What I Want From a Superhero Team Book

With the launching of a third Avengers book on Marvel, a count of 5 (perhaps more) X-team books, as well as the continuing success of Geoff Johns's JUSTICE SOCIETY OF AMERICA for DC, it really seems that team books are the rage right now.

So why am I left wanting every time I read an issue of NEW AVENGERS? How is it that, as impressed as I am with the neat ideas with a storyline of Grant Morrison's JLA run, I still feel something more could be done with it?

Things are clearly missing from team books to me. Sure, they can have your favorite characters all in one place, they can be up to your eyes in sexual tension, and they can fight villains big enough to give all of the DC Universe's hardest hitters a run for their money.

But is that all there is?

Here's a couple concepts I think are sorely lacking from newer forays into the superhero team genre.

#1: Fighting by Strategy and Creative Team Dynamics

A rant of mine that has been going for a longtime is that fight scenes in American comics are boring. I generally hold American comics to a higher esteem than manga, but for as melodramatic, insipid, and pointlessly pornographic as manga can be, they beat Americans on all counts in portraying well-paced and action-packed fight scenes that are actually enjoyable to watch.

Open the pages of any manga, even a dumb one like DRAGON BALL Z, and you'll see that the fight scenes are invigorating. Panels show close-ups of each and every punch and kick, every block, every dodge. The sequence of the moves is enough to serve as a storyboard for a film (which is probably why the scenes in the anime adaptations are so close to the ones in the pages). Other factors, such as the angular shapes of the panels, the motion cues in the drawing, as well as the sparse details in the backgrounds and the figures, are all designed to both convey the feeling of fast movement as well as to keep your attention progressing rapidly from panel to panel.

American comics, in contrast, come across as stiff and static. The figures are often drawn in impressive, almost photorealistic detail, motion cues are often omitted to avoid the perception of being cartoony, and the pages are covered in gorgeous color gradients. All of this is screaming "Look at me!" to the reader, making us awe over the individual panels, rather than just flip through them to get the basic impressions. Movement is often implied rather than shown, giving the impression of a montage in a film.

The consequence of these American comic aesthetics is that fight scenes come across as rather dull, far less intense and fast-paced than they come off in the small black and white Japanese books.

And yet, there are still comics that still put a lot of pages into their fight scenes, despite the obvious inferiority. I recall forming some of the threads of this rant after reading an issue of MIGHTY AVENGERS from the Venom Bomb storyline, in which there are a whopping THREE double-paged spreads showing a fight involving all the Avengers members and the villains.

To me, there is nothing more insipid than a splash page or a double-page spread showing a fight scene. There is no story being conveyed - only a big image of a bunch of people hitting each other. From looking at the pages, there is no pacing, no way to tell which fighting styles are being used, no turning points in the action - actually, there's no action whatsoever.

So when I see three double-paged spreads of a big fight with no text or dialogue, that's six pages, 1/4 of a single issue, which adds up to almost a whole dollar being spent on this fight alone, all I see is a big orgy of costumed characters hitting each other. I don't see any story being told. If I had paid for the issue, I would have asked for my money back.

One strategy for dealing with fight scenes effectively in a superhero comic is just to avoid focusing on them altogether, showing one to three panels effectively summarizing the action and moving on.

PANEL 1: An image of Captain America throwing his shield.

PANEL 2: The shield is hitting some poor sob in the face.

BAM! The story's told.

Maybe if the artist is good, give us a monolithic panel that could be blown up and put on a wall, like of Superman overtaking an angel or Luke Cage kicking Elektra in the crotch.

But if you want my recommendation on how to do a longer fight scene that is compelling for the reader to watch, show a fight scene in which the characters have to win by strategy rather than brutality.

This is something I haven't seen done in a long damn time. Really, the last example I can think of is the Claremont/Byrne run of the X-Men. Sure, the artistic portrayal wasn't as detailed and the fight scenes were cluttered by hokey dialogue, but the neat thing about them was that the protagonists always had to think through their battles and work as a team in order to succeed.

When the X-Men fought the Hellfire Club, they were given a run for their money and savagely beaten by their leader, Sebastian Shaw, a man who can absorb kinetic energy and deal it back. Not knowing how his power worked, Colossus used him as a punching back for a little while, only to have all of that force absorbed and dealt back at him to near-death effect.

So how do the X-Men counter this? Not by dog-piling him. Instead, Storm realizes that while he may not be able to be beaten hand-to-hand, he's vulnerable to the cold just like everybody else. A bit of sub-zero wind chill made blankets and hot cocoa more appealing than conquest, so Shaw takes off.

Another event from the same run was when the X-Men fought against Magneto in his underground Antarctic base. Similarly, Magneto had just given them a good thrashing, using the metals of the base as well as the X-Men's two metallic teammates against them. So for round two, they needed to mix things up a bit.

Jean Grey telepathically connected everybody to Cyclops, so Cyke could actively and silently give orders to each member of the team. Like a pressured quarterback guiding a team that was down for the count with one minute to go, Cyclops quickly formulated a plan and sent them into action.

Colossus was especially vulnerable due to his metal form, so among the first orders was that he had to be flesh and blood for this. A quick change remedied his weakness, and he was good to go. Instantly, he was ordered to swing Nightcrawler around by the tail and release him. We've all heard of the fastball special, in which Colossus chucks Wolverine and lightning speed, but have you heard of the Nightcrawler shot put? What purpose would such a silly looking action serve?

On release, Nightcrawler flew at an immense speed. A neat fact about him is that whenever he teleports, he maintains the same velocity as he had before the teleportation. So, a quick teleport in front of Magneto's face gives him minimal, minimal time to react and defend himself, in this case, not enough to shield himself from Nightcrawler hitting his face and stealing his helmet.

With his helmet off, more than just his gray, old man hair was exposed - he was vulnerable to psychic attacks. A psy bolt from Jean Grey incapacitates him enough to prevent him from using his powers long enough for a now metal-form Colossus and adamantium coated Wolverine to hand his own ass to him. And then there were hurrahs all about, with a giant cooler of Gatorade being dumped on Cyclops by his jovial teammates amidst the glow of victory.

What was so fun and refreshing about the fights from this era was that they had to think through all of their battles, which is something that I firmly believe is much more identifiable and inviting to the reader than a series of panels of heroes dog-piling their enemies or seeing an orgy of superpowers lighting up the pages. Furthermore, seeing a team fight by strategy illustrates a team dynamic, showing them work together and producing a whole greater than the sum of its parts, showing why the team, and perhaps more importantly, why the book matters.

I want to see more of this kind of action again. I want to be right there with the heroes, thinking through the battle and seeing how they can get through a battle despite being outgunned. I don't want to see pages of the New Avengers squaring off in one on one matches against their opponents or a last-chance save by a you-thought-he-was-dead-but-you-thought-wrong Wolverine.

#2: Subplots

I have a big problem with subplots in modern comics.

Mainly, that there just don't seem to be any.

A while ago, there was this great Alan Moore interview in which he described his thought process for TOP 10. In particular, his inspiration stemmed from his thoughts that team books in superhero comics just didn't seem to work.

Wait, they don't work? Like, at all?

But there have been something like 40 years of stories of the Avengers, the Justice League, 60 years of the Justice Society, not to mention fan-favorite teams like the Legion of Superheroes, the Teen Titans, and the Defenders.

I'm sorry, Mr. Moore, but you are just coming across as a pompous ass when you say that. As pompous as you did when editor Len Wein told you that the alien attack ending in issue #12 of WATCHMEN should be omitted and something to the extent of "You ripped it off of an Outer Limits episode. It's already been done." and your response was merely "But I haven't done it."

...But then Moore elaborated on how the stories that he thought best exemplified the team dynamic were cop shows like Hill Street Blues or NYPD: Blue. 2 and 2 came together as naturally as they usually do for him, and the idea of a superhero police precinct was conceived.

In the pages of the book, we're shown a police unit where characters are dispatched to different parts of the city to investigate different crimes. Two veteran partners go here, another pair of partners go there, the new member is comically paired with one of the most difficult members of the team and sent on a seemingly innocuous beat that turns out to be more harmful, etc. etc. Characters and plots are constantly coming and going. While some of the plots tie together, they often do not, so one case being closed does not end or affect the others. All of these elements combine to give the feeling of a living, breathing, police department that is operating 24-7 in its war on crime.

