Think About The Future, Eckhart.

Here’s a thing to bear in mind for every aspiring comic creator out there, and while I think about it, every publishing company, as well.

Everything not in Previews is a pain in the arse for your average Funnybook retailer.

For those of you who don’t know how Previews works: This is Previews. Make sense of this. As your job. Every month.

If you’re not mad enough to try and make sense of that for free. Previews is a monthly publication, roughly the size of the Argos catalogue listing all the products being offered by most of the heavyweight publishers to ship in two months time. We, as retailers, have to sit down with this thing and essentially gamble our continued existence on correctly ordering just enough copies of items to keep our customer base happy without overstocking (As most comics are non-returnable unless they’re very late, everything we’ve ordered, we’re stuck with, so if we can’t sell it, we’re lumbered with expensive and undesirable stock.) or understocking (If you don’t have enough of the desirable items of the month in stock on a regular basis, customers just tend to say ‘Well, if they’re not going to stock POP!/ DHP/Mars Attacks/Insert you chosen example of a comic that’s obviously understocked here, then I might as well going to the place up the road and pick up my other stuff there at the same time.)

Honestly, I can’t imagine how you settle down and try to make sense of Previews if you don’t ave a strong working knowledge in the history of adspeak, a study of Naomi Klein’s ‘No Logo’ and George Orwell’s ‘1984 ‘and the attitude ‘Okay, how are they going to try to get us to overorder ourselves into bankruptcy THIS month?’ If you are new to the Game, here’s some things that happen that you ought to be aware of.

(By the way,  even if you don’t have a hand in the ordering process, I cannot recommend to new comic shop staff that they get into the habit of reading Previews on a regular basis enough. I know of at least one employer that seems to actively encourage their staff to be as ignorant of new comics as possible. This might sound like an easier job, but you’ll find down the line that your employer has left you with virtually no transferable skills beyond ‘Running a till’.  You’re going to need more than that to survive. Trust me.)

CYCLE SHEETS!

I cannot say enough good things about this process. Every comic shop that’s still open today must have employed this technique or some variation of it in order to stay open, so here’s how it works.

You’ve just opened up a new comic shop. You set up your Diamond account .Tuesday evening comes around.  You clear out the customers and this week’s new comics arrive. Let’s say, hypothetically, you order in 100 copies of the new issue of Amazing Spider-Man for the month of September. You stash aside 30 odd for standing orders and phone ins. 5 of those are variant covers, so you do whatever it is you do with variants. You’re left with 65 regular issues of Amazing Spider-Man that you put on the shelf. Fine, so far, so good.

The next step is what you do if you’re smart and want to stay alive.

Come Sunday, you take a spreadsheet that lists every comic that ships that week and the 1st, 2nd and 3rd weeks of the month.  You sit there with your remaining copies of Amazing Spider-Man and count how many copies you have left. The following Sunday, you count and record that amount again. Then again the third week. The next week is the week the new issue should ship. Whatever number of copies you have on that third Sunday is the number you cut your order of Amazing Spider-Man by for your next order. (Barring whatever copies you want to keep for back issues, etc.) You repeat that process for every comic you stock that you order from Previews

And you IGNORE THE FUCK OUT OF ALL VARIANT/RATIO BASED INCENTIVES and stick to your numbers, regardless of whatever you’re offered in the next Previews. Holofoil 1 in 50, Die-Cut 1 in 30, 3D Lenticular 1 in 75. You’ll see all kinds of numbers going on eBay for all this stuff, and it’ll be easy to abuse your ordering system to go for the quick profit. Marvel and DC will LOVE you for ordering all that stock. But you’ll still be lumbered with a bunch of stock that looked amazing in Previews, on the websites, but now it’s taking up a lot of space in your shop. Did it all ship on time? Then it’s non-returnable. To get the 1 in 75 cover, you have to order 75 copies of the comic. It isn’t Marvel or DC’s problem whether you can make a profit on the other 74 copies you’ve just got in or not.

Comics doesn’t work like the newspaper or magazine industry. You don’t get to send your unsold copies back for credit. You have bought all of that stuff firm sale.I’ve literally seen shops go under because they focussed on short-term variant gain. I can guarantee you there are shops across the world who are still looking at their faded and yellowing Secret Invasion/Final Crisis variants gathering dust on the walls and wondering what they were thinking.

(Sure, there are some shops that seem to have variants all the time, and I’ll bet you Dollars to Doughnuts that every time the money that pays business rates, site bills, staff wages isn’t being generated by new comics sales and can afford to screw up their orders from month to month.

Or not.)

This is why whenever I see comic creators or shop staff saying ‘Oh, well, variants are just some fun, you know?’ it does my utter tits in. The way Archie does variants (They offered every cover to the Death Of Archie issues on a ‘Order as you like basis.) or Image’s efforts to make their 2nd and later printings as attractive as the original covers (particular shout-out to Sex Criminals, here.) is fine. The concentrated effort by publishers to try to make retailers ignore their own sales figures to artificially increase pre-order numbers is less funny and more, given how small the comics business is now and how many shops have gone under because they clearly didn’t know what they were doing before they opened up their copy of Previews.

That’s literally just one element of the thought process that goes into managing a comic shop, but actually, while we’re on the subject…

Tom, Jim, Axel, Dan. Let’s talk savvy for a minute here. Pretend the Rubes aren’t here. Hang on, I’ll find something for them to get outraged at…

Here. Redraw that.

Right, while they’re angry, look, we need to talk here. Here’s the thing. All of us who have the book? We’re old enough to have lived through at least three Infinite Crises or two Professor X deaths. We know the score with what you’re doing with your punters, and that’s fine. We could probably do without double-digit Captain America issue ones or such, but you probably don’t need us being quite so straight and explaining to punters why not every crossover is an essential purchase or telling them they can always find the Skottie Young variant covers on Google Images for free, so we’re balanced out, I reckon.

