A little bit of comic book day

I stopped by my LCS today and picked up the very meager offering waiting for me from last week. I also picked up X-Men and Spider-Man #3 and two more volumes of empowered. Even after doing so I still have 30 or so bucks in store credit left.

X-Men and Spider-Man #3 - I am really liking this. It amazes me because I hate Mr. Sinister and the bad guys that cropped up around the same time more than almost anything in comics. I hate everything Spider-Clone related to nearly the same degree. I am not a fan of Venom, and less so of Carnage. Having said that, I must point out that I can handle them all just fine in this context. The art is beautiful, the slices of continuity are extremely well done and fun in my opinion, and it takes a lot of crap I don't care about and turns it into an interesting story I am happy to read. I will say it again for emphasis... Mario Alberti's art is just phenomenal here, and Gage has done a great job writing these pieces so that they seem authentic representations of the time periods they represent.

Amazing Spider-Man #583 - This isn't the worst issue I have ever read, but I don't think it's very good. About halfway through the story the art goes blurry. That may just be my copy, but that was a bit annoying. That isn't what makes this issue bad. It's one of those kind of overview stories narrated by a supporting character while we see some different angle on our hero. It's a bit schmaltzy and brings nothing to the table in my opinion. I can live with that. The backup in this is the Obama story that features Spidey and the Chameleon, and as others have pointed out, it reads a lot like a Spidey Super Stories. I think that's not a bad thing when it is a story featuring a president elect. It's cute, I don't love the art, but it isn't bad. Also as I have seen others point out, it is a little strange to take what people had to know was going to be the most hyped single issue in a while, and fill it with a crappy story featuring speed dating and no shortage of drunkenness, etc. This would have been a good issue to really show the appeal of Spider-Man to a non-comic reading audience, and instead it just isn't. My opinion on this issue is that the most awesome part is the giant 5 page ad for Agents of Atlas. If nothing else, I plan to buy it when it is out.

Supergirl: Cosmic Adventures in the 8th Grade #2 - Another good issue. In this one, Linda Lee continues to struggle with fitting in, and the brief glimpse of Supergirl that we see shows us that she is continuing to struggle with controlling her powers. Two additions pop up in this issue that will allow for more plotty fun. Belinda Zee, the opposite of Supergirl comes into existence due to an accident Linda has involving some Kryptonite and an overhead projector. She is everything that Linda isn't, for good and ill. Lena Thorul starts school and takes an instant liking to Linda. Lena likes Linda, but hates Superman as she is Lex Luthor's little sister! This is fun kids stuff done pretty well.

Some thoughts on the rash of blog on blog violence

This post will contain no links or pictures.

I am also going to refrain from using direct quotes if I can. It is not really my goal to pick up any hits or receive any traffic from the things I am writing about.

A few years ago I was a fairly active participant on a message board linked to a web comic. The web comic was awesome, and I had met the creator at a convention and was absolutely charmed by her and the hangers on in her booth. It was just a nice group of people. The discussions on the bulletin board ranged from the comic, to who was going to what conventions, to general video game chatter, etc. I think there were between 10 and 15 people posting there on a regular basis. It was fun and light and nice. The core was an extended group of friends, some who had known each other in real life first, some who hadn't, some friends of friends, etc. I wasn't part of the core, but that wasn't an issue, everyone was friendly and welcoming.

This was a message board attached to a comic that was great, but not exactly huge. The artist was nothing but nice and seemed to have fun doing her thing, and this was part of her public face. This was an aspect of her as a creator hoping to gain an audience or sell some merchandise, or just keep turning out a pretty fun and by no means controversial comic.

One of the people on the message board is a friend of one of the core friends. He has a friend who shows up and starts posting as well. He seems fine, although he doesn't seem like he has even read the comic... ever... He seems to enjoy the community. Everything is still ok until the attacks start. First there are a series of people who have also never read the comic that show up and maybe make a real comment or so before just using every opportunity to just attack this other guy and smear him in the group, etc. It was ugly.

Then the guy is throwing crap back at the attackers because he knows who they represent, etc. He knows who the kingpin is and he calls them out. Then the kingpin shows up and just spews vitriol. It was ugly. This person is a very well known comic book writer. I was appalled and a bit freaked out by it. The writer had a lot of claims against the guy, and while they may have all been valid and true, it was pretty shitty to use the message boards related to a really small time artist, working to carve out a niche and build readership, etc., for that kind of personal vendetta.

It greatly soured me to the writer. I WANT to like them, but I have difficulty doing so now because of how they comported themselves in public. It makes it hard for me to even pick up books they are associated with.