So my big question is - Why isn't the same approach taken when writing the Justice League or the Avengers? Having been an active reader of superhero comics, I still have no idea how the Avengers synchronize their schedules and balance their solo duties with their team efforts, or how the Justice League designates a threat important enough for them to intervene as a team.

Instead - both of the books seemed to have followed the same paradigm for as long as I have read them.

A really big monster/threat/powerful supervillain appears, and the team members dogpile or combine their powers to stop them.

I don't mean to suggest that there weren't interesting stories to read along the way, but I mean, c'mon - aren't there other ways to tell these stories?

Personally, I think one of the most effective ways to freshen up the popular Marvel and DC team books and make them feel like they're really operating as a team is to have multiple subplots running that concern different characters. The Justice League and the Avengers are teams that have to tackle large threats that require the cooperation of multiple heroes. Surely, these events aren't just discretely happening one at a time, much to the convenience of the team.

Rather, it would be wise to assume, even in an unrealistic universe with superpowers abound, that these kinds of events would be popping up all over the place. Teams would have to make decisions, delegate which events require the attention of whom, split up and cover more ground. I want to see Green Lantern and Hawkman sent to investigate a giant spider landing in the Midwest, Green Arrow and Aquaman dispatched to handle pirates off the coast of Africa, Wonder Woman and Superman fighting a giant robot from the former Soviet Union unleashing havoc on the countryside in Russia, all while the Martian Manhunter is observing the events on monitor duty while simultaneously hearing Batman doing his best Danny Glover impersonation and grumbling about being too old for this shit. The characters would be finishing and starting their plots all at different times, making the JLA Watchtower/Hall of Justice a place full of comings and goings of different heroes as they're all delivered to their missions around the world or returning, weary from combat. On occasion, large-scale villains like Darkseid would require the cooperation of the entire team, and members would have to decide to either forfeit or continue the battles in their immediate attention. The book would be so dense and busy that watching the varied action scenes alone would exhaust you.

Seriously... Wouldn't that be awesome?

Even when something like this is touched upon remotely, it produces interesting results. Brad Meltzer's JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA #12 was a neat little one-shot called "Monitor Duty", which just showed 24 hours of rotations as various heroes, through enthusiasm or total reluctance, take the task of monitoring dangerous events in the world and allocating JLA resources to combat them should they be important. The issue was an amazing read, and alone it proved to be far more enjoyable than the entire first seven issues comprising The Tornado's Path turned out to be.

- - - -

Alright, I've decided.

I'm laying down an ultimatum.

Marvel and DC, hand me your team books for me to write and revamp, or face the continued wrath of my blog rants!

I need a new title

Part of the reason I haven't been posting much lately is because I found out there's a comic blog out there older than mine called "Yet Another Comics Blog."

While I would be perfectly content to thumb wrestle them over the rights to the name, I think it would probably be better to pick a new, more distinctive name.

Anybody have any ideas?

What Will the NEXT Era of the X-Men Be?

All this discussion about the X-Men canon really begs this question - Just which of the X books out right now really has the potential to be similarly canonized? Which one will people look back on fondly and think "I fucking loved that run!" instead of regarding it as another bland series of status quo changes and battles?

The most obvious choice would be the current run of ASTONISHING X-MEN under the helm of the new creative team, Warren Ellis and Simone Bianchii.


Before I begin, let me just say that Marvel's conception of ASTONISHING X-MEN is genius. And I'm not just talking about Joss Whedon's run.

Somewhere along the line, somebody at Marvel got the bright idea that all the best runs of the X-Men (ie: the three runs I mentioned) combined the best creative talent in the industry with some editorial leeway and permission to tell stand-alone stories that don't have to mingle with company-wide crossovers.

So when ASTONISHING X-MEN was created under this premise for Whedon and Cassaday, the idea behind the book was that they were just going to be the first creative team operating under these conditions, not the only team.

This was a big solace in the years preceding the close to the Whedon run on the book. Many fans like myself were paranoid we'd have to back to reading mediocre runs on books like UNCANNY X-MEN. Seriously, if even writers like Ed Brubaker (writer of SLEEPER, CRIMINAL, and now the two-time Eisner winner for BEST WRITER) can't make the book interesting to read, then who can?

There was a lot of speculation as to who at Marvel would take over. Frankly, a lot of their star talent was either busy or not apt to take it.

Brian K. Vaughan would have been an excellent choice. Among all the comic book writers, he's possibly the most similar to Whedon in terms of writing style, and for that reason it's no surprise that he was hired to write for LOST. Unfortunatley, he's pretty well finished with comics, so he's off the table.

Mark Millar could have brought a really cool character focus along with big plots to the book, but he already had a lot on his plate with FANTASTIC FOUR and WOLVERINE. Guy hasn't been known to take on more than a couple of books at a time.

Bendis is the most obvious choice for just about any Marvel project. However, he was the most swamped of them all. To boot, he's never written team books very well, and his run on ULTIMATE X-MEN was no exception.

Brubaker was writing UNCANNY X-MEN. Would have been weird for him to jump right into writing ASTONISHING.

Jeph Loeb may have been a possibility in the discussion, but I'm of the opinion he should be kept away from the book by a large, poleax wielding Frankenstein monster. Loeb isn't a very good writer, and if people don't realize that from reading ULTIMATES 3, then, well, I just have no faith in people at all.

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Really, there just weren't many choices available. Marvel needed somebody critically acclaimed, somebody that could take the book in a bold direction and wasn't afraid to take on such a widely viewed title. So Marvel called the one writer that could make it happen.

Chuck Norris.

Except Marvel realized that past the irony value of the decision, it would have been a really bad idea. Plus, Norris insisted during the phone call that the book take a Christian direction. Thankfully, that was overruled.

So Marvel instead called up Warren Ellis, the critically acclaimed writer of PLANETARY, the gritty, noirish FELL, and the multiple Eisner winning, Patrick Stewart favorite TRANSMETROPOLITAN.

Personally, I think it's a real testament to Joe Quesada's shrewdness and amiability with creators that they have Warren Ellis working for them in any respect at all. He's not only one of the most irritable people on the planet, but he's also one of the most vocal critics of corporate comic publishers next to Alan Moore.

But at the same time, there was a real risk in this decision. Warren Ellis has been critical of major corporate comic publishers for a reason.

The guy despises superhero comics.

Wasn't raised with 'em, doesn't like 'em, doesn't want anything to do with 'em.

And go figure - during many of the times he's written superhero comics, his lack of passion for the subject matter has really shone through.

Don't get me wrong - some of Ellis's Marvel work was awesome. His Extremis storyline for Iron Man might be the single best Iron Man story I've read and I firmly believe it should be the basis of the third Iron Man movie. His run on ULTIMATE FANTASTIC FOUR was simultaneously well paced, filled with interesting ideas, and had fun character quirks all at the same time and still stands as some of the best stories told in the Ultimate universe. And for as relentless and over the top as his run on THUNDERBOLTS was, the stories were were full of unexpected twists and turns and featured a team dynamic with such incendiary chemistry that it probably took every ounce of Ellis's restraint not to indulge the most rational course of action and just have the team members outright murder each other.

But still - a big weakness in Ellis's writing is that he can be just outright stale.

His miniseries ULTIMATE HUMAN (aka ULTIMATE IRON MAN VS HULK) - stale. Every issue fluctuated from being heady dialogue about mutations and technology, completely beridden of any character stuff like endearing dialogue or introspective moments, to large, quiet issue-length fight scenes, without revealing much thought as to pacing the two concepts.

His MINISTRY OF SPACE featured a cool, Philip K. Dick-esque alternate history reimagining of Britain if it had been the leader of the race to space and the moon. But alas, these really cool concepts were overshadowed by a sense of sterility that pervaded the book Character development and interactions were kept to a bare minimum, a need-to-know basis. Flashy events and images popped up on the pages, but I couldn't help but feel like "Yeah... so what?"

GLOBAL FREQUENCY, his 12 issue maxiseries about a global call-and-response organization, featured 12 stand alone stories with completely different characters and situations around the world, all having to do with responses made by the Global Frequency organization. Every issue seemed to fluctuate between being a big, John Woo-style fight scene, with fists flying and guns blazing but almost no story or dialogue, to dialogue-heavy big ideas with slow pace, little action, and stale character interactions.

These two highly polarized situations have one thing in common. They both lack an emotional climax. They leave me with the same response:

"So what?"