BUT:

I get why you need to do the ‘Classified  solicitations. I understand why you don’t want everyone to know who’s writing and drawing The Future’s End books, you don’t want the Gossip sites to blow your Third Act Reveal or anything. You want them to be surprised by the events. That’s fine, I dig you don’t wanna show your Aces until you’re playing the last hand. Just meet us halfway here.

Instead of running to the world’s media when you solicit a book two months before it hits the shops because it has some content that’ll get the real world interested for good reasons that could potentially expand the reading population, like the female Thor or having Sam Wilson be Captain America (Which has the little fat men in stained t-shirts who want to keep the Clubhouse Girl Free Because They Have The Cooties looking nervous at various marts I’ve been to, so keep it up.) How about this?

Get in touch with The View, The NY Post, whoever a couple of weeks before Final Cut Off Date. We’ll get a wave of people who want to buy the product as it’s coming out, rather than their hearing about it and then forgetting by the time said comic hits the shelves. Let us know what’s going on so we can give you more money! Realistically, we basically need a Retailer version of Previews so we can see, say, Wolverine #55 is going to feature the Death Of Sabretooth or such and will order more copies accordingly. If we just find out with the rest of the Rubes, we can’t prepare for it, you don’t print enough copies as we didn’t know to order more, customers can’t get them, nasty parasite scalpers end up with the copies and neither of us actually benefit from the effort. Just those lowlife schlubs who only care about any comic if they can sell it for more than cover price. And screw those guys. They made comics bad enough in the 90’s.

And after all, too much lead time can sometimes really backfire on you, right?

 

 

That’s just two elements of everyday life working in a comic shop when it comes to dealing with new stock. I’ve been lucky enough to work in shops that were very concerned with carrying stock outside the Diamond order, and as we learn to co-exist with Comixology and Amazon undercutting the price of new Hardcovers and Trade Paperbacks, specialising in something beyond the Wednesday shipment is going to be something we’re all going to learn very quickly or die, so we go into old British comics, Undergrounds, Toys, Manga, Small Press.

Most of this is easy. Undergrounds, Back Issues and such are offered as collections are easy enough to go through, Toys and Manga have their own catalogues and such. When dealing with private individuals though, things get…difficult. I’m not going to go into why too deeply, but I will say that talented artist of ‘ It Girl’ (available on Comixology here) the upcoming ‘Elsie Harris Works Here’ graphic novel and also appearing in my favourite comics related project of 2014, the Locust Moon produced Kickstarter project Little Nemo: Dream Another Dream,  Jessica Martin has perfected the ‘How To Make Retailer’s Lives Easier.’ booklet.

But seriously. You want this.

 

Jessica’s booklet is perfection because here’s the reality: With the best will in the world, I probably won’t remember your blog, or that I’ve got your card, or such. It isn’t malicious, more that it gets filed under ‘Things That Will Get Dealt With When All The Things To Do With The Shop Making Money Now Are Done.’ and will possibly be forgotten. For the record, and I think this needs restating, when we sit down to do the final numbers for Previews, we have the customer orders, the cycle sheets, anything we need to remember and then we’re in the process for a good three or four hours, usually arguing for quite a bit every time.

Every bit of information that isn’t on the table will be forgotten. If you solicit a comic but want us to go chasing the actual creative teams on your website three weeks later or plain refuse to tell us the actual content of the comic that you want us to pay non-returnable money for, you seriously run the risk of us saying  ‘No, this just isn’t worth the trouble of ordering any more. Why not spend the money on publishers who are straight with us rather than turning our job into some kind of scavenger hunt?’ Don’t assume any title is beyond dropped from the shelves.  What we need, ultimately, is simple information that gives a rough idea of what we’re getting for our money two months down the line. Jessica has fulfilled that brief perfectly.

What Jessica has done has created a high production value A5 booklet composed of 5 pages,(10 sides) In it, she lists what’she ‘s worked on previously, examples of what her comics look like, where to find her content, what’s she’s got coming up in the future and how to get hold of her if I want to order any of her stuff. And that is literally all I need. Ideally, what I’d have is a whole bunch of these from various comic creators who want to try to sell their work outside the main channels and I’d sift through them and order as and when needed. Simple. Do this. It’ll be worth the effort. This is how you stay both alive and relevant.

By the way, if you haven’t read ‘It Girl’, it’s well worth the effort of hunting down a copy. A touching tale of Clara’s life and a rather poetic ending. Jessica’s passion for the subject drives this period piece to be a debut that looks like the word of a studied veteran decades into their craft picking a vanity piece to work on, rather than the first time out of the gate. Jess’s artwork is somewhere between Guy Davis and Eddie Campbell on this project, and I see her as one more valuable contributor to the book that’ll probably bankrupt me this Christmas. Seriously, if you have a comic fan in your life, either they want Locust Moon’s ‘Little Nemo:Dream Another Dream’ or they don’t know it exists and they will love you for getting it for them.

 

Simple, intelligent. Hopefully, the future.

 

Some Batman Comics You Might Not Have Read.

Aside

(Full inspiration for this column goes to Amy Brander, who writes as The Frog Queen. We were chatting about Batman comics and she said she was bored of the regular recommendations….)

 

I hope Milo Manara is spending the Marvel Money on Coke and Whores, myself.

Anyway. Holy Lists, Folks, its Batman. I thought since this is BatBirthday year, I’d highlight some Batman comics you might not be aware of, since Lord knows I’m sick of the usual LongHallowDarkKnightEarthOneYearOneDarkVictoryKillingJoke that get pulled out every time. There’s nothing wrong or bad about any of those comics, they just get a bit…well, familiarity breeds contempt, you know? So here was my criteria: Pick ten comics or runs that would be easily accessible to someone who’d only seen the movies or cartoons. No worrying about NU-52 stuff, crossovers, continuity glitches or such. You could open he comic armed with knowledge that there’s’ a rich bloke called Bruce who beats up people dressed as a bat after his parents were killed and lives in Gotham.