The questions I ask myself now are these: Would I feel the same way if the writer had a blog devoted to slamming this guy? What if they had a general blog, but took every opportunity to personally slam the bastard in their posts? What if it only happened every now and then? Would I still feel that everything they did was tainted, or would I just think they were petty and irrational, but their blog is their place to be as petty and irrational as they wish? Would I fault the company they write for? Would I refuse to buy that company's titles because they employ writers who do things like that? Would I call upon the company to fire this person? Would I suggest that this person was unfit to work there because of their personal views and personality?

Would I go on my own blog and blast the individual publicly? No I wouldn't. Honestly, after having seen more things this person has posted, my opinion of them is no longer really affected by that one time. They have a history of being really outspoken and fiery at times, but although I would like it if people carried themselves differently 'in public' I am not the civility police, or anything close to that. In fairness, the writer apologized for the way things went down, and for the fact that it played out how it did and where it did. They directly addressed the artist whose site it was, etc. It showed some class, but at the time didn't really erase anything that went on.

I am for civility. I am for a positive spin where possible. I generally believe that if there is a possibility of taking the high road on something (especially where others are involved) that it is preferable to do so. I don't think everything in life needs to be an I win, you lose situation. I don't think that the beliefs and opinions of others invalidate my beliefs and opinions. I don't think that people who disagree on something need to act like enemies.

I also am not a fan of link posts in general. I try to put links in my posts wherever possible to enhance the experience, take you to someone's site so you can see more about them, site an original post on something, that sort of thing. Many link posts, and places that use link posts as regular features, seem to do so in a way that doesn't serve any great purpose but to antagonize, name call, or 'call people out for the purpose of inciting others to jump on the bandwagon of attacking the person being linked to.

There is a lot of ground that can be covered relating to comics and the comics industry, and related fields of interest. I am a fan of snark. I am a fan of humor. I am not a fan of bad natured attacks and sweeping generalizations that are not presented tongue in cheek or with any sense of irony. Rarely will you find any two people with the exact same definition of a concept, even one that both would claim to embody or support. Discussion and debate are good things. Name calling and bullying are not. Civility should be a given. I don't care that this is done over the Internet. Civility is something that we all strive for. We cannot control the actions and behaviors of others, but we can each control ourselves.

Superman/Supergirl: Maelstrom

Superman/Supergirl: Maelstrom - 5 issue mini series - Palmiotti & Gray, art by Phil Noto

I picked this up recently, and just had a chance to read it last night. It is another Palmiotti project that popped up on my radar recently (yes, my radar is notoriously slow to pick things up).

This mini series is basically Superman and Supergirl go camping and talk about stuff. There is another, almost inconsequential story that this is set within the context of, but that story carries no real weight at all, and I am not sure it needs to. This is less of a criticism than a statement of fact. I really enjoyed this series, and my reasons for that are several.

Superman and Supergirl are portrayed in a really great way in this series. Superman is closer to the George Reeves standard than he is sometimes drawn. He is not hyper muscled, and he looks like he has some age and some wisdom to him. He comes across as the embodyment of those things you want Superman to embody, and he is very interested in helping his cousin become the sort of person the world needs her to be. He also very obviously cares about Kara.

Supergirl is a teen(or there abouts). She is portrayed as such. She doesn't come across as a fembot or a sex kitten. One of the particularly great covers shows her in the midst of putting her hair up, and it has a 'humanizing effect' She also, at one point makes a remark about losing a cup size from not eating for days. Seriously, I know those things might seem a bit cliche, but you don't usually get that level of down to earth realism. It helps put the 'girl' in supergirl without resorting to cheesecake poses. She has the mid-drift top and supershort skirt, but still manages to look more realistic than overly idealized sexy. Most of the series is spent with her wearing basically something like a jumpsuit. All of those things stood out as underlining the idea that we were getting into her head and her character, not her super-skirt. This is a relationship comic, and a coming to terms with what you can and can't do sort of thing, and it works.

Here is the plot more or less:

We meet Maelstrom. She is from Apokolips, and her goal is to become Darkseid's wife or queen or whatever. She decides that in order to get his favor she will bring him the head of Superman. She goes to earth via a boom tube and unfortunately Superman is off planet doing good. Supergirl fights her and is bested and left disturbed about it when Maelstrom destroys a hospital full of people. Superman shows up in time to save Supergirl and send Maelstrom back to Apokolips. Maelstrom goes through a variety of punishments before getting a chance to try for Superman again, this time with an escort of the Female Furies.

Superman takes Kara on a camping trip to a planet where they have no powers, and during the course of the trip she learns a lesson about how her powers aren't the only thing she has going for her, etc. It is really the point of the story, and gives us a great look at compassionate Superman really trying to help his cousin learn and grow. Eventually, through Kara's growth, they get off of the planet and back to earth in time to defeat Maelstrom and the Furies, etc. The Maelstrom part of things really only exists to justify and frame the real focus of the story. It also shows us a good view of the differences between how good and evil operate.