Actually, this kind of dichotomy would probably be fitting of many of Ellis's stories. It sort of reminds me of an old joke: "God gave man a brain and a penis and enough blood to only operate one at a time." Ellis's stories fluctuate from being completely cerebral, dialogue heavy, full of big sci-fi ideas, to being completely visceral, with fast action and intense fight scenes.

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So just how will his run on the book turn out?

Best case scenario is that it's like his ULTIMATE FANTASTIC FOUR run. It's fast paced, has neat ideas but is balanced by fun character interactions and witty dialogue. It has the characters we all know and love behaving in the ways that made us fall in love with them in the first place, but thrown into new sci-fi territory that Chris Claremont was never smart enough to write. It's a slam dunk and everybody adores it.

Worst case scenario is that it's as sterile as a mule. The said characters we all know and love, yadda yadda, are all made by banal by haughty conversations and extensive dialogue about sci-fi concepts about the X-factor gene and other concepts that Ellis will dream up. We all collectively yawn and get nostalgic for the lightheartedness and fun of the Whedon era.

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We're three issues in (four counting the first issue of the Ghost Boxes miniseries), and sadly, the latter description is much more apt.

Very little has actually happened so far. A mysterious dead mutant body was discovered in the first issue, there's been discussion about this Ghost Box that allows people to travel between parallel worlds, and now the idea has been introduced that something is traveling between parallel worlds killing mutants.

But there has been no action, the dialogue has felt dense, the pacing slow. The only thing it's had in common with the Whedon run is the lateness in the release schedule.

Of course, it could just be that he's just taking his time positioning the pieces and that the rest of the run will turn out to be awesome, or dare I say, astonishing? Hell, Whedon's run wasn't even that good three issues in.

In the meantime, however, I would bet money that this won't turn out to be the 4th volume of our theoretical X-Men canon.

So what will the 4th volume/era be?

Maybe it won't even feature the top tier, most familiar characters.

Maybe it will be YOUNG X-MEN. A book that features newer mutants that are still discovering their powers not only makes for a fresher character dynamic, but it's also more true to the X-Men ethos. After all, if the mutant gene arises in teenhood and can happen to anybody, not just scientists experimenting with cosmic phenomena and radiation or subjects of military experiments, then we should probably see more stories about nobodies that turned into mutants that are novices with their mutant abilities and throw in some more teen angst for good measure, which is exactly what YOUNG X-MEN is in terms of formula.

But really, I have no idea.

I mean, who am I to comment? I said that the X-Men should most definitely NOT go to space, and all three runs that I described as landmark runs in the series ALL featured either the X-Men going into space or featured some cosmic elements.

So for all I know, all my speculation could be wrong.

And that "astonishing" joke I just made? Ugh... terrible.

Related To My X-Men Posts...

Shortly after finishing the three X-Men posts, I found this article in one of the CBR blogs in which a veteran X-Men reader gives long and detailed explanations about the X-Men continuity in response to questions from younger people reading the books after seeing the movies.

A lot of it centers around the same stuff I talked about - what Claremont was doing with the book, how it changed when John Byrne joined, how creativity faltered considerably in the 90's, and how both Morrison and Whedon have revitalized it of late. There were also several explanations of the origins behind ideas used in the movies.

Worth checking out.

The Three Eras of the X-Men Part Three: Joss Whedon and John Cassaday's ASTONISHING X-MEN Run

Third and final installment!

JOSS WHEDON AND JOHN CASSADAY'S ASTONISHING X-MEN RUN
*ASTONISHING X-MEN #1-24 and GIANT-SIZE ASTONISHING X-MEN #1
*Can be found in ASTONISHING X-MEN trade paperback volumes 1-4 and ASTONISHING X-MEN deluxe hardcover volumes 1 and 2.

As you can tell from the last article, Grant Morrison's run with the X-Men characters was pretty epic. It featured possibly the most status quo changes to not just the X-Men, but to any Marvel book. The run was critically acclaimed, sold like hot cakes, everybody was happy. Right?

Well, the X-book editors (over-controlling and nefarious proponents of stagnation for the X-Men, but that's another story) were feeling anxious about how many changes were made. Or perhaps they were just trying to reassert some control. Regardless, Chris Claremont was put back on the book for the 17th time, all the characters were superheroes again and put in flamboyantly fabulous costumes, and most, if not all of Grant Morrison's changes were undone or forgotten about.

Sales dropped, fans were confused, and the quality of the writing plummeted.

For all practical purposes, Grant Morrison's run never even happened. The book regressed to what it was before, and the NEW X-MEN run felt like nothing but a dream of what the X-Men could be.

Times were bad. Something needed a change. There needed to be a fresh look for the book. Somebody who could write the characters really solidly but without muddling the book with tons of new character introductions. Something with familiar ideas and characters but without being too indebted to past continuity. Somebody to bring a fresh look to the book that isn't too derivative of the NEW X-MEN run.

Enter Joss Whedon and John Cassaday, who helmed the revamped ASTONISHING X-MEN, a run magnificent enough to qualify as the third volume in the X-Men canon.

Whedon and Cassaday managed to hit the Goldilocks spot of the X-Men (the G-spot, if you will) of being "just right" about everything. The run was both character-driven and plot-focused, felt classic and yet pushed in new directions, was respecting of both the superhero origins as well as the mutant focus, was in continuity but not burdened with references and back history.

Within the first issue, Cyclops gathered the team and introduced the whole premise of the book. The team would be superheroes again, they would don their costumes again, but as a PR gimmick. When the X-Men were all wearing black uniforms, they looked like a rogue biker gang. By appearing like the Fantastic Four or the Avengers and by stopping typical supervillain crimes, ordinary people will see the X-Men and perhaps mutantkind itself as agents of good.

In essence, it was a superb wedding of the first two eras of the X-Men.

On one hand, you have Claremont who writes the X-Men as superheroes without any explanation. On the other, you have Morrison who dispensed with the superheroism altogether and said that the primary focus of the X-Men is mutant rights and protection. Whedon came along and saw the common ground: that by being superheroes, the X-Men advance and protect the image of mutantkind.

The characterization that Whedon hit on the book was the best ever seen on any X-Men book. While Claremont and Byrne grew many of the characters from square one to the positions we see them in today, and Morrison wrote the characters as very complex and threw them into adult situations, Whedon hit the dynamic of a great television drama. The conflicts were passionate and heated, the romances were loaded with sexual tension, and the banter was always witty and top-notch. It really doesn't get much better than this.

The book also had a sense of classic adventure that I forgot a Marvel book could even achieve. Big splash pages of the X-Men fighting giant monsters, strategic clashes with alien overlords, to my favorite conflict of all - the X-Men fighting themselves. The book consisted of 4 story arcs, with the first three being discretely divided by their own villains and themes, with the fourth packaging all of the ideas of the third up along with the X-Men as they're sent into space.

Yeah. Space. So what?

At this point, I should probably point out the irony that in my initial manifesto on the team, I mentioned that the X-Men should not go to space, and yet all three eras of the team that I considered the finest all had some elements of space travel or aliens.

However, like the Phoenix saga of the Claremont/Byrne era, the X-Men were completely out of their element on this one. The book almost confesses to the rule by showing how ill prepared the X-Men are while dealing with an alien war on a planet they'd never even heard of before.

The final story arc that I'm referring to was called UNSTOPPABLE, which serves as a reflexive reference to the book's own momentum and pacing at this point. Many other possible titles, like BADASS, RUTHLESS, or FUCKING AWESOME, could all suffice and ably refer to the story's content, themes, as well as your reaction after reading.

I know this feels like an enormous copout, but I really wish I could describe the events in the story that elicit these reactions. Unfortunately, the events themselves are so cool and unique that it would really, really spoil the story. So instead here are a few brief teaser snippits: Colossus is finally written like a three dimensional character instead of a dull gentle giant, the X-Men avert a world-scale disaster that is both appropriate for the team and unpredictable in execution, and Cyclops is given complete and total redemption from being the boring leader that wears tighty whities to finally being recognized as some kind of badass military genius.

And to top this whole sundae off with whip cream and a cherry is John Cassaday's incredible, incredible art. If you've ever wondered what it was like to grow up in the 60's and discover comic books through the imagionation of Jack Kirby, to look at big images of monsters, time travel, anti-matter rays, and intergalactic space ships - all of these images previously unrealized visually at the time and yet are staples of comic books today, John Cassaday's clean and sharply drawn artwork somehow has a way of renewing the awe of these images, making you experience them for the first time, giving you a real sense of awe. Read his work on PLANETARY and you'll see what I mean.

