"Cold water wash, right?"

Well, since every red-blooded blogger has had something to say about this (available soon at a comic shop near you, except that they've apparently already sold out their production run, so if you haven't already pre-ordered it, it may be too late), I will too. Here's what I have to say:

If anyone is looking for an overly-expensive birthday present for me, this is it. And no, the Justice League Unlimited Locker Room figures are not an acceptable substitute.

Thank you.

LATER: Note to Sideshow Collectibles: Consider a 6" version. This dang thing is 14" tall! That's huge! Even Barbie is only 12" tall, and that's standing up straight.

I wonder if it's worth pointing out that most artists suck at faces. Most characters, in most books, the only reason we know who they are is by the costumes they wear or the props they carry. There are exceptions, of course, and this MJ statue is so clearly MJ that she doesn't have to be holding a Spider-Man costume for us to know who she is. Part of that is attitude (the pose that has attracted so much criticism is classic hey-look-at-me MJ), but part of it is that the face is right.

Has anyone even looked at the face?

"Join me in a little disintegration?"

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Originally uploaded by dtaylor404.

When Bob Haney creates characters, man, they stay created. Until, that is, their whole premise for existence is turned inside-out by the next writer on the book, in this case Dennis O'Neil.

But that's what it takes to undo what Haney does.

Dorian at PostModernBarney has the details.

Realistic superheroes is an oxymoron

Let me approach the fracas du jour from another direction:



This is the cover of the comic that introduced Steel (later Commander Steel, now Citizen Steel, not to be confused with John Henry Irons) to the DCU. Can anyone explain to me how this costume could possibly be drawn, or the character posed, such that it does not draw attention straight to Steel's crotch?

That said...



...what's the difference? Why does it matter now, when it never has before?

In that light, it seems perfectly reasonable that if you're going to make people look there, you might as well put something there worth the trouble.

I've been saying that comics are over-rendered for years now, ever since Neal Adams gave Batman chest hair. This is what it took to get any kind of agreement from the comics community?

Hey, I like Kirby 'n' all...

I realize that now that Jack is safely dead, the major comics publishers have come to a new appreciation of his work and influence, but Devil Dinosaur Omnibus?

And a thousand fanboys and fangirls cry, "Yes!"

Hints dropped left and right by Gail Simone and DC editorial were confirmed yesterday: Gail Simone (Birds of Prey, Secret Six, The All-New Atom) will be the regular, ongoing writer of Wonder Woman starting right after the "Amazons Attack" event, with issue #13.

The title has been floundering lately, with a high-profile, chronically late writer (something about that TV show he's also writing for, Grey's Anatomy) and a coming new high-profile writer who, it was announced going in, will only be staying for six issues.

The thing about having a character do something really dramatic (like, say, killing a long-time supporting character, as Wonder Woman did to Maxwell Lord) is that the editors have to have some kind of plan for where the character goes next. I don't think they had one.

So, if Simone is writing it, who's drawing it? She's said "a dream art team," and she's said "if the readers all made a list of who the best possible Wonder Woman art team would be, I bet this would be the number one choice. It’s that good."

I'm thinking one of two things must have happened: Either Didio looked around and thought, "Why am I asking Adam Hughes to draw an All Star Wonder Woman title when the real Wonder Woman title is in so much trouble"; or else he remembered that it wasn't the artists who made the first five issues of the restart late, and realized that he can't do any better than Terry and Rachel Dodson. I'll take either option, but I'm hoping for the Dodsons.

Are there any civilians left?

Aw, heck, the Fortress Keeper said it already.

Heroic Dynasties and Legacies

Given: The DCU is too white-male-centric.
Given: There are only so many good names/costumes/raisons d'etre.
Obvious Solution: Any property from second-tier on down is subject to being killed off and rebooted as a non-white/woman/both.

Okay, I get that. I like that blacks and women can be superheroes without being "Black This-or-That" or "She-Something".

Corollary Solution: Any property -- any property -- is subject to acquiring a partner/kid sidekick.

