn’t doing him any favors. I’m not sure what Marvel was thinking, but they paired Sanders, who is a cartoony artist by nature, with a colorist that used the kind of color palate and Photoshop effects you’d want from a Greg Land colorist – it’s not the prettiest looking combination.

I also mentioned what he does with Angel’s powers, which was to add energy blasts/sword. I don’t have a problem with this, and that is because I planned on doing basically the same exact thing if I ever got to do the X-Men. This is the second time Aaron has beaten me to the punch (the first was Iceman), but I can’t really hold this against him just because great minds think alike.

Grade: 4.5/5 (the only thing holding this back from a 5 is the coloring)

AVX Consequences #5 – this was a bittersweet issue; I agree with a lot of other critics, this series was basically Uncanny X-Men #21-25, and it’s a hell of a way to cap a run. Gillen, since taking over the old Uncanny from Fraction, has done a brilliant job of dragging it from the boring, poorly-written muck that was the Brubaker-Fraction period. While Cyclops couldn’t be salvaged (I still hate the whole Utopia/General bullshit), Gillen at least wrote a Cyclops that A) was in character based on the previous interpretation and B) a Cyclops that I didn’t immediately detest. That writing is present here -  Cyclops is a conflicted man, he knows what he’s doing is morally wrong, but at the same time he’s doing what he feels is necessary. He’s a Scott that is aware of the way his current philosophy is at odds with that of the Scott of ten years ago, but he can rationalize it based on what mutants have endured in that ten years.

The actual issues moves along at a brisk pace, picking up from the cliffhanger of the last issue, and managing to work in a lot of information. We get an exciting break-out scene where everyone’s powers are on display, we see the new Uncanny team in action as a unit, dangling threads introduced in this mini are tied up and Scott finishes his transformation into Magneto-Lite that started all the way back in Deadly Genesis. The character itself is pretty weak sauce now (he feels like a high-school student’s first fan-fiction version after they’ve finished reading Whedon’s run for the first time), but Gillen makes the process itself very compelling, which is why I’m so sad to see him leave the X-Men because he could make the most poorly thought out editorially mandated direction at least readable, and all too make room for a guy who used talking head stories while cribbing from the X-Men to make the Avengers work as an A-list book – who will Bendis crib from take the X-Men back to the top? But that’s a topic for another day…

One touch I really liked was Scott’s letter to Wolverine, where he acknowledged the shift in the roles they play – ten years ago, Wolverine would be the one taking a harder stance while Scott would have cautioned him about how that would alienate humanity and be a step away from Xavier’s dream. That’s how much these characters have grown (yes, grown); they built to this, with Scott getting more and more cynical as things got worse for mutants after Deadly Genesis, and Wolverine seeing the flaws in his old philosophy by watching one of his closest allies take it up. A brilliant stroke from Gillen.

The art is more than serviceable, but I don’t think it fits this more action-heavy chapter of the series; I have to question Marvel’s art scheduling, because his style very easily could have worked on one of the earlier issues, while one of the earlier artists (like Raney) would have fit better here.

Grade: 4/5

All-New X-Men #1 – This was actually not as bad as I thought it would be. Yes, I still hate this new version of Cyclops because he’s basically a much less intimidating, more platitude-spouting version of Magneto, but this issue somewhat works. It has flaws (that’s for damn sure), but it has some nice moments. For one, I like how Iceman points out what I’ve been think for a while now, and Hank’s plan isn’t all that bad considering the X-Men are probably the biggest users of time-travel stories. The plot moves along quickly, Bendis introduces a new mutant (who has powers I planned on giving a new mutant should I ever get to write the X-Men; I think it’s safe to say I’ll have a post down the road about Marvel constantly doing this), he further establishes the role Cyclops’ new team will play from the end of AVXC #5, and he sets up the premise for this new series.

It’s a lot of stuff, and maybe I’m being greedy or nostalgic for the old days, but I think he could have done more. While he packs in quite a few plot elements, I think he could have taken out some of the more padded dialogue exchanges (already we’re seeing one of Bendis’ eccentricities hold the series back) so that he could have ended the issue with the original X-Men confronting Scott’s current Extinction Team. There’s also a bit of a talking heads problem here too, where several of the characters feel like cyphers. Still, it could have been worse. As for the art, not much to say here; I paid for Immonen, I got Immonen. His pencils do their typically great job, they’re dynamic while also telling the story adequately.

All in all, I’m looking forward to the next issue, but I don’t see why this or the upcoming new Uncanny book are going to be the flagship books when you have the much better (and more revolutionary, and more X-Men-like, etc) Wolverine and the X-Men from Jason Aaron. He’s proven himself time and time again since Schism with this book, and mark my words, he’ll consistently beat Bendis out every month when it comes to quality. Seriously, Marvel, stop sucking Bendis’ dick, he’s you’re Geoff Johns, not your Grant Morrison (that would be Aaron).

Grade: 3.5/5

Next time, I'm doing fewer books (I didn't even review all the books I got last week!)

Cable and X-Force

This is a book I want to talk about briefly because it is the one book from Marvel NOW that I'm looking forward to the most (other than the mystery Joe Mad! project that has been teased for a while, and which will apparently be just the beginning of his return to comics). For one, check out what Nick Lowe had to say about Sal Larroca on the book:

"Larroca's work on the series was described as a reinvention of his work – a mix of his early style from the '90s and the more photo realistic art he did on "Invincible Iron Man" of which Lowe said, 'He's quick and amazing. People complain about how we can switch up artists on books. That's not going to happen here.'"