He also combines this sense of inspiring, larger than life visuals with very keenly drawn physical expressions. Characters' facial expressions just look genuine. He's so good at expressing subtext and nonverbal communication that it makes you wonder why his writers use any text at all.

If it were possible to physically interact with intangible concepts and ideas, I would fuck John Cassaday's art. I wouldn't fuck one of his characters, I wouldn't fuck him, I would fuck his art itself. It's that gorgeous.

As much as I'd like to close with some kind of witty, journalistic one-liner, I think it's more relevant to close with a recommendation. Read THE ASTONISHING X-MEN. It's stellar.

The Three Eras of the X-Men Part Two: Grant Morrison's New X-Men Run

Here’s the second installment, in which we talk about:

GRANT MORRISON’S NEW X-MEN RUN
*New X-Men #114-154 and New X-Men Annual #1
*Can be found in New X-Men Omnibus hardcover collection, New X-Men Ultimate Collection volumes 1-3, and New X-Men trade paperback volumes 1-7.

Flash back to 2001 for a minute.

The Bryan Singer X-Men movie had just come out. The property was completely revamped, with black leather outfits substituting for the colorful campiness of the comics. Xavier’s Institute wasn’t just a superhero training camp and X-Men hangout, but a very literal academy for hundreds of young mutants from all around the world. The characters felt real, and showed that mutant powers are in many cases just as much a curse as they are a gift. Mutants and the oppression they experienced was close to home.

Comic book fans were initially skeptical about the new look, but the filters that Singer put the X-Men through weren’t just an attempt to get a mainstream audience. They also succeeded in telling a good story, a story focused exclusively on mutants and not on wannabe Avengers heroics or adventures into space or whatever.

And simultaneously, everybody remembered how much they liked the X-Men. They remembered how much the concept resonatese with people, and a few of them (like me) went out and re-watched the old X-Men cartoon from the 90’s or picked up X-Men comics.

And what did we find?

Colorful costumes that looked horribly goofy and outdated by modern standards (Cyclops’s question in the movie: “What do you prefer, yellow spandex?” to Wolverine echoed really strongly through this), literally half of the X-Men members serving as horsemen under Apocalypse (who really doesn’t seem to have anything to do with the X-Men or mutants), cover stunts with Wolverine and Jean Grey making out, and Cyclops jumping over a shark on water skis.

You can never make too many jumping the shark jokes.

In comparing the movie to the stories in the comics on the shelves, a very strange irony was presented: It felt almost as if the comics were a perversion of the movie, rather than the other way around.

Marvel subsequently realized that the X-Men badly needed a makeover. The comics on the shelves were actively turning away the casual reader curious about Marvel comics after seeing the X-Men movie.

Enter Grant Morrison.

If Marvel had just added his name to the covers and didn’t even have him write the thing, the sales still would have jumped around 30%. They could have been content with just that. But instead, they gave him full editorial control over what he wanted to change.

The results were obvious. Grant Morrison turned this
(Cover to X-Men #113)

Into this:


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Morrison’s first and most obvious change probably went a lot like this:

Grant Morrison: Hey, if the movie is more popular than the comic, why not make the comic like the movie?’

Marvel Executive: Brilliant!

And thus, the costumes were gone. The X-Men all wore black leather jackets somewhat similar to the movie, but with giant yellow X’s on them. Wolverine no longer wore the silly looking Batman helmet, Cyclops no longer had those completely unnecessary packs on the front of his body (just what did those hold, anyways?), and Jean Grey no longer looked like some kind of alien.

Marvel Executive: Sounds good. Where do we go from here?

The next most obvious thing was to contradict the assumption that the X-Men are superheroes. There’s no need for them to fight Whirlwind, The Red Skull, Mysterio, Doctor Octopus, Apocalypse, Mojo, or any other supervillain that doesn’t really have any preoccupations with mutants.

So Morrison followed suit and made the book about mutants and only about mutants. No more filling in for the Avengers while they’re out of town. The X-Men are strictly a mutant defense, espionage, and relocation group.

Marvel Executive: Okay – so we’ll make a book that stars mutants strictly about mutants. Interesting, but I like it.

The Xavier institute was thus populated from wall to wall with mutant children, many of which were creations of Morrison’s that were being introduced for the first time. Like the movie, various members of the team acted as instructors at the institute.

Additionally, the readers were given a long overdue look at what it’s like to live in a world with mutants. A whole mutant ghetto in New York called Mutant Town was introduced. Mutant subculture like fashion and music was talked about by the students of the institute. Mutant teenagers had their own mutant role models and ways of thinking about the world.

Why didn’t’ anyone think of this earlier? Seriously – my train of thought is derailed by my confusion at this.

- -

While all of these changes are rather cool, they all come second to the stories that Morrison told with the characters and concepts over the course of the run.

While it may have seemed like that the visual makeover from costumes to generic outfits and the refocusing from broader superheroics to more limited mutant related activities stripped down the nature of the book, the ideas presented in the stories only served to expand them to points nobody thought were even possible.

To put it simply, there was no shortage of what Morrison is popular for.

Big ideas.

There were so many big ideas over the course of the run that I’m really hard pressed to find some aspect of the run that wasn’t provocative.

The run began right off the bat with Beast’s discovery that mankind is on the verge of extinction. It was quite simple – mutant genes were propagating like crazy. Mutants were clearly the future of the human race.

And yet, before you can even really soak in what this means for the future of the book, mutantkind’s biggest stronghold, the independent island of Genosha, is obliterated and several million mutants die instantly in the genocide.

The X-Men fight against the catalyst behind all of this – Xavier’s twin sister Cassandra Nova, who exhibits telepathy that is so powerful and so frightening that Xavier himself, a man that embodies peace and non-violence, carries a handgun with him to shoot himself in the head in case Cassandra ever infiltrates his mind.

And this is within the course of like, three issues.

The run is 42 issues long.

Despite the crazy propagation that had taken place, the entirety of mutantkind is up against a wall during the duration of his run. Genosha was the first step in the obliteration of mutants – the disbandment of the X-Men is the next.

Slowly, over the course of the run, we become introduced to a whole slew of villains that both the reader and the X-Men have never seen before. They’re not necessarily more powerful than previous mutant nemeses like Apocalypse or Magneto, but that’s not to say that they can’t hurt the X-Men in ways that they couldn’t, whether it’s by means of propaganda in the mainstream media or even uprisings within the institute itself.

And behind all of this is a plot and a villain that is so unique and so completely unprecedented not only in the history of the X-Men, not only in the history of Marvel Comics, but in the history of storytelling itself.

Up to this point, the X-Men villains that made the most sense fit into one of two groups: 1) Humans that want to kill mutants and 2) Mutants that want to kill humans. I suspect that if Alan Moore were to write the X-Men, he would write a villain that fits into one of these groups.

And yet, Grant Morrison, a real genius when it comes to lateral thinking, comes up with something that doesn’t fit into either of these categories and strangely, it ties the whole series together.

I really can’t bear spoiling what that is. I think I’ve already spoiled too much already. Let me just say this: Conceptually, it’s brilliant.

However, if there’s a major flaw in his writing, it’s that while his concepts are very smart, his execution of these concepts can be rather… rough.

Much like Philip K. Dick, Morrison is almost smart to a fault. At times, there are just too many ideas, too many new introductions, too many characters, and too many weird workings for the reader to really comprehend at a normal pace. Certain storylines, most notably the Imperial and Assault on Weapon Plus will make the average reader say “Hey! Slow down!” I mean, it’s hard enough understanding the concept of how time can be liquified before you’re given the long-kept secrets of the Weapon X program.

Additionally, while it seems as if Morrison has discarded a majority of the X-Men continuity, there are actually several metatextual references to the past history of the book. I’d really like to say that have read many of the older X-Men stories would be able to pick up on these rather easily and note “Oh, the reason why this sequence is suddenly so campy is that it’s a throwback to the 70’s years on the book and demonstrates how outdated this character is.”

But hell, I’ve read stacks of X-Men issues and still don’t pick up on a lot of what Morrison is talking about. You have to be some kind of Marvel continuity scholar to really understand what he’s saying in certain parts of the book.

