Observation the First: The other day I'm at a restaurant and I hear, in the booth behind me, a couple of kids of about 8 years old talking about Captain America and how badass his shield is. I smiled, and then a thought came to me.

How the hell do these kids know who Captain America is? There's no TV show, no movie tie-in, no Captain America books aimed anywhere even remotely at people under the age of 16, so... how did they know? What's reaching these kids and telling them about old Marvel stand-bys that are largely no longer marketed at them?

Observation the Second: I'm at Half-Price Books yesterday, because it's the most glorious place on earth, and I head on over to the smallish comic book/graphic novel section. What do I see? A mother and her two daughters, scouring the sizable collection of manga there, picking up stacks. The mother wasn't actively participating, but she was there, watching her kids, and everyone was having a good time.

I have never, ever seen that in a DM store. Granted, the two daughters and mother were of indeterminate Asian origin, so they have a bit more cultural knowledge of the existence of manga, but damn. What the hell are we missing, here?

Observation the Third: I dug up some old EC Comics reprints that I bought back when I was a kid, maybe 12-14 years ago. Who's this Russ Cochran guy, and how did he manage to get the rights to reprint all this stuff?

These books are what got me into comics way back when. I loved horror stories, loved the lurid art and the wicked plot twists, and they set off the spark of comic interest in a young boy that DC and Marvel quite frankly failed to maintain, until I came across The Dark Knight Returns back in 2001.

I was a kid who took his allowance down to the local (tiny) bookstore once a week shopping for comics. I had no idea what titles were out there, so I always browsed randomly. I had no concept of when comics came out (Wednesdays), and as I was doing this on my own, I never had anyone to clarify. DC and Marvel's release schedule thusly seemed pretty scattershot and uncertain, and 30 days is a long, long time for a little kid to wait for the next issue of something that gets read in 10 minutes. So I lost interest in a lot of monthly titles pretty fast, because it seemed like a shitload of work for me just so I could get stuff that, even to my young mind, wasn't really all that good. (This was around the release of the 2099 line at Marvel, if that gives you some context.)

These EC reprints got it right, though. On the back cover of every issue of Vault, Tales, and Haunt were four cover images, two by two, of upcoming titles... and the dates they were coming out splashed right across each. None of these covers have wordy splashes of dialogue of text to tell you what each issue is, just one stark, intriguing image and the three bubbles on the left showing you the narrators of the tales.

Point being, I knew when the next issue came out, and I had enough of a tantalizer to be looking forward to it.

Whatever happened to these reprints, anyway?

In his brand new Comics I Shouldn't Own series, ChaosMonkey (or, I guess, I could call him Mark) discusses Venom: Nights of Vengeance #3:

This guy here, this is Vengeance. You know Ghost Rider, right? Kind of looks like this guy here? You can think of Vengeance as Carnage to Ghost Rider's Venom — a "kewl" version of an established character created to hep up a series. And that's all I really know about Vengeance. Take Ghost Rider, add horns and tusks, bigger spikes, bones instead of chains, and, if this issue is any indication, make him talk like a dipshit tough guy, though that may have more to do with Howard Mackie than the character himself. Except I'm pretty sure Mackie wrote the Ghost Rider series and probably "created" Vengeance, so... dipshit tough guy. Fire horns tusks spikes bones.

And Venom. Poor Venom. Once the coolest cat on the block, a spit-dripping, brain-eating, Mary Jane Watson-Parker-frightening psychopath, reduced to the role of limp-dick anti-hero, saving hoo-mans and protecting bums who live underground in the ruins of the 1910 San Francisco earthquake. That happened in the Venom: Lethal Protector (Lethal Protector!?) mini-series that I threw away some years back. This issue stands as the sole survivor of my "Venom" collection, part of a series of mini-series that began with Lethal Protector and ended probably way too fucking late. (... the fuck is a "Lethal Protector," anyhow? I imagine it's like a pimp, only he doesn't take quite so much of your money, and he may or may not bitchslap you or eat your brains.)

And if you're Howard Mackie and people won't pay you for sex, what better way to make money than to team up a neutered psychopathic villain and a Ghost Rider rip-off? In 1994, no better way at all.

A seriously entertaining read. I hope there's more to come.

Kevin Melrose, in his third in a series of interviews centered around Brian Wood's and Becky Cloonan's Demo, talks with publishers Larry Young and Mimi Rosenheim of AiT/PlanetLar about publishing in general and Demo in particular.

On Demo:

Q: Brian Wood said Demo was "almost impossible for me to properly describe ahead of time." What was it about the concept that made you want to publish the series?

Larry: Well, there were several factors operating, here. First, I've known Bri for a while and we've not only been able to put out some good comics together, but we're pals, too. So we've been working together for so long that we have kind of a shorthand. I don't even remember how he pitched to me, but it was probably something that just organically came out of his work with Becky Cloonan on Channel Zero: Jennie One. You know, something like, "I was thinking about working with Becky on a monthly, and address some of the subjects I like in comics. Make it look really sharp, stretch our muscles." So I think, "Monthly, 'super' powers, written by Bri, with art by Becky? Self-contained, mini-OGNs, high quality production values? I can sell the hell out of that one." So he didn't have to pitch it to me, really. I totally respect Bri and Becky as artists on top of their games, so the last hurdle was me translating all the positives to Mimi, so she could see whether or not it would make financial sense for us. I'm the crazy man, and she's pretty conservative, so whenever we agree on a project right away, it bodes well for its success. And Mimi didn't need any convincing ...

On their publishing methodology and inspiration:

Q: From a publishing standpoint, you seem to zig when everyone expects you to zag. Just when most people start associating AiT/Planet Lar with graphic novels, you put out something like Demo. Then you wade into the superhero "genre" with Planet of the Capes. Are these calculated moves to do the unexpected?

Larry: Here's the thing: I pay attention to mainstream entertainment in other media, so the things that I respond to and are interested in and influence me aren't in comics. And for Mimi, that's even more true. We just like other things as well as comics, and try to bring a sensibility of what works in other media to that of comics. That whole "HBO of comics" thing you hear about our company, most recently on the Variety comics blog, was ironically in a review about a couple of our upcoming superhero books. So there's a place for superheroes, sure, but when we do them they aren't going to be boy's adventure stories. Planet of the Capes is an allegory for the industry, and Hench is a cautionary tale. The costumes are just the detailing on a fast car, not the car itself.

All very good reads. And forget not, of course, the DEMO GIVEAWAY, wherein we give you a metric fuckton of free trade paperbacks and comics (and original art, and a t-shirt, and so on and so forth) for telling us about what superpower you'd like to have and what you'd do with it.

GO NOW!

Back to normal.

And so is your mother. Now shut up and start felching.

Anyway. Proof #1241057238957238759832476349 that the Image Forums are holding cells for people we'd rather not rub elbows with:

(Thanks and blame to THE ROOMMATE for finding that shit.)

Johnny Bacardi, godfather of all that is Latin and hedonistic, has put up a new blog showcasing his rather surprisingly good sketches and sequentials.

You Will Go Now!

The breadth and expanse of my art critique expertise goes to saying stuff like "that's pretty cool," so please, if you have something kind and/or constructive to say about his art, don't be shy about commenting.

Also:

HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAATEEEE!

From the latest issue of Playboy:

Playboy: You played a sniper in Enemy at the Gates, but you live in a country where it's hard to buy a gun. What do you make of America's fascination with firearms?

Law: Unfortunately it seems that guns and the gun culture are a part of most world societies. What troubles me more is that people are shocked and surprised when tragedies like Columbine or the D.C. sniper shootings hit the news. Mix guns freely into a culture in which people are dealing with emotional problems and stress, and you end up with body counts because guns are so easy to operate. It is sad but inevitable, whether it's starting a war or cornering a nation or a religious faith into a position in which it feels it has to kick back to be heard. We know how humans react, just as we know how a gun works. So why are we surprised when it goes terribly wrong?

Playboy: Did watching Arnold Schwarzenegger become governor of California leave you thinking that anything is possible for Hollywood actors, or did it leave you scratching your head about the power of celebrity?

Law: A little of both. The most interesting theory I've heard was described as narrative politics -- involving the audience in the process, letting them conclude a story. The idea that the people can make it possible for an Austrian bodybuilder turned movie star to become governor empowers them to create a great story. Just as it's a great story to vote in a president whose father was in the White House and who is a reformed alcoholic.

"Narrative politics" is a term I'm going to have to write down. It does indeed seem like politics of late have been turned into a sort of spectator sport, but that of course is a lie; everything about our greater institutions has been, since the dawn of civilization, subverted into a kind of entertainment. I'd even go so far as to suggest that making a spectacle of even the most vital life-and-death issues is what seperates us from the animal kingdom and kicked us into our own peculiar brand of evolution, straying so far from the rest of the species.

The caveman hunted and killed its prey to survive, as did the tiger. The tiger, however, never felt the need to write about it on a wall.

(I don't want to hear any wiseass opposable thumb comments. You know what I'm getting at.)

GRRRRRRRRRRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHH!

MICAH IAN WRIGHT CAN EAT MY FAT HAIRY DONG AND SHIT CHINCHILLAS FOR ALL I CARE!

JOE QUESADA'S MOTHER COULD ONLY BE MORE OF A WHORE... IF THERE WERE TWO OF HER!

I WILL CASTRATE CHUCK DIXON AND SERVE HIS GENITALIA AS A SIDE DISH AT THE GLAAD MEDIA AWARDS!

I THINK THE FANTASTIC FOUR ARE STUPID FUCKING CHARACTERS. THERE, I SAID IT!

THAT GOES TWICE FOR ALL THEIR VILLAINS, EXCEPT DR. DOOM!

SPIDER-MAN HAS THE LAMEST ROGUES' GALLERY IN THE HISTORY OF THE MARVEL UNIVERSE, WHICH IS REALLY SAYING SOMETHING IF YOU STOP AND THINK ABOUT IT!

DC HAS LIKE FOUR MARKETABLE CHARACTERS AND 10,000 PIECES OF WALKING SHIT IN STUPID OUTFITS!

I MEAN SERIOUSLY, STARRO? AMAZO? METALLO? SINESTRO? I KNOW RETARDED LABRADORS WHO COULD COME UP WITH BETTER SHIT THAN THAT! SOMEONE NEEDS TO TAKE AWAY YOUR "O" KEY BEFORE YOU HURT YOURSELVES!

RRRRAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGGGGGGEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!

(All-New, All-Different Howling Curmedgeons is a great blog, by the way.)

Chris M. over at The All-New, All-Different Howling Curmudgeons may very well have figured out what makes secret identities such an intrinsic part of the superhero genre:

Also, I think a final aspect of secret IDs that is good, interesting, and powerful comes from the fact that in a mass-produced, mass-marketed, homogenized, industrial society (which, interestingly enough, was really just starting to get going at 90 mph when Superman was first created), we all lose a little bit of ourselves, a little bit of our sense of the unique wonder of being me. Secret IDs give the creator a mechanism by which a character can be recognizably a real person who is part of the mass-produced, mass-marketed, homogenized, industrial world outside our windows, and yet be able to step outside of that and be wonderfully unique, and free, and tacky. I think that’s an important aspect of why superheroes won’t go away no matter how vehemently they’re attacked or intellectually derided.

Maybe this isn't such a revelation to anyone else, but you know that feeling when you're reading something good and a part of your brain just... takes shape as the ideas are fed into it, and suddenly a piece of the puzzle is filled in? That's what that was, right there, for me.

Excellent piece.

There's been some talk floating around lately about secret IDs, thanks in large part to the Superman monologue in Kill Bill: Volume 2, and it's one I'm still forming opinions on. Especially since my favorite comic book character, the Punisher, has no secret identity. He is what he is.

I think this take on what secret IDs have brought to superhero literature is more or less correct:

[T]here are probably a thousand different “dual nature” aspects to any individual, examples of the ID and Ego at odds, all sorts of stuff like that. Secret IDs are the perfect vehicle for exploring and expressing all of these things.

Excuse me while I think out loud. This won't be coherent; apologies all around.

Secret IDs sure as hell have presented a lot of material for superhero comics, and none, I think, flagellate this theme to the extreme more than the Peter Parker character, and has manifestations of such in Robin III. The conflict of leading the double life, who that person has to keep things from, and how they are constantly tormented by it doesn't really interest me all that much. It's nice window dressing, but I only have so much tolerance for angst.

What interests me is why such noisily tormented souls continue to do what they do anyway, despite the problems it causes in their personal lives and general disruption of happiness. My slightly cynical mind follows the Frank Miller course -- the sensation of unleashing one's id on the world becomes so intoxicating to them that they just can't stop themselves, and why should they? Who's going to stop them? The police? Super villains? The government? Concerned spouses? Don't make me laugh. All of these sources of intervention are either ignored or meet tragic ends.

These people get to take the superego shackles right off their id every single night in ways most of us can only dream about, and no one in the world can stop them. Most people, in fact, applaud them. I get the feeling guys like Matt Murdock and Peter Parker bitch about how their double-lives hurt them so much out of lip service alone: They feel like they should feel badly for what they do, that that's what is expected, so they act it out in largely pointless and overwrought self-flagellation. It's all an act, and they've even bought their own hype.

I guess this, ultimately, is why a guy like Frank Castle appeals to me so much. For Big Frank, there's no posturing. There's no superego. There's no second life, trying to scrape by a normal living, while having a crush on the unattainable coworker. There's no mask, no superficial identity-change device (unless you count the skull shirt, which he wears almost all the time anyway.) Frank Castle has let his id dominate his entire life, has refined and worn down all the excess baggage of the superhero into its nightmarish extreme: he is the merciless embodiment of his own darkest urges, given no need nor method for restraint. His war is his life.

And he knows it, too. He's not into self-delusion in the way Parker, Murdock and Co. are. He makes no apologies about what he does, and he doesn't even make the pretension that he does what he does for the betterment of mankind.

He's The Punisher, not The Avenger. As is stated so succinctly in "Welcome Back, Frank," he kills criminals because he hates them, not because he wants to make the world safe for good people. He wants those who have got it coming to get theirs. I suppose the Marvel Universe can be thankful that Castle had enough of a shred of morality left to aim his guns at the criminal element instead of the world at large.

This isn't me celebrating what the guy does, by the way. I'm not saluting his violence or spinning his genocide as "a man doing man's work in a world of spandex-clad children." But I think there's something raw to Frank Castle, a statement about the violent beast that's lurking under every set of red horns or web-spackled mask. When I was reading the Daredevil issue wherein Ol' Hornhead kicks Kingpin to the curb, sheds his mask, and declares himself the new, ultra-violent Kingpin of Hell's Kitchen, I imagined Castle watching from a rooftop, crossing his arms, and thinking...

"Now he gets it."

...the more intrigued I become. Grant Morrison really is some kind of genius, isn't he?

(I realize that's not news.)

Newsarama:

Q: Starting at the ground level – how do you describe this book? A simple ‘superhero with nothing to do’ tale, or the examination of man’s inhumanity to man told through iconography we’re all familiar with…or something like that?

Morrison: A bit of both, as usual. the story started out as a kind of palate-cleansing exercise - after the heavy, 'realistic' approach of the Marvel stuff, I wanted to do something surreal and whimsical, in the vein of my DOOM PATROL stories again - an ocean-going picaresque adventure, you might say.

Then I had the idea to develop SEAGUY into a weapon I could use to fight back against the trendy and unconvincing 'bad-ass' cyncism of current comics, most of which are produced by the most un-'bad-ass' men you can possibly imagine. In the current climate, it seemed like an act of rebellion to deliberately create 'the new sentimentality' and produce work that was almost embarrassingly dripping with tender and awkward feelings. There's a strange kind of Edwardian vibe hitting the world right now - a kind of slowing down, a promenading feel as people rebel against manufactured 'cool'. SEAGUY can be seen as art at the vanguard of this new attitude.

Makes me wonder. The last time we saw manufactured cool, it was during a time period I like to call "the early-mid 90's." Have we really approached that point again, and so fast? The thought depresses.

And Seaguy just sounds fantastic.

In other news: aren't puppies cute? And so fuzzy!

Kevin Melrose has up an interview with Demo writer Brian Wood, and it just provides more reasons for you to enter the DEMO Giveaway to win fabulous prizes. Observe:

Q: You mention on your Live Journal that you're outlining the last three issues. Looking back, have you been able to accomplish what you set out to do from a creative standpoint?

A: Absolutely, and then some. Ten times over. This is my proudest work of my career, and of my entire creative life.

Now darnit, wouldn't you like a chance to try that out for free? Even the format of the mini-series is unique -- 12 pretty much self-contained issues, so you can pick up anywhere and start anywhere, yet the central theme ties all the works together. Wood's right; I don't know why more people aren't doing this. You can pick up new readers at any time, and still reward longtime followers. It's darn near the perfect monthly format.

In other news: I like rocky road ice cream! Hooray!

This... hurts my delicate sensibilities.

In a perfect world the cat and the bird would exist harmoniously, and no one would be pulling shotguns (green or no) on anyone else's nose from a lifeguard's perch.

Alas, we live in a hateful world.

Notice anything... different?

Heh heh.

I guess I could Google it, but why else would I have you slaves here for me?

I need an image file. A big one, preferably, pretty good quality. Of what, you ask? Of Detective Comics #359, featuring the first appearance of the "new" Batgirl.

Can anyone come up with that? Drop me a link in the Comments section, or send off an e-mail to crimson @ lethaldeath.com

Many thanks.

For awhile now, the Power Dude has been chronicling the use of his new superpowers, his trying to score a costume, filing his taxes and finding out there's no tax break for superheroics...

He's snapped.

* Humm-vees make the most satisfying noise as you drop them into their richfuck owner's inground swimming pool. Lexus SUVs get second place.
* If you leave the owners in the car, it's even funnier.
* Dark, moody heroes have a tough time dealing with villains who moon them, then run off.
* Being a petulant fuck with superpowers is the second most richly satisying experience ever.
* The first most richly satisfying experience ever is remember the moment when you first knew true love, then flying back to that spot and tearing the fuck out of it.

Jesus Christ, evil people are funny.

A thriller directed by Mike Hodge, starring Clive Owen and Malcolm McDowell?

I'm there.

(Forget not the DEMO Giveaway -- wherein you can win a fuckton of trade paperbacks and original art just for telling us about what kind of superpower you'd like to have. GO!)

I'm tardy in reporting on it, but Steven Grant's got a new Permanent Damage up over at CBR. There's some stuff at the front about Micah Wright, but I believe the story barely deserves thinking about, let alone repeating or opining on, for pretty much the same reason Grant does.

Nobody died because of Micah Wright's fabrication.

So enough of that.