Oh, before we start. Let me make it clear this is an exercise in Taste, more than anything else and if you’ve been reading me for a while, you’ll know my enjoyment runs towards the esoteric and wrong. I’ve not read every Batman comic ever because life is short enough  If you want to call me out on a factual error, like I’ve said Dave Gibbons drew Batman:Year One, that’s fine. If you want to go into ‘My taste is better than yours.’ then…No. That kind of viewpoint is the sort of thing that makes talking about comics not fun, but just another stream of fossilized academia or quasi-religious zealotry that demands one has read ALL of ‘Knightfall’, all the way through to Knightsend AND all the tie-ins before you’re allowed to talk about anything Gotham related. It’s BATMAN, For Zod’s Sake.

Kelley Jones/Doug Moench run.

This run was such a massive relief for me. After years, literally, of Bane, Azrael, Bruce being tired all the time, general falling over by everyone, visions, five o’clock shadows, magic ninja spine fixing sequences and Tim Drake whining more than Lisa Simpson, Bruce beats up Azbats, gets a new costume (celebrated with an embossed cover where you could …touch Little Bats. If you wanted. Seemed fair. DC had put out Catwoman 1 a year or so previously with Embossed Selina Touching Options.)

The Moench’Jones run returns the set up to Bruce fighting a series of insane and amazing villains, essentially a tour de force of Kelley Jones’s amazing, Wrightson/Mignola art. Batman fights Monsters in a big brooding Gotham City free of outside continuity. This run not only has J.H. Williams III as pinch-hitter fill in artist, but also introduces us to Agent Chase, one of the more interesting characters DC created in the 90’s. Her ongoing only ran a few issues, but is well worth checking out, being the story of a Government Agency designed to keep tabs on Meta-Humans.  If you want a Batman comic that’s outright fun, start here.

 

Batman: Brave And The Bold. 

Really, I could have picked any of the Animated DC comics here. They’re such a world apart in terms of quality from the regular DC titles and have been from their inception back in the mid 90’s. I’d really have no problem if DC Editorial said ‘Okay, we;re using this approach for all of our DCU Books from now on.’ They follow the simple formula of clean, simple but clever artwork, stories working on multiple levels that can be read independently of any of the other books and have an awareness of the overall DC Continuity without ever being bogged down by it. I imagine doing a cartoon book is a much easier gig for a freelancer (and more fun when you don’t have to deal with wondering if you can use The Joker because he had his face torn off and is meant to be hiding in the sewer according to last month’s Detective.) which is why there’s been such a high quality of contributors doing stuff there over the years, and critics of Mark Millar are invited to check out Superman Adventures 41, which features an astounding tour through every aspect of Superman’s life in 22 one page stories drawn by…well, you’ll see.

Batman: Brave And The Bold was the peak of that. The cartoon is my favourite Batman thing that has happened in a very long time, with the possible exception of Lego Batman 2. It’s very, very silly and I have no idea if anyone beyond people who’ve spent far too long reading DC Comics are getting half the jokes in there (And if I ever meet the person who wrote the baseball short featuring Batman giving a pep talk that concludes ‘We have to do this. For…for Little Julius Schwartz and Frankie Miller!), I’ll buy them a drink. Batman: B&B is a fun run through the history of the DCU featuring all the good characters without having to worry about Flashpoints, Zero Hours or Crisises.

Also recommended: L’il Gotham.

Sugar & Spike are better than everything in The New 52. Science says so.

 

Superman/Batman: World’s Funnest. (No, not the claymation thing.)

Heh, alright, this one breaks all my rules about being accessible, but I’m hoping a mention here will kickstart someone at DC to consider reprinting this. Here’s the pitch. Mr Myztyplk and Bat-Mite get into a row and try to one up each other tearing through the DC Multiverse. That’s it. Written by Evan Dorkin, this is an extended episode of Itchy & Scratchy. What makes it worth reading is the amount of utter…love poured into this. Evan’s frightening knowledge of the history of DC’s publishing os on full display as Myzty and Bat-Mite go through The Dark Knight Returns world (As drawn by Frank Miller). Kingdom Come (Art by Alex Ross) the Animated Universe (Bruce Timm pencils here.) and a fair amount of Universes drawn by Ty Templeton. Jaime Hernandez, Frank Cho, Doug Manhke, Phil Jiminez and Dave Gibbons all show up to provide pages also. It’s either as deranged an introduction to the DC Universe you could possibly wish for or a haunting realization of just how much you know about very silly comics featuring some daft superheroes.

 

Batman/Houdini

This is just gorgeous.

Quite possibly overlooked when DC realised they were onto something with ‘Elseworlds’ and flooded the shelves with as many Elseworlds as we could handle,  Batman/Houdini is one of the amazing Mark Chiarello’s very, very few forays into drawing interior covers. He’s one of those people who really ought to have had his own Solo book and I almost wish DC would stop Mark being an Art Editor and make him draw some more bloody comics instead.

Saying that, thanks to Mark, we did get Wednesday Comics, Solo and Batman: Black & White. The story of how he actually got Jim Lee to draw ‘Hush’ with Jeph Loeb is also worth finding out, although I’m not telling it here, as I suspect it might be a bit legal now.  This particular prestige format Batman is daft, camp stuff. Somebody’s kidnapping kids and Batman teams up with Houdini to find out who;s doing it  Written by Howard Chaykin whose attitude towards superhero comics drips from every line of dialogue Harry utters. I can only assume that this was written with a mindset that declared ‘Forget it. They’re all going to be looking at the art and it doesn’t matter what I write.’

