Quick Links: May 17th

"Beast Wars" was often hit or miss for me. But when it was good, it was great.
Shout is offering the complete series for 50$. That's some good value for robots fighting. Ah Dinobot, you were so brave.
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Comics Alliance has the new Tin Tin live action movie posters.


I am oddly enthused to see this movie.
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Spinoff Online (and many other places) are reporting that the Wonder Woman pilot wasn't picked up. They submit that TV might be giving up on geeks (as Smallville also just wrapped up for good). I would prefer to think that Wonder Woman just wasn't that good a pilot, especially since the superhero movies have set the bar so high in terms of production value.
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"Thor" seems to be doing well. I should get out to go see it, I guess.

Free Comic Book Day 2011: Spider-Man

I dropped all the Spider-Man books from my pull list following the "One More Day" storyline. That's a long, and completely separate story.

This year was the first year I have ever been able to participate in Free Comic Book Day. I always managed to be busy or out of town prior, so I was pretty excited. It was fun, and the atmosphere in the shops was really good. I see why it warrants all the hoopla.

I picked up a couple of free comics, and the first that I read was "Amazing Spider-Man" by Dan Slott and Humberto Ramos. I figured that it would be a good test to see if Spider-Man was going to be a book I could look into picking up again or not.

Other reviewers seemed to like this book well enough, and I've never had any major issues with either Dan Slott (who I liked from his "Avengers: Initiative" work) and Humberto Ramos (who's "Crimson" is still something I like to re-read from time to time) both usually do good work, so I had a sense of enthusiasm getting into this issue. Maybe even hoping that things had turned around for the Spider-Man book, and I could hop back into it. I have just finished reading an Essential Spider-Man book, and it served to whet my appetite for more web-slinging action.

But this book? Meh.

Okay, I'll say, it's not terrible. It looks okay, and it's paced okay.

However, that's it. It's full of just being "okay", and it should have been, in my opinion, great enough to serve as a flagship for the entire Marvel line of comics.

Spoilers follow, be warned. Not in any great detail, but you know, this is the internet. I'm just doing my part.

• Spider-Man fights the Mandrill, and he fights Spider-Woman because the Mandrill has possessed her.

The Mandrill fought them both not too long ago in "New Avengers". This seems like a cheap rehash of another book I already own. Also, "The Mandrill"? Really, Marvel? Not Doc Ock, or a Goblin, or any other of the web-spinner's iconic foes for this book, the one you're giving away to try and win new readers, but instead, the terminally silly Mandrill? For shame.

• Spider-Man has lost his spider-sense.

Not really sure why. It's never really explained, at least not to my satisfaction. Spider-Man's powers going on the fritz is sort of a standard Spidey plot. I think that it's a bit lazy on the part of Dan Slott to trot out this old, "tried and true" trope for Spider-Man. It doesn't feel fresh, it doesn't feel innovative. I'm just going to assume he got hit by a pumpkin bomb full of strange gas, and that's what caused it. Sounds about right.

• The Master of Kung-Fu, Shang Chi, teaches Spider-Man kung fu in order to help him compensate for the loss of his spider sense.

This little plot point, I like. It was sort of jammed into the story, but really, you'd think a guy like Peter Parker who is constantly getting his butt whupped would take a class at the Y or something. I mean, he pals around with Captain America and with Iron Fist all the time. This was a cool little idea that I liked a lot.

• They call his new style "spider fu".

Yeah. They call it that.

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Was this book arduous to read? No, in general it was okay, but I think that as a Free Comic Book Day offering, it was a failure, as this book did nothing to make me want to shell out four bucks a pop for more.

Superman: Global Citizen - (The World has Gone Mad)

Superman is no longer an American.

The internet is now ablaze.

Look at some of these comments from the Comics Alliance article:

• robo: One more reason why I will never buy another DC comic again. Marvel is almost as bad. News flash: Liberalism is bad for business you morons.

• Eggman: The great thing about America as of the posting, is that I can decide where to spend my money, and it won't be with DC anymore. This PC crap is enough to make me vomit.
• Charlie X: Yet another perversion of an American institution by a group of Liberal Socialist "New World Order" turncoats who I think might find a more illuminated point of view if they moved away from this country and its freedoms. They continue to try and rot America from the inside and attack everything patriotic. Enough Already!

Wow. There are hundreds more posts like this, just on Comics Alliance alone.

Bleeding cool has collected a bunch of comments from pros in the business. These are a few of my favs:

Ethan Van Sciver: I just recommend a letter writing campaign, now that DC Comics has letters columns again, demanding to see Superman carrying an American flag into space again. Let the editors know it matters to you that Superman remains an American icon. They’ll listen.