The real meat of the column, the stuff that actually does have an affect on comics as a whole, is Grant's unerring cross-section of CrossGen's myriad failures. He empashizes, again and again, the reality that if you don't have enough product to back up your hype, you'll fail, no matter how much money you throw at the market.

When Dave Olbrich was editor at Malibu, he was fond of saying perception is reality, but that's not true and it never has been. Perception can be a building block for reality, but perception unrooted (at least a little) in reality will ultimately collapse. For awhile, you can create a public perception of yourself or your company, but, again, unless you can back it up with something solid, eventually everyone cops to the emperor's new clothes and past that point it's hard to win any credibility back on your say-so alone. A problem with a lot of would-be comics publishers is that they've come to believe enough hype will make itself come true. They also convince themselves that all they have to do is publish, and both readers and ancillary income stream deals – movies, toys, amusement park rides, whatever – will come raining onto them. Too many predicate their long term success on that. Certainly in the last couple years Alessi was more prone to talk about his upcoming media deals (and their potential for saving the company, though none have yet materialized) than about the comics.

I would argue that this holds true for the Big Two, as well. It's easy to take this diagram of failure and look at Marvel's less savory practices, but I would suggest DC's lackadaisical approach to their DCU titles is equally as irresponsible and dangerously static. (If you're not Superman or Batman, for instance, you can forget about getting high-profile creative teams and gargantuan marketing pushes.)

The lesson is twofold:

For young and wannabe publishers, the conceit is that cult of personality will be enough to get your titles sold, and if you have gobs of money to make everything purdy and buy your way into large distribution, all the better. In short, if you have a noisy business presence, you don't need to be doing much creatively.

For folks like the Big Two, the reasoning is different, but the end result is the same. The Big Two seem to be operating on the idea that the fans will, by and large, buy up anything they put out. Sadly, this is true -- to a degree. Marvel arrogantly shoves out just about anything they want and doesn't even bother to check what the fan base thinks, and DC lets its much-smaller imprints garner artistic cred while doing almost nothing of interest on their DCU titles. The end conceit is, as above, that if you have a noisy (and staid) business presence, you don't need to be doing much creatively. People will come because by god, you're motherfucking Marvel, and the fans should be thankful you're casting pearls before them in the first place.

Does this mean that to succeed, a start-up should be comprised exclusively of creative dreamers who can balance a checkbook, and let it all work from there?

No. Because you need business sense, too.

What does it mean needs to be done?

I can't tell you. I'm just here to pose the question.

I have determined that Invincible is the best superhero comic on the market right now.

I just got done reading issue #11, which came out today, and there really is absolutely no reason for you not to go out and get the first two TPBs and the last 3 issues up till now, because jesus christ, I haven't read a coming-of-age superhero comic that's so organic and... and unconventional in a long time.

Issue #11 sealed it for me. As I was reading it, as I was hit by startling revelation after startling revelation, the dormant fanboy in me started to stir, saying things at the back of my mind like "No! This can't be! Do this and everything's going to change forever!"

And that's officially a Very Good Thing. Why? Because that dormant fanboy is a slave to sameness obfuscated by words like "continuity," and that it was getting a good hard kick in the scrote. It means it's still possible to do the unexpected, to make a surprising and compelling story, while operating within the confines of a decades-old genre that naysayers everywhere like to proclaim is all played out.

Go read it.

NOW!

(Credit Where Credit's Due department: THE ROOMMATE got me started on this series.

Also, be sure to enter the DEMO GIVEAWAY, wherein you'll win (roughly) a fuckton of trade paperbacks and original art just for telling us about what kind of superpower you'd like to have, and why.)

So I hear you like comic books.

I mean, you're at this blog, right? So you have some predilection for them and some familiarity. Maybe you entered the GREAT LOSERS GIVEAWAY, and maybe you won a prize. Or maybe you didn't. And you're wondering... hey, man, those prizes were pretty good. Are you ever going to have another contest like that again?

Well, yes. Yes we are.

In conjunction with Shane Bailey, Kevin Melrose, Rick Geerling, Johnny Bacardi, AiT/PlanetLar, and Digital Webbing, there's a BRAND NEW CONTEST, focusing on the much-acclaimed and hard-to-find 12-part mini-series Demo. The prize list is absolutely staggering.

GRAND PRIZE: One copy each of the TPBs CHANNEL ZERO, PUBLIC DOMAIN, CHANNEL ZERO: JENNIE ONE, the two COURIER volumes, a CHANNEL ZERO t-shirt, issues #1-5 of DEMO, two pages of original art from PLANET OF THE CAPES, a six-issue subscription to DIGITAL WEBBING PRESENTS, and four back issues of DIGITAL WEBBING PRESENTS

SECOND PRIZE: One copy each of the TPBs CHANNEL ZERO, PUBLIC DOMAIN, CHANNEL ZERO: JENNIE ONE, the two COURIER volumes, a CHANNEL ZERO t-shirt, issues #1-5 of DEMO, and four back issues of DIGITAL WEBBING PRESENTS

THIRD PRIZE: CHANNEL ZERO: JENNIE ONE, issues #1-5 of DEMO, and four back issues of DIGITAL WEBBING PRESENTS

FOURTH PRIZE: Issues #1-5 of DEMO, and four back issues of DIGITAL WEBBING PRESENTS

FIFTH PRIZE: An issue of SCURVY DOGS, and four back issues of DIGITAL WEBBING PRESENTS

(Want to know more about a lot of these pieces of art? Then check out an interview with the artist of many of them, Becky Cloonan, over at Thought Balloons.)

Wow.

Whadya gotta do to win all that swag? Easy. Just march yourself over here and tell us about having a superpower. That's right, pick one superpower, tell us why you want it, and what you'd do with it. You can be typical... I guess... and say stuff like invisibility and flight, but if you go the typical route you'd better really wow us with your reasons. We want weird, original, wild, CRAZY shit ("Skin made entirely of Nerf, so I can go bungee jumping without the bungee!") that sets you apart from the rest of the entrants.

Two rules:

1) The focus of this contest is to hook NEW readers into DEMO. We'd prefer you not already be a fan.

2) Contest runs from today to next Wednesday, May 12th. Get your entry in, and SPREAD THE WORD!

Well, what're you waiting for? ENTER HERE!

(Special thanks and consideration to Larry Young at AiT/PlanetLar and Digital Webbing for donating the prizes, and to Brian Wood and Becky Cloonan for their time. Give them some love, people.)

(If you even get that title, you qualify.)

White Wolf's unveiling some art for their new World of Darkness line, and who should be returning to their fold but Tim Bradstreet?

And, of course, some new stuff from Alex Maleev, who I believe to be one of the finest artists in Marvel's stable, regardless of my lukewarm feelings about Daredevil:

Yes, it all looks very gothy, but this is Vampire we're talking about here. At least the art's always beautiful.

Newsarama talks to Antony Johnston about his upcoming Western comic, The Long Haul, and what he feels the appeal of the Western is:

Well, it's twofold. I personally find the real history of the Old West fascinating, because it's unique. Nowhere else in history do you find this mixture of modern, educated, post-industrial revolution people and the old-fashioned pioneering, exploratory development of an "undiscovered" country. It's a strange, almost anachronistic combination that led to some amazing historical events and characters.

And I think that mixture is responsible for the element that attracts people to the fictional Old West, which is the romance of it all. Westerns, as a rule, tend to reinforce the ideal that everyone is - and should be - responsible for their own destiny and free from oppression. That's not exactly an original notion in fiction, but Westerns are close enough in terms of history that it's easier for people to relate to the ideals and methodology in that context than in, say, the French revolution. I mean, we're only talking 140 years ago, here.

Both of those things are a big attraction for me as a writer. On the one hand you have the wild, romantic adventure of the lone gunman, and balancing that is the railroad system, telegraph lines, firearms and so on of a civilized culture. It's a great juxtaposition.

And that sure is some purdy art, too.

(Hey, Shane -- weren't you telling me about Azzarello's western? Could you refresh me on that, please?)

From The Intermittent, regarding a particular professor's rather insane solution to getting rid of the pornography menace:

[I]t's not that hard to have sex without other people noticing. Ask millions of teenagers.

Well, shit. Have truer words ever been spoken? Or, uh, typed? You were all teenagers once, I'm sure. Think about some of the zany places you had sex when you were one, and actually got away with.

Then post them in the Comments, if you dare. If you just make shit up... well, make it entertaining, at least.

Gone & Forgotten updates with a couple articles, one about Spider-Man teaming up with the cast of Saturday Night Live (no shit):

Today, for instance, I sacrifice my juvenile glee at seeing Spider-Man - arguably a true counter-culture icon of the fictional four-color forum - teamed up with the hallmark of cocaine culture's rebel comedians, and trade it in for pointing out that the whole affair is wrapped up in a comedy comic penned by Chris Claremont.

"The hallmark of cocaine culture's rebel comedians." God, was there ever truly a time when SNL was edgy? These days, it is the very definition of cumbersome irrelevance.

And another piece examining the Hulk's insatiable lust for processed fruit pies:

“Cousin Betsy, The Plant Lady" attempts to induct the Hulk into her jewelry-thieving trio of anthropomorphic plant-villains, charmingly named Mari Gold, Rhoda Dendron and Artie Chokes. I get that Artie, you know, can choke you, but I'd hate to see Rhonda dendron even a kitten.

G&F fills me with so much glee, I feel fit to burst. With glee. All over your keyboard.

Shane gets a small shipment of manga from a friend in Japan, and continues on his quest to survey advertising methodology in comics by comparing manga ads with ads in American comics:

So what do we have total? We have ~ 12 full page ads half of which advertise other manga and ~ 20 (I didn't list them all) stories in one book. So lets say there are 24 stories just to pick a good number and 12 ads. That's one ad for every two stories. The book is black and white except for introductions to the main stories in the books. I'm sure some of these stories are probably bigger than the others.

In American comics you get an ad about every two pages. Why can't we go this route? Books like Shonen Jump and others are showing that we can. Tokyo Pop can produce a whole run of an individual story and sell it for $9.99. These anthologies are big sellers in Japan. They would constitute a whole line of comics here in America. So lets take an example from Marvels line. Lets look at the upcoming Avengers revamp. Take all the single issues stories of the revamp. We have the main title, which is Avengers, and three other titles: Thor, Captain America, and Iron Man. If Marvel wanted to take this approach they could publish the Avengers book in full color followed by the other titles in black and white in a square bound book for pretty cheap. This would allow them more room to place ads in the book as well as reaching larger audiences through bookstores and newstands, meaning even more ad revenue as the books sales go up. This would also give them room to try other titles such as Captain Marvel or She Hulk for cheaper and less risk than publishing a full color comic based on those characters.

What I want to know is why we can't do this? Is it our adherence to the direct market? Is it the companies reluctance to take a chance on a new way of doing things?

Fuck, but those are good questions. And I can't think of any good answers. Don't get me wrong, I can think of answers, just not any good ones. Condensing, for instance, Batman titles into one large monthly anthology sounds like it would be a huge fucking relief for me and my wallet, and I'd have a greater chance of being exposed to new writers and artists quite by accident.

Maybe 300-400 page monthly anthologies would take up a lot of shelf space, so let's move ourselves more gradually in that direction: a monthly TPB, 72 pages apiece, featuring (for instance) three serial or episodic Batman (and related character) tales at 22 pages apiece, with 6 pages left over for full-page ads. Or three 20 page ads with 12 pages for ads and a letter column, or whatever. I would buy the fuck out of that book, let me tell ya.

Food for thought.

Imagine the superhero mythos as a sports car. A fancy, tricked-out Italian situation, with a cherry red paint job, all-leather interior, heated seats, the most advanced MP3/CD player system on the market, and so on and so forth. You've got all the flash and pomp of superheroes, the costumes and the high melodrama and action (or, let's call it what it is, violence) rolled into one package.

Strip away the glitz and the glamor. Strip away the high sentiments and lofty, black-and-white morality. Remove all the obfuscation of paint jobs and casings, and what you have beneath this sleek package is an ugly mass of steel, a bare churning engine, and raw visceral power not held back by an affected higher moral calling.

And that's where you'll find Codeflesh.

I can pretty much imagine the kind of conversation that Codeflesh developed from. See if you can reason why: Cameron Daltrey is a bail bondsman, a man so in love with the risk and violence of collaring "skips" that he dons a mask at night to track down only the most dangerous ones, those with superpowers and the will to use them for ill. No one knows the secret of Cameron's double-life except his business partner, not even the love of his life, a stripper named Maddy. What Maddy doesn't know hurts their relationship; Cameron is so enamored with the high-risk lifestlye of his alter-ego that he constantly chooses dangerous collarings over meeting her on time for dates.

Sound familiar? Cameron Daltrey could be Daredevil. Or Batman. Or Spider-Man. Or any number of do-gooders putting themselves into a dangerous position night after night, risking their personal happiness in the process, to pursue... what, exactly?

Matt Murdock or Bruce Wayne or Peter Parker might say they risk it all to pursue a higher calling. To do right. To prevent tragedy from afflicting any more lives like it has afflicted their own. Cameron Daltrey, however, does not live in that world; it's absolutely clear that Cameron Daltrey has no such pretensions, and submerses himself in a fatally dicey nightlife simply because he gets off on it so much. It's not about right or wrong, or pursuing justice. All he's doing is what all those other superheroes are doing, anyway: Capturing villains and tossing them in the slammer before they inevitably break back out again. It's a Sisyphean task at best, and Daltrey is the only one on that list that seems to operate under the acknowledgement of that fact.

The stories in the Codeflesh collection are told in 12 page snippets, and their brevity necessitates the anecdotal style of the tales. Joe Casey here exhibits a complete command of pacing that keep things moving briskly but never come across forced, and the dialogue is given enough breathing room to sound natural, and to operate on a higher level than broadcasting necessary exposition. Only once does a character's words wander into the silly territory. The last story is especially striking in its storytelling style, and packs a wallop of emotional impact especially remarkable considering how little time we've "spent" with these characters previously.

Kudos, too, to Charlie Adlard for his art labors. Adlard's managed to take all the glitz out of the sanitized, glorified rock-'em-sock-'em duels of superhero books and turn them into what they really are: nasty, brutal, cringe-inducing, and sadistic affairs. There's nothing clean or clear about Cameron Daltrey's world, and the roughness and busyness of Adlard's panels reflect that well.

(Don't get me wrong. "Roughness and busyness" does not translate to "hard to follow." The art never fails to tell the story effectively.)

All that said, this concept is about played out. I cannot for the life of me foresee more Codeflesh collections that would not essentially be retreads of what we read here, because quite frankly there are only so many superhero conventions to comment upon before you start swallowing your own tail. We have here a collection of meditations on the nature of vigilantism, distilled of pretensions and gaudiness, and to add more on top of it would only sully what's collected here. Codeflesh is a gutpunch of a comic, and deserves a look-through for anyone interested in the underlying realities of the superhero book.

I have returned from the depths of Alabama a wiser man.

Lessons learned:

1) Bacon Egg n' Cheese Biscuits from McDonald's were shat directly from Aphrodite's Rubenesque ass onto my breakfast plate. They're just that good.

2) It doesn't matter what city you're in. Dance clubs, after about 20 minutes, are really fucking boring.

3) Nothing. There is no third thing.

(Name that quote!)

4) Also, no matter what city you're in, there'll be some stupid local law about having a "membership card" of some type to be able to drink. Said card takes approximately 3 minutes to get: You just have to fill out a card that has all the information already on your driver's license and hand it over to some bartender who could give two shits. Then you're a member and you can drink.

5) Protestant weddings are boring, but at least they're short.

6) Farts are like children: everyone else's can go to Hell, but yours are special.

7) Have hope. Sometimes that hot chick you think is way out of your league will approach you, all nervously and cutely, and strike up a conversation.

8) Denim jackets have got to go.

9) If you live in a town with a lot of ugly women, and you're wondering where the balance of average-to-hot women is, look no further than Birmingham, Alabama. Jesus. Yeah, a lot of them have all the wit and tact of a bag of rocks, but they are very nice to look at, and they have that accent thing going. Don't say anything too smart, because the resultant tilt of the head, the slow southern-lilted "Whaaat?" and quizzical smile all together go from charming to completely fucking maddening in 10 seconds flat.

10) Bill Hicks never stops being funny.

I'll be back on later with a review of Codeflesh and, I dunno, a picture of my balls or something.

Later.

I'll be heading out of town at a criminally early hour tomorrow morning, and won't be back till Sunday afternoon. I know you're sad. But please, put down that katana. You don't need to kill yourself.

You can, in the meantime, entertain yourself at these sites:

THE CLIQUE (Or, People I Bug Regularly):

Near Mint Heroes (Shane) - Never a dull post at this place. Shane brings together all the weirdest, oddest, most entertaining news on the internet just about every single day. He also has an encyclopedic knowledge of comic books. Check it.

Thought Balloons (Kevin) - Best Linkblogging on the Internet, bar none. Kevin's sharp as hell, and he's got his finger on the pulse of just about everything. In the absence of Journalista, Kevin has taken up the mantle of the news tracker of the comics blogosphere. Not on purpose; he's just naturally that good.

The Johnny Bacardi Show (David) - A hallmark of the blogosphere. Johnny, Latin hedonist, does some of the best comic book reviews on the net, and he's got the habit of occasionally posting some of his art, to taunt those of us without the talent. Bastard. Johnny also shares a love of Tarot, so for that alone he's teh rock.

Eat More People (Rick) - In the category of People Who Are Funnier Than Me, there's Rick, and then there's everybody else. He's also an apparent aspiring writer, and it shows in the wit of his entries. He's a bit less regular in his postings than the rest (needs to eat more prunes), but every post is a gem.

PEOPLE WHO ARE SMARTER THAN ME (Or, People Whose Blogs I Have No Place Commenting On)

I Am NOT the Beastmaster (Marc) - I'm just way the hell out of my league over here. There's a new, lengthy, thoughtful and thought-provoking post up here about every three or four days, and some of the comment-conversations that spring up around them are the best talk going on the internet. You absolutely cannot go wrong. (Also, Marc's apparently a flaming liberal like myself, so that doesn't hurt.)

The Intermittent (Dave) - He doesn't post in novels like most of the intellectual bloggers do, but every bit of it is food for thought. Dave's got a gift for keeping things short and sweet, and no less potent than his lengthier brethern.

JUST PLAIN FUN (Or, Places I Go Because Damn, I Enjoy Them)

Progressive Ruin (Mike) - There is always, always, always something fun or thoughtful or entertaining as hell over here. Mike's got a light touch that's nonetheless searingly insightful, and he's one of those rare good souls no one could ever say anything bad about.

Otto's Coffee Shop (Jeff) - Seamlessly blends discussion about comics, movies, and poker. Those are three great vices to have, and he writes entertainingly about all of them. Careful where you tread in that Comments section -- his friends'll beat you up for milk money. Heh heh...