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mitefall.

Um.

A couple of years previous to this on shot being published, Alan Grant and Kevin O’Neill decided to bring back Bat-Mite in his 1st Post Crisis appearance. Bat-Mite shows up in Legends Of The Dark Knight 38 and harasses a junkie called Bob Overdog who blames a massacre on Bat-Mite’s actions. Given this is the proper super serious DCU where things like Bat-Mites, Arm Fall Off Boy or Supergirl having a relationship with a lad who turns into her horse just don’t happen there, nobody believes Bob, who goes to prison. As with most of Legends Of The Dark Knight stories, it was an entertaining story that no one had reason to think would go anywhere. After all, the only other LDK story that had impacted on the regular Bat-Books was ‘Venom’, and that didn’t really turn out too well for anyone.

Well, er…turns out we were all wrong. ‘Mitefall’ is a plain unreasonable parody of Knightfall and contemporary comic cliches featuring Bat-Mite. Either you’re going to laugh coffee out of your nose at this kind of thing or think it’s some kind of evil, spiteful dig at Batman. I think it’s both. That’s why I like it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Batman/Judge Dredd: Die Laughing

It was a toss-up between this and the first one, which features amazing Simon Bisley art, but Die Laughing (Painted by Glenn Fabry) added Victor Meldrew as a guest star, so that wins out instead.

 

 

Gotham By Gaslight.

Probably the most well-known on the list. While some of us had seen Mike coming a while back on his Cosmic Odyssey mini and, oddly, a fill in issue of X-Force. But nothing really prepared any of us for this. ‘Gotham By Gaslight’ was the first DC Elseworlds comic, a story of a Victorian era Gotham featuring Batman taking on Jack The Ripper. Mignola draws the hell out of this dark and lurid thriller.  Not for the squeamish, but a great read nonetheless.

Dark Knight Strikes Back.

I can hear your inner monologue already.

So, let me stop it there by answering the two criticisms I always hear whenever I dare say I really, really like Frank Miller’s Dark Knight Strikes Back.

1) ‘It’s shit.‘

Yeah. The thing is, we haven’t quite reached the point where anyone’s subjective opinion is recognised as an absolute judgement just yet. Art isn’t a light bulb that can be deemed ‘on’ or ‘off’. I’ll accept that my tastes might not kick off your genitals, but to dismiss things that aren’t your cup of Black Forest Hot Chocolate as rubbish is to suggest every single thing ever created only has merit if it appeals you personally, which sounds incredibly arrogant to me. No two people are ever seeing the same thing, and one man’s trash is another’s treasure. I’d literally trade every X-Men related comic published this century (Alright, maybe not the first series of Wolverine and The X-Men.) to own a page of art from The Bulletproof Coffin. (Preferably one featuring Ramona, though.)

2) ‘I wasn’t expecting…this!

Really? Well, you weren’t paying attention, then.

The thing that made Dark Knight Returns so distinctive in the first place was how totally out of left field it was when it first appeared.  Batman was a bit grim in his regular comics, but social commentary? Being old and drinking? An old Catwoman? Bats looking vulnerable? Punching Superman in the face? The idea that The U.S. Government would use Superman as a military deterrent? Holy Unheard Of In 1986, Old Chum! Sure, that kind of idea of how superheroes would touch upon Humanity had been touched on previously (Most strikingly and effectively in the early days of Miracleman.) but never in something as big a deal as Superhot Frank Miller doing Batman in a Prestige Format series.

If you’d not been paying attention to anything Frank had done since Dark Knight Returns, then I could see why you thought you were going to get more of the same, but it was obvious from things like ‘Tales To Offend’, ‘Hard Boiled’, ‘Spawn/Batman , ‘Give Me Liberty’ or the hallucinogen issue of ‘Sin City: Hell And Back.’ that his mindset had changed from the gritty to the ridiculous and he was more interested in the use of characters as symbols and avatars rather than depicting every last fold of Batman’s cape.  Beyond that, I can never take people who see a thing with a preconception in their head of what it ‘should’ be too seriously. This seems to be the thought process of ‘I have this idea in my head of what this comic/film should be, and if it doesn’t match up to that, then it has FAILED ME!’

‘Goddamn it.’

I love Dark Knight Strikes Back because it is clearly taking the piss out of everyone’s expectations. (Chucking away the Batman/Superman rematch people had waited over 20 years for in the first place was a hell of a start.)It’s also about what defines Bruce’s motivations beyond all the trappings of the Batman character, it’s hugely imaginative redesign of the DC Universe looks stunning. Frank got some flak for the change in his art style, but I like it because it’s representative of ideals. Concepts of heroism bursting through an amazing bombardment of noise and clutter. There’s a pretty good explanation for why the shift in his art in the much recommended (by me, anyway) Eisner/Miller.

Also, in the same way that Dark Knight Returns predicted the next few years of society and superhero comics, I have to say, considering there wasn’t a Twitter, an Instagram, a Buzzfeed or such when he put DK2 together, he didn’t do a bad job of predicting a total stimulation future, also, his explosion of colour isn’t too far off how comics look now (particularly Image, Dark Horse and IDW.) A great tale of Batman. Possibly better enjoyed after reading what you can of All Star Batman.

 

Batman ’66

If there’s one thing that bugs me more than people presuming to be The GateKeepers Of Taste, it’s the last 40 years of listening to people attempt t justify liking comics. ‘Oh, it’s not “just” a comic, it’s really a book about The Holocaust told in…GRAPHIC NARRATIVE format!’, ‘Really, The X-Men are a metaphor for so many other things!’, ‘Ah, THIS! This issue of adoration And Nukes is finally, finally the one that shows Comix can be as deep or meaningful as anything in Books or Films!’