- -

Among the most needed changes in the book, however, was a really fresh take on all the characters. Morrison found some way to take the characters we all know and love, characters that have been written about for decades now, and portray them in a way that is true to who they are but still feel distinctive and human.

I could go through and describe what he did with his characters one by one, but I doubt I could top his own descriptions of who they are, as taken from this CBR interview:

‘"Professor x - the headmaster," explains Morrison. "A man with big ideas which aren't always understood by people who ain't as smart as himself.
"Cyclops - repressed, utterly noble, brutally hard on himself
"Jean Grey - tries so hard to be good she sometimes forgets to be human.
"Emma Frost - sexy, devious, villain-turned-hero, the ultimate self-made woman,
"Beast - brilliant, witty, bipolar scientist.
"Logan - dirty zen brawler with heart of gold and a hint of desperate vulnerability."’
And there you have it. Cyclops was still anally retentive, but you understood his good intentions and didn’t think of him as a total douche.

Beast was always portrayed as a worldly happy-go-lucky renaissance man, but in this run you see a real sadness and loneliness to him.

Wolverine was always historically portrayed as arrogant and hostile, constantly challenging Cyclops for leadership of the team as well as playing the whole lone wolf, Clint Eastwood type character. What’s always been illogical about that is how a man so deadly, and most of all, a man almost 200 years old, would ever threaten a 20-something guy with a goofy looking ruby visor over his face instead of just killing him and taking leadership of the team.

So instead, Morrison completely revised the rivalry between Cyclops and Wolverine. It’s not about leadership: Wolverine doesn’t want to be the leader. A man who constantly craves solitude likes himself really shouldn’t be in a position of constant demand and dependence. He’s old enough and wise enough to understand this.

So when him and Cyclops trade blows with each other, it’s not really about wanting to be leader. No, it’s really more just Wolverine being a dick. Wouldn’t you make wise cracks about a guy wearing a goofy looking visor who takes himself too seriously? And yet, underneath, Wolverine tacitly defers to Cyclops and understands that he’s the real soul and leadership of the team.

- -

The dialogue was spry, the emotions of the characters and their interactions felt real – this book is one of the best ways to rediscover why you ever liked them in the first place.

And my favorite part of all of this was how Morrison was able to appropriate all the movie elements and still one-up them. It was like a message to Hollywood: “We can use your sex appeal and your mainstream savvy in our work. But we can also use wickedly smart ideas and gigantic visuals that you could never hope to.

“Take that Hollywood!”

The Three Eras of the X-Men Part One: The Claremont/Byrne Run

The X-Men are a funny property.

Everybody likes them.

Every Marvel comics fan has a stack of X-Men comics and maybe a poster or two, every other movie fan adored the X-Men movies directed by Bryan Singer, and just about everybody else spent their childhood Saturday mornings watching the X-Men cartoon.

And yet, despite all this enthusiasm for the property, if you go to a comic book shop and actually read a few of the current running X-Men titles or any number of back issues, you find the quality of the books just isn’t that good.

I think the moment I really discovered this when I was catching up on the classic X-Men stories by reading Essential X-Men Volume 3. While the supremely awesome Chris Claremont & John Byrne run of the book was collected in the first two volumes, the third volume is when the quality of the stories really started to falter.

There was literally one story in which Storm was bedridden with some kind of anemic sickness. All the other X-Men were so perplexed as to what was going on: She was confined alone in her room and provided with all her basic needs, and yet, her health continued to deteriorate. And what was the explanation for this?

Storm was being visited by Dracula.

I’m not kidding.

Dracula.

And all along, I thought the X-Men’s primary mission statement was to stand as forerunners of mutant rights in a world that thinks the only good mutant is a dead one. I thought the whole idea of the stories was to be analagous to the events of the civil rights movement – protecting mutants from mankind’s hate, and just as well, protecting humans from mutantkind’s hate.

What does Dracula have to do with any of this?

And this story was back in like, 1982. Can you believe it? 26 years ago and the X-Men had already jumped the shark.

I’m not ranting about this particular issue just to pick on Dracula. Pick up any other number of stories from the 80’s, 90’s, or even today, and the same kind of problem keeps popping up. Writers run out of cool ideas to spin the X-Men through, so they go for gimmicks.

Gimmicks like costume changes, Magneto being turned into a baby, the X-Men being shot into space, Magneto returning to adult form and leading the X-Men, the X-Men being shot into space, clones, clones, and more clones, mutants with even bigger powers, and did I mention the X-Men being shot into space? Because that happens quite a lot.

However, all of this ranting really begs the question: Which were the good X-Men stories?

Now, I’m no expert on the X-Men. Somebody that’s read all 50,000 pages of X-Men stories might write in and say that I completely forgot about some amazing story arc in the middle 300’s of UNCANNY X-MEN or something like that. So take this with a grain of salt.

I’m of the opinion that there three really solid eras of the X-Men – three volumes that stand as the current X-Men canon, defining the characters and the mythos of the team for years to come. These are the Chris Claremont/John Byrne run on UNCANNY X-MEN, the Grant Morrison run on NEW X-MEN, and Joss Whedon/John Cassaday’s ASTONISHING X-MEN.

Since this post is turning out to be quite long, I will just post my review of the Claremont/Byrne run for now. Subsequent posts will have the reviews of NEW X-MEN and ASTONISHING X-MEN.

- - - - - - - - -

THE CLAREMONT/BYRNE RUN

*Uncanny X-Men #108-143

*Can be found in Essential X-Men Volumes 1 and 2. The majority of it is also collected in the Uncanny X-Men Omnibus Volume 1.

Looking back, I’m amazed I was as drawn into this run as I was. Comics from this era tended to feature really dense, expository dialogue and were crammed from panel to panel with campiness. Somehow, there was something so appealing about the characters that were being fleshed out before our eyes and their wild aventurous forays around the world that I was just able to overlook the idiosyncratic writing and presentation of the time.

The entire run was almost one big adventure – whether it was to the Savage Land, to Moira MacTaggert’s mutant research lab in Ireland, Magneto’s Antarctic lair, to Japan, home of former X-Man Sunfire, with subplots galore through the entire progression. No matter what obstacle was thrown in their way, whether it was Juggernaut and Eric the Red double-teaming them to Magneto single-handedly raping the entire team, the X-Men would conquer the challenge only to be thrown into a bigger one, with their resolve being stretched so thin it actually broke on several occasions.

And just when they thought Cyclops and company thought they got a handle on things, Jean Grey’s Phoenix powers started to attract some unwanted attention and the X-Men were sent the one place they were completely unprepared to deal with.

Yep. Forget what I said earlier about writers jumping the shark and sending them to space out of a sheer lack of ideas – Claremont & Byrne managed the unthinkable: They booted the X-Men from Earth’s gravity, right into an interplanetary war, and it was awesome.

I’m not sure what made the intergalactic orgy of the Phoenix Saga so awesome. I think part of it might have had something to do with the fact that all the characters, Jean Grey excluded, were completely in over their heads. None of them had been to space before and had any idea what to expect. None of them had the strength to compete with the might and pride of the Shi’Ar Empire.

And of course, what could top the Phoenix saga but the now legendary Dark Phoenix Saga? Before reading about it, the title left a bad taste in my mouth. It just sounded kind of lame – taking something cool and attaching “dark” to the beginning of it in a half-assed attempt to produce something new.

“Oh, it’s the Dark Phoenix! She’s powerful, but most of all, she’s dark! Fear her evil!”

And yet, the story proved to be so good that I envy anyone that read the Dark Phoenix when it came out. Because as much of an impact as it had on me, as scary and as destructive as the Dark Phoenix was, I just can’t imagine what it would have been like to read the stories at a time when superhero comics were generally innocent and when planet shattering destruction was unprecedented.

That’s right – a product of the late 70’s in comics, a perversion of a hyper-powered X-Men character, was actually scary.

It wasn’t just her powers. No, that’s a rather weak and predictable way of making an impact on a character.

It was the fact that Jean Grey’s tranformation into the world-destroying Dark Phoenix was done by way of seduction.

Even today, when good characters turn bad, it’s not uncommon for writers to go for some gimmick like “Oh, she was under control by some mind-control dude.” Instead, in this case, Jason Wyngarde aka Mastermind was slowly digging into Jean Grey’s mind, really grasping at what made her tick.