Go. Visit. Enjoy. Check out every single link on my sidebar there; none will do you wrong.

See ya on Sunday.

(Quote of the day: "I'm so classy I shit fine china." - Me.)

Steven Grant saw those neato Ben Templesmith Ghost Rider pictures that Templesmith posted, and he's not pleased with the trend:

This is far from the first time something like this has been done, and I don't want to come off as singling out Ben and Dan because I'm not, but...

This sort of thing is embarrassing and amateurish. It's one thing to use the Internet to try to find a publisher for an original creation, or to otherwise finance it. With so many stumbling blocks, any venue for that's a welcome one. With something someone else owns, let's face it, it's just fan fiction. I don't care if it's professionals doing it or not, until a publisher buys a project it's just fan fiction. I can understand why freelancers want to work on company-owned properties – often it's the only way to get paid (dogs and mortgage holders gotta eat, after all), and it's possible to have fun, sometimes a lot of fun, doing it – but to so blatantly and openly go begging after something, I dunno. It's also a dodge for the creators. You're always going to find someone who thinks an idea is about the greatest idea ever conceived on the face of the earth, but it's not them you have to convince, it's an editor or a publisher or whoever makes the decisions at whatever comics company, and trotting stuff out for public viewing/opinion before it's sold is just trying to stack the deck as most companies are concerned. Companies make decisions based on a lot of factors besides (but usually not to the exclusion of) the talent involved and the quality of the work. Is the Wickline/Templesmith GHOST RIDER a hot looking package? Sure is. Would it make a good book? Probably. Might it not fit Marvel's conception of or intentions for the character? It might not. And anyone who thinks Paul Levitz or Joe Quesada can be pressured by "popular demand" into changing a decision has been paying too much attention to the hype. Remember the last time you were pressured into changing your mind on something? Enjoy it much? If you really want a company to give you the keys to the city, sell a million copy comic. Every major company in the business will be beating down your door.

Harsh.

Yet true.

That's Steven Grant for ya.

Steve Lieber over at Mercury Studios talks about comics activism:

Those of you who are interested in activism will get a lot more bang for your buck if you put your energy into supporting small press and self published titles. Let's say that a well-organized and sustained push could raise a book's sales by five hundred or a thousand copies. That's not enough to keep a corporate publisher from cancelling a moribund series. It simply doesn't represent a big enough slice of their expenses. But that same increase on a small press book makes an unbelievable impact. It can push a book out of the red and into the black, It can significantly increase the buzz on a title, making fence-sitting retailers more likely to order that all-important first copy, and most importantly, it can keep a cartoonist working on his or her comics instead of moving off to do commercial art.

Color me chastened, in regard to the GREAT LOSERS GIVEAWAY. However, my partners-in-crime and I had already decided to shift in this direction for the next Giveaway... just keep your eye on Near Mint Heroes on, oh, May 5th?

Something might show up.

(Dun dun!)

Hubert Selby, Jr., author of Last Exit to Brooklyn and Requiem for a Dream, has died. Rick at Eat More People, a fan of the man's work, hasa eulogy.

Marc-Oliver Frisch with his usual fantastic analysis, plus a bit of a namedrop I have to confess I was pleased with.

I have nothing clever to add. Just go read it.

Been away from a bloggable computer for a bit, but here I am again. Off to buy comics shortly. Here's the list, because you care:

DC/Vertigo/Wildstorm Comics
BIRDS OF PREY #66 $2.50
KINETIC #2 $2.50
LOSERS #11 (MR) $2.95
MIDNIGHT MASS HERE THERE BE MONSTERS #4 (Of 6) (MR) $2.95

Image Comics
FRANKENSTEIN MOBSTER CVR A WHEATLEY #3 $2.95
WANTED DOSSIER ONE SHOT (MR) $2.99

Marvel Comics
THE PUNISHER #5 (MR) $2.99
WOLVERINE PUNISHER #2 (Of 5) $2.99

Various
KISS KISS BANG BANG #4 $2.95
ROB ZOMBIE SPOOK SHOW INTL #7 (MR) $2.95
VAMPEROTICA PIN-UP ILLUSTRATED #1 (MR) PI (just kidding)

Whew. That enough books for you? Okay, here's your assignment:

Planet of the Capes came out today, a TPB for a mere $14.95. This is a book written by Larry Young, he of Astronauts in Trouble fame. Larry is completely incapable of writing something that isn't better than 90% of the dreck the Big Two put out, so that means you're going to go buy it.

This isn't an optional thing.

See ya in the stands.

NEWS THAT IS NOT NEWS: Once again I am a moron. Planet of the Capes is $12.95, not $14.95. I swear, I am flaking lately. I blame liberals.

Graeme's at it again. I consider Steven Grant's Permanent Damage to be the best column in comics, though I'm not sure it's fair to compare these two. Grant's all about the analyses and state of the industry, Graeme's going for slice of life. And damn if it's not entertaining:

It was at that point, you see, that I realized that it’s actually kind of boring living out in the middle of nowhere alone. Sure, it starts out fun and exciting, but really, there’s only so long that you can convince yourself that the rustic life is something that you really ought to explore and experience for any length of time when you’re twenty years old and want to go to shitty nightclubs and shake your bits to the hits while having crushes on the most inappropriate of girls, you know? Especially if, like I did, you find yourself actually living much closer to a farm than you expected, and get lulled to sleep at night by the sound of cows mooing and awoken every morning by a peacock doing a stunningly good impression of a baby screaming.

The image I get in my head is of a slightly anthropomorphic peacock rearing its head back and just letting fly, howling its lungs out. It's both fucking creepy and hysterical as hell.

(When I was running the GREAT LOSERS GIVEAWAY, that title was the title of about half the e-mails I received. As if I didn't hate the song enough already.)

Augie De Blieck, Jr. discusses The Losers: Ante Up over at CBR. He's pretty spot-on with his assessment:

THE LOSERS is a great action/adventure/spy piece. It rarely slows down, pushing the gas pedal to the floor and taking the reader along for a wonderful ride. The gun play gets more amped up, the explosions become more bombastic, and the chase scenes conjure up visions of Bond movies. Simply put, THE LOSERS is the perfect comic book to be translated to a major motion picture, but would sadly break the budget of any movie studio that tried to. There's just that much going on here.

[...]

Andy Diggle writes some great moments, keying off the ludicrous situations the characters find themselves in, combined with the simplified character traits they display. Take particular notice of the first issue for the series. It's a great example of how a comic book series should begin. The story is complete in the first issue. You have a great idea what the general tone and theme of the series is. And you're introduced to the characters on the fly, usually by their actions and not some clunky block of text next to their first closeup. The first issue makes you want to read more, and not out of any obligation.

Pretty much. Augie's got some harsh words for Jock, the artist, but I'd have to say that comes more from Augie's traditionally being, um, a bit of a stick in the mud traditionalist about things. Me, I think the art is fun and kinetic, and thus perfectly serves the needs of the story.

Then, and this is why I love Augie so much, he has the amazing ability to attach politics to anything:

Diggle's also obviously British. British writers, after all, specialize in writing stories with paranoid American government conspiracies. I wonder if they teach that in the textbooks over there as retaliation for losing a war almost 230 years ago?

Uh, right. The British (especially it's 20-something writers) are bitter about the fucking American Revolution. I wonder if he thinks young writers in Spain are still aching over the Spanish-American War?

Could be, that having someone inside the CIA be a rotten egg (important distinction Augie overlooks: it's one bad apple and his cronies inside of the CIA that's bad, not the entire government) comes from the 50+ years of history wherein the CIA propped up and shot down governments all over the world from the shadows.

Or, you know, it makes for a fun story. It is possible to tell a fun story that uses a conspiracy premise to set a certain tone, you know. No, really. Seriously, I really do love Augie, but this kind of thing makes me scratch my head.

Anyway. No reason not to buy the book. It's only $10.

Do you want some music that'll maybe fuck your head a little?

Lyrics that can be sad, or funny, or dry, or a little bit beautiful?

Maybe just some angry-fun chaotic guitar rock with a howling, sarcastic vocalist?

I present to you Mondo Generator.

I've been listening to this CD (A Drug Problem That Never Existed, on which the first song is titled "Meth, I Hear You Callin'," in case you had any doubts these guys maybe did some drugs) off and on for about four weeks, and it's not gotten old yet. I won't quote lyrics at you, because I fucking hate when people do that; they always come off limp and contrived without the context of the rest of the song.

Just trust me.

(If you're going to be cheap about it and hit up some BitPass or something, look for the songs "Like You Want," "Four Corners," and "Day I Die." You can't go wrong.)

There's a lot going on here that's totally wrong, but really, one thing above all else is bugging me.

Why are her high-heeled mega-boots, so practical for cat thievery to begin with, open-toed?

I am told that Indy Magazine has just put up its latest edition, focusing mainly on the republication of David Mazzucchelli's adaptation of City of Glass. It's got about eleventy special features going -- the republication, I mean -- and it seems worth taking a look at.

Of interest is the interview with Mazzucchelli (easily the second-greatest surname in comics, right behind his co-adaptor Bill Kartalopoulos) with some page samples and breakdowns.

I'd say more but, uh, I'm reading the damn site.

NEWS THAT IS NOT NEWS: I am a moron. Kartalopoulos is the interviewer, not the co-adaptor. The proper credit goes to Paul Karasik as co-adaptor, along with Mazzucchelli.

You still have a pretty cool surname, Bill.

I'd seen an ad for these Universal Monster DVD collections, but I didn't know they were doing that mega-set for $80.

You can make your checks out to "Ken Fuckin' Lowery."

I got no idea why they decided to put in that fucking Phillip Glass score on Dracula. It reminds me of the time a friend gave me a copy of Nosferatu on DVD, as scored by a seemingly random selection of Type O Negative songs. I appreciated the sentiment (of the gift), but can't we just watch movies how they were meant to be seen?

(Link thanks to the comments over at Eat More People.)

Fantasy is the genre that is both the most promising and most stunted, unproductive genre in all of fiction.

Case in point: When I said "fantasy," what came to mind? Swords and wizards and elves? Maybe dragons? Great Horrible Undead Hordes That Must Be Vanquished By A Band Of Plucky Multi-Racial, Multi-Talented Characters With Verbs And Colors For Names?

(Before you get all pissy, the "racial" in "multi-racial" is in reference to elves, dwarves, hobbits and other such nonsense.)

That's the problem with fantasy. You say the name and everyone thinks of one very small part of it; in this case, stuff like Lord of the Rings is considered "sword and sorcery" fantasy but fills most peoples' minds as the prime example of what the genre is and can offer. That would be like saying the only kind of drama there is are cop dramas, or that slasher flicks are all that horror has to offer. J.R.R. Tolkein may be modern fantasy's greatest hero, but I believe he is also its greatest enemy.

Then something truly strange and original comes down the pike, and I remember what fantasy should be. This time around it was Jax Epoch and the Quicken Forbidden, written by Dave Roman and drawn by John Green.

Jax (short for Jacqueline) Epoch is your average 16 year old girl, if a bit of a recluse: she prefers books to human company, and only sticks with her current boyfriend because he's pretty cute. Her frustration with the world seems to come from the realization (typical for that age and thereabouts) that the real world usually isn't as interesting as the ones you read in books by half.

It only takes 7 pages before this book starts fucking your brain. Jax has followed her boyfriend and his group of ne'er-do-wells into a lab facility, presumably to vandalize and investigate, when she finds herself chasing a runaway lab rabbit (hint, hint) and stumbling through a gateway into...

Oh, but I don't really want to tell you. Finding out what the hell is going on, page by page, is really half the fun of it; as I was reading this book, the logic centers in my brain were screaming to piece together what the hell is going on, while the rest of me was having a blast. And this realization, right on the heels of that: This is what good fantasy should be. A pleasant disorientation as new and wonderous sights are presented to you page by page, stacking up in a half-mad configuration you know should make sense, if only you had the proper reference point to go by.

Roger Ebert once said that there was more imagination and innovation filling up the corners of the Mos Eisley cantina scene in Star Wars than there was in almost every sci-fi and fantasy movie since then. I would argue the same is true for Jax Epoch. Yes, there's some winks and nods to previous fantasy greats, such as the "chasing the white rabbit" sequence, but overall the final product is something new and innovative and heading toward (if not quite at) daring.

There are so many sights, so many characters, so many new proper nouns to learn, such a wild sense of setting and character design, and little throwaway moments of sheer oddity that you'll barely have time to catch your breath before the next new weird/stunning/humorous/odd/quirky thing comes along.

No, this isn't to say this book is just page after page of Roman's and Green's ids stamping themselves on the page; there's a real story here, a real spin, a real through-line informing every twist and every turn and every new seemingly random event. The fun is in finding it.

Jax herself is well fleshed out, which is critical. So many genre stories want to give us a cipher of a main character, perhaps assign a Hallmark card philosophy or a lame "shortcoming" to give them depth, and then expect the setting to do the rest. Not here. Jax has a wholly-formed personality, and all the quirks and foibles you'd expect of someone her age. More importantly, she works her way through what's going on the way someone like her would, rather than just going with what the plot demands. Her casual kleptomania, a personality that flicks between dreamy and pragmatic with ease -- all of it matters, all of it factors in, and all of it makes sense.

Quick question: Was it intentional to make Jax resemble Scott McCloud in some of these panels, especially early on? The big round empty glasses with black frames, the plaid flannel shirt... it was a little eerie.

Anyway. I loved it. Could you tell?

Here's a bit more info. Then Buy it.

Fresh new Chick Check served up with a side of fries, this time focusing on last week's DC haul.

The Rose & Thorn thing has me confused. Not about the quality of the series, no -- I've always felt it to be pretty subpar, because I just know Simone has it in her to tell a good, serious, psychological story. This just ain't it.

What confuses me is the covers. You've got your trying-to-be-deep psychological thriller and every cover has a redhead in a green PVC Frederick's of Hollywood outfit usually involved in some sort of erotic bloodplay. It's not that I'm offended or whatever, hooray cheesecake, I'm just... well, as I said before.. I'm confused. Does not compute.

Hours in a weekend, from midnight Saturday morning to midnight Sunday night: 48.

Hours I slept in said weekend: 5.

Hours I slept it off in this morning: 12.

That about evens things out, right? Later on I'll do a post about 24 Hour Comic Day in general, and what it did for me, as well as a review for Jax Epoch and the Quicken Forbidden. Stay tuned.

So you know how there's those titles that you never heard of before, and then suddenly you see a couple blogs/message boards/whatever bring them up in passing, and then more and more people start talking about it, and the next thing you know they've cast the actor for the lead in the movie adaptation? And you still don't even have the damn scoop on what the title's about, yet?

That's Hawaiian Dick by Clay Moore, for me. I'd heard all this stuff about Johnny Knoxville (my assessment: give the man a chance) being cast as the main character, that this is a Must Read series, and so on and so forth. But shit, I have a lot of Must Read titles on my list, okay? It's hard keeping it all in order, and remembering to ask about them all when I'm at my DM store.

And gods bless it if it doesn't come up outta nowhere when I'm throwing e-mails back and forth with Larry Young (I am not yet comfortable with calling him Uncle Lar, because that is totally a John Wayne Gacy alter-ego name waiting to happen). He points me here, to his forum on Delphi, and whadya know.

Questions answered.

It's now 8 AM, CST, Sunday morning. I'm done.

22 pages of script, not 24. I could pad it up if I wanted, but I'm pretty satisfied with the ending. It's just 22 pages of script, mind you; I've only got 12 pages of storyboards, and no "finished" art. I can't do finished art. I can't do art at all, actually.

The story's not half bad. Kind of grim, but that's what I'm into, really. If you're curious, e-mail me (link up there in the top left) and ask, and I'll send you a copy. I'd rather not just post it, because I have enough of an ego to think someone might steal the script and go off and make millions (or, perhaps, dozens) with it.

I'll probably write some neato lengthy post about the experience, yadda yadda, artsy fartsy, but now is not the time. It's 8am, I've been awake for roughly eleventy trillion decades, and I have 2 hours of sitting around ahead of me before I have to actually prepare to be anywhere.

So now's not the time for fancy extrapolation. Now is the time for some goddamn Bacon Egg N' Cheese biscuits from McD's.

Talk at ya later.

I'm still alive. I've got 19 pages done, I'm flying toward the end of this thing, and I had to take a break to play some Doom 2 or I was going to go fucking crazy and start hurting some people.

I have now been awake for almost a day, going on a low amount of (bad) sleep, taking the occasional break to read the first Skyape TPB (THE ROOMMATE bought it, since he liked Skyape: Waiting For Crime so much.)

I almost gave in. At about 3am, I truly, genuinely was ready to give it up and get some goddamn sleep. But Wil stayed online with me as my lifeline, and saw me through that bad patch. Told me to pump my veins full of caffiene and keep on trucking.

And for that I will always hate him. Thank you for encouraging me to prolong this torture, you evil son of a bitch.

More to come.

And I'm 15 pages in, actually. Typing that out made me feel a bit better. I've found my second wind, I think -- or at least a delirium-inspired dementia that passes for creative writing. This'll just be a script, folks, and 12 pages of storyboarding.

Sorry if you're disappointed. I realize I fell asleep about 25 hours ago, the last time I went to sleep.

Been up for 20 hours now. Won't be going to sleep till probably 10pm CST tonight.

Yipee.

I've done 12 pages.

I've given up all hope of having a finalized product, and I think I'm going to have to be satisfied with having 24 pages of (very) rough storyboard along with 12 pages of finalized script. The process I'm using is, I think, unusual: I do the storyboard first, and then write the script from that. I suppose it helps to visualize the panels and arrangements if I actually draw it out on the page.

This is probably not interesting.

And those peanut butter cookies are seriously messing with my stomach. I have a mild headache and I'm sweaty, even though the A/C's on.

Somehow, I think I caught malaria from 24 Hour Comic Day.

Well, 15 minutes shy of 12 hours.

I'm taking a break to make cookies.

Yeah, I'm delirious.

ADDENDUM: I totally have a dozen peanut butter cookies, now. It's sweet.

My hand is about to fall right the fuck off. Drawing hurts. Writing hurts. Typing hurts.

This is not a good sign.

Stopped yawning, though.

Let's start this with how my day was going right up until I began the comic writing festival:

Got about 4 hours of sleep last night. Couldn't sleep, too anxious about miscellany, HUGE lightning storm outside with pounding thunder, and had to get up at like 7am so I could go off and do a charity thing. Help restock, reshelve, and organize a public library. Did that till about 12:30, got some lunch (no caffiene, none was available), came home. Already yawning. Not a good sign.