Which is essentially shorthand for ‘Look, I know most people think comics are odd, but please don’t think I’m..you know..one of them.’ And honestly, as a community, we need to get over the effects of the Batman TV Show From 1966 now, for two reasons:

1) I realise there was a bloody long period of stupid people assuming that ALL comics were exactly like the Batman TV Show. Yes, it was annoying. It was ignorant, it was also a daft assumption that doesn’t work when you use it on other mediums (‘Did you watch  “Utopia”?’. ‘No. All television is like Eastenders.’) and it led to a deep-seated, self-esteem crippling shame across the comics industry that I still see to this day. That shame is what’s led to all this horrendously earnest effort to validfy the whole bloody medium. Green Lantern isn’t just a space copper fighting evil and governed by Blue Midgets In Red Dresses anymore, now he has to have a DUI because social relevance, innit? We’re just as capable of knocking out overpriced autobio nonsense or terrible forays into ‘Why Everyone Is Horrible Except Me Who Is Lovely!’ Of course having a whole wealth of adult and interesting material alongside yer ‘POW| BIFF!’ stuff, but there was never a need to make everything quite so bloody po-faced and grim. Watchmen was meant to be a comic that utilised the full possibilities of the format, not a model for how everyone was meant to approach the super-hero genre for the next thirty odd years.

Take some pride in your entertainment choices. Do I like the Adam West Batman? No, I bloody love it. It has a great theme tune! It has its own dance moves! Frank Gorshin portrays The Riddler like a kid who’s been given ALL the sugar! There are terrible puns! Cesar Romero wears Joker make-up over his moustache! How sexy are Catwoman and Batgirl? It’s daft FUN and Batman’s a big enough character that there can be an Adam West Batman, a Scott Snyder Batman, a Lego Batman, an Alan Moore Batman, a Grant Morrison on, etc, etc. It’s alright. It’s not blasphemy. You ran around your back garden with your towel around your neck singing The Batman theme tune as a kid, or even at the last comic con. It’s just fun, not a sacred text that Adam West and Burt Ward have blasphemed against, and besides….

2) Most other media isn’t any better..

Come on. It is. The problem with this whole ‘We need to validify comics as a legitimate art form’ nonsense is that you’re trying to appeal to people who consume total crap to start with. Do you seriously need to run your collection of The Metabarons or The Boondocks against a populace who made ‘Friends’ one of the most popular TV Shows ever made? Whose critical faculties apparently totally elude them whenever Justin Bieber farts out a new song? I’m writing this on Jack Kirby’s birthday, and the popular thing is the #ReadAComicInPublicDay hashtag, but really? Is that a thing where in 2014 we feel embarrassed to read the new Sex Criminals, Stray Bullets or Dark Horse Presents in front of people reading Dan Brown novels or pre-ordering tickets to see 22 Jump Street or whatever South Park knock off Seth MacFarlane is hacking out next? Am I being unfair? Hey, if comics is going to be judged by its worst habits, then I claim full right to shout ‘DALE WINTON, THO!’ whenever somebody tries to tell me how amazing TV is today. These are just my personal examples, obviously. Feel free to replace with your own symptoms of nullifying mediocrity.

Batman ’66 is simply how it sounds. It’s a comic based on the TV Show. It runs a new episode on three weeks of the month on Comixology, then those three digital bits are published in hard copy form on the final week of the month. There’s a running sub plot concerning Dr Harleen Quinnzel going on, but beyond that, every issue is like a Poptastic new episode that can be read on its own. It has that Mike Allred/Troy Nixey/Joe Quinones look to it that screams Warhol and The Archies and has featured literally the greatest sound effect pun about Russia ever. With the possible exception of Batman:Black And White, the greatest DC comic this decade.

With all this free publicity I’ve just given DC, it only seems fair to encourage people to check out Legends Of The Knight screening. It’s a film about various people who’ve used Batman as an inspiration to better their own lives, The screening is a fundraiser for both Refuge. and  Action Duchenne.

That about wraps things up for this week. I don’t claim to be a Batman expert or anything and I’m sure there are dozens of Gotham related things I’ve never read. Hit me up with your suggestions in the comments.

 

Running Low On Cash. One ALF, One Rowlf And A Fozzie To Support.

Well, as I’m a bit short of work at the moment, I figure advertising here couldn’t hurt and I might get something useful out of Facebook for a change:

Right guys, what I do when not selling comics at 30th Century Comics is Collection Sorting. I’ll go through your unsorted boxes of stuff, put them in order, generate a wants list and create a spreadsheet that can be passed onto dealers I know with an eye to selling your comics if that’s what you want. Bear in mind most of these sessions will automatically take at least a day longer than you think it will. Rates are negotiable, and weekends tend to be bad for me. Hit me up or Share this if you know someone whose house is essentially a mass of broken comic boxes.

Ta. Nevs

Backwards In Going Forwards.

Just thinking about the whole next gen of consoles stuff and backwards compatibility. My main issue with picking up either a PS4 or a Xbox One is that neither machine , as far as I’m aware, will read or play the games from the previous generation in the same way that a PS2 would play most PS1 games or a limited amount of PS2 games could be played on earlier models on a PS3.

I’m rather loathe to abandon my Xbox 360 in particular as I have something like 60 games on there, and the notion that Microsoft thinks I should think of that as dead money so I can play the likes of Sunset Overdrive, Dead Island 2 or Rise Of The Tomb Raider this Christmas is one that bothers me and to be honest, makes me want to get neither.

Given the amount of games I’m not simply going to dump, and that there are still things coming out on what I guess is now considered last gen tech, I had a thought.

Since both Xbox Live and PSN Accounts can be read from one gen of hardware to the next, would it be possible to read on your account if you had a game from the previous generation and simply allow you to upload the Classics/HD Remake as and when they came out. For example, I see that next year’s big trend in games is going to be HD remakes of recent output, such as GTA V HD and the like.