He discovered and exploited all of Jean’s inner fantasies. He tapped her desire to be a status symbol, her inner condescension and her wishes to subjugate others, and created a fantasy world that transformed and unleashed the full power of the Phoenix – a power that Jean’s psyche couldn’t uphold. It stood as a validation of that old adage about the difference between power and absolute power.

And all of this was done slowly and subtley, with the plot threads being laid down amidst other stories, amidst other events and turmoil that the team was thrown into, as if they hadn’t been through enough. Claremont & Byrne exhibited a subtlety to the storytelling that most writers today could learn from.

Their run closed with the now unforgettable Days of Future Past storyline, in which we get a glimpse of a future in which mutantkind has undergone a holocaust at the hands of mankind. Within the course of three issues, we not only see this nigh-apocalyptic future, but we also witness the downward spiral path to it caused by the assassination of a prominent American senator at the hands of the Mutant Brotherhood.

The real personal importance of this story to me is that it shows us why the X-Men matter. The X-Men aren’t just out there to save a couple mutants from pitchforks and give them a good education or even to stop the Juggernaut from crushing some children.

No, if the X-Men don’t exist, if some force doesn’t stand between humans and mutants and ensure mutual peace, then it’s inevitable that mutants will suffer a holocaust at the hands of humankind.

What a point to close a run on.

Comics I've Read Over The Past Few Weeks AND For The Record: Fuck The Laughing Ogre

This one deserves a bit of an introduction.

So my comic buying habits have slowed a bit lately. I'm now down to buying comics every 2 or 3 weeks, as opposed to buying them every week as I used to do. The reason for this is because I now buy my comics at Packrat Comics - a store that's about 15 miles from where I live. Weighing the price of gas and how painfully thin my monthly paychecks are, I figured it was best to reduce the number of trips to the store and come back with a thicker load each time.

The most sensible question to ask in response to this is why I would shop at a store so far from where I live when there are in fact two stores within a 4 mile radius of me. The answer is simple - those stores suck.

Most people would then point out the Laughing Ogre. Conveniently situated uptown, enormous selection, and frequent signings by well known writers like Jason Aaron and Brian Wood. Okay, okay - the store itself doesn't suck. It's got a pretty interior and has all the books I'd ever want to buy.

But there still remains one enormous deterring factor that keeps me from going there. The employees are complete and total assholes. Nearly every time I go there, there's about three or four of them working, and they only seem to talk to each other. Nearly every time I ask one of them a question or try to engage them in a conversation about comics, the question gets answered succinctly and they go back to their conversation as if I was merely an interruption.

Never, never in my life have I been to a comic book store where employees pretended the store was a record store, a setting where it's socially acceptable to act too cool around the customers. Most stores I've gone to, even the poorly lit ones with overweight workers too situated to get off their chairs, have employees that aren't just willing to converse with the customers about comics, they're eager to. Back home in Southern California, at Nuclear Comics I would usually go and shoot the breeze with whoever was working that day for at least an hour.

I love that. I love to be able to get all kinds of recommendations, to hear about all kinds of books I haven't read, and even to argue a little bit whenever contrary viewpoints are espoused. What makes the comic community unique is that the art form is so distant from mainstream audiences that everybody that reads comics is serious about them and usually loves to talk to others about them.

And to be honest - I don't even care that much for reading comics in issues. Trade paperbacks make for a smoother read, they're a self-contained work that you can loan to people, and they look sexier on a bookshelf. To boot, you can get them for much cheaper, especially if you order online or look for them used. The only real reason I buy comics in issues is to give me an excuse to go to comic book stores more frequently, hereby giving me more opportunities to shoot the breeze with comic book store owners and sometimes even other customers.

When I first walked into Packrat Comics, the owner greeted me enthusiastically, asked me if I needed help finding anything, and was more than eager to delve into a long, meandering conversation about comics. I didn't come back for another month and a half, but when I did, the guy remembered me from before. After a decent length chatterring about comics, I made my decision. This is the store I want to set up my comics subscription at.

So that's that. And for the record, fuck the Laughing Ogre.

A word before the three weeks of comics - I forgot to buy the newest issue of INVINCIBLE, so I'll have to pick that one up next time. Also, the store has been sold out of the newest FANTASTIC FOUR, so once they get in a new copy I'll post a review of it.

1. DEADPOOL #3
Writer: Daniel Way
Artist: Paco Medina

This issue surprised me quite a bit. So I've stated previously that what really makes Deadpool fun to read is the silliness and shenanigans in the book coupled with the extreme amounts of violence. All of that is still there, and the book is still making me laugh out loud a little while reading (a feat pretty rare for any print medium), the book is actually surprisingly plot-oriented. At first I thought the Secret Invasion tie-in was meant to be a little bit of a joke, but it looks like Deadpool's actions are going to be pretty integrally tied into other big players in the Marvel Universe. So the book is now three things in one - it's gritty, it's plotty, and it's funny.

I'm still waiting for Deadpool to use a samurai sword again, though. I've always got a craving for some katana.

By the way - I mentioned the last couple of times how much I wanted DEAR DEADPOOL back. Well, when I talked to Daniel Way (ironically, at The Laughing Ogre), he said he wouldn't mind writing it, but it's up to the editors whether or not it will get printed. We'll see!

2. ACTION COMICS #870
Writer: Geoff Johns
Artist: Gary Frank
I think most would expect me to trash this issue after the pretty thorough rant I gave about the newest SUPERMAN issue.

But, truth be told, I liked it. Geoff Johns has been doing a good run on the book. I think he's one of the few writers that knows how to write Superman for the long-term, in that he a) introduces enough twists and originality into Superman's life b) he doesn't use these twists in a gritty, post-modern type way - the book feels fresh while still preserving what people like about the character and c) he brings out the sympathy in the character. When you read his work, you like the guy.

If nothing else, Superman is a guy you're supposed to like. You can read Wolverine without thinking Wolverine's a good guy, you can read Daredevil without empathizing with Daredevil, and you can even think Batman's a little bit off his rocker and still enjoy the book. But with Superman, you really cannot enjoy the book unless he's portrayed as a likeable, charitable guy. If the writer can't accomplish that, the book fails miserable.

This issue was by no means a great issue. And this storyline as well as the previous one hardly compare to Johns' wonderful Escape From Bizarro World, but nonetheless, it's a fun read. This issue had some confusing moments in it. Particularly, I'm not sure how I feel about the ending, which seems to be leading heavily into the New Krypton 12 part arc coming right up. I'm being intentionally vague about this because I don't want to spoil anything.

Gary Frank's art is still awesome, by the way.

3. THE INVINCIBLE IRON MAN #6
Writer: Matt Fraction
Artist: Salvador Larroca
I've made no bones about the fact that this is probably my favorite book on Marvel right now. Iron Man is a likable and witty guy for a change and it's been really wonderful to read a book about him that reminds me of how hard Tony Stark works to be a good guy and how hard he is on himself for his failures.

This was the final issue in the arc and had a big confrontation with Ezekiel Stane. While in some respects the resolution follows a rather predictable pattern, the nature of the confrontation itself does not. The book had some well paced action and an ending that really nailed the tone of the story arc.

I can't wait to read more.

4. THE WALKING DEAD #53
Writer: Robert Kirkman
Artist: Charlie Adlard
I'm really kicking myself for not having bought that Invincible issue. That way I could have reserved the whole latter half of this entry for a Kirkman Korner and shown that goofy picture of him wearing that Savage Dragon hat. Until next time...

I used to say that this was my favorite book to read in issues - that every issue had something major and climactic and it was always really well-paced and fun to read. Looking back, I think part of the reason I said that was because at the time I was reading the No One Is Safe arc, which was pretty damn incredible. Now that the pace has slowed down (back to its normal pace), the book is a bit sluggish in the single issue department.

This issue really felt like a transition issue. It was mostly dialogue, which is usually fine with me, except the dialogue didn't really speed the pace or advance the plot, it mostly was just normal chitter chatter. Small talk, even. There was a cool punchline at the end that piqued my interest, but naturally, I can't reveal it here.

- - - -

That's it for now. In a couple of days I'm probably going to have a fun X-Men corner activity. Bring the kids!

Why Hasn't DC Hired Mark Millar to Write Superman?

DC is kind of in the dumps right now. While Marvel is enjoying the obvious big success of their major titles like the Avengers books, Spider-Man, and the whole lot of X books, they've also had enormous success in elevating the statuses of their lesser known heroes. IRON FIST, CAPTAIN AMERICA, THOR, DAREDEVIL, and more recently, GHOST RIDER, have all experienced major overhauls in sales and critical appraisals due to shifts in their creative teams.