Sat down and started brainstorming at 1:30 CST today. I admit I already had a germ of an idea I'd been discussing with Xe (at great length) awhile ago. I find that, given those discussions, and some handy books I have on related topics, I hack out a (very rough) outline in like 10 minutes.

So far, so good.

I head downstairs, away from the infernal computing machine, to sit in relative silence (iPod, game soundtrack remixes, and Faith No More to drown out ambient noise) and start hacking it out, page by page. The basic idea is that I'm going to storyboard the comic and then actually go back and try to do GOOD drawings, which is a laff and a half, since I can't draw a convincing straight line. After I draw the "good" stuff (on boards, the kind you use to bag comics, thought it'd make a nice touch), I'd type up and print out all the dialogue and caption narration because my handwriting blows goats for quarters. Good plan.

Still yawning. Bad news: I'm low on Coca Cola. Shitty Planning 1, Ken Lowery 0.

The rest goes fairly smoothly. First page comes out in about 15 minutes. Second page has a good general idea, and 3 of 5 panels drawn. All panels with the narration. Going pretty fast; I start to think I'll actually pull this off.

Then I get to a major dialogue scene. In toto, this dialogue scene, between two characters at a diner, takes 3 pages of comic book. I suddenly gain immense respect for artists like Steve Dillon and Pia Guerra, who flawlessly and unnoticably add dynamic flow to stuff like two dudes sitting in a diner fucking talking. How do you keep that shit fresh and visually interesting for three pages?

I'm no artist, so I can't do neato three-quarters elevated angles on the conversers, so I'm stuck with profile pictures of one or both people, dead-on shots, and one panel I'm rather proud of: A fork hovers over a bite of food, as one guy asks the other, "Gonna eat that?" ...before the real meat of the conversation carries on. A nice pause.

Five hours in, I need a fucking break. I'm chewing on my pencil like crazy, sharpening it when it doesn't need sharpening, forced to a standstill at the end of this GODDAMN MOTHERFUCKING DINER TALKING SCENE.

I'm yawning like crazy.

So me and the roomie head to Zeus to buy some shit. They're reducing the store size, so they're liquidating a bunch of stock, and I needed the time off to let my brain relax. We go to Zeus, we grab some Wendy's, we come back, we watch some Chapelle's Show, and I get back into it.

Except I can't. I'm stuck again. And The L Word is on Showtime, and these chicks are fucking each other about every 5 minutes. Naked. Heaving. Tongues everywhere. I could change the channel, but... sweaty naked lesbian love, man. This isn't the fake-tits-fake-tan-fake-blonde lesbian porn they make for guys. This is lesbian sex filmed for lesbians, which is so much better. Not even Mike Patton can stop me from watching that stuff.

So here I am. Updating you. And I'm about to head back into the trenches.

It's 24 Hour Comic Book writing time.

So you probably won't be hearing from me for the rest of the day unless I need a break, or something.

Wish me luck.

Couple of things:

1) We know that Marvel does not send out comp copies to online journalist types, and they have every reason in the world not to do that. Frankly, that's a large chunk of your audience you'd just be giving shit away free to, and what's to stop some jackhole from starting up a site just to score free comics (like.. say... me?)

But.

2) Also remember that a little while ago Marvel cited Mile High Comics as their favored vendor because they move a shitload of Marvel titles. This was decried as usual by blogging types, though I felt at the time that it showed a sort of grassroots support thing. Show the DM a little love.

But.

Witness Mile High getting a full-issue preview of Brian K. Vaughan's Ultimate X-Men.

Witness Mile High also getting a full-issue preview of Quesada's Daredevil mini.

This seems to be going above and beyond simply rewarding some DM stores. This looks like... an unhealthy brand of favoritism.

Could be jumping at shadows. Highly likely that I'm jumping at shadows.

But still.

(Thanks to THE ROOMMATE for finding that X-Men preview, and Thought Balloons for the DD one.)

Dave at Intermittent (the one who kicked off all this talk) responds to his responders with some interesting and absolutely true thoughts about the state of the industry, specifically that of our "journalists."

Right now, comics journalism online and off seems to consist of interviews, previews, sales charts, rampant speculation in the absence of fact, and guys talking about stupid toys. There's no one following the writers and artists, no one consistently keeping check on the various EIC's, no one looking at marketing trends and revenue. If we had competent journalists working as journalists in this field, we'd have seen this Icon thing coming 4 months ago.

At least Comics Continuum has the balls to strip away all pretense and just be what it is: A Press Release Factory.

The rest of the quasi-journalists, they take what the company gives us, thank them for that, and run back to the rest of us to fill us in on what scraps got thrown to us from the table. For a real journalist, that's not enough. The fact that most of our "news" comes from rumor mills like Lying in the Gutters says to me that publishers have erected a wall between themselves and the readers, and that we, as readers, are satisfied with that. That we'll accept that, and let them jerk us around and wait like obedient lapdogs for the next morsel to fall.

I would prefer we avoid the kind of trash journalism rampant on TV stations like E! and VH1, but at least journalism focused on the movie industry has some kind of equality with their subjects. They're respected, treated like humans, and sometimes feared by the moguls of Tinseltown, and even the most casual movie-goer can find out what movies will be released one, two, or even three years from now.

No such luck in comics journalism. The publishers, at least the large ones, have made their decision that we're not really worth the time and have kept us on a need-to-know basis. This hurts them and it hurts us. Treating the reporting half of the comics community like servants is exactly what keeps the comic book art form a "hobby" instead of, well, instead of an "art form." We cannot be perceived as big business if we are not treated as big business on all sides of the game.

Don't get me wrong: This isn't me laying the blame at the feet of the Big Two alone. No. Our news sites are pitiful and we've allowed them to be pitiful and we haven't kicked them in the ass enough to strive for more. It's gotten to the point, for me, where news sites are barely even relevant anymore -- I just go to blogs for all my news now, and end up as well-informed as anyone who lives and breathes Newsarama and CBR. The cults of personality that have popped up because of blogs have, strangely enough, yielded more results in continuous news coverage of the comics world than the relatively faceless news sites. Wonder why that is. (Not rhetorical; I really don't know.)

Tired of it.

ADDENDUM: This, an article about the potential ramifications of Gaiman vs. MacFarlane, is the kind of journalism we should expect more often from our news sites. I know Newsarama never claims to be a "news" site... interestingly, since "news" is right there at the front of the title.. but that's still one of the finer pieces of actual journalism I've seen come out of any comic news site in awhile.

Johanna Draper Carlson has come to the blogosphere, which is like another nail in the coffin of my relevance. When all these fancy "qualified writers" show up with their "interesting topics" and "new ideas," I can feel my grasp on you subliterate monkeys slipping bit by bit.

Damn you, Johanna.

And welcome! The Chick Check alone is worth the price of admission.

You might have noticed that there's been a slight change around here. A bit of a.. cosmetic upgrade. Something tasty.

Shane is responsible for the beautiful tableau of colors you see before you, that wonderful masthead up there, for the lovely font of my lovely blog, and for the general assembly of neatness.

Wil is responsible for the little devil bastard named Pinche Cochino. Those who know Spanish... know what that means.

These are men of vision who wasted their time to please YOUR retinas. Give them praise and visit their sites.

This is so beautiful I could splooge all over your mother.

From Eat More People, I find this link to Ben Templesmith (30 Days of Night, Dark Days etc.) doing his spin on Ghost Rider.

It. Is fucking. Gorgeous.

Fanaticism is the ultimate enemy of mankind.

Incredibly enlightening. Thomas Jefferson quotes never get old.

(From the blog with the name that reminds me of that damn Fiona Apple album, Once I Realized I Was On Fire I Relaxed and Decided to Enjoy the Fall. I assure you the actual blog is not annoying at all, and that Fiona Apple should die a pauper's death.)

Kazu Kibuishi gets himself interviewed over at Paperback Reader, about his upcoming mini Daisy Kutter: The Last Train. They also can't seem to decide how to spell his name.

Here's a segment I know will interest Jeff:

Q: When I first heard of Daisy Kutter, I was expecting a typical Western book with gunfights and bar brawls. Instead, a lot of the tension comes from an often-overlooked aspect of the Western story: the poker table. Are you an avid card player?

A: (Laughing) Oh yeah. I love playing Texas Hold 'Em, and I think it shows in this first issue. And no, before you ask, I have not watched the World Series of Poker, but I am familiar with it. In fact, it's probably the reason my friends pulled me into the game. I've been hooked on it ever since.

On the tone of the book:

Q: For the remaining issues, can readers expect to find the action and drama in more unlikely places, such as Daisy’s inner struggles, or will there be plenty of gunfights and fisticuffs?

A: I'm glad you caught that about the first issue — that there isn't a single shot fired or a punch thrown. I promise there will be plenty of action down the line, but I want the readers to feel there's something at stake when it all goes down. Man, I WANT to feel it myself when I have to write and draw all those panels!

Seriously, when I started this project, I really wanted to base everything around the emotions and not just the cool action. I would not have tackled this project if it weren't for the intense conflict going on in Daisy's head during all of this stuff. Her problems make her such an interesting character to write, and she's been the most complex one I have written thus far. And, it only gets more complex as it goes. (laughs)

Color me there.

No, not vengeance.

Lunch.

(Lego thingy link and lunch assistance from Wil.)

(Hey, that rhymes!)

Dave over at The Intermittent speculates on just what it is that causes titles to sink: Is it really the lack of advertising or knowledge, or simply the preference of the fans in action?

So how can it be a failure of advertising when good comics die? How many of the hundred thousand or so regular comics readers out haven't heard that Sleeper is a good comic? Can there really be that many? This isn't snark; I'm really curious. Is the problem really, pace Steven Grant, that folks aren't finding out about good comics....or is it that the people who make up the bulk of the direct market simply have very different ideas then the comics cognoscenti as to what constitutes a "good comic?"

I suspect it might be the latter. And this is not a slam on the direct market; the market is what it is. And while I'd love it if tons of others shared my loves, I don't see divergent tastes as evidence of moral failure. Different strokes, and all that. But pinpointing why a book like WildC.A.T.S. v. 3.0 didn't sell is important, if only so its mistakes can be avoided (assuming that's possible). Maybe a lack of advertising really is to blame, at least in part. Before we accept that as recieved wisdom, though, let's make sure it's true.

The "received wisdom" part was linked to my entry regarding helping out titles while they're still alive, the one where I assigned my readers to go out and buy an issue of Lone and Runaways.

Dave's onto something, but first I want to clarify what my received wisdom was.

I agree with Steven Grant that retroactive activism is a waste of time and doesn't serve any real purpose. It's kvetching for the sake of kvetching, and lord knows us online comics fans love to bitch. I simply want them to take a more active role in the health of the titles they love.

I do believe that advertising now is greater than it probably ever has been, in the comics community. Back up: that's true, to a degree. How often do you see Fables advertised in Superman/Batman? Not very bloody often, that's what. Part of that is advertising to the demographic; part of that is a willful ghettoizing of titles. This is a reductive system: if you advertise Vertigo titles only to Vertigo readers, it stands to reason your base readership isn't really going to grow, is it?

Yes, there are the retarded segment of the fanboys that wear their aversion to anything new proudly on their sleeves. Yes, there are insufferable snobs on the other end of the spectrum, sniffing their noses at anything with a cape on the cover, foretelling the End of Comics As We Know It whenever they see another Wolverine guest appearance. These people are equally as backwards as the fanboys; their drug of choice (to the exclusion of all else) is simply different. Same shit, different pile.

Those people resist change like no other, and remain insular to the point of creative death. But they are the extreme minority, repeat EXTREME MINORITY of the comic book fanbase, the two opposing points on the spectrum. There's a fuckton of parity in between those two points, of people who read 90% superhero books and maybe a little bit of Planetary, to the guy who reads nothing but AiT/PlanetLar's booklist with a little dash of Batman for seasoning. There's something for every taste in the comics world, but not all of it is getting equal shelf space in every DM store from coast to coast.

So I don't know that the argument that "the market is what it is" is enough for me.

Let's say, as a hypothetical, public television is absolutely nothing but cop dramas. If you want a little bit of variety, maybe some law dramas and hospital dramas, you get your basic cable installed for a bit of a fee and a bit of a hassle. If you really want some variety, maybe some comedies, some horror, and so on and so forth, you have to get premium cable, for a larger fee and a greater hassle.

And if you want every possible bit of fiction and nonfiction alike, you have to get some mega-service, like 500 channels of cable or satellite TV. This costs you installation fees, absurd monthly fees, the hassle of dealing with service changes, changing rates, and a lot of extra baggage besides.

It's feasible that a person with nothing but cop dramas wants more out of his TV, but he doesn't have the time, patience, and/or available service to get more. The market is what it is, sure, but willing customers are also limited by outside factors. Have you seen the crap on the three networks lately? Does any of that speak to you? Does it speak to the majority of the people you know?

Most likely the answer is "no." But you have to deal with it, because that's what takes up the most space and gets the most exposure.

I would also say that Dave's argument is based on the assumption that every single comic book fan is tapped into the blogosphere, news sites, and Wizard magazine on a regular basis. I say this isn't so. How many regulars do you know on message boards and blogs? Maybe a thousand, in all? Two thousand? The major blogs (such as Fanboy Rampage) get about 800 unique visitors a day -- a miniscule percentage of the estimated couple hundred thousand comic book readers.

We are not all tapped into the pulse of the industry, due in part to sheer ignorance of the matter or willful avoidance. I would suggest that the online talkers, like us, are the extreme minority of fandom.

The rest just don't know about Rocket Comics. Or Oni. Or Avatar. The DM stores don't advertise them and in many cases can't afford to give them shelf space. So they're not talking about them, and their shoppers never learn. The "the market is what it is" argument presupposes that every single comic book buyer knows everything there is to know and acts on it accordingly. I do not believe this is the case. They just need exposure.

Which is where what I was talking about earlier today comes into play: comics advocacy. If you like something, spread the word. The response I got from people over the GREAT LOSERS GIVEAWAY was enough proof to me that there's comic fans and non-comic fans alike who want to see something new and different, and were almost searching for an excuse to try out a new title they knew nothing about.

People are not ignorant unless you treat them as ignorant.

Which is what, I think, most comic book companies do, unconsciously. They aren't trying to snare new fans; they're trying to keep the same fans in circulation on similar titles. There's no growth, and no organized push for growth. So, bit by bit, that's what me and my good buddies are trying to do. Create awareness. Create growth. Reach new audiences. Spread the word.

And you know what?

It works.

ADDENDUM: Rick over at Eat More People chimes in with his two cents, and it's worth taking a gander at. Us bloggers get lucid and prolific in the wee hours of the morning, don't we?

ADDENDUM, PART DEUX: Shane chimes in with his thoughts on the advertising/market debate, taking more of a center role (being that Shane is a rational person.) Interesting thoughts, and a quick analysis of what a gaming magazine's ads look like compared to the ads in a comic book. It's enlightening.

NeilAlien also chimes in and, in his usual style, summarizes everything perfectly in like a paragraph. That bastard.

(Whew. Kind of went off on a rant there, didn't I? Don't get me wrong, Dave -- I'm not pissed at you or something, not even close. You said something provocative, and I responded. Bravo.)

And what I thought, because mine is the Only Opinion That Matters:

Rich Johnston's Holed Up #1 -- In order to have successful satire, you must have a recognizable target shown, bit by bit, to be totally and completely insane. Rich Johnston skips all that tough setup stuff, took some notes from The Unfunnies while completely missing the point, and slapped on a half-assed sitcom look and feel (stolen from Natural Born Killers, I'd wager) to bring us what is supposed to be a caustic look at some of the nuttier aspects of American life. Instead, all we get is a comic book of caricatures that's just pretty lame and aimless, and leaves me asking that deadliest of questions: "What's the point?"

Rating: Won't make that mistake again.

The Walking Dead #6 -- Grim, grim, grim. We've reached that inevitable point in the Zombie Apocalypse Survivors story where the chain of survivors distintegrates link by link. This could be overwrought, but Kirkman has a knack for taking old conventions and finding something new to do with them. In the process, he gleans new truths out of old stories. The ending's a bit heavy-handed, but I'll grant Kirkman that after all the fine, fine work he's turned out on this series so far. And I will sorely miss Tony Moore when he is gone.

(Though what I've seen of Charlie Adlard's work is trés impressive, and far moodier than Moore's work.)

Rating: Zombie-rific.

Lone #6 -- Thus ends one of the quirkiest, oddest, and most interesting mini-series on the market. It's a fairly standard action ending to an action title, with some fairly standard conventions on who dies and who doesn't, but these characters are sharply drawn and its villain so easily hateable that you have no choice but to be sucked in. The whole series is highly recommended, and I'm eager to see if it'll be collected into a TPB.

Rating: Sad to see it go. We shall miss you, Lone.

Batman: Gotham Knights #52 -- Thank god for this series. Now that Azzarello's off the main title, to be replaced by Judd "Bleh" Winick, I was starting to wonder where I'd get my Dark Knight fix. Hush, in his much-lauded debut series, was nothing but a blank slate upon which an evil motive was placed; here, Lieberman fleshes him out as the smart, ambitious, and ruthless villain only hinted at previously. The Joker's rant about who the real power in Gotham is ("ME!") is a classic scene, and I like seeing how ol' Jokey operates, behind the one-liners and homicidal mania. This storyline, if it keeps its current course, is going to be one hell of a rumble in Gotham.

Rating: The bitch is BACK!

Robin #125 -- The much-vaunted issue where Tim Drake throws down the mantle of Robin, a sabbatical I predict will last approximately six issues (just enough to get a "NEW ROBIN!" TPB out of it) before things get back to normal. That being said, Bill Willingham can write him some dialogue, though his readily apparent skill at storytelling is hampered by De La Fuente's complete disregard of anatomy, angles, perspective, and consistent character design. An interesting diversion overall.

Rating: Just stick to the dialogue balloons.

Fraction #1 -- Another strong title out of the DC Focus stable. The superheroic conceit featured in this title is that classic mainstay, the powersuit. Except: not just one average joe stumbles across it, but four of them, old buddies and part-time losers all. There's a clever (if overt) usage of color to indicate how each of these four friends regard this new wildcard in their life, and I can only hope the morality at work doesn't stay so cut and dry.

Rating: Definite, definite potential. Pick it up and give it a try.

Reviews for Daredevil #59, Runaways #14, and Ultimate Spider-man #57 later on. Probably tomorrow.

Maybe your junk is getting a little uppity? Maybe a little too big? Mayhap you need some help from these guys?

Or maybe you're unclear as to what this "in the junk" business is all about. Luckily, someone has posted a step-by-step display of what it means to be Kicked in the Junk.

Like so:

(Blame Shane.)

Just how unique do you think you are?

Want to find out?

If it turns out you are... there are professionals who can help.