Working with this process, when Sleeping Dogs HD comes out next year, your Xbox One could read your Live account, see that you’d already had it as an Xbox 360 game when you bought it as a download there, and offer to install it as a freebie.

I suspect it’s an awkward idea (and would probably be unworkable with the sports games like Fifa, Madden, WWE, etc) but something like this could go a long way to actually convincing a lot of us to taking that step. As it stands, both the PS4 and Xbox One’s lack of ability to play games from previous generations means I’ll be buying neither.

Right Way, Wrong Way. A Look at Barbarella and Little Nemo: Return To Slumberland

On the list of ‘Damn it, I really wish I hadn’t sold that part of my collection to Jon Browne.’ includes my run of Viz Manga’s Pulp’ ‘Pulp’ was a life saver for me. I didn’t know anything about Manga when I started working in comics beyond watching a 3rd generation VHS of ‘Akira’ and had read a few issues of ‘Ghost In The Shell’, but ‘Pulp’ was a crash course in Manga that I sorely needed at the time. ‘Pulp’ was also fun, serialising the likes of ‘Uzumaki’, ‘Black And White’, ‘Cinderalla’ and the genre splitting study in violent deconstructionism that was ‘Even A Monkey Can Draw Manga;. ‘Pulp’ also featured interview with the people creating the work, essays on the culture pertaining to the strips and previews of stuff that Viz would be publishing.

So, Yeah, £4 a month, meant I could talk intelligently about Viz’s output and push their books through the shop, as I can sell a comic to anyone if I like it (And,by the way, The Goon, Sex Criminals, Shaolin Cowboy, Pretty Deadly, Afterlife With Archie, Eltingville Club, Batman ’66, Stray Bullets? You’re Welcome) Anything beyond five quid/$8 on a new concept is a bit more difficult, and if I know more about the comic, it’s an easier sell. Wanna know the reason Uzumaki was a big deal in London long before the Manga explosion happened? Wotcha!. I read ‘Pulp’, I explained why ‘Uzumaki’ was amazing to customers and it sold. Simple.

LFCC 2014 Joke 1 here.

 

For new readers, this edition is a one colour super deluxe reprint of the original Barbarella strips, but with rewritten text by Kelly Sue DeConnick of Captain Marvel, Pretty Deadly and Ghost fame. The dialogue is suitably flirty and camp, and it reads like One Thousand and One Nights (Not the Green Lantern comic.)  starring an intelligent and fun heroine in Barbarella, with one set up and storyline quickly shifting into another and another imaginative and fleshed out scenario with snappy, intelligent dialogue. I was rather worried when I read that the text was going to be ‘updated’ that Barbarella was going be referring to LOLcats, sending Snapchat messages and receiving awkward Tinder suitors but it just means that the previous awkward translations aren’t making the story unintentionally funny die to poor understanding of English.. (I particularly liked the Blind Angel and Cannibal toys bits, myself.) The original art by Jean-Claude Forest  is a lush mash-up of Joe Kubert and Jim Holdaway.

 

Now, I enjoyed reading Barbarella. The difference between most of you and me is that I get to read this for free because I’m on Humanoids’s mailing list (Or I was when I wrote this, anyway.). Can I really, honestly recommend this to someone for the £50 you’d have to pay for a copy? No. I can’t. But that’s not a dig at the work in any way. I just couldn’t tell you that I thought any one graphic novel was worth £50. A deluxe edition HC of Liberty Meadows featuring the strips, the unreleased ending to The Wedding Story plus University Squared, any other bonuses or cameo appearances, all the covers, sketches and suchlike bonus features would still have me thinking ‘But it’s actually Fifty British pounds. Fifty pounds that is a bit more than what I get paid for a day’s work for some jobs I do. Just less than Unemployment benefit for a week. I could get a 500GB Hard Drive for my PS3 for that. That’s more expensive than a Triple A game being released at Christmas. Even if I bought it at Sainsbury’s, though.’

And LFCC 2014 joke 2…..

So as I try to be more of the solution than the current vogue of criticism that suggests ‘This is bad because I don’t approve of it.’ (COUGH SPIDER-WOMAN BY LAND & MANARA COUGH!) I’m sure there are people who are both well off enough and enamored of the things that they’re publishing to stump up the best part of £100 to buy 2 or 3 books, and that’s fine. I’m sure it does them well enough to coast off the good feeling people have towards Jodorowsky, Dodson,  Jose Ladronn, .

But THEN what? Once those books are sold to people with fond memories of the authors or have a desire to own every edition of *something*, how do you expand your market, because I don’t think ‘Here, try this thing you know nothing of for £50.’ is going to work.

I own The Incal, (Ta, PM Buchan) because if pushed, I’d probably be tied between that and The Invisibles as the greatest story ever told. (Sandman? No.) in the comics medium. (Defining a story as something with a designed beginning, middle and end, not something wrapped up because of cancellation.) It took a fair bit of work to settle on one version of it, and almost to the day that I finally got the HC Trade edition , I was informed of the publication of Final Incal. being released. something I very much would like to read as a physical object, but I’m going to be waiting until the HC drops way below the £60 asking price it currently goes for.

One solution to this problem (And it IS a problem, I’ve already noticed these books starting to gather dust in shops and being remaindered at London Marts.) is for Humanoids is to put out a reasonably priced anthology aimed at the weekly/monthly comic market seriaiising  the stronger parts of their output and then releasing those works in a softcover format, similar to what DC produced when they had the license to publish Humanoids’ output. Maybe get a new strip by Jodorowsky serialized in the mag as an incentive for those well off people who can actually had the money to buy the HCs in the first place.