I love this; I'm a big fan of his old school work, stuff like X-Treme X-Men, which has a bit of an anime look to it. He used this kind of style on his AVX Versus issue, which was a very nice surprise from what I was expecting based on his last few years on Iron Man. The guy really is talented when he's not trying to be a poor man's Greg Land (fuck that guy). Also, the promise that we will actually get a run where the artist will do as many issues as the writer is something I'm looking forward to, since it's something we don't get enough of these days. So far, the only comic I'm reading that is doing that is Snyder's Batman. A book with a good main artist that can hit deadlines is always a huge plus in my book.

There's not much I can say about Dennis' writing, but I've heard good things and I like to see young writers on the rise, so I'm rooting for him. Plus, take a look at this other tidbit:

"There are some inspirations from '90s X-Force here for sure," Lowe said. "But there's also influence from 'Uncanny X-Force' and so on...both this and the new 'Uncanny X-Force' came about at the same time." Lowe said both X-Force series would pick up on the broader ideas from the last run written by Rick Remender as Remender did from Craig Kyle and Chris Yost. But they'd still be differentiated...especially when it comes to the eventual reveal of the mystery big bad of "Cable And X-Force." "We've got some really good dingers we want to try and surprise you guys with.'"

This is another good sign to me. I loved Remender's run, but it seemed to go over the same ground quite a bit, so while I like that this book will try to keep it grounded in that atmosphere, I like that marvel recognized old-school X-Force not only has fans, but good qualities in general; the book really doesn't get its due because of the stigmata from Liefeld, but as soon as Nicieza and Capullo took over, it became the best X-Book at a time when i would say there were a lot of other solid X-Books, and it kept its quality all the way through Milligan's run. Plus, there was the one thing Remender's team lacked - Cable.

Which brings me to the last thing I like about this book - the line-up. As I mentioned, having Cable on the book is great. I think he's a highly underrated character, he's got a good visual, and it gives me hope for Marvel that they have enough confidence in this creative team that they let Cable be the leader instead of trying to keep Wolverine shoe-horned into this team (which is especially good since the ending of AVX Consequences #5, where Scott acknowledges the positive shift in Logan's personality since starting the JG School, and having him stay on X-Force when he's supposed to believe in this school was starting to stretch credibility). You add in Domino (another underused character up until recently), another X-Force standard, along with Forge and Colossus (two favorites of mine), and you've got a solid team. I'm not too keen on Dr. Nemesis, but I said the same thing about Fantomex (a character I really came to love), so I'm keeping an open mind.

I honestly think this book has the potential to be the sleeper hit of the NOW! relaunch, so good luck to everybody involved. I can't wait for it to hit stands. You can find the rest of the article here:
http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page=article&id=42217

Let's try this again...

Wow, it’s hard to believe I started this blog over a year ago, and then pretty much gave up as soon as I started. I had so much I wanted to do, but time just got away from me. In retrospect, these posts look rather silly to me. It’s not because my opinions have changed (hell, I think they've been reinforced, if anything), it’s the pretty amateurish writing. Well, that and the fact that there’s only three of them. I’m not saying I've gotten all that better since then, but I’d like to think I've improved a little bit.

This time, though, I think I’ll have a much better go.  For one, I've actually got a plan! It always helps to have a plan, right? Plus, I've gotten a pretty big kick in the pants to get something done. My friends are all doing creative things with their lives, making an attempt to make a living off what they love. It’s hard to watch them and not want to be a part of that. While this blog isn't anywhere near as close to what they've been doing, it’s a step in the right direction. If I can push myself to write original content for this blog, I might finally have the drive to write that movie script my buddy’s been pushing me to do.

Here’re just a few ideas I’ve come up with so far:

Comic Reviews – I love to talk comics. I talk about comics the way sports fans talk about their favorite teams, and going to pick up my comics on Wednesdays is what I live for, it’s my equivalent to going to church on Sundays. I’m not thinking of doing anything elaborate, just a brief write-up of everything I pick up on Wednesdays, plus it’ll give me a chance to talk about what I love and loath about current comic trends.

Why I Should Write the X-Men – yeah, I know I’m stealing this bit from MGK’s site, but I love this kind of thing. I love to hear other people’s pitches for comics, and I love to talk about my own. I don’t ever plan doing a Legion or Dr. Strange version and I don’t think MGK wants to do an X-Men one either, so I don’t think I’m stepping on anybody’s toes. I also think I’m a lot more cynical than him, too – I’m pretty sure I’ll never get a chance to write my proposed series for Marvel, so I’ll give more details.

Rants – this is what I’m all about, I love to rant about comics. I can rant about what I like, what I hate, trends in the industry that rub me the wrong way, creators that piss me off – there’s so much material to write about out there.

I know it’s not much, but it’s a start. So yeah, that’s my mission statement – post something. Anything. And see where that takes me. I do have some specific ideas though.

Jason Aaron is a BOSS!!

Check this out
Not only is Jason Aaron bringing the X-Men back to what they should be, but he calls out Alan Moor for being an overrated asshole, something I've been saying for years.  This guy just became my favorite writer in current comics.