(Thank you for participating in Adventures in Corporate Schillhood.)

Steven Grant talks about cancellations, along with many other topics.

Shane quotes this very same paragraph, but I believe it bears reiterating. This is why we did something like the Great Losers Giveaway, and why we'll continue to run giveaways like that in the very near future for other Titles In Trouble:

Recently the comics world was "rocked" by the sudden cancellation of Wildstorm's WILDCATS 3.0 and STORMWATCH:ACHILLES, despite a recent high-profile crossover that involved both books with on-off hit THE AUTHORITY and another tenuous but highly-regarded title, SLEEPER, and brought a sales bounce to them. Both brought new ideas and new takes to the well-trod superhero genre. WILDCATS 3.0 was a unique attempt to upgrade superbeings to a corporate environment. STORMWATCH:ACHILLES was a highly politicized series about paramilitary human response to super-action. Both were well done. Both had audiences. And only an idiot would be surprised by the cancellations.

Because, good as they were, they weren't selling.

Bitching and moaning won't do it. Lamenting it all after the fact, saying the comics industry is doomed after good titles get bounced -- that solves nothing and helps no one. Find new titles that are worth your time, and talk about them. Buy a few extra issues and give them to your comics-reading friends.

Is that so hard?

It's not, believe me.

Reaction is not enough in this business. It's a small business, small and insular, and incredibly hard to find safe ground for a relatively unknown product. This means you have no time to sit back and doomsay only after your title of choice gets the can. If that really is all you can offer, then please kindly shut your trap and let people with some initiative do the talking. You folks are like those professional mourners of ancient Egypt: Wailing and moaning and gnashing your teeth, lamenting the death of someone you never really cared about in the first place.

At the risk of coining a cheesy phrase, turn your reaction into action. Take the initiative, for once.

Your assignment: Buy Runaways #14 and Lone #6. No questions asked, just DO IT. If it intrigues you, and you want to know more, BUY THE OTHER ISSUES. If you still like them, then buy a couple more for your friends (you can spare $5 for your buddies, right?)

That is the first step to affecting change.

Move. You have your orders.

Johnny Dynamite: Underworld is a blast. It's the kind of book that makes me want to recite the James Ellroy "perverts, pederasts, and panty-sniffers" routine (which I know by heart, scarily enough). It makes me want to soak in some bad 50's monster movies. It makes me want to crack open some Mickey Spillane, and maybe swing a gold watch by its chain while I do it.

And, strangely, it makes me want to watch From Dusk Till Dawn. While you read the plot summary, see if you can figure out why.

Like any decent detective story, it all starts because of a dame. She's blonde (of course), she's leggy (duh), she's a soiled dove with a heart of gold (natch.) This particular blonde is an old fling of the titular private eye, now starring in movies funded by Vegas mafioso Tony Mal. Tony Mal beats her, she runs to Dynamite, Dynamite runs back to Mal, takes care of business, comes back to the girl, finds out she's dead, takes out Mal, and takes out Mal's boy what killed the blonde.

Or so we think...

In a truly twisted, truly memorable sequence, Mal's hitman (Freddie Faust) wanders the desert Dynamite dumped him in, gutshot and dying, until he stumbles upon a nightclub tableau worthy of any bar in Hollywood, circa 1955, bartended by none other than the Lord of Darkness. Faust, because it's in his goddamn name, cuts a deal with El Diablo -- near-immortality and a clean slate to work his dastardly mob magic. Faust gets the know-how to create an army of zombie mobsters to do his bidding, Tony Mal's old empire, and two caveats to all of this: Don't use supernatural muscle overtly, and be careful of the one man who can kill you.

No points for guessing who that is.

What follows is a cofidently spun tale of mobster shootouts, zombie attacks, blonde beddings, and good old-fashioned hardboiled PI narration set to the soothing lines of Terry Beatty's so-50's-you-could-choke artistry. That said, I've got to agree with Johnny Bacardi's assessment of the occasional stiffness of Beatty's work; you get the sense of mannequins posing in some panels, rather than smooth, natural human motion. For me, this is a minor problem. Except for a few semi-sloppy two-page action sequences early on, Beatty does his part in storytelling in a pretty conventional but completely mastered style. Max Allan Collins has complete control over the pacing of his story, moving along at a steady pace neither zippy nor plodding. Combine those two talents and you have a hell of a spine to build a story on.

I got a lot of joy out of this book. I rather liked the parallels between the genre clashings presented, and that every blonde bombshell in the story worked on movies that had pretty much the same material; and maybe it's just the schlock horror fan in me, but damn if the mobster-zombie elements weren't done in a pretty competent and, in this story's own rules, completely convincing manner.

It all comes back to that nightclub scene in the desert, for me. A ninety-degree turn in genre like this one has can be death for a narrative, but the sheer oddity of the tuxedoed Satan and his pitch is such an amusing (and ballsy) spectacle that you can't help but keep turning the pages, if for no other reason than to see what the hell Collins has up his sleeve next. And before you know it, you're seeing mobster zombies and nodding your head, like it makes sense or something.

And damned if it doesn't, too.

Rating: Buy it right the fuck now. This bad boy's only $13, and I'd gladly pay $20.

Last communique from Graeme of Fanboy Rampage before he goes off to the wild blue yonder of the Grand Canyon. Less a single column and more just a smattering of thoughts, it's still a pretty damn good read. Observe:

What seems to be happening at Wildstorm is that DC – or that particular imprint at DC, anyway – are now starting to follow Marvel’s lead more than a little bit. Not only are they seemingly culling the lower-selling titles (with Authority being relaunched with a creative team that will make a lot of people very happy, and Sleeper surviving due to good sales in trade format), but if rumors are to be believed, Wildcats may be relaunched again as a mainstream superhero title, with the characters back in superhero costumes and going back to the simpler world of Good Versus Evil… just like Marvel are doing with their X-Men franchise. It’s an interesting route to take, if that is what’s going on; they’re definitely following the money by retracing the steps of American comics’ most successful franchise, but how much of that success is down to reader apathy and buying what they know, and how much is down to the actual content is always up for debate. And it’s not as if Wildstorm’s Gen13 revamp, which took the concept into much more old school superteam territory (and was written by X-Men Reload’s chief architect, Chris Claremont) was a big success…

(From Broken Frontier.)

Lifted wholesale from EW.com:

The release of ''Star Wars: Episode III'' is still more than a year away, but in five months, you can get a good idea of how baby-faced Jedi Anakin Skywalker becomes black-masked villain Darth Vader. Lucasfilm announced on Monday that the upcoming DVD set of the original ''Star Wars'' trilogy, due Sept. 21, will offer a whopping 10 hours of extras, including a preview called ''The Return of Darth Vader.'' The preview will feature George Lucas discussing Anakin's seduction by the dark side of the Force, show the new Vader costume that Hayden Christensen will wear in ''Episode III,'' and detail the preparation for the epic lightsaber battle between Christensen's Anakin and Ewan McGregor's Obi-Wan Kenobi.

The DVD box will contain four discs: one disc each for ''Star Wars,'' ''The Empire Strikes Back,'' and ''The Return of the Jedi'' (complete with commentary tracks by Lucas, Carrie Fisher, and others associated with the movies), and a fourth disc of bonuses. They include a two-and-a-half-hour making-of documentary, testimonials by filmmakers influenced by ''Star Wars,'' hundreds of previously unseen production stills, and previews of two upcoming video games. That should last you until next May, no?

Excuse me while I change my pants.

A mere $5, from the folks at T-Shirt Hell.

Buy one.

That is some funny shit. "In the junk" is one of the greatest phrases of all time to slap on the end of a sentence. Try it!

Also good to throw onto the end of a sentence:

"In accordance with prophecy."

Usage: "I will buy a novelty-sized cookie, in accordance with prophecy."

Or, as stolen from Amazing Spider-Man #129,

"This the Jackal swears!"

Usage: "Nose hairs grow like a foot a minute, this the Jackal swears!"

(Image swiped from ChaosMonkey's Abysmal Pit, which is loads of fun to type out.)

Imagine, if you will, four panels on a page, one in each corner, of equal size to the others. In the top left panel we see a distant shot of a complex of ancient Egyptian temples and monuments and gateways, and much smoke is blowing. A man dressed as a Big Bird facsimile is punching a guy in a stovepipe hat in the face.

In the top right panel, we see the entrance to a sacred temple, and a gorilla wearing shoulder armor, goggles, and a utility belt is being helped out by a woman in fox-hunting gear, who has a cybernetic arm.

Bottom left panel: A pirate has his fist reared back to punch his captor, a man dressed like a pharoah by way of the Kiss army. Both look off-panel, stunned, presumably at the gorilla and the woman with the cybernetic arm.

Bottom right panel: Close up on the gorilla and the woman. The gorilla is giving a thumbs up, because hey, why not, right?

And that, right there, is Sky Ape: Waiting For Crime. A zany and (dare I say?) madcap comic book that, at least in this installment, hits about as often as it misses. You get the impression that the writing team behind this concoction were trying just a wee bit too hard to be zany and madcap.

Let's back up: I confess I have not read the first Sky Ape collection, but this is a fairly self-contained volume, and any background information we need can be inferred or is supplied to us (such as the origin of the woman-in-riding-gear-with-cybernetic-arm, Francis.

The breakdown? Skyape is a gorilla-accountant by day, gorilla-with-jetpack by night. He can talk. He has his secret identity. He has his buddy Francis, who he secretly lusts for, and a companion (friend? ally?) and mad scientist Peyton Fenway. The problem? Rather unusual installments are showing up in ancient city structures: a spa in a pyramid, vinyl siding on the pueblos of the Anasazi, baseboard heating in the ancient cities of Peru -- someone is going back in time and installing cheap crap on ancient monuments!

I would not dream of telling you who's doing it, or why. Suffice to say the reasoning and methodology are right on par, sanity-wise, with the Kissy army pharoah.

I'm really on the fence here. A lot of the humor relies on wacky non sequitors and pop culture references, and those don't hold a lot of weight with me unless they're done really, really, really well (and sparingly). Examples:

Maintenance man: You called, sir? We're here to spray for Ted Nugent.

See? Funny. I'll be using that line for ages.

Owen Dangertooth: Sorry we're late, buddy! I was busy wiping my ass on Fred Durst!

Eh, not so much. Don't get me wrong, wiping my ass on Fred Durst is a long-held fantasy of mine, but I doubt that joke will pack any punch in three years' time. Ted Nugent, on the other hand, is immortal.

I guess the final verdict comes down to this: If I had not received this for free, I probably would not have bought it, even though it's only $6.95. Then again, perhaps this just isn't prime Sky Ape territory. My local DM store has a copy of the first TPB, so maybe I'll pick that up, see what it does for me...

Jeff over at Otto's Coffee Shop (and what's that name mean, anyway?) has some good, sharp TV reviews up. I've never heard, nor do I think I'll ever hear, a more accurate description of Al Swearengen from Deadwood's dialogue than this:

I love the way that Swearengen uses words like "fuck" and "cocksucker" the way the rest of us use "the" and "and."

I, too, hope for one day to use those words so fluently. Jeff: might I suggest that Swearengen uses the word "cunt" like we use a less-frequent but fairly common word, such as "hello"?

I'm glad they've set up Swearengen and Tolliver to have a more practical working relationship. I didn't want to see blood on the streets right away for it, because I think both saloon owners are way too smart for that. And I rather like Swearengen (bastard that he is) and would have resented some new guy coming in and just wiping him off the face of the earth five episodes in.

Best new show on television, bar none.

Someone came to this site after searching for "you're still a homo chips ponch" on Google.

Give it a try.

(Got a headlight to put into my car. After that, it's comic book blogging time.)

Taken verbatim from Rich Johnston's "Lying in the Gutters" column, so take it as you will:

Gutterati Nate Southand emails me with a "Sin City" location report from the upcoming Rodriguez/Millar movie.

"A friend of mine worked as an extra on 'Sin City' yesterday, and he had some exciting news.

"They were filming the strip club scene. Apparently, this will be the most faithful adaptation of a comic in history, because their shooting script was xeroxed copies of Sin City. They line up the camera to look like the panel, and they shoot.

"They're filming 'Sin City, That Yellow Bastard' and 'The Big Fat Kill.' The stories will be cut together 'Pulp Fiction' style. An intro starring Josh Hartnett is from 'Booze, Broads, and Bullets.'

"Mickey Rourke as Marv. They used prosthetics to make him true to the comic: square jaw, flat nose, everything.

"Nancy hasn't been cast yet. They used a stand in.

"Frank Miller is on set."

I'm not one for hyperbole (is that one right there?), but you know what? If all this is true, and if it's true that Tarantino might do a segment or two... this could be the comic book movie that finally breaks ground with the critics. Real ground. This could be The One, folks.

So I'm browsing the fancy "high-end" Marvel store, the Official One, and it's 2:30, and I notice two very funny things.

First is this, a little graphic that Reed Richards might have some complaints about:

If you're old enough to read this blog, I don't need to explain the joke.

And then there's this, described thusly:

Marvel Legends 6" Thing

Features more than 30 points of articulation and a wall-mountable display base. Stands 6” tall.

Tragically, there is no picture.

(Shut up. I cracked the hell up when I saw that stuff, and you did too.)

The Diamond list of comics shipping for Wednesday, courtesy of Johnny Bacardi (Latin hedonist!)

And what I'll be getting, because I know you're so very, very curious:

EL ZOMBO #1 (Of 3) $2.99: Full disclosure: I have no idea what this is, but that's a hell of a title.

LONE #6 $2.99: This is a mini-series, right? That's what I always thought.. if I'm incorrect in that, please let me know.

FRACTION #1 $2.50: Been bad about the Focus line. Hard Time is great, but I haven't yet touched anything else, but this one.. sounds good.

WALKING DEAD #6 (MR) $2.95: One of the best titles in comics. You have no reason for not buying this.

CABLE DEADPOOL #2 (RES) $2.99: One last chance to impress me.

RUNAWAYS #14 $2.99: A Title In Trouble. (A-TIT! Tee hee!) BUY IT! It's good loving. Can't go wrong with Vaughan.

GEORGE ROMEROS DAWN OF THE DEAD #1 (MR) $3.99: You know why. Steep price, though.

RICH JOHNSTONS HOLED UP #1 (Of 3) (MR) $3.50: Could be tacky and good, or could be tacky and bad. I'll find out.

I got the comic today, read a bunch of it, ended up at the mall later, and bought 7, 9 & 10, was pissed they didn't have 8, have to go to the comic shop for that.

love the comic, thanks.

That was from the second place guy, the one who broke his ass and let us know about it and won himself a copy of The Losers: Ante Up.

If you haven't bought it yet, what's your excuse?

Don't that just warm your bowels right up?

The Man speaketh:

[L]isten carefully. I support [Rush] Limbaugh's right to be on the radio. I feel it is fully equal to [Howard] Stern's. I find it strange that so many Americans describe themselves as patriotic when their values are anti-democratic and totalitarian. We are all familiar with Voltaire's great cry: ''I may disagree with what you say, but I shall defend, to the death, your right to say it.'' Ideas like his helped form the emerging American republic. Today, the Federal Communications Commission operates under an alternative slogan: ''Since a minority that is very important to this administration disagrees with what you say, shut up.''

Very good, if brief, read. I like this part:

Unlike millions of Americans, I do not listen to Rush Limbaugh on the radio. One reason for that is that I am usually at the movies when he's on the air -- an alternative I urge on his listeners.

Jim Treacher's haiku-review of Kill Bill 2:

In a mobile home
Swordplay is problematic
But keep an eye out

I'd just like to say I liked Volume 2 a lot more than Volume 1. It clicked. It's not as hectic and fast-paced as the first one, but that's fine; we get lots of nice, juicy dialogue to savor, and rock-solid performances from every single member of the cast. The first movie didn't have good performances so much as it had good lines delivered confidently -- but this one is a damned masterpiece.

Interesting interview with Jim Lee over at Broken Frontier. I've come to think Jim Lee is just a really cool guy. Anyone got anything to counter that?

Anyway, there's this:

BF: How would you compare the talents of Brian Azzarello with those of your former collaborator Jeph Loeb? What does either writer bring to the table that your artistic talents can take advantage of?

JL: Both are great writers to work with. Jeph stages things more elaborately, very cinematically. Brian has a lot of the tension come through dialogue, through silent beats. I’m drawing a lot more shots where the camera is cutting back and forth between the characters or holding still on one character while he ‘acts’ out his lines. They both have a flair for the dramatic though and I consider them both not only to be some of the top writers in the field today but also good buds.

Which, well, I can only hope Lee's being diplomatic there. I guess Loeb could be considered a "top writer" because he sells so well, and Azzarello because he writes so well... anyway.

And check out how closely BF gets to asking about the cancellations of two top Wildstorm titles, and then dances right away from it again:

BF: About WildStorm, fans are heavily discussing what the new direction of the WS universe with Coup D’Etat having wrapped up. What factors do you think led to the necessity of a new course?

JL: While the books were very well received and critically acclaimed, we felt we needed some big event to make retailers and fans take notice. We felt if they gave the line a chance, they would stick around because I happen to feel the creative teams on all the Eye Of The Storm books are top notch. I think in years going forward, these will be the superhero books fans will look most fondly back on for doing very different and cutting edge work. Getting some marketing muscle and dollars out there to open the eyes to the rest of the fans was the goal and from the numbers we got, it looks like we succeeded. Now we have to continue delivering the goods and come up with other ways to make people take notice. It’s sad that a lot of the very best comics today are on the verge of cancellation.

Which would be a perfect lead-in, right? You'd think Jim Lee is giving the BF interviewer an opening to ask about the cancellations of WildCATS and Stormwatch, right? I mean, Jim Lee wasn't personally involved in the cancellations, but Wildstorm is his baby, so it would only seem logical...

Here's the next question:

BF: Is there anything you can reveal about what will be done in the next couple of months to make WildStorm bolder and better?

Dickheads.

NEWS THAT IS NOT NEWS: I am a moron, and my reading skills today are apparently faulty. The interview took place before the announcement of the titles' cancellations. Whoops.

Now who's the dickhead.

From EW.com:

Second place, as expected, went to ''The Punisher,'' the comic-book-based thriller starring Thomas Jane, Rebecca Romijn-Stamos, and John Travolta, with $14 million. That's considerably lower than the $23.2 million debut of ''Hellboy'' two weeks ago. Could audiences be tiring of these comic-book flicks? With ''Spider-Man 2'' less than three months away, don't count on it.

This annoys me. El Castigador rakes in $4 million more than was anticipated, brings in Lion's Gate Films' highest opening weekend gross ever, and they bring in this shit about people "tiring of comic book movies."