The art is mostly awesome. There are a few places where things have issues in my opinion, but mostly it is great. For the record, I really think that Noto's Kal and Kara look a LOT like Adrian Pasdar and Helen Slater...

Empowered

Ok, first run over to Wit War and look at this review of Gail Simone's 'You'll All Be Sorry" When you get there, scroll down to the picture of Black Canary. Isn't that awesome? 'Does this outfit make my ass look empowered' I laughed a lot.

Empowered v1 - Adam Warren - I have been seeing some chatter on this title for a while. It is possible that I have seen it before, but it's seeming nature and my unfamiliarity with it may have kept me from purchasing it. Don't get me wrong. I like 'sexy' just fine, and I am a fan of 'funny' I am not generally a fan of things that just seem straight up exploitative or are poorly written, or designed solely for titillation, etc. This title isn't really any of those negative things, and is mostly really funny.

It is a comic that looks like it is going to be borderline superhero porn at first glance, until you see there is no detail that makes it lewd, only a lot of drawn skin and sexual situations that are generally done as a lampoon of a lot of superhero conventions. There isn't even any actual cussing in this title. The sex scenes are just borderline R rated, and maybe not even that. The volume is clearly labeled explicit content, and marketed to an audience that has seen enough of the genre to understand the jokes. I have no issue with this from the onset due to those things, but that doesn't guarantee that I will like it.

What does ensure I will like it is the fact that it is extremely funny, well written and nicely drawn in a sexy manga style. The story centers on the lovely super-heroine Empowered. She thinks her name is pretty dumb, as do most other super-folks who encounter her. She had to pick it on the spur of the moment, and that's what came to her. Her powers manifest themselves by way of a skin tight liquid latex like 'membrane'(suit) that she wears. The suit grants a variety of powers including the ability to shoot power blasts from her hands sometime, and super strength sometimes, and if she concentrate she can make the suit turn invisible... not make herself invisible, just the suit. The problem with the suit is that even light contact such as brushing against a plant might cause it to shred, and the more it shreds the less powerful it is. This leads her to be captured by pretty much every bad guy she encounters, which leads to her being bound and gagged, and in need of rescue at the end of every run-in.

One of the things about this book that keep it from being as slimy and sleazy as some might imagine a title about what I just described might be, is the very real seeming insecurities that the characters (especially Empowered) have. Empowered is a friendly, very nice, and well meant woman. She is hurt by the fact that her fellow heroes don't like her, that enemies think she is a joke, that her suit is humiliating, etc. She has so much insecurity about so many of those things that it makes you feel really sympathetic to her. She feels all those things, but she keeps going out and fighting crime and trying to make a difference.

In the course of being bested by the bad guys she meets the one person who seems to respect her and take her seriously, despite her tendancy to lose quickly and end up in bondage. She ends up dating him. A similar situation occurs when she encounters Ninjette, another villain who after besting her, gets fed up with the other bad guys not showing up, and invites Empowered out for dinner and drinks. They become fast friends.

It is really hard for me to communicate just how funny this title is, while at the same time being a little self indulgent at times with the sex and sex talk. It isn't terrible, but if you start noticing that stuff it means the funny has slowed down or stopped. I am not going to cover everything about the title here, but I will say, there is a pretty great sequence where she is bluffing the bad guys by telling them she actually gets stronger with every bit more skin she shows. This screams a sort of Witchblade comparison, and is pretty great. I recommend this title if you are an adult who appreciates a sexy superhero lampoon done in manga style, and don't mind references and scenes of 'personal topiary' and non graphic sex of a variety or two. Here are some pages I found while poking around looking for them.

Palmiotti much?

Sometimes you accidentally end up reading a lot of stuff by a writer or creative team. Recently I have read and or bought what I feel is quite a bit of Jimmy Palmiotti. Fortunately for me this has been a so far very enjoyable thing.

You may recall that i gave a good bit of lip service to the recent Terra mini series that he wrote and Amanda Conner drew. I liked it a lot. I also just bought the floppies of the Superman, Supergirl Maelstrom mini, but I haven't read that yet.

This post is really all about Jonah Hex

Jonah Hex: Face full of Violence, Guns of Vengeance & Origins - Palmiotti, Justin Gray, etc. (DC, $12.99 each) - I had not read any of this latest incarnation of the scar-faced gun slinger. My older brother was a big Jonah Hex fan when I first got into comics way back when. He collected Jonah Hex and Black Lightning. I read his Jonah Hexes, as well as picking up some of the post apocalyptic Hex series, and some of the supernaturally themed stuff that I didn't care for. This series is mostly made up of 'done in one' stories. It's nice. You can pick up any of the books and flip to a story and have a complete little morsel that doesn't require you to have read much else to enjoy.