If I’m not ripping into them as you might expect, it’s that I’ve found Humanoids to be one of the publishers whose work I can sell to real people because they don’t put out work that’s a quagmire of its own continuity, super-hero comics that don’t understand their own audience or such. ‘This is The Incal, it’s about a man who discovers who he really is. Oh, and it’s drawn by Moebius.’ I can do that kind of pitch with most of their books and it worked a treat with the Softcovers. I want them to thrive as a genuine publisher of comics for adults, who can be there to keep people reading the medium once they’re grown out of the superhero stuff. Basically, Humanoids here it is: serialise your work in a monthly anthology in something akin to Heavy Metal without the porn ads and put out softcover editions of your books and I’ll have something to work with as a retailer and a reviewer. As it stands, the quality of the output is overshadowed by the price points.

*AMENDMENT

Since the original posting of this, Jo from @Humanoids has been in touch. He tells me two things

1) There will be a standard edition of Barbarella released after the HC. Price will run around $35/£22 or so.  Humanoids are planning to make it standard practice to have the HC/SE editions released, spaced out by a few months like the book industry. Also, purchase of any physical edition of their books from their website gives you free access to the digital copy. If you haven’t checked out their huge range of stuff that ought to be on your bucket list of  ‘Comics You Should REALLY Read Before Death’, their website is here. I’d start with ‘Madwoman Of The Sacred Heart.’ by Jodorowsky & Moebius.

 

2) Volume 2 will follow in the New Year, which has never been published in English previously. Translations will again be provided by Kelly Sue DeConnick.

Shoutout to Jo from Humanoids, by the way. I’ve had publishers blanket blacklist me from talking to their creators after a far less rough review of their product than what I said. Jo took in what was discussed and responded in a fair and intelligent fashion. So fair play to them for being able to take their ego and PR head out of the equation and be able to discuss the points I made rationally and even give me some good news, which I’m sadly sworn to secrecy about.

And on the extreme opposite, the right way to promote an old work being brought to a new generation of readers.,Little Nemo: Return To Slumberland by Eric Shanowar (Age Of Bronze, The Elsewhere Prince) and Gabriel Rodriguez (Locke & Key) brought to you by IDW. This is a bit of a year for the Little Nemo franchise. Not only is there this rather lovely ongoing series but also the Kickstarter project ‘Little Nemo:Dream Another Dream‘ produced by Locust Moon with probably the best line up on one comic you’re going to see in 2014. There’s also something called ‘Big Nemo’ by Alan Moore and Colleen Doran on the way via Electricomics. IDW could have taken the total piss with their new comic and only released it as a Popbot format hyper expensive thing, or maybe as an Artist’s Edition, hoping the faithful would show up with their $60 odd.

Instead, they put out a preview as part of Free Comic Book Day, and knocked out the regular comic as a $4 thing. You get a full story, a bunch of script and pencil art. It looks beautiful. If I have a regret about this title, it’s that IDW don’t have a cheaper priced Younger Readers line. This really ought to be sitting  and shining next to the likes of Archie, The Muppets, Ben 10, Adventure Tome because, really, this is the top of the line children’s comic that we should be selling cheap to the next generation of readers. Little Nemo: Return To Slumberland is a gorgeous, charming comic, and a faithful continuation of the work of Windsor McCay. One of those rare moments where something so idiosyncratic as a strip like this is actually worth reading, even if you are a fan of the original. A simple story of a child lost in a dreamworld with incredible art. Order the inevitable 2nd printing (It was already sold out in various shops when I had to go hunting for it yesterday.) and lose yourself in imagination for a while. Here, see?

All Through The Night.

Image

‘I don’t think an album’s gonna do anything. You can’t listen to a record and say, ‘Oh that really turned me onto gay life, I’m gonna be gay.’ A lot of people will have one or two experiences, and that’ll be it. Things may not change one iota. It’s beyond the control of a straight person to turn gay at the age he’ll probably be listening to any of his stuff or reading about it‘

Lou Reed, in conversation with Lester Bangs. 1973

Most of the time, I’m just looking for kicks.

‘Kicks’ bring short for ‘Kickstart’. As in, something kickstart my brain and heart through the tedium of life. Girls, booze, pills and their effect all eventually lose their power as either tolerance or familiarity slowly take their toll, but rock n’ roll is the God that never ever let me down. I’m starting to think maybe I don’t hear sound the way other people do, though. The amount of analysis and questioning of taste that goes on just confuses me, like ‘How can you like THIS guy when he wrote those lyrics?’ or ‘Don’t you know this bassist said THAT thing in 1984, so therefore all their later work is invalidated. It’s effect on you should be nullified because of that.’

Man, that’s just a mindset I do not understand at all. My critical analysis of music is as follows:

It Kicks, or it does not.

That’s it. I’m not initially bothered by lyrics, or the appearance of the musicians or what kind of label they’re on. Even less the personalities of the people behind the music. What I care about is The Kick. I’m talking about a biological shift in the thought patterns, the rising of the goosebumps on the arms, the tingle up the spine, the quickening of the heart.I don’t care if the guitarist walked in from the public school down the road or had to parachute in from Space and fend off Westboro Baptist Martians, whether the M.C. is rapping about record labels, shouting out to fallen brothers or toasting his shopping list. The only important question is ‘Does It Fucking Kick, man?’

Don’t misunderstand the notion of the Kick too soon. Kick ain’t just about happy and woo nor only the reflection and empathy with your soul’s pain made manifest or solely the urge to wave your hands in the air like you just don’t care. The Kick is all of those things and none of them. The only true proof of Real Kick is that it’s the only thing in the room. You can’t chat quietly nor play it while you prepare a gluten-free wrap. The Kick has you playing with knives and dancing because you are literally kicked from your previously docile state and no Kick is ever guaranteed from anything. Not from all of the output from a record label, and no artist is ever a brand that assures 100% Kick with every slab of vinyl.