Let's get something straight here: Hellboy opened up against nothing. The other releases that week were fucking Home on the Range, Walking Tall, and The Prince and Me. It did not have to open against A QUENTIN TARANTINO MOVIE. It also had twice the marketing behind it that El Castigador did.

Anyway, according to Box Office Guru, the numbers on El Castigador were pretty damn solid:

Opening in second place was another revenge-driven action film, the Lions Gate release The Punisher with an estimated $14M. The Thomas Jane-John Travolta pic averaged a solid $5,285 from 2,649 theaters despite facing competition from Kill Bill.

Ahem. I get defensive. Sorry.

(EW link provided by Fanboy Rampage.)

Gah!

(I'll get to the comics in a minute.)

Doom 3.

Not sure why they're calling it Doom 3, as it appears to be a redo of Doom 1, but I don't care. It's DOOM, baby! The first game I ever bought for the computer was Wolfenstein 3D, complete with the shareware of Doom, Episode I: Knee Deep in the Dead. I remember being genuinely scared by the sound effects of distant zombies.

The pink demons still freak me out, sometimes.

And I, somehow, managed to get a beta of Doom 2 long before anyone I knew could ever get their hands on the game... and I became the coolest kid on the block. And a badass on DWANGO (anyone remember that?)

I just hope they have something in Doom 3 that's as viscerally satisfying as the sound of the double-barreled shotgun blasting nice and loud, and klik-klaking in reload.

(Link thanks to Wil.)

I'm really glad that Nazi saboteur killed the doctor who pumped Steve Rogers full of his super soldier serum.

(Lordy, did that sound homoerotic.)

Because like, the plan was, to make a BUNCH of these guys, right? A bunch of Captain Americas, running around and kicking Nazi ass. While I have no doubt that if that plan had come to fruition, these super soldiers would be kicking Hitler's head around by suppertime, what do we do with these guys afterwards? I mean we can presume they'd all have fancy neato shields, so just popping them two in the head wouldn't work out so well.

It's not like they would all be as noble and heroic as Steve Rogers, right? Even if you just injected one platoon of guys with this serum and gave them indestructible shields, that's 29 guys whose only distinguishing characteristics is that they are between the ages of 18 and 25, male, and weren't good enough for the army to throw onto the front lines as cannon fodder. And they aren't all going to conveniently get frozen in an ice floe, mister.

Can you imagine what would happen if you injected the cast of the latest Survivor with the super soldier serum, and made them super strong, super tough, tactically brilliant and functionally immortal?

Okay, how about the New York Yankees?

The anchors and anchorettes of Fox News? Bill fucking O'Reilly?

If you tell me that doesn't send shivers of fear right down your spine and into your bowels, then you, sir, are a liar.

(That "Avast" key fucking slays me.)

Have you ever giggled like a goddamned fool? You get the giggles so hard, so fiercely, that no matter how hard you try to stop, no matter how many people stare, you just can't quite shake them?

Like when the priest cuts a mean fart during Communion? How about when your faithful dog runs smack-dab into the glass patio door, just trot-trot-trot-kaPOW? Or like that one video that was passed around in everyone's e-mail, the one of the cat clinging to a spinning ceiling fan before it gave up the ghost and flew right into a wall? Or that time when Jeff Daniels decked Lauren Holly in the face with a snowball in Dumb and Dumber? Or when a kid totally kicks some guy in the balls, and that guy makes that pop-eyed "holy jesus!" face right before he falls over?

That's Scurvy Dogs.

This is a pirate comic, and no pirate comic is complete without a colorful crew, so let me see if I can get this straight: You got the Menudo-American guy with the pet vulture (named Pete, of course), you've got the surly Irish guy who knows the difference between sea shanties and maritime tunes, you've got the old geezer who eats everything and has a handful of origin stories for his hook, and you've got the chinese guy who doesn't talk. All these guys do indeed have a pirate ship, wear eye patches and hats with the old Jolly Roger emblazoned right on the front, but these guys operate in the real world. Or, at least, the kind of "real world" that allows for vikings from the future and the King of the Hobo Mafia (he of the bitchin' cape.)

Brilliant.

Just about every funny B&W comic I run across, I end up comparing to The Tick, and I think that in this case the comparison has some validity (if only in form and not content.) Both comics set up their own totally insane world, and both operate flawlessly within the parameters of that world. There's a kind of energy running through these panels, a speed and a sharpness so completely mastered that Andrew Boyd and Ryan Yount make all of this look effortless.

(Secret: It's not. Otherwise we'd have more books like this one.)

Enough of that high-falutin' crap. This is a goddamned funny book, and I'm still giggling like a fool. ("The priest! He farted!") And I ask, has there ever been a finer sentence put to print than this one?:

"C'mon, boys, let's show these Portugese lepers why we call them the 'pinatas of the sea.'"

I submit to you that there has not.

Rating: "Right in the middle of Communion!"

(Web page.)

...and you like gaming of every variety possible, from console to tabletop RPG, then be sure to check out the Penny Arcade Expo.

I'd pitch it, but then Gabe and Tycho have already taken care of that:

Whatever your obsession, chances are good that we will have something to interest you - it only starts with rooms for tabletop gaming, and a robust LAN rocking the newest Unreal Tournament or Battlefield games. Linked consoles for Mario Kart, Crimson Skies or Splinter Cell. Want to hear how to break into the industry? Stop by one of our many industry panels. Want to pitch your game ideas to the pros? This is also something we have.

Maybe you'd like to actually get your hands on some of the things they showed at E3. That's something we can hook up. Maybe you would like to hear rock bands perform interpretations of console hits. We have that as well. You might be wondering if there will be a full screening of the Red Vs. Blue DVD. Yes!

In short, there was an event we wanted to go to that did not yet exist. We decided to fix that.

(CW)TB

Not bad. Not bad at all. It's kind of unfortunate that I live in Texas. Which is, you know... half a country away.

Saw El Castigador again, because I figure I should at least donate my $7.50. Tim Bradstreet was there, which was neat, and I got an autographed poster, which was even neater.

Anyway. The movie was much better the second time around. It still has some pacing problems, some score problems, some tone problems. But I realize the first screening was seen under pretty bad conditions: small theater, shitty sound system, guys who would whoop loudly every time a pretty girl came on screen (and with Laura Harring and Rebecca Romijn in the cast, that was pretty often), and so on and so forth. An unpleasant viewing experience for any movie.

If you're on the fence, go see it. There's some cheesiness there I could do without, but it's a viscerally satisfying flick. And Tom Jane is a perfect Frank Castle.

Second-finest column in comics. This one about the whole CrossGen/American Power mess. No finer breakdown of that situation has yet been written.

Look, it really is as simple as Graeme lays it out, folks. This isn't a political issue. And conservative pundits of the comic book world? I can't help but feel you're rushing to this book's defense for no other reason than Chuck Dixon is nominally one of you. There is no way you can defend what is so obviously a complete piece of garbage.

To neocon comic book talking heads: just because Dixon says he's one of you, that doesn't mean you have to rush to his aid. I am a dyed-in-the-wool liberal, but I don't feel the need to defend any and every crackpot left-of-center because other people say he has the same politics I do. I'm not a vegan, I believe in the death penalty in certain circumstances, and I am not a zombie to the party line. Neither should you be.

Chuck Dixon, much as I like some of his work, is not a conservative. He's just fucking crazy.

At least that's how I felt, opening up my box from AiT/PlanetLar. I thought, you know, I'd be getting like a couple issues of Demo (which I'm still very much on the fence about, as a series) and a hardcover or two.

Oh no.

What I got can only be described as "a metric fuckload." Or perhaps "shit-ton." Or maybe even "godDAMN but that is a lot of comics."

So yes, I'm here to tell you I, Ken Lowery, have sold out.

Don't worry, though. If I don't like something, I'll let you know. Freebies are cool, but these free items are not intended as a bribe, and I'm not taking them like one.

Looks like I got some weekend reading to do...

Shane has posted the first part of his multi-part overview of the City of Heroes beta. This stuff gets my dork senses tingling, man.

Who's up for creating an all-blogger mega-team when this hits the market? C'mon, don't be shy!

(Dibs on the Natural-Scrapper-Medieval Weaponry combination!)

Rating at a glance for El Castigador -- 3 out of 5. The rest of the reviews I've seen are wildly across the board. Some loved it, some felt more could have been done with the material, others felt it fell far short of its potential. I can see validity in each argument.

(Though I think it is worth pointing out that Rolling Stone review. RS is a flaming pile of shit, but Peter Travers generally has it together.)

I'm not going to make this a fancy movie review. It's 3am, and I'm tired, and my bed is like a foot and a half away. If this review seems disjointed, and like it's hopping all over the place, then there's your reason. Back off.

The Punisher is a movie with problems, though one that nonetheless manages to entertain. We have a movie attempting to walk that fine line between gruesomeness and humor -- the one that Ennis and Dillon walk so effortlessly -- and, perhaps about half of the time, missteps and miscalculates. But when it's on... wow.

I'm not going to bother you with a story. Frank Castle's family dies, he hunts down the people responsible and in the process makes the transformation into the Punisher. All the bad people die, and Castle does not. We know this about Punisher stories. That's all window dressing. The how's and the why's -- the visceral fun of how the baddies die, and the slightly deeper implications of why Castle is doing what he's doing -- are the important parts.

It's the origin I have trouble with. This isn't me picking it apart as some kind of namby-pamby fanboy, oh no. This is me, a longtime reader (first time caller!), tapping my fingers on the armrests, watching that slow transition from the death of Castle's family to his first kill, silently chanting get on with it. It's impatience, pretty much; I know all of the details of the transformation, and I don't need to see yet another rendition. Will this stretch of screentime bore or interest non-comic book fans? I haven't the foggiest idea.

And then enters the Russian, and I could feel the audience (or was it just me, projecting?) get snapped right back into the movie in a vital way. The fight scene with Senor Russian is long, brutal, humorous, wince-inducing, and almost punch-for-stab lifted directly from the "Welcome Back, Frank" source material. After this scene, the movie picks up speed: we watch as Castle methodically sets his traps and offs his prey, one by one, dismantling an entire criminal empire in a few deft, crafty, and rather brutal strokes. From the Russian on, this movie reaches its rather bloody plateau.

And there really are some moments of sick genius. Keep an eye out for a take on Chuck Dixon's classic blowtorch interrogation scene.

The direction is uneven, as is the pacing of the story. We have brief outbursts of violence as a few would-be assassins make their move on Castle during the first half of the movie, punctuating long stretches of not much else. The brutality and violence are unglamorized (at least until, again, the Russian), especially the origin segment wherein three generations of Castle get murdered, but I suppose this is appropriate. To sex up the murder of men, women, and children would cross the line into the perverse.

I have issues with a few trappings of this movie, specifically the two designed to set the tone as a kind of 70's revenge movie or revenge western. Don't get me wrong: I don't mind those two styles of movie at all. I think we're rather lacking in them both, lately. But...

The opening title cards, I have no idea what the hell's going on there, or who thought those were a good idea. I had rather uncomfortable flashbacks to the opening titles for the Dolph Lundgren, and it's.. just.. well.. cheesy. There's no other word for it.

Second major complaint is the score. It's obtrusive. Majorly obtrusive. The movie's score is composed by Carlo Siliotto, who's an old understudy of Ennio Morricone and will not let you forget it. Once again, when we reach the Russian scene and points beyond, the loftiness of the trumpets begins to make a bit more sense -- but Jesus jumped up on a pogostick, man. You remember that old AMC slogan? Sometimes, SILENCE IS GOLDEN.

Anyway. Will you have a good time? Probably, so long as you're not expecting a brain workout. That's not me saying "it's dumb" -- though some critics will undoubtedly tell you it is -- just me saying it's a straightforward story, beginning to end.

And good god, does it get brutal. Two-word review: "Nasty fun."

Keep an eye out for Thomas Jane's upcoming Stander. If this movie doesn't make him a star, Stander will at least earn him some chops among the critics' circles.

(And, Xe, in case you needed more reasons to like Frank Castle, he manages to slip in a diss on the Skankees. Kind of funny, considering his comic book counterpart is a born and raised New Yorker.)

Fun post about City of Heroes on the front page of 8-Bit Theater. If you are interested in this game as much as I am, then by god, take a read.

This paragraph alone (about other cockholes, as my roommate put it, not being able to interfere in your missions) shall spawn me a new slogan for Ringwood Ragefuck:

When we're in the middle of something like roleplaying, which boils down to typing the likes of "QUERY: SO MUCH BLOOD, BUT WHERE IS HUMAN LOVE?" to make each other laugh, we don't need Vegetorz_SayenXZ storming onto the scene.

Holy jesus.

ADDENDUM: Larry Young sent me an email noting that the CITY OF HEROES comic, available soon from your local retailer through Diamond Comics, sports artwork by Brandon McKinney, he of SWITCHBLADE HONEY and PLANET OF THE CAPES. If there isn't a second volume of SH or POTC, blame the allure of that fat cash The Divine Mister B rakes in from Corporate Video Games.

I did not, repeat did not C&P that directly from an e-mail sent to me by Larry. Nosir. No way. Huh uh.

My integrity has not been compromised.

(Because I have no integrity.)

There's a discussion going on over at Fanboy Rampage about a comment made by Andy Diggle, writer of The Losers and Swamp Thing. His money quote goes something like this:

"The X-Men back in spandex. Doom Patrol goes 70s. Wildcats 3.0 cancelled. What fucking century is this... ? I need a drink."

The usual responses are coming from all around. Those that concede with what Diggle's said want to blame either the DM and readers (as if they were one entity), or the publishers (in this case, the Big Two, DC and Marvel, also treated as if they were one entity.)

And once again we see the basic flaw in thinking that many, many, many otherwise intelligent critics and comic fans wear on their sleeve when this discussion (or one like it) comes up. Everything's in black and white. It's either this or it's that. You're either a Marvel or DC fan, you either love nothing but superheroes or hate superheroes with the searing heat of a thousand white-hot suns.

As we know from real life, one side or another in every artistic medium cannot bear the full blame. Black and white mentality never solves anything. The issue is always, always, always much stickier than that.

The arguments go something like this:

It's the Big Two's fault: "The Lords and Masters of Marvel and DC hate all creativity and would skin their money directly from the backs of Ethiopian orphans if it were possible. Innovation is the enemy. They all sit in smokey boardrooms and talk about how they can fuck over the youth of American in new and interesting ways. Their stagnation is the death knell of the industry. Blah blah Quesada blah blah sellout blah blah corporate blah blah Barnes & Noble blah blah capes blah blah man-panties."

Problems with this argument: Yes, it's quite true that a lot of Marvel's and DC's current policies seem to indicate they're backtracking. There's a potential revolution on their hands that they're not going for. But you know what?

Revolutions cost money. Revolutions are risky and quite dangerous to public image and to the wallet. Publishing risky books in high quantities, advertising for them as you would a new Superman/Batman crossover, all that shit equals a lot of money spent that simply won't be made back for a long, long time. Trends emerge slowly and catch on with the mainstream audience years after their heralds are first published.

The Big Two are in the rather precarious position of being the yardstick by which the entire industry is measured and gauged. Both are monoliths in comparison to places like Image or Dark Horse or Oni, but are absolute peons when you compre them to Simon & Schuster or Paramount Pictures. The money scales are so vastly different, and the industry so much smaller, that Marvel and DC simply cannot afford to publish tons of risk titles.

Everyone likes to bitch and gripe about how bankrupt the industry is, how it's always on the very precipice of utter failure, and then turn around and bitch at Marvel for putting out five Spider-Man titles instead of a bunch of watered-down Chasing Amy-esque semi-autobiographical wankfests written by self-important nobodies (lord knows I've bitched about it.) And they fail to see the connection. Marvel and DC do not have a lot of money. In order to get a lot of money that can be spent on aforementioned wankfests, they must first generate disposable profit. How is this accomplished?

By releasing twenty (yes, twenty) Spider-Man books in the month of May, for starters.

Do you understand, now? Do you get it? These are corporations that must, at all times, turn a profit. Comics sell little enough as it is. These companies do not have the room to release title after title of untested, unreliable material. No corporation in the world works that way; why do we expect the Big Two to operate differently? If one of them did operate that way, they'd sink in about two years. Can you imagine what the comic book world would be like if Marvel or DC tanked?

A fucking warzone, that's what. Love them or hate them, the Big Two are essential to the survival of the craft.

It's the DM's and comic book readers' fault: "How dare you insult our superheroes? Look, if it's really their fault, why don't you just quit bitching and stop buying the superhero books? Obviously that's the solution to the problem: If you disagree with me, just don't talk about it. Since Avengers/JLA sells so well, this must obviously be what the people want. Blah blah fanboys blah blah juvenile blah blah manga blah blah Wildstorm blah blah if fans want something new they can look elsewhere." Interestingly, this argument is supported by mindless fanboys and kneejerk all-superheroes-suck cynics alike, if for different reasons.

Problems with this argument: Look, it really isn't as simple as all that. Do you know why Fables doesn't sell 100,000 issues a month? It's not because "the dumbass fanboys" (or "the people," if you happen to be one of those "dumbass fanboys") just really prefer to see a dude in tights kicking another dude in tights's ass.

There's a fuckton of other factors to consider, some of which have been touched on in recent columns all over the internet. (My preferred flavor is the one that stated that most people go to comic books for superheroes because their other needs, in drama and horror and sci-fi and so on, are adequately met in other media, such as novels and movies.) And we also, inevitably, come back to finances.

Fables, a fine comic, does not sell 100,000 copies a month because it does not and cannot command that kind of audience. I don't care if you give it the hugest marketing push in the world (which costs money), gave away free 8-page samples of it on the street (money again), or forced every single DM to carry a stack of them each time it came out, no matter the size of the store (dinero). Despite all those hypotheticals, it's still trapped in a DM store, which is a specialty shop. Despite all those hypotheticals, it still sits next to Ultimate Man-Thing (or whatever) on the shelves, and people are going to go with what's familiar, because going out on a limb costs them money, just as it costs the publisher money to push a risk. They would prefer to spend their money on a product they know will satisfy them, then take risks every single week.

(A quick aside: I don't want to hear any shit about how comics is the only place where the audience seems to go for the same characters over and over again and never wants anything new. The assumption is that only lameass fanboys go to their entertainment for a pleasing sense of comfort and, to some degree, sameness.

To you types, I invoke John Grisham, Michael Crichton, Meg Ryan, Michael Bay, Bruce Willis, Dave Barry, Top 40 radio, the romantic comedy formula, and a host of other people, story structures, and repetitive media we see churning out pretty much the same product year after year after year. And people buy or otherwise patronize them. Why? Because people know what they like and they seek it out. Not everyone is an entertainment adventurer looking for new thrills every single time they go to the theater or bookstore. And I'm not going to be the kind of cultural fascist that suggests everyone should be. I don't have that right, and neither do you.)