Palmiotti and Gray do a great job with the character, and a great job with the series. Jonah Hex is sort of like a Western version of the Punisher, if the Punisher also worked as a bounty hunter. He looks like a cold hearted bastard of a killer, and to some degree that's true, but that isn't the whole story with him. Like the Punisher, he has a mission of sorts, and a very real code that he lives buy and enforces. There are a lot of things he won't tolerate, and lord help you if you end up on the wrong side of him.

The fact the stories are generally stand-alone, does not mean that they don't tell an over-arching story, or that you don't have events that relate to one another from story to story. Quite the opposite, you do get a sense that the guy you are seeing is the same guy, that he has one history from story to story, and that events from the stories you see may matter in later stories. It works well for making a solitary character compelling and real seeming.

I am thinking that I will see if my Dad wants to have a look at this. He is very into westerns, and he used to read our comics when we had them laying around the house. I imagine he would like this a good bit, as well as Brubaker's Criminal.

If you like gritty and violent western action that is pretty well written and mostly well drawn (although somewhat inconsistently). I recommend picking up a copy and giving it a chance.

Another Comic Book Day in the City

I had it in my head that I was going to hit Forbidden Planet again this week since I am working in New York again. I figured I would go on Wednesday as I did last week, since mid way through the week I can usually find a way to get out early, and Forbidden Planet is open until midnight on Comic Book Day, which is pretty cool. You may recall when I asked people for suggestions of where I should go while I am in the city, and Eden was awesome and suggested checking out Toy Tokyo. I googled all of the suggestions I had gotten, and figured I could take a cab to Toy Tokyo, then walk to Forbidden Planet, then cab it back to the hotel for dinner. It sounded like a perfect plan, but little did I know it was even more perfect... MORE PERFECT than I had planned.

I had no trouble finding Toy Tokyo, and it was pretty awesome. It's a small place, but absolutely jam packed with toys and figures and such. Most are in a price range that excludes me from buying them, but I did pick up a few things for my girls, and I had a great time walking around. The clerk there was adorable and very nice, and she helped me figure out what direction I needed to go to get to FP.

So I walked down St. Marks Place from 2nd Avenue... Which is impossible to do without the King Missile song 'Detachable Penis" running through my mind. The awesome thing is if you watch this video... at about a minute and thirty-six seconds, the guy is walking directly in front of where Toy Tokyo is!!! I saw the 'Love Saves The Day' awning. I think I am right about this anyway... If I am wrong, then he is right in front of St. Marks Comics , the next awesome place I went...

St. Mark's Comics is on St. Mark's Place, and I just happened to see it as I was walking. St. Mark's Place itself was a new experience for me... I have never been anywhere like that before. It was cool, but a little freaky to me. It's like walking on the boardwalk in Ocean City(Maryland) only it's a city street and there are no Thrasher's Fries... The comic store was fantastic. It's like you took a rundown rowhouse and stuck a comic shop in it instead of demolishing it. My foot almost went through the floor at one point, I swear. It was really neat, though, with tons of stuff on the shelves and lots of older independent and underground stuff. I was glad I went there, but I didn't get a whole lot.

I had no trouble getting to Forbidden Planet, and it was pretty awesome, just as it was last week. My daughters sent me with some cash this time and I picked up a few things for them while I was there. I also picked up more things for myself. I need to put my comics habit on a diet, but at least I have plenty of good stuff to read and write about when that finally happens. Tonight I picked up the following:

Empowered (TPB) Volume 1
Jonah Hex: Face full of Violence (I have the second and third volumes and needed this one)
Heartbreak Soup - Gilbert Hernandez - I have some of this already, but I missed out on the Palomar HC so I need this and the other trade to make up for it... plus I know it's good, and it is only 15 bucks for nearly 300 pages!
Stray Bullets (TPB) Volume 2
America's Best Comics Sampler - 5 bucks!
Young Liars #11
Johnny Ryan's Angry Youth Comics #14 (from St. Mark's Comics)

I need t go relax and read some now.

It's like Magic...turning cards into comics

I sold my collection of Magic The Gathering cards yesterday. Actually, I traded my cards for $250 bucks in store credit. I picked up some stuff, then went back today and picked up some more. I still have about 70 bucks in credit left over. Here is what I have picked up. You may notice that I do indeed take people's advice when they give it.

The Collected Stray Bullets Volume 1 - David Lapham
The Punisher (Max) Volume 4 (Hardback) - Garth Ennis
Girl Genius Book 1 - Phil * Kaja Foglio
Sleeper Volumess 1-3 Brubaker & Phillips
The Goon Volume 4 - Eric Powell
Jonah Hex Volume 2 & 3 (I will get vol 1 next time I go, but they aren't numbered. I understand that the issues are standalone stories, but I still wanted to take them in order.
I also picked up my weekly stuff.

I need to get a new bookshelf. This is exciting stuff .