DC, however, only seems to be kept afloat by their more major properties. Sure, the JUSTICE LEAGUE, JUSTICE SOCIETY, and BATMAN books all sell really well, but what else does? And moreover, now that ALL-STAR SUPERMAN is done and now that Greg Rucka has left CHECKMATE, what is on DC that's really worth your time and money?

What boggles my mind is when there are big name creators that explicitly state that they really want to work on and overhaul certain DC characters or properties, and yet, the creators never get their crack and we don't get to see the books change.

There are a whole bunch of cases of this happening, but for now, I'm going to single out just one. Superstar writer Mark Millar has stated numerous times that his life goal is to be the long-term writer of SUPERMAN or ACTION COMICS. This isn't just a recent proposition - he's been outspoken about this in interviews for pretty much as long as he's been interviewed. Why the hell has he not been put on the book?

Let's go over some facts about the guy to illustrate how absurd this situation is:

• The term "superstar", especially "superstar writer" is kind of a joke. However, in this case I deemed it appropriate for usage because if there's anybody for whom this applies, it's Mark Millar. Nearly everything this guy writes sells like hotcakes. It's extremely rare for any of the books he writes to not break the Top 10 or 20 in sales. He's had blockbusting runs on MARVEL KNIGHTS: SPIDER-MAN, ULTIMATES, WOLVERINE, ULTIMATE X-MEN, and more recently, on the FANTASTIC FOUR.
  
  
• To boot, he's possibly the most successful creator in the industry after Alan Moore. He's really the envy of the creator-owned world, as his books Wanted and Chosen ended up rivalling big name Marvel and DC books in sales. This is incredibly rare. His newest book, KICK ASS, sold 60,000 copies of the first printing of the first issue. Most creator-owned books rarely rarely rarely sell over 25,000 copies.
  
  
• He's not only a big name in comics, but in the film industry as well. The Wanted movie grossed enormous numbers, which is pretty rare for a non-Marvel or DC comic book movie adaptation. A Kick Ass movie is already in development, and there's talk of adapting Chosen and War Heroes.
  
  To further compound the ridiculousness, many of his changes to Marvel status quo have come around to influence the movies. It was his decision to model the Nick Fury of the Ultimate universe after Samuel L. Jackson - a man who now appears to be playing the character in all of the newer Marvel movie adaptations. Nearly all of the talk around around the upcoming Avengers movie is how much it will resemble Millar's run on THE ULTIMATES.
  
  Translation of all of this: This guy can't write something that's not cinematic.
  
  
• While some might still be reserved about the guy for his inexperience in writing for the DC Universe, he actually has already written Superman several times. Millar initially cut his teeth writing the kid friendly SUPERMAN ADVENTURES book, but more importantly, Millar was the author and brains behind the now classic Superman: Red Son book. I've heard accounts from several that they had hated Superman before reading that book and still thought the book was an absolutely incredible read.

- - - - - -

Is it just me, or does after considering all of this make DC seem absolutely insane for not hiring this guy to write one of their Superman books? This one is such an obvious no-brainer: hiring the guy is almost guaranteed to produce big sales and critical acclaim. Anybody that refuses to hire Mark Millar for a project that he's genuinely excited to undertake must just not want to make money or make fans happy. That's honestly the only explanation I can think of.

WATCHMEN: The Movie Will Be Awesome

I'm routinely bad about keeping up with things, so maybe everybody has already seen this, but just the other day I just found this interview with Dave Gibbons talking about the Watchmen movie.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SbnLAVV856E

(I also haven't yet figured out how to display YouTube videos in a blog. If anybody knows, please tell me.)

Seeing that has actually assuaged a lot of my doubts about the upcoming movie. I was a little nervous about the choice of Zack Snyder because frankly I found the 300 movie a little dull and was also getting paranoid that the unique neon and rain-soaked vision of New York presented in the comic would be replicated using green screens and gaudy digital visuals.

Instead, they seem to be using live sets for what looks like nearly all of the scenes taking place in New York. On top of that, the sets look UNBELIEVABLE and really recapture that meticulous eye for detail that the comic had.

I have to admit - this sounds like comic book heresy, but I'm really quite excited for this movie and have only been getting more so the more I hear about it. To all the naysayers out there who keep repeating like a mantra "It's not going to be as good as the comic!", I have this question for you:

What the fuck is? Honestly?

If I were to only watch or own works of art that were up to the quality that Watchmenis, then I would probably own about 6 comics, a handful of movies, and maybe a small stack of novels. This is a harsh criterion that really shouldn't be leveled on ANYTHING.

So I pose this question to all of you: Instead of constantly belaboring about how the movie will never be able to replicate certain aspects of the comic, how about thinking about a thing or two that the movie will be able to do betterthan the comic?

I, for one, can already name a couple:

1. Judging from the footage in the trailer and what I've heard about the movie, Zack Snyder seems to be remaking a lot of the scenes panel for panel, completely retaining the artistic vision. It's going to be really amazing to see all of these classic scenes in motion with vivid detail. The scene in the trailer with Dr. Manhattan trouncing through Vietnam and vaporizing Vietcong soldiers gave me the chills. The way he does it so dispassionately... he doesn't even change his completely neutral facial expression. Scares me just thinking about it right now.

2. Music and sound. I'm obviously a huge proponent of comic books as an art form - the fact that I made my own comic book blog and post on it frequently while I have no blogs for movies or books or whatever really shows my dedication. In my snottier moments, I will go as far as to argue superiority of the form over film, television, books, whatever.

So I hate to say this, but if there's one thing that comic books are sorely lacking, it's music and sound. Star Wars wouldn't have worked as a comic - it's combination of enormous visuals and a big orchestrated soundtrack made an amazing operatic production. A great, evocative soundtrack in a movie will often make a movie very emotionally engaging, make you just tingle all over - a sensation that I rarely get from a comic book.

So while Watchmen: The Movie may not cause as many intellectual discussions or be as cerebral, it may, just may, completely destroy Watchmen: The Comic in the raising-the-hairs-on-the-back-of-your-neck factor.

3. See below:


I don't know about you guys, but expect to see me line for the midnight showing on opening night. Of course it won't be as good as the comic, but chances are it will be more than worth the 10 dollar ticket price and 2 hours of my time.

An Awesome Album Cover (Why Hadn't a Comic Book Artist Thought of This?)

I was just listening to this band I was rather fond a while back, The Afghan Whigs. Their biggest album, Gentlemen, always had a cover that I thought looked really cool, but I never realized just how good of a photograph it was until today.

I mean, just look at how much the kids look like adults in the middle of a complex situation. The girl is looking at him with a kind of a tender look, but the boy has a little bit of bitterness in him.

You can tell he's thinking something to himself along the lines of "Man, how am I gonna get rid of this bitch? She was good for a lay but not much else." And yet, even though his resentment feels restrained and very adult, he's still a kid for crying out loud! You look at him and want to pinch his fucking cheeks!

Classic. While this isn't remotely comic book related, it's such a great shot and really has so much story embedded in it that it's something I would expect to see on the cover of a comic book story about a relationship drama instead.

And also, it's my blog, so I can post whatever I want. One day you could come on here and just find pictures of kangaroos playing volleyball, essays about botany, or a crude pictorial history of the invention of the phone book.

And there won't be anything you can do about it. Because at that point, I will have gone mad with power.

Most Handsome Man in Comics?

I've been wanting to make a detailed post that borderlines on being an article about how awesome Matt Fraction's writing is. It would detail his early creator-owned work to the more recent epic CASANOVA and even his Marvel work and how he was able to really bring to life many lesser known or previously seen as unlikeable characters. All of this would lead to a sort of argument that Matt Fraction is a guy to really watch in comics - somebody that might be as important as Grant Morrison in ten years.

But somewhere along the line, I got lazy.

Yeah. Work does that to you.

So instead, I'm going to make a much easier argument. I'm going to say that Matt Fraction just might be the Most Handsome Man in Comics right now.

Don't believe me? Compare him to these ugly schmucks.

Jeez, Frank. I wouldn't look so smug if I was sporting your ugly mug.

And this might be the first time anyone has ever referred to Alan Moore as an "ugly schmuck." I'm just THAT edgy.