Stephen Wacker Got some angry letters today from people mad at Marvel about what we did to Superman.

Dan Lawlis: Is there any doubt the comic book industry is dominated by Godless anti-American leftwing extremists? No. And this is exactly why I don’t miss working in the comic book field.

Ethan Van Sciver continues to be one of the least likable people I've ever met in the comics field, and basically alienates me further as a non-American comic book reader. Steve Wacker's comment, however, was comedy gold.

Comments on the internet are crazy and they are everywhere.

On the LA Times Article:

• More leftist garbage from an America-hating clown who happens to be a comic book "author"...nothing like comic books to teach kids how to hate America like punks such as him already do. Posted by: Verballistic
  

USA Today:

• Oyster P: So now the liberal pukes have their hand in one of the best comics out there. That's one way to brainwash the minds of our youth to their American hating ways.

• Steelbird: If this happens, I will be renouncing Action-Comics. Not one penny of my money will go to ANY of their products. Leftist pigs!!!!!!

Wow.

(I'm going to say wow a lot, in this piece, I think. People on the internet are amazing me today.)

The Washington Examiner's Christian Tappe has these...opinionated words to share in his op-ed article:

"Superman will be renouncing his U.S. Citizenship. Because apparently comic books still exist and people still read them I guess.

Regardless of circulation and readership, the Man of Steel, will no longer be America’s own, but rather a citizen of the world.

As the scintillating and super realistic dialogue of the comic says, “The world’s to small, too connected—which is why I intend to speak before the United Nations tomorrow and inform them that I’m renouncing my U.S. citizenship.” Some guy who I don’t know then answers incredulously and profoundly, “What?” And then Superman responds: “I’m tired of having my actions construed as instruments of U.S. policy.”

This drastic decision was brought about because for some reason Superman was in Iran helping out non-violent protestors or something like that.

On the one hand, whatever. It’s a comic. And, um, Superman is an illegal alien anyway, literally. And, again, it’s a comic.

On the other hand, Superman is—or at least was—an American icon, standing up for truth, justice, and the American Way. And while America succumbs to a multiculturalism where morals and tradition are generally rendered moot, Superman stood for a code, and honor, and goodness. He represented everything great about America: strength, conviction, and unwavering principles."

Again, wow.

Here's the thing that gets me the most. The people who hate this story, the one who hate it the most, these are the same people that hate the current government in the U.S. They're the ones who call their own president a Commie and a traitor and say that America is going to hell in a hand basket. They spew such anti-American sentiment themselves...and when a fictional comic book character says, "Yeah, I'm not gonna represent the U.S." they lose their minds.

Even better is the fact that there are people who demand that the president of the U.S. show them his birth certificate while at the same time hate the fact that the last son of Krypton is no longer identifying as American.

Fox News, somehow, manages to be pretty relaxed in their reporting of the story. That's a little surprising, but it's okay. They have their comments section to balance it out.

• patriotshammer : LOOK, up in the sky, it's a bird, it's a plane, No it's a Can O' SPAM.... What has happened to our heroes of our childhood??? Hollywood has neutered all of these Heroes, fortunately we still have Heroes in Our Servicemen and Women... I Love My Country, but loathe my Gov't, for what it has done to denigrate this Nation to the world!!! VOTE CONSERVATIVE IN 2012!!!

• savage_eagle : Good bye superman............take all the pretenders in Californica with you please !

• dlkyk : Superman, whose next??? Sad that some progressive writer needs to beat up any country.

This one is my favorite comment from the Fox site:

• john_q_militia : Superman = GAY.

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Now, I know that this is not all Americans that think this way (or don't think at all). I know that. But there are so many of you that are on the internet writing about how mad you are that you disagree with Superman that I just had to write about it. Because it's ridiculous. To those people that are writing these comments and feeling this indignation, you sound like petulant children. Stop it. Stop it an go to your room until you're ready to come out and behave yourselves. You are embarrassing yourselves, and your ancestors would be ashamed of you. Stop acting out like spoiled, rotten little kids, stop being bullies and brats, and just chill the fuck out.

You're making your whole damned country look bad, and when you do that, it upsets me, because it inevitably spills over into mine.

Quick Links - April 27th

The Cool Kids have a post about why Forge is the worst of the X-Men today. They're right, Forge was a terrible X-Man. Really, fuck that guy, he's always so whiny and he has led a life of failure.

Apparently, there is a Royal wedding motion comic app. Yeah, I knows. I knows.

Green Lantern is adding 9 Million dollars to it's special effects budget. A little late in the game to be messing with the SFX, I think. How bad did it look?

The first image from the Avengers movie set is out, over at Comics Alliance. I am giddy with anticipation.

