A Quick One While He's Away

I am a few hours from stepping on my airplane, but since it seems to be the topic du jour around the big table, I thought I'd throw in my few cents on the subject of yelling at stupid people.

It's a bad idea. I've probably done it myself a few times. It feels good to vent. But... it's the least productive action possible given the circumstances. It's so unproductive as to almost be counterproductive.

To wit:

* Sometimes following serialized fiction entails buying books you don't like or don't enjoy. I still think it's something of a misnomer to say that people don't want these books, however. They obviously do want them or they wouldn't be buying them. Sometimes you keep up just to see how bad it can get, or to have something to complain about, but that doesn't mean you're not getting some kind of value for your money if that's what you're doing. We've all done it, and it's not unique to comics: how many people do you know who have kept watching a TV show long past its prime, or followed a book series, or went to see movies they knew they wouldn't like because a favorite actor was in them? Negative enjoyment is not physical pain, and it's still possible to enjoy something you don't "enjoy", when you factor in ancillary context. Just think: do you know a Milwaukee Brewers fan? Or a Boston Celtics fan? No one calls them crazy for watching a losing team - even when the team loses chances are they still enjoy watching the game.

* There's this idea at the back of these complaints that comics spending across the industry is somehow a zero-sum game. As much as some may protest, there is at the heart of the matter a core assumption that if people would just stop wasting money on crap they would spend their money instead on Nextwave / Casanova / Sleeper / Love & Rockets / Kramers Ergot. The consumers that makes up the majority of the audience for mainstream comics are not fans of the medium. They are fans of specific characters and concepts, as well as connoisseurs of a specific type of aesthetic experience that can only be gotten from sewrialized heroic fiction. If these characters and concepts ceased to be published, they would probably not continue to be comics readers. Just look at how enthusiastic so many superhero fans are over shows like Buffy and Heroes and Lost: the medium, much as a vocal minority may fight against the tide, is nowhere near as important to the vast majority of comic readers as the message. And the message is serialized heroic fiction. If the Marvel Universe ceased to be published in comic form and instead became a series of ongoing live-action soap-opera programs on a dedicated cable network, many fans would probably grumble, but most would put up with the switch in formats and continue to follow Captain America and Wolverine. And probably never read a comic book again if it wasn't Garfield.

* Most importantly: if something that someone else does bugs you, leave it alone. This is a hard lesson to learn, but learned it must be. You don't win any friends by berating stupid people, and it just succeeds in raising your blood pressure.

Stupid people will always prosper, and short of an IQ-based genocide followed by a selective eugenics program dictated by alien overlords, that will always be the case.

Bullet Points

* It should come as no surprise to anyone that Ghost Rider was very close to my platonic ideal of what a superhero movie should be. At no point during the proceedings was I at all tempted to throw something at the screen. I can't remember a movie since the original Superman that has done such a good job of communicating a character's specific visual appeal. With Ghost Rider, the visuals are a huge part of the appeal, and once they had that part nailed, well, they could fill the rest of the plot with salt-water taffy and I'd have been content.

* But man, they should really change the name of the movie to Eva Mendes' Breasts with Ghost Rider. If you know what I mean. And I think you do.

* So, yeah. Civil War. Heh. I was quite amused by Augie De Blieck's advance review of the final issue. Now, De Blieck is a Marvel fan. You know if you've lost Augie, you've lost the plot, because in the past he's shown a very generous willingness to give Marvel the benefit of the doubt. But his reaction seems to be a big fat shrug, never a good thing for such an enormous initiative. And it is extremely telling to me that after discussing the issue his very first thought is what Marvel is going to be like when the current leadership is gone... could be just a coincidence. But never a good sign for the Powers That Be if your most popular product instills such yawning indifference in your target audience that the idea of replacing the Boss is the next logical thought.

* I'm going out of town for a little bit starting tomorrow. So if there's anything important anyone needs to ask before I go . . . well, good luck with that.

Memo to Reed Richards

Re: The Infinity Gauntlet



I believe he said so:



I think Doctor Strange didn't say anything because he was being nice.

Big Pile 'O' Crap

Wolverine: Origins #11

I think there's some sort of hard-and-fast rule about the fact that, whenever you've got a long-standing adventure character, the moment you run out of stories to tell that don't involve chipping away at that characters' origins and defining moments, you have officially entered a baroque period of steadily diminishing returns. So when I see a comic book with Wolverine's long-lost son (heretofore known as "Poochie"), I can only think that somewhere along the line someone at Marvel totally lost the plot. Yeah - Wolverine, one of the most prominent super-heroes in the Marvel Universe, just happens to have a long-lost son, and he's slimy Eurotrash, and he's got claws coming out of both sides of his wrist - oh yeah, this is just a fantastic idea. I think he needs a skateboard to go with those totally extreme tattoos. At least Wolverine's nubile teenage girl clone was nice enough to look at.