Marvel Apes

Just about anything bad you can say about the series MARVEL APES is totally valid.

But you can't deny that the covers have some pretty funny references.

(The original cover, CAPTAIN AMERICA #25, which featured the death of Captain America, is on the left, whereas the new, parody cover is on the right.

More Industry Speculation - Will Marvel Lose its Fire?

This is an addendum to the piece I wrote yesterday about Marvel. I was just thinking about it today and realized that there are a whole bunch of points I forgot to talk about in that already overly long article.

So here we go. More fun with industry speculation that will most likely be wrong anyways.

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The most obvious analogy I can give for the way Marvel is operating today, in terms of creative output, the working creators, and the working business model, is the way DC operated in the 80's.

Think about it. Back in the 80's DC had all the coolest creators: Alan Moore, Grant Morrison, Frank Miller, Neil Gaiman, Dave McKean, John Byrne, Peter Milligan...

...who am I forgetting? There might be a few others. I can't remember all of them.

They were all revamping books left and right. Gaiman's SANDMAN, Moore's SWAMP THING, Miller's work on Batman, etc. etc. There were even newer original works by creators, like Miller's RONIN, and the most obvious, Moore's WATCHMEN. All were highly successful, highly critically acclaimed. Hell, even artsy fartsy guys like Scott McCloud hold Moore and Gaiman's work at DC to be some of the best work produced in the medium.

Slowly, however, the creators (with the exception of Grant Morrison) all left. Some goodbyes were like messy breakups and had a lot of mean words exchanged, while some just seemed to get better offers elsewhere and didn't look back. But if there was any one single unified grievance, it was this:

Creator rights.

No matter how much fun a writer is having with editorial leeway and the revamping of a character, no matter how much a creator is being paid to do corporate work - in the end, they never feel all that great about losing ownership of the characters and icons they create for the corporate books.

Fast forward 20 years to the present and we're in the same situation. Marvel has all the Eisner winning creators, they're doing revamps left and right, sales are good, smiles all around...

...but is it just me, or is there a ghost about to rear its ugly head? Somewhere along the line this issue of creator rights has to pop up. When I was talking to Daniel Way, he mentioned that editors keep pushing the writers to create new characters and none of the writers want to do it, because not only do the creations belong to the company, but even the content in the pitches belongs to Marvel.

Come to think of it, this would probably explain why Terry Moore is doing work for Marvel and not creating something new. I've said in the past it would be pretty awesome if he wrote something just like STRANGERS IN PARADISE but taking place in the Marvel U, but why the hell would he bother creating a book for Marvel when he could create a book for another company and retain full ownership?

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So here is my theory for all of this:

Some of the big name writers are out. I mentioned Kirkman, but I forgot to mention Brian K. Vaughan. He's done great work for the company, but now he's a huge name, has a lot of critical acclaim - he doesn't need the Marvel paycheck or the name boost. I am willing to bet he'll never be doing any work for Marvel again.

Then there's Warren Ellis. He seems pretty entrenched, doing a whole bunch of books for them. But do you think he'll honestly stick around if any of his Avatar books break the 30 or 40k mark in sales? Hell no.

It's only a matter of time before many other of these creators start to make decent sales on their creator owned books and take off. Think about it - the pay is better and most of the writers claim they have more fun doing it. It's a no brainer, huh?

My take on all of this is that in the coming few years, it's going to be hit then split for creators at Marvel. Once their creator owned books become hits, that's it - they're gone.

Again - I could be completely wrong about this.

(In fact, that's most likely the case)

Will Marvel Lose its Fire?

Just today, I met Daniel Way, writer of WOLVERINE: ORIGINS and DEADPOOL for Marvel while he was doing a signing at The Laughing Ogre here in Columbus. Normally writers are pretty quiet at signings. A month ago when Jason Aaron was at the same store, he signed my books and answered a question or two of mine and that was about it. With Daniel Way, he just kept talking and talking - I got a good 25 or 30 minutes of chatter out of the guy. I'm just glad there weren't too many people waiting.

Among the things he talked about, what really piqued my interest was his discussion of a lot of the editorial and corporate practices at Marvel. One of the things he said that really worked to Marvel's advantage was their flexibility about scheduling. Apparently at DC, stories are plotted up to two years in advance and once they're plotted, they're set in stone. If anybody comes up with cool stuff they'd like to use in a story at a creative retreat or some kind of editorial meeting, well, um... too bad. No way to fit in. Way commented that at Marvel, things were fluid enough that they were willing to change the schedules in order to fit in cool ideas.

Which is the way to go, as far as I'm concerned. A policy like that has Quesada editorship (is editorship a word? I need an editor) written all over it. Joe Quesada is seriously the Bill Clinton of Marvel. He came in at a time when Marvel was in the dumps and had lots of innovative ideas for reforming the company; all of which tied back to a central thesis - "It's the storytelling, stupid!" So he put storytelling first, and voila: the books flourished, and even no-name titles with less popular characters like DAREDEVIL and CAPTAIN AMERICA topped the charts. Remember the 90's? Anything without Spider-Man or the X-Men simply didn't sell.

However, while the focus of the editors at Marvel is largely on creating cool stories, Way also mentioned that the corporate structure is in a very conservative swing. I didn't know much about how Marvel works as a business, but apparently the editors are totally swamped. The fact that the books continue to sell and be profitable doesn't make a difference - editors only continue to get more bogged down. Apparently assistant editors rotate through the company like crazy because the work is not only intensive but pays piss poorly - about 24,000 dollars a year, which doesn't seem bad until you consider that you have to live in New York for that job. Additionally, he mentioned that Marvel only hires a new editor for every three that leave.

He also commented that new ideas are becoming less and less of a prerogative for the company. He said it's no surprise that we're witnessing the third crossover in a row with popular heroes fighting popular heroes. They're not changing the established formulas, they're going with what they're confident will sell.

And with that, he smiled and said he'd kinda like to see it all come crashing down, just to see what happens.

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This led me to some thinking - will the prosperity that Marvel has been experiencing over the last 5 or 6 years level off or decline? Let's think about the factors:

1) What Way described was typical corporate cost-cutting. That's the nature of the beast - it's how it feeds itself and how it stays alive. But - corporate structures and artistic minds don't always go hand in hand. When a company is conservative, they become more efficient, but they considerably cut down their chances of having out of the blue, surprise hits. Marvel's ideas will get recycled, while other companies might capitalize off the pique value.

2) Creators are already leaving. Sure, their stints were fun, they loved working with Quesada, but few of the top level talent took the work as a permanent job, with some exceptions (I'm looking at you Bendis).

• Matt Fraction commented that his major motivation for doing corporate work was to pay the bills that his creator owned work couldn't. You can imagine that once his name becomes big enough that his creator owned work will do better, he probably won't be as interested in working at Marvel.
• I believe Mark Millar only has one more Marvel project scheduled. After ULTIMATE AVENGERS debuts and finishes, I think he's going to do creator-owned work exclusively. Hell, all of his creator-owned books sell like hotcakes. If any creator has a book that sells half as well as WANTED did, he or she would most likely be making more than any major Marvel title will.
• It's only a matter of time before other major, critically acclaimed creators jump ship. Ed Brubaker got his second Eisner in a row for Best Writer and sales for CRIMINAL continue to increase. It's only a matter of time before he gets offers to do whatever the hell he wants, and at that point, why work at Marvel?

3) Where can Marvel get new talent? Their previous strategy was siphoning big talent off of DC, who are now almost completely dry. They can fish in the indies, but if you look at Marvel's catalog, they still just don't have many books which offer fresh starts for newer talent.

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I could be completely wrong about this, but my bet is that FOUR YEARS from now, the company will be very different from it is today. The big name creators that are recognizable now will all be gone, Image Comics will have stolen a lot of their thunder, and crossover fatigue will have set in a lot of the comic buying audience.

Don't believe me? Let's meet here four years from now at 8 o'clock and discuss it. If I'm wrong, dessert's on me.

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POSTSCRIPT:

I forgot to mention this and I thought it was kind of neat. When I told Daniel that I loved his story about Tombstone in TANGLED WEB, he smiled and looked and sounded really flattered.

That's one of the things I love about meeting newer, lesser-known creators - when you tell them you like their work, they sincerely sound flattered. Grant Morrison won't bat an eyelid if you mention that - not because he's a jerk (actually he's quite the opposite with fans), but just because he gets that all day from people.