And there are those comic shops that simply cannot afford to cater to the smaller print stuff out of vanity. Do you know why? Because it doesn't pay the fucking rent, end of story. Tower Records has filed Chapter 11, largely because they sell a lot of specialized product (such as as their large selection of zines and indie publications) that cannot pay for the floorspace they take up.

We are a cottage industry, ladies and gents. We don't yet have the room to publish a bunch of vanity and experimental titles in truly significant numbers. Those titles come through, bit by bit, in Oni and Avatar and Vertigo and AiT/PlanetLar, and for now that's about as much as the industry can handle. You want things to change? Get active about it.

The "everything's fine" argument: "It's always been this way. Why do you care about the X-Men going back to spandex? I see no obvious greater significance of that. This is what people want. Why are you bitching? This is how it's always been and always will be. You're just whining."

Problems with this argument: Thanks, guys. Your apathy is duly noted. Next time, if you have nothing to contribute, just don't talk. You don't have to voice an opinion on everything, especially if your opinion is to not have one.

Do you get me now? That this isn't one side's fault or the other, that pat answers will solve nothing? Change is affected when it is made benficial for both sides of an argument.

Example from the movie industry: I was watching Last House on the Left the other night, specifically to listen to the director's commentary. The experience was enlightening. Prominently mentioned was the fact that this film was budgeted by a collective of independent movie theater owners who wanted to produce cheapie films for their teenage audiences. This was a fairly common practice in that where and when, and seemed to work out pretty well for a young writer/director named Wes Craven.

Do you understand the implications? Business owners interested in profit funded young, untested filmmakers to make a movie because it was something that benefitted the both of them. The owners got their dirt cheap product and made money off of it, and the filmmakers got a jumpstart on their careers. You can scoff all you want at the importance of Wes Craven and the slasher/shock genre of movies (and they are important to the history of film, whether you acknowledge it or not), but you will find no greater instruction of how change in an artistic medium can be effected.

Whew. That's all for now.

I'll be seeing that at midnight tonight, and goddamn if I'm not excited. Trying to keep myself objective, though; I've heard wildly different takes on the movie, from awful to awesome. If for some reason it sucks, I'll be honest about it.

And I'll let ya know, as soon as I get back.

As you probably know, Steven Grant has a new Permanent Damage up.

The thing in this column most people have focused on is the Marvel Icon business. Which is interesting. But as the wise Franklin Harris pointed out, no one really knows enough yet to speculate anything meaningful; an opinion columnist can only lay out a spectrum of possibilities and their thoughts on each. Intriguing, but basically a mental exercise that has no real bearing on anything. Until we get more concrete facts, everyone's just pulling their pud and remarking on how clever they are about it. Grant, at least, recognizes this.

I'm not interested in that part of the column, anyway.

His "episodes from a freelance life" is much more interesting, as it gives a little peek into editorial policy that, while not revelatory, is still interesting to read. This part, particularly, struck me:

Here's something that's turned into a social taboo, particularly since Columbine: kids. Particularly evil kids, or harm coming to kids, even evil ones. Which is too bad, especially since our concept of "kid" has reverted as far as the late teens and even, for some, early 20s. (That there are those who wish to treat all of us as children is a separate issue.) I don't believe there's no such thing as a bad kid. I believe bad kids are usually the result of bad parenting, which isn't quite as transparent an observation as it sounds, but it's more complicated than I care to get into, so let's leave it at that. I've seen kids do lots of bad things; that kids can be flat out evil strikes me as fit fodder for fiction. (Check out J.G. Ballard's RUNNING WILD.) "Kids as villains" also strikes me as a thorny problem for almost any hero, and one that confronts our justice system as well. How do you deal with juvenile offenders? Should they be treated as adults for severe crimes? Is "zero tolerance" a fair approach? Given the understanding of technology that many kids (teen and pre-teen) far exceeds that of their elders, it doesn't strike me as far-fetched that, in a more technological world, young people would increasingly take not necessarily legal advantage of technology for a variety of reasons that wouldn't necessarily mirror adult concerns. Which makes them interesting to write about.

This might make me sound like a tool (as if I haven't already, in many many posts), but this reminds me of the Punisher one-shot where Mister Castle travels to Belfast to deal with some drug runners and murderous psychoes. He spies a couple of kids torching a car with a molotov cocktail and ponders to himself: "I wonder, sometimes. When it comes to what I do. How young is too young, exactly?"

I sure as shit wouldn't mind a story exploring that particular morality, as told by Ennis or Grant. The latter doesn't work much these days and the former gets too easily dismissed because of the oddball nature of his stories, but I don't think there's anyone else in comics who deals so comfortably with the darkest of morality plays.

You are a GRAMMAR GOD!


If your mission in life is not already to
preserve the English tongue, it should be.
Congratulations and thank you!


How grammatically sound are you?
brought to you by Quizilla

(Thanks to Shane for the link. He's given a toy for everyone to play with today, it seems.)

So there's this 24 Hour Comics day thing. Basic idea is you lock yourself into a comic book shop and come up with a comic book in a nonstop marathon of 24 hours. You write it out, you draw it, and you produce a comic book in that span of time. No one helps you. It's you alone.

A lot of people have snarked on it. A lot of people have said it makes no difference, that it's a stupid idea, yadda yadda. Crippling the idea before it even gets out of the gate. Bloggers, like me, pretty much make a hobby out of criticizing the fuck out of something until it's dead in the water.

Thanks to a friend of mine, Joe, I'll be taking a different tack. He decided to sign up, stretch his creative wings a little, and have some fun with it.

So I am too.

Now, I can't draw. No way. Not a chance. The book will look like warmed-over ass, at best. But I can write. I can do dialogue. I can do characters. Also, I like having a good time. There's no goddamn way in the world I'll "win" or whatever, since more than likely I'll be up against Scott Kurtz and possibly someone from Viper (seems like I'm name-dropping Viper a lot lately, doesn't it?). But I don't care, and neither does Joe. We're going to spend 24 hours in a comic shop, trying our hand at the hobby we love. We're not cartoonists, not by any stretch, but we're going to have a kickass time.

Maybe you should try it too, eh? Maybe every blogger should. Money-where-your-mouth-is time, folks.

Find a location near you and sign up. Hell, if I can find a place to host the images, I'll even scan mine and post it for all of you to mock.

Sound good? Let me know.

What I bought:

Reload/Mek TPB flipbook - Most people seemed to have not-so-nice things to say about this. I'll judge for myself how these series are.

Chosen #2 - Say whatever the hell you want about Mark Millar, this looks to be a thoughtful, insightful series. Yeah, I'm willing to back that up.

1602 #8 - Just as the series is getting really interesting, it comes to a close. Ah well. Fun while it lasted, and pretty pretty art.

Dead@17: Blood of Saints #1 - My boys at Viper are back!

Deep Sleeper #1 and #2 - Enough people have been talking about this title that it was no longer acceptable for me to not check it out. So here I am. Being trendy.

Bite Club #1 - Gotta go with Johnny Bacardi (Latin hedonist!) on this one; worst title ever. Still, vampire mafioso? That can be fun, fun, fun!

More reading, less talking. See ya later on, when I'm done.

Anyone got $1200 they can spare?

Because, you know, this:

You would totally be my friend for at least a week.

And he forwards me this:

Beautiful Killer artist Phil Noto posted an update to his yahoo group:

I'm starting on the new miniseries for Black Bull called The New West. Jimmy Palmiotti is writing it and it'll be debuting at the Wizard Chicago con. They're going to start hyping it at the Philly show. I'm also working on something big and secret that I can't share just yet, but it's going to be super-cool.

And what I told him: Cool. His art was the only thing worth a damn in Beautiful Killer. Just wish I knew more. If any of you do... POST IT!

(Real winner-losers can be found here.)

This particular letter takes a little bit to pick up steam. There's some crap in here about getting a degree to be a band director, which is pretty fucking loserly, but it's not going to get you any comics (or even get you marked for murder when the revolution comes.) I skipped past all that and got to the meat of it.

The Guy Who Gets Hit By Things:

Reason #2: I've been hit hard in life. I've been hit by lightning, once thank god, a motorboat while I was in a canoe, and by a car while I was blindfolded. Why, you ask? Because I just have a bad luck life, I guess.

Lightning, wow. I was in boy scouts, I was 12. I tried to save a tent that blew over in a thunderstorm and when I was racing over to save it, BAM there it goes and now I was blind for 5 minutes and deaf for 2 hours. That's great. It sucked a whole lot, and you don't get to remember a lot, but just be glad you haven't been struck (if you have, damn man I feel ya, I do.)

And then there's that time at a church camp I was hit by a motorboat. Wielded by a LIFEGUARD. Keyword: Life. Guard. And she was driving so fast her bow was up and couldn't see us in time. She struck our canoe full force and I was underwater, attatched to the canoe, and I had to unstrap my harness and swim over and get my friend out to make sure we were ok. Can you believe it, a lifeguard in a lake almost killing us? Well I can.

And well, at that same camp I had to do a blindfold test to test my faith in other Christians, and well, I let go of my friend in front of me up a hill because he kept leading me into rocks, and I ended up almost roadkill because I let go and walked into a street. Not knowing of course you were near A STREET kind of sucks when you're blindfolded at church camp, but I hope they changed the route now for this faith-building adventure. Damn, I can't believe that.

The Son of Man has a sick sense of humor.

I still think the lifeguard part is the funniest. That's something out of a Farrelly brothers movie, pre-Say It Isn't So.

But wait! There's more! Same guy:

I'll tell ya something else too. I am still technically virgin though I attempted INTERCOURSE. I dunno how it works, but one time, after I graduated high school, my friends attempted to get me laid with a cute girl. She didn't tell me her age and I was 18. We fucked like rabbits but I never came and she didn't either. Miracles of the first time I guess, but we were both close the whole time. Well, after a while we realized both of us couldn't satisfy the other, so we ended it. Did I mention that we did the act in a senior citizen mormon people's house while they WERE ON VACATION?!?! Isn't that great, even though we didn't technically ever reach our limits, we did it in a house that reveres Joseph Smith. I don't have anything against mormons, but it was just what we had availible! Besides, I guess old people quilts feel good when you're doing it. Haha, but anyways.

-Josh Geary

"I guess old people quilts feel good when you're doing it." Holy SHIT, I think my spleen just ruptured from laughter.

Anyway, when I get to that part about the "house that reveres Joseph Smith," I imagine this anthropomorphic house with a white shirt and black tie praying to Smith like he were Mecca. While people fuck to zero fruition, inside of him.

ON OLD PEOPLE QUILTS.

(Real winner-losers can be found here.)

This pretty much speaks for itself:

I haven't heard of these comics before (sorry!) but I'm more than willing to share my terrible terrible shame! The potential of winning a prize for it is only a bonus!

To fully appreciate the abject my abject loserdom you have to picture the dorm room that I lived in last year. My stolen microfridge contained only an opened can of sprite and globs of dirt (no one knew how it got there, but I certainly wasn't going to clean it up). I had what I assume would be considered as nice hardwood floors by people without my unusual condition. You see, I shed enough body hair to put most breeds of small dogs to shame. Coupled with my chronic aversion to cleaning supplies this made for quite a spectacular site to behold. One would open the door and the slight rush of air would send actual tumbleweeds of pubes happily bounding across the floor. I would always snootily maintain to my friends that it was simply accumulated body hair from my manly physique and hoped no one would give the offending "pube-bunnies" the even cursory inspection required that would reveal their true greasy brillo pad-esque nature.

I nearly got away with my deception too, as everyone living on my floor was eager to believe anything but the most outrageous lie regarding the origins of the grime on my floor or for why I needed to buy a new printer after my old one clogged with 'dust'. However this was forever spoiled during one particularly hurried masturbation session (my roommate had learned early in the semester to knock before coming in, but I still preferred to streamline my methods rather than deal with the akward silences aftering yelling 'just a minute!' and bumbling around trying to close the cascade of porn pop-ups, each for a darker taboo than the last, that would inevitable spawn when I tried to navigate away from incriminating web sites). Several droplets of man-brine escaped the loving non-judgmental embrace of kleenex...and landed right on my class syllabus for a tough required course I was taking.

I didn't know anyone in the class and was too shy to ask the professor for another one so I would know what the assigned reading was, so being the frugal person (read: disgusting bastard) that I am, I simply used some scissors to cut out several squares where the syllabus was most-damaged. Now, I'm pretty proud of myself. I got to ejaculate and my syllabus is still mostly readable (except for the readings due for week 3, but its not like I need a GREAT grade for the class). So all in all, not a bad day! However, in my hubris I left the syllabus on my desk where a group of my friends discovered it, looked from the damp spots on it to me to and then to my ever-present tissue boxes strategically placed near my computer and somehow connected all the dots. Bastards.

While I think I've become a little more controlled in my habits since then (by not leaving important documents within the embarrassingly small striking distance of my sperm) I'll always hold the title of "biggest loser in the world" in the eyes of my friends.

That's my true story! Thanks for taking the time to revel in my shame!

-Adam Eisenhut

Holy shit does that guy suck.

But I've been learning all kinds of valuable new expressions ever since I started this giveaway, phrases such as:

"I drank like a country music star."

And "pube-bunnies."

And, of course, "I got fanny fucked by four feet of floor."

Thanks, guys.

I don't know if I believe this entry or not. I don't really care, it's a pretty entertaining story. If nothing else, the guy would have spent a lot of time making shit up to win some comic books, so, more power to him.

I present to you the first of the Best of the Rest in the GREAT LOSERS GIVEAWAY. These are the people who get all the humiliation of a prize winner, but without any actual prize to claim for it. Tee hee!

(The real winner-losers can be found here.)

Here goes:

It happened during the middle of exams... I was still living in Waterloo at the time and received a phone call from my parents in Brampton.

They told me that FedEx had a package here for me.

I gave them my standard response of "sign for it, open it, and tell me what it is."

But for some odd reason the package was being delivered with express instructions that only I could sign for it.

My name, my address, etc was listed on it.

I wasn't expecting a package so I asked where it was from. It turns out the package was coming from a Nelson Kelley in Belize City, Belize.

Not only was I not expecting a package from there..... I don't even know who Nelson Kelley is, or where Belize is.

I asked what the customs documents said it was under the assumption that they usually have to indicate the contents, but apparently it was blank.

I then made sure that it wouldn't cost me any money to accept the package since I don't even know what it is.

When I asked whether they could deliver the package to me in waterloo, I was told that yes, they could, but there would be an extra $10 charge.

Since I didn't even know what the package was, I thought it would be more interesting to let the suspense build and asked if they could hold it until I get back in 3 weeks time, which apparently they could and would do.

In the meantime, my dad was apologizing to the FedEx guy for this taking so long -- but I'm not really sure how quickly you can deal with a package directed to only go to you when you're not expecting it and not in the same city.

Anyways, the FedEx guy leaves a number he can be reached at to deliver the package when I get home and drives away.

10 minutes later the excitement begins.

The police show up at my parents door with a search warrant.

Apparently the package contained $40,000 worth of cocaine... evidently shipped using my credit card. Street value of aforementioned cocaine in Canada: $500,000

The police searched my room, taking everything apart and looking through every random piece of paper.

Meanwhile, my parents phone me back to tell me what was in the package.

As you might guess I was rather surprised by the contents.

My parents asked me, "were you expecting half a million dollars worth of cocaine to be delivered?" to which I could easily answer "uh...... no? As in very much no? As in...... what the heck is going on?"

It also turned out that the FedEx man was not actually a FedEx man but instead an undercover police officer. The entire thing was a sting operation meant to catch me collecting my cocaine and then counting it or whatever people do once receiving a lot of it.

Had I been at home I would have been arrested.

The police had discovered that the package contains cocaine at the border and then taken the package from FedEx saying, "don't worry.... we'll handle this one."

While the police were still searching my room, my sister got home and my parents explained the situation to her.

Not too surprisingly, she didn't believe them. Especially considering one of my cousins had recently married a police officer. As such, she thought it was his car and that they were playing a joke.

To "help" with the joke, she shouted out "don't worry...... I'll lie for David!"

The police upstairs searching my room heard this and decided that it might be in their best interests to speak to my sister.

In the meantime, the police ask to speak to me over the phone. Apparently they want me to come in for questioning, but since I'm in the middle of exams I can't really leave waterloo.

The police ask me some simple questions......

Police: "Is this your cocaine."
Me: "No."
Police: "Are you sure?"
Me: "Quite sure."
Police: "Do you know anyone else who would have ordered a whole bloody lot of
cocaine and delivered it to your house?"
Me: "Well...... there's always Bob, and he said that..... I mean.... no."

Never joke with the police.

Fortunately I actually just said no to that last question instead of the line above.

After speaking to me and searching my room and such, the police began to doubt the fact that I had indeed ordered the cocaine.

Even if I were stupid enough to order a lot of it, I certainly wouldn't be so stupid as to pay for it with my credit card and have it delivered to my house under my name.

I always would have thought that cocaine would be a cash business really......

I mean, I don't see them as going, "just swipe your card please...... ok...... now sign here....... thank you......... ok, and here's your cocaine."

I also checked my credit card bill online and noticed that yes, there was not a $40,000 purchase listed at a store called Cocaine 'R Us or equivalent retailer.

Not that my credit limit would have covered it anyways.... but better safe than sorry.

Anyways, over the weeks that followed I found out more information, and apparently had I been willing to pay the $10, they would have come to Waterloo and arrested me there.

My being too cheap to pay $10, my not having drugs or drug-related paraphenelia in my room, and my sounding confident over the phone with them together convinced them of my innocence. One would think that someone would be willing to pay $10 to receive their $500,000 worth of cocaine.

Apparently the cocaine had been delivered in a large picture frame where by removing the back the cocaine could be accessed.

Anyways, a few weeks later still I received two bills from FedEx. Firstly a bill for $230 or so for shipping the cocaine.

And secondly, a bill for $21 for customs on the cocaine. Personally I would have thought that the customs fee would be slightly higher for a product of that value.... but who knows these days.

I'm still contesting the charges to my credit card with the credit card company.

And I think that about covers my story.

Isn't that about the craziest story you've ever heard?

My mom actually received two odd phone calls earlier that day. Both said they were from FedEx.

One said, "Have you received a package? One may have been wrongfully delivered to your address, and if so we can come and pick it up."

The other said, "Sorry, we were unable to change your shipping address."

-David Held

More to come.

"I'm sorry, that's just creepy."
- Warren Ellis, in e-mail, about THE GREAT LOSERS GIVEAWAY

Y'all are some sad motherfuckers.