But man, Steve Dillon is still one of the best. I have to think he is having a ball drawing this crap, because the alternative is just depressing.

Thunderbolts #111

One of the great things about comics - well, strike that, all entertainment period, but comics especially - is that whenever an old idea stops selling, the Powers That Be can always be counted on to totally screw up the original concept in the name of trying to squeeze more money out of an existing trademark. This is an important distinction for anyone involved in corporate comics, and I daresay it is a simple enough rule that it can be distilled into a mathematical formula:

Trademark > High Concept

Having a book on the stands that exploits the Thunderbolts brand is much more important than keeping the brand cohesive; given how hostile the market remains to even established brand names, it is considered prudent to squeeze every possible ounce of juice out of every recognizable brand. It's not that the new Thunderbolts is even a bad idea for a book: in the wake of Civil War, the government sponsors a team of the world's most dangerous super-villains to take down rogue superheroes. Sure, it's essentially Suicide Squad with Venom and Bullseye. And the post-Civil War world building is hokey and contrived. But there's a germ of an idea there. The problem is, the idea is not the Thunderbolts.

I have intermittently kept an eye on the Thunderbolts since the very beginning - I bought the first issue off a supermarket spinner-rack, if you can believe that. I haven't always bought the book but I have always liked the idea. It's a simple idea: reformed villains seeking redemption. That's it. It's so simple, it almost writes itself: redemption. You can do a lot with that. There's the "will-they-or-won't-they" tension of morally-ambiguous "heroes", there's the distrust from established superheroes, there's the "misunderstood-criminals-on-the-run" shtick. But at the end of the day, if you don't have a group of super-villains who, by hook or crook, are trying to improve their lives, it's not the Thunderbolts, it's something else entirely. Call it something else if you wish, but it's not the Thunderbolts.

So yeah, put the Green Goblin, Venom, Bullseye and S&M Speedball together. Make it so that S&M Speedball loses a massive amount of blood whenever he uses his powers - great idea. Throw in Moonstone - she was never anyone's favorite anyway. But leave Songbird and the Radioactive Man - two characters who Kurt Busiek and Fabian Nicieza have spent years trying to redeem - out of it. Because putting those characters in this book is just an awkward fit, and sort of an insult to the fans and creators who followed them in the old book. They're not household names, they could easily do the book without them. When the hell are we going to see Songbird join the Avengers, a la Avengers Forever? Every issue that the character is involved in this deplorable mess, that day becomes more and more distant, which is a damn shame. That might have been fun - this is just depressing. I've always believed that Mark Gruenwald was 100% correct when he sad that it was a creators' responsibility to leave a character in better shape than when he found them, but apparently Warren Ellis believes that it is his responsibility to break all the toys.

Ghost Rider #8

This was a perfectly fine comic book, with no catastrophic errors in judgment on the part of the creative team. It looks great. Javier Salteres and Mark Texeira were made to draw Ghost Rider: just one of those weird things. Daniel Way seems to be working on an extremely old-school interpretation of the character, and given all the crap that Ghosty has been through in the last decade or so, that's probably for the best. Back to basics.

But - wow, this issue has nothing at all to do with Civil War - despite the Casualties of War banner on the top, there is nothing to indicate that this comic even occurs in the same universe as Civil War. One character mentions the events in passing, and that's it. Maybe next issue will see a full-on crossover, with SHIELD going after the Ghost Rider, but wow, if I bought this issue for a Civil War tie-in, I'd be pissed.

And there is the small matter that this issue seems to have the exact same plot as the last Ghost Rider comics I read - which just happened to be the most recent issues of Ghost Rider, the Richard Corben arc. Johnny Blaze stumbles into town and is immediately taken into police custody for a crime he didn't commit... wow, what a concept. Where are the editors?

Justice Society of America #3

Hey! Howabout a superhero comic that doesn't involve lots of innocent people being gruesomely murdered by neo-Nazis? No? Oh, damn.

Could you at least give me one that doesn't involve Wildcat's long-lost son turning into a giant kitty? No? Oh, double damn.

Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes II #6

What's that you say? The Wasp is hot? Yes she is.

LOLZ PWNED