I even get that. I have to admit I wondered what kind of powder is in the sugar bowls in the DC breakroom when I saw Miss Martian, but dang it, she grows on me. (If only her breasts didn't grow and shrink from page to page, but then she IS a shape-changer.)

Here's what I don't get.

Did nobody at DC actually read Kingdom Come before they decided to make it happen? It was a dystopia. It was a nightmare. I always interpreted it as a commentary on Marvel Earth as well, since Stan Lee really wrote (heh) the book on leaving the villains out of the story completely and having alleged heroes whomp on each other for whole issues at a time. (Maybe Civil War was inevitable, at that.)

Specifically, it was hell on earth for non-metas, who appear to be drifting out of comics, even as supporting characters.

Things that made Scipio happy

Over on The Absorbascon, Scipio has been keeping a running list of "Things that made me happy" in the week's comics. Taken as a group, they are proof that the rumors are true, and the DC comics universe is getting brighter. Even Bruce Wayne, the poster child for abandonment issues, is learning (in Superman/Batman #33) that it's OK not to be an a**hole all the time.

What, again?

What kind of situation leads a comic-book retailer to say this to the press?

Don't bug me about this. I'm ready to kill in a heartbeat because of this stuff. Seriously. Just a comic.

When you buy comics, do you want to know what happens before you get a chance to read it? Some people say no to spoilers, some say yes. Both of the Big Two comics publishers have had major events spoiled when plot twists leaked, so their inclination is to keep the stories secret until the books actually arrive at the stores. Occasionally, they're actually able to do this. They're getting better at it.

On the other hand, the comics shop buyers have to decide how many of each issue to buy weeks in advance. They track sales (both in their specific stores and nationwide) very carefully, and decide on quantities anew for each issue of each title. In order to do that, they want to know as much as they can about upcoming issues: Who the creative team is, what characters are featured, broad-brush plot information, specific key events that might bring in significant numbers of new readers causing an uptick in sales.

So the decision is made two or three hundred times a month: How much information do you release, and to whom?

If Marvel had told retailers weeks ago (when orders had to be placed) that Captain America would die in this issue, someone, somewhere, might have leaked the information before the book shipped. They did everything short of that: They hinted that Cap might die at some point in the course of their current crossover event, Civil War. They urged retailers to increase their quantities on Captain America #25, without saying why. Yeah, right. If retailers bought big just because Marvel told them to buy big, they'd be stuck with 200,000 copies of Squirrel Girl Swimsuit Issue.

Marvel didn't reveal that they would be sending a press release to the New York Daily News telling them that Captain America would be killed in #25. They didn't reveal (because they couldn't know) that everybody from CNN to Stephen Colbert would run with the story. And they didn't reveal that they were dramatically overprinting #25 in order to have sufficient quantities to cover reorders -- reorders that the retailers weren't told they'd be able to place.

So when all this hit on New Comics Day (known to the rest of the world as Wednesday, March 7), every specialty comic shop in the country was deluged with walk-in customers ("I didn't even know they were still publishing comic books") who wanted to buy the first comic book they'd bought in years ("Four dollars? When did they stop being ten cents?") because they'd heard about it on CNN ("It's going to be collectible, right? I mean, characters don't die everyd-- Hey, look, Superman comics. I thought he died years ago"), only to be told that unless you were a regular customer with a subscription list, there wasn't one to be had.

Of course, with the current size of the comic book market, a "deluge" of non-regular walk-in customers can be defined as "more than fifteen", which is pretty sad in itself.

Another retailer said this:

I ordered about 10%-15% above my usual number for Captain America, just based on the fact it was an anniversary issue.

Anniversary? It's #25. It's now a landmark worth celebrating when a title lasts two years. Talk about short attention spans.

Civil War: The Cash Cow

From the Fortress of Soliloquy:

This isn't a plot, it's a series of events, and the only story to speak of is simply there to get from one event to another. There is no flow, no natural progression; nothing seems to follow. Actions and reactions are disconnected from the stories, then justified after the fact.

It's a very long post.