Essential Spider-Man, volume 4

I picked this up last year at the Montreal Comicon on the cheap, and it sat on my bookcase for a few months. I finished reading it a few weeks ago, and wanted to do a quick write-up, but haven't managed to until now.

Essential Spider-Man, volume 4 contains issues of Amazing Spider-Man 69-89, and the 4th and 5th annuals, which were published from 1969 to 1971. Stan Lee is the writer for these books, and the art is by some of the great Marvel crew of that era; John Romita Sr., Sal Buscema, and Gil Kane.

When reading these issues, I felt that this was the "Classic" Spider-Man. By that I mean that there was such an iconic presentation of the character in these 22 issues that the character would forever be measured up against these books. Peter Parker goes through all the stereotypical Peter Parker problems and somehow manages to persevere. It's almost funny how these issues laid out Pete's life so that if ever he tried to break from this routine, his fans would never hear of it. The archtype for his "Parker luck" is just hammered home by Lee in nearly every issue, and becomes as important to the character as his web-spinning or his spider sense.

Some of the trials and tribulations that Peter goes through include:

• Aunt May gets sick. Peter has to fight a bad guy, and can't be there to look after her. Anna Watson disapproves.

• Aunt May Gets sick. Peter worries about money to help support her.
• Peter gets fired by J. Jonah Jameson.
• Peter gets rehired when Jonah wants some great photos Peter took.
• Peter forgets to photograph a fight he has as Spider-Man, even though he needs money.
• Peter misses a date with his girlfriend because of his hero duties.
• His girlfriend is mad at him, but forgives him.
• Flash Thompson hits on Peter's girlfriend.
• Harry Osborn is disappointed that his roommate Peter is never around.
• Peter thinks he should quit being Spidey because of the affect it has on the rest of his life.
  

It seems almost silly, until you think that it is these books that helped make this the stereotype for Spider-Man. I guess that makes it okay, but I'm hard pressed to understand why so many fans want this Spidey back. It's fun to read for a bit, but after a few issues, the melodrama gets tough to slog through.

Volume four has some good fights, too, so it's not all drama all the time. Mysterio, Kingpin, The Lizard, Electro, The Shocker and Doctor Octopus all show up to get their licks in, and Spidey also tangles with heroes in The Human Torch, Black Widow and Quicksilver. Some lesser known baddies also show up, like The Chameleon, the Prowler, the Kangaroo, Silvermane and Man Mountain Marko, so there's a good tilt almost every issue, and that helps to keep things moving.

My favorite part of this book is how serial the storytelling is. Everything keeps flowing forwards, and it is pretty easy to feel out the whole of Spider-Man's world, more so than in any modern incarnation of the character. The writing follows a pretty simple formula, and the sub-plots that are introduced play themselves out nicely and are tied off once they have run their course. Stan Lee keeps throwing stuff at the read, and keeps pushing the story forward, it doesn't really matter that very little of actual consequence happens (the Spider-Man in issue #69 is not very different than the Spider-Man of issue #89).

All in all, I enjoyed these books. I liked Gwen Stacy, and I liked the non-stop parade of rogues that menaced New York. I don't need this era to be recreated though, as it's already been done, but hey, at least Spidey doesn't do much singing.

Challenger Deep

I picked up Boom Studios' "Challenger Deep" a couple of weeks ago. Written by Andrew Cosby and Andy Schmidt, with art by Chee, I picked it up for two reasons:

• The cover was simply beautiful.
• I wanted to blog about something that wasn't super hero related.

I read a lot of mainstream comics, so I end up writing about them a lot too. I try to mix it up, but sometimes that takes a little forethought when I'm in ye olde comick shoppe.

Boom has a few preview pages of the book here. The art is at times very pretty and at others, very sketchy.

I liked the story of the book, which is that a nuclear submarine has sunk into one of the deepest areas of the ocean, one of the most inhospitable places on Earth, and if a rescue team is not sent down, not only will the crew die, but the world will end in a nuclear chain reaction.

I like the plot. It's dire. It lends itself to anxious moments and it has potential.

However, I found that the execution was less than perfect.

There are times where this book really has the opportunity to show that this is the most dangerous and isolated place on the planet, and that the world is at stake, but the writers get a little too caught up in dialogue, and tense scenes end up turning into "Tarantino-light" pages. The artist also fails to help out the mood, often zooming in when he should be zooming out to use negative space to highlight the feelings of isolation the characters (and thus the reader) should be feeling.

I feel like this was a project designed to be optioned to film, rather than a fully developed offering for comic fans. Interesting, and not terrible to read, but never really living up to the potential it could have achieved.

Scott Pilgrim Art

Bryan Lee O'Malley posted some new cover art for the Scott Pilgrim books and their publication in Japan.