I got tales of heartbreak. Heartache. Big Dates With The Hot Girl ditched so you could play 12 hours of D&D or Unreal Tournament. Heard tales of self-inflicted ball-bashing. Women telling me Samus Aran is their personal hero. Guys who weren't hip enough to hang out with the Magic: The Gathering kids. Guys whose ex-girlfriends went lesbian, with each other. Women who lust for Grima Wormtongue from Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers. Guys not picking up on it when women are giving them The Signal (a lot of those; conclusion = women are too fucking obtuse). Women who know all the lyrics to Jesus Christ Superstar. Guys who have set themselves on fire multiple times, presumably on accident. DDR aficionados. People who, in a drunken stupor, have either 1) pissed on their keyboards, 2) picked fights with bouncers, and/or 3) decorated themselves in christmas lights and danced nude at parties.

I haven't been talked to by this many virgins since I was in the Boy Scouts.

Amongst all this muck and mire, a few really unfortunate souls have risen to the top. Five men and.. actually just men, worthy of being called The Biggest Losers in the Universe. And mind you, these aren't your run-of-the-mill dorks who can't get laid or hold down their liquor; these are people Fate personally picked out for humiliation.

The ones Lady Luck strapped down to the floor, squatted over, and squeezed out a link right onto their foreheads.

These are The Losers.

In FIFTH PLACE, Winner of Sword of Dracula #1 and #2:

You want a tale of humilation? Those always involve the fairer sex!

So be it!

Her name was Laura. She was, without a doubt, built to perfection. A pretty face too with great eyebrows and piercing green eyes. I did my best to hit upon her, but she was quick to bring up the "boyfriend.' Her boyfriend was meeting her here or there and she was too busy, thanks all the same.

A year later, I'm at a party and as fate would have it, so is Laura. No boyfriend, real or imaginary is in sight. I'm trying to be cool, but maybe all those beers I've had are somehow blunting my efforts to impress. Still, I'm able to postion myself stragetically across from her in a chair. I'm slowly involving myself into the conversation she's having with some other woman on the couch. I catch her eye. I smile.

I then suddenly, without warning, vomit into my lap. I guess I had had more to drink than I thought. Two guys appear on either side of me and drag me out of the room with amazing speed. I'm able to catch the look of horror and disgust on Laura's face before I'm bum rushed out of the party. So, I finally make an impression upon her, that of a drunken, vomiting loser. And I never see her again, which come to think of it, is probably for the best.

-Grant Schreiber

Grant, a word of advice: Girls don't really like it when you hit upon them. At least not any kind of girl you don't pay first.

But hey, who here hasn't vomited into their lap in front of a charming person of the opposite sex?

Me, for one.

In FOURTH PLACE, Winner of The Monolith #1, #2, #3:

There are really so many things that could prove one to be an irreparable loser, and I've done most of them, but one particular occurance really sticks out in my mind. A couple months ago, I'm sitting at my computer (as I am for most of every day), and one of my cats (yes, plural, in a studio apartment) walks over to me. She jumps up onto the side of the chair, climbs into my lap, and sits on my forearm. She rubs her ass down my arm for a second, then springs off. I look, and see a streak of brown shit on my arm.

Apparently, at least for one brief moment, my own pet felt I was valueless enough to use as toilet paper.

-James Yarrison

Short but to the point. The man's cat wipes his ass on his bare skin. I'll probably be giggling about that on my death bed. That cat completely kicks ass.

His owner? Total loser.

In THIRD PLACE, Winner of The Losers: Ante Up:

Q: What’s more pathetic than those inbred hill-jacks that reveal their idiotic behavior to millions of people on nationally syndicated talk-shows, for the simple sake of appearing on TV?

Uh.

In March of 2003, sweaty-palmed and blinking under hot studio lights, I found myself telling my wife and approximately 20 million viewers, “I really don’t know what I was thinking, I, uh… I peed on the cat at our Christmas get-together, hon…”

Wait, wait, fuck. I should back this up a little.

My name’s Jeremy Bear. My wife and I live in Los Angeles County, so we thought it might be a splendid idea to snag tickets to The Tonight Show with Jay Leno when my dad and sister came to town. I suppose that was my first mistake.

Leno tickets are no easy feat. One must stand in line for ages outside NBC in Burbank, even if your tickets are already in-hand. So, hours before the taping, the four of us were bored to tears, waiting for the NBC interns to give us the go-ahead to file into the studio. Eventually, some of the interns passed out pencils and index cards to the folks in the line. Printed neatly on the cards were two questions:

"What’s something you’ve never confessed to anyone?

Would you be willing to reveal it to Jay on Friday’s taping?"

Apparently, Tonight Show writers are always fishing for comedy bits. I was bored, you understand. Very, very bored. So I wrote:

I’ve never confessed to my wife that, at Christmastime, I accidentally peed on one of our cats. I’m not sure if she’ll forgive me, but maybe Jay can smooth things out.

It was a complete lie, and not a particularly creative one. But, you know. Bored.

Soon, the index cards were collected and, before I knew it, I found myself repeating the lie to the writing staff of the Tonight Show, ad-libbing details all the way. They called Jay on the cell, told him the story. They snapped their cell phones shut and said to me, "okay. Great. Jay wants to have you on. You've got a good story. Can you do it?"

"I, uh. Yeah. Sure. So, I'm going to make this big confession on the air?"

"That's right."

"Like on the phone?"

"No, like on-camera. It's a bit, you know, and Jay'll have a lot of fun with your story."

"Oh. Wow. Yeah, that's cool, I suppose. Will my wife come?"

"Does she know about your confession?"

"No."

"Yeah. Bring her. We'll have her on-camera to get her reactions."

"Okay."

"Terrific. We'll send a car to Long Beach to pick you up on Friday at 1:30. They'll take you to the studio and you'll wait in the Green Room. Also, if you like, bring a couple of friends and we'll get them seats. When the time comes, Jay'll pull you out of the audience and that's it."

"Friday."

"Friday."

"And the show airs...?"

"On Friday."

"Friday."

Q: What’s more pathetic than those inbred hill-jacks that reveal their idiotic behavior to millions of people on nationally syndicated talk-shows, for the simple sake of appearing on TV?

A: Educated professionals that lie about idiotic behavior that never happened in order to humiliate themselves in front of millions of people on late-night TV.

On the limo ride to Burbank the following Friday, I downed several rum-and-Cokes because

1) they were free, what the hell, and

2) I wasn’t about to face Jay Leno with a falsified story completely sober, thank you.

My families had their VCRs set (although I still hadn’t revealed what I was going to say to anyone but the Tonight Show writers…). The in-laws neglected to tell any friends and relatives that their little girl and her husband were going to be on television, for fear that I’d embarrass the family name.

So, when the time came, the cameras rolled and Jay pulled me out of the audience. He asked if I had anything to confess and I admitted, yes, at Christmastime we were having a little get-together and we’d locked the cats in the bathroom to keep them out of the way. At one point in the evening, I needed to relieve myself. When a friend of mine knocked on the bathroom door, I turned to answer and, in so doing, pissed directly on the head of our oldest cat.

No, this story didn’t exactly make TV history. I don’t expect to see it on any ‘Best Of’ montages or ‘Jay Leno’s Finest Moments’ DVDs.

But, hey, I can’t be expected to revolutionize late-night TV while waiting in line in Burbank, can I? Oddly enough, I heard from a lot of old high school friends and acquaintances that I hadn’t thought about in years in the following few days. “Did I just see you on Jay Leno? Dude, what’s wrong with you?”

Anyhow, you want a loser? My literal Claim to Fame is “I’m the guy who pissed on his pet”… and it never even happened.

Where’s my pride? My dignity?

Nowhere to be found, sir. Nowhere.

For a transcript of the encounter with Jay, I recorded the debacle on my own blog:

http://www.jeremybear.com/blogger/archive/2003_03_30_index.html

And just for shits, here’s me and my wife with Jay, taken after the taping:

http://www.jeremybear.com/images/blogger/with_Jay_Leno.jpg

Sincerely,
Jeremy Bear, Loser

The funny thing is, I was going to accept this entry even though it seemed like bullshit. The sheer audacity of the lie was enough to convince me to include it. But then... he includes his blog entry and picture. That's that little extra effort that gets you greatness.

Or a total lack of dignity, I guess. C'mon man, Leno? That guy's about as fresh as the panties my grandmother was buried in.

In SECOND PLACE, Winner of The Losers: Ante Up:

So the other day I'm at work, I work in the kitchen of a nursing home, Dietary Aid is what they call the position. Anyway I just got done washing off some carts and I was on my way back to the dishroom to scrape more pureed Welsh fucking Rarebit down the garbage disposal when I lost my footing.

I stood there, suspended in time and space, with one foot in the air, and one foot slipping forward, it was like a bad Karate Kid Crane motion mixed with the slow-mo camera swirl of a Matrix movie, I can only imagine the look of distinctly knowing what is about to happen to me. Obviously I fell.

The problem being, I didn't just fall. I felt directly on my ass. I don't mean I hit my ass as I was falling. I mean that at the precise moment that my 280lbs. ass pinged off the floor I could feel my insides force their way down, as four feet of floor shoved it's way directly into my anus.

I screamed something, I *still* don't know what I said. At this moment my MOTHER comes to check on me. That's right I work with my mom. Anyways here I am, laying on the floor, in a puddle, on my stomach, motionless, with both hands clasped over my ruined ass. A few minutes later I got up, and my mother asked me if I was okay. My response? "I now know what Prison Rape feels like."

When pressed for further explanation I was quoted as saying : "I've just been fanny fucked by four feet of floor"

All the great fun ensued, like not being able to stand up, or sit down, or bend over, without commenting about the immense pain in my ass. I had to fill out an accident report about HOW I fell, WHAT hurts and all sorts of other bullshit. I walked into work the next morning (bow legged I'll admit) and the *ENTIRE* kitchen staff was commenting on how I was walking and asked me how my ASS felt. NOBODY THAT WAS ON HAD SEEN ME DO IT, word of my ass spread far and wide in those vacant hours that the kitchen fell silent.

My ass is *mostly* better, my tail bone is still bruised to hell, and I can't pick anything from off of the floor, but the worst part is that when I take a shit now it doesn't come out cylindrical, it looks likes I shit out whole Denny's Chicken Strips, my SHIT is CHICKEN STRIP shaped.

son-of-a-bitch if that doesn't suck.

-Will Carpenter

Still hungry? That's what I thought. Bet you'll never eat another chicken strip again without thinking it came out of THAT GUY'S ass. Think about it. How warm and tender it is, pliable to the touch...

I'll take seconds.

Incidentally, "I just got fanny fucked by four feet of floor" has now replaced "I'm Rick James, bitch" as the new catch phrase to be overused to death in the span of one month. It's also a handy tool to teach schoolchildren about alliteration.

And now, the moment no one's been waiting for. The tale of the SINGLE BIGGEST LOSER IN THE UNIVERSE. The one guy that God gets a big, huge, gutbusting laugh at every time He thinks about him. The man I officially designate, for all time, as Fate's Clown:

In FIRST PLACE, Winner of The Losers: Ante Up, as well as issues #7, #8, #9, and #10:

Hi,

I just want to briefly say that I'm the unluckiest loser ever. I won't detail my entire life, but a specific anecdote from the last few years immediately comes to mind: the night my car exploded.

I'm told by a engineer friend of mine that cars don't actually explode. Sometimes, he says, they burst into flame and burn prettily, and sometimes they combust rather rapidly, but they do not explode.

Every time he says this in public, he looks over at me with a worried expression, knowing that I could out him right then and there. My car did explode. Like the wrath of God Almighty. Like the Hindenburg after a chili burrito.

One cold rainy night in November of 1999, I was just getting home from a hard night of delivering pizzas, a decent job monetarily but somewhat degrading. After all, it involves you going to people's houses and admitting that you are in the food service business, and then relying on their personal generosity to pad your wallet. Living off of tips is kind of like being a Bombay beggar, but with less cultural respect.

It was about three in the morning when I got home, having stayed late to help close the store for no
extra pay (as each employee was required to do at least once a week). My apartment building is the
typical sort of place reserved for college students: six apartments, all facing the street, in a three-story building. A staircase linked the three floors, and wooden balconies linked the two apartments on each floor. I got the best parking spot in the apartment building lot that night - the closest one to my ground-floor door. I took my small victory and stumbled into the living room.

My roommate was still up, a fairly typical problem for him, as he was (like me) something of an insomniac. We traded brief greetings, and I went to my room to get ready for bed. My typical sleeping garb includes a T-shirt and a pair of shorts - no shoes, I will note, as that becomes important in a few moments.

I laid down and was just starting to get comfortable, as my roommate comes pounding on my door. "Jeremy," he says with some urgency, "your car is on fire!"

"Sure, Mark," I respond with dull apathy. "Sure it is." I don't really have time to play games at three - almost four - in the morning, I decide, and turn over to ignore his bullshit.

"No, Jeremy," he continues, more urgent. "Your CAR is on FIRE!"

Finally deciding that if the joke is this good, I better get up for it, I pull myself out of bed and open my door. Flickering orange light plays across my face, cast from the outside window, and I realize that this may actually be more serious than first I thought.

I pushed my way past Mark to the front door, casting it open. In a brief second, I went from the cool air of my apartment to the blazing insides of an inferno. Mark's shout sounded like "SHIT!" but I was a bit busy freaking out in the meantime. I grabbed the phone, intent on calling the fire department, when Mark urged that we get outside and warn our neighbors.

I agreed and ran out past the blaze with him, realizing only distantly that though I had our cordless phone in hand, I was still quite barefoot. In the rain. In November. Dialing 911, I observed Mark efficiently waking our neighbors, their varying degree of crankiness or gratitutde clearly visible. At almost four in the morning, there's not a lot of room for duplicity in motive.

I began to analyze the situation as the operator assured me that firefighters would soon save us all. My car was a fiery inferno, gouts of flame and searing heat coming from under the hood - THROUGH the hood, really - and from beneath the car.

It got worse.

In front of my car was a grand old oak tree that my landlord once explained to me had been planted there when he bought his first piece of property. It was on fire too. The bark blackened and the leaves died as I looked on, numb. Holy shit, I thought, what have I done now?

It got worse still.

Down the line from my car in the apartment lot were many other cars. The lot was pretty full that night, which was why I had considered myself lucky to get the best spot. My friend Matt, who lived next door, was parked in the spot next to mine. His car was on fire - the bumper, the tires, the door lining, and, as I watched, the interior. In his trunk, I remembered, were about one hundred pounds of illegal Tennessee fireworks - rockets, quarter-sticks, the whole works. My mental processes kicked up a notch from "holy shit" to "dear sweet fuck". At least this was the lowest tier of Hell.

Hell opened up to reveal more terrors.

The next car past Matt's belonged to a girl who lived on the third floor. I never knew her name, but she had always been pleasant to me if we passed one another in the parking lot or on the stairs. Just as Mark got her out of her apartment and onto the stairs, her car caught fire too, the front bumper and tires burning merrily. Looking back the other direction, I could see that the paneling of my apartment building was melting, warping, and running from the intense heat.

I was screwed. Not to mention cold.

Mark finished his evacuation, and I was left in the parking lot, barefoot and holding a phone, surrounded by neighbors who, at this point, surely knew exactly whose car was driving them from their homes at four in the morning. As I mentally bemoaned my fate, Mark leaned over the balcony railing, I can only assume to survey the damage from above.

A firm and emphatic WHOOMPH noise came from my car as it jumped a foot off of the ground, taking a large dollop of melted asphalt with it. A column of flame shot up into the sky, like a beacon to the gods, informing them of the beginning of Ragnarok. It rose higher than the roof of the building, directly past Mark, who jumped backwards and fell on his ass rather than be consumed in the immolation.

Mark caught up to the rest of us in the lot, minus his eyebrows and nightly growth of beard, somewhat red-faced and ashy. He looked at me with significantly less resentment than I would have had in his situation and said, "Only you, Jeremy. Only you."

The only blessing of the whole goddamn thing was that Matt's fireworks did not detonate, and he got a better car out of the insurance money. So did the girl whose name I never knew. My insurance agency's report quickly drowned my hopes of the same. The fire marshal's investigation decided that no hand of man, act of sabotage, natural disaster, or (as some wits suggested later) meteorite had destroyed my car. The two reports agreed: ACT OF GOD. An act of God destroyed my car - the category which means that no one could be held responsible for the devastation, and thus they need pay me ABSOLUTELY NO REPARATIONS WHATSOEVER. Only to be expected, I suppose.

My engineer friend informed me the next day that he was awake when this had all been occurring, on his way home from a job monitoring a late-night campus computer lab. He told me that he had wondering where the bright flash came from, and went on to theorize that perhaps there was a bomb in my car, since - as he knew - cars DO NOT EXPLODE.

And that's why, among other reasons, I'm the biggest loser ever.

Sincerely,
Jeremy Puckett

Says it right there, folks. ACT OF GOD. God hates Jeremy Puckett. Look, I tend to think this guy is shooting me straight, but if you want to call him a liar, that's your own business. I don't care if he's a liar or not. That stuff is fucking funny. I think I'll doctor that story to make it about me, so I can tell it at parties.

Not a bad little lineup, is it? Makes you feel a hell of a lot better about your lot in life, right? I swear, putting on this giveaway was the greatest boost my ego could have ever gotten. Whenever I can only satisfy seven gorgeous international supermodels because I've had a long day, I'll just think of Jeremy Puckett's exploding car, Will Carpenter's broken ass, and Grant Schreiber's Stan Marsh-like vomiting to make me feel that much better.

Stay tuned, as throughout the day I'll be posting the Best of the Rest, wherein the runners-up get the usual round of humiliation by having their nastiness posted for an audience of hundreds, except without winning any actual prizes. Suckers!

(Once again, many, many, many thanks to Shane, Johnny, and Kevin for their corroboration and help. Extra special super-duper thanks to Brian Clevinger at 8-Bit Theater and Anne at I'm Blue for their linkage. Mega thanks to Graeme, Rick, Mike, Laura, and John for their linkage. Thanks, guys, one and all. I appreciate the hell out of it, and I'm sure Andy Diggle and Jock do, as well. You're saints.

Anyone else that I've forgotten to thank, it's because my brain is tired and hates me. But I love you, yes I do. Who's a good boy? Who is it!)

If you didn't win, hey, that's not so bad. That means you aren't as big a loser as you thought. You're more sort of a mediocre loser. God, why can't you ever achieve?

Buy The Losers: Ante Up from your local comic book shop, or Amazon. It's only 10 goddamn dollars, people. That's the cost of a movie ticket with a little extra garnish, and you will be at least as entertained by this book as you will any movie out in the theatre right now. Best part? You can reread it for free! No shit!

Anyway, take heart: This contest soared. Next month another one will be hosted, with equally fabulous prizes. Stay tuned and keep coming back.

Now get outta here, ya bunch of losers.