Sure now every label and artist wants you to think that they’ve caught lightning in a bottle, that a purchase from EMI Records or making sure you’ve pre-ordered every Bowie reissue, but no amount of listens will have any song from ‘White Tie, Black Noise’ provide as much Kick as ‘Underground’ from the ‘Labyrinth’ soundtrack.

That’s the 1st thing about The Kick. The second is that Kick is as idiosyncratic to you as whatever wets your clit or stiffens your dick. At the end of the day, you can only fake what makes you Kick so long. So many reasons to fake it, of course. To bury your secret passions. Maybe it’s not cultural safe for you to admit your fetish for tanned muscle men or that you dig Bon Jovi when your love has covered the house in Mouldy Peaches merchandise. But ultimately, the more you pretend to enjoy The Kaiser Chiefs or Vanilla Missionary Position when your soul craves Reverse Cowboy or Jimmy Somerville, the more you’ll resent it. You’re only cheating yourself. You don’t have to wear Gimp Masks or listen to Cannibal Corpse if you really want The Best Of The Beautiful South and Spoons. It’s okay. It’s YOUR Kick.

If I’m straight about this, I resent the attempt to impose the Intellectual onto the wholly Instinctive that is the Kick. You can’t talk me into ‘liking’ The Doors anymore than you can convince me I have a foot fetish. I’m wired like I’m wired. I think it’s a Truism that no two people ever see the same thing, because while we’re seeing or hearing the same idea, our influences, preconceptions and such create filters that create our personalised reactions. Your playing me The Cardigans promo videos on YouTube  is on a Kick level hoping I share your kink for…fuck, I dunno, being dressed like a baby or something? Fun for you, no doubt, but leaves me flaccid.

 

Kick literally in motion.

 

Which is why all the morality and analysis of music is, for me, at least, totally futile. There is something so pure, so heart-rending and real about Jerry Lee Lewis’s ‘Middle Aged Crazy’ that the Kick ignores everything but That Feel. Kick is simply instinctive and doesn’t care that The Killer married his 13-year-old cousin or upstaged Chuck Berry in a pyromanical, destructive act born of sheer egotistical racism, anymore than an erection has a conscience or a coke addict cares that their fix is supplied by perpetrating a brutal system of abuse in order to keep the supply going. Some things are simply not subject to the approval of the intellect. My Kick doesn’t care how threatened you are by M.I.A. She Kicks. The End.

So, you’ve probably worked out I care about the quality of my sonic intake in the same way Walter White cares about his Meth recipe. One viewing of the chatroulette version of ‘Call Me Maybe’ is worth the entire musical recorded output of Morrissey to me. That isn’t ‘wrong; anymore than someone who prefers The Pussycat Dolls to Public Enemy is ‘wrong’. There are no standards that have any basis beyond approval, which isn’t worth anything and won’t tingle your eyeballs. It’s just a fact. Some people are turned on by some things and other people are turned on by other things. It’s not too difficult a concept to defer to.

Let me diplomatically state that I’m aware of many, many attempts of the comics industry to try to crossbreed the two art forms of funnybooks and music. On the whole, they haven’t provided me with that Kick, and certainly not the ones your brain is saying ‘Ah, but what about -?’ right now. Yes, I know. Nothing. That doesn’t invalidate what they did for you. They just didn’t do it for me, sorry. Out of everything I’ve read that crosses music with comics* there are three books that genuinely manage to fuse the two mediums in such a way, and they follow after this image…

An Elseworlds where ‘Bryan Cranston plays Phil Spector in 1987, who goes insane trying to get the perfect sound for the new Michael Jackson record and ends up methodically killing the entire Jackson Five over five seasons.

1st off, there’s the Sex Pistols biography drawn by Steve Parkhouse and published by Omnibus Press, which I reviewed a couple of years back. You can read about it here.

Secondly, the current bane of my year, Rock N Roll Comics featuring The Melvins, published by Roger Corman’s Cosmic Comics. Foolishly, I sold this a few years back, so I’m having to go by memory rather than having the thing to hand. If I remember rightly, Rock N Roll High School is a retelling of the 1979 movie cult classic drawn by Bob Fingerman and others. I’ve heard that the reason The Melvins replace The Ramones in the comic is that Da Bruddas wanted money for the use of their likeness in the comic, and The Melvins were willing to be in there for free. Any insight into this would be highly appreciated. I’d give a link to where to find this largely unknown classic, but the truth is I’ve not seen a copy ever except the one I sold on in 2011. So, erm, if YOU have one, get in touch either via the site or my Twitter and we’ll sort something out. It looks like this, for the benefit of my mystery stalker who bought me both Lego Marvel and the Valve Hardback Anthology.

Finally, and by far my favourite of the bunch is Matt DeGennaro and Phil Elliott’s ‘Tupelo’

 

 

Sadly now out of print, (although you can pick up copies on Amazon) Tupelo was originally published by Slave Labour Graphics in 2003 as a four issue mini series, and then published as a trade paperback featuring a cd by cult band Famous Monsters. I was working in the late Comic Showcase at the time and was staggered by how much each issue just..got it. Understood and recreated the atmosphere in my head. The sticky floors, the toilets with broken doors, the kids proudly showing off their home-made ‘X’s, the drone of the men who are too old in the head to be there. The Outside that oppressed with silent hostility. The outrage at the huckster hypnotist who stands in for every soulless advertising exec who preys on the insecurities they created and profits from them with promises of false hope.

 

If Matt wasn’t in a band or in the front row for a long, long time, I’d be stunned as his work was both, for better or worse, both preparation and inspiration for The Filthy Orphans. Once we started playing better venues than the Outright Racist Pub In West London Trading Off It’s Name Instead Of Encouraging Poor Rich White Boys To Do James Blunt Karaoke And Nothing Else, Tupelo was essentially a map of exactly what I could expect, from the people full of soul who wanted to elevate talent to the self promoters looking at you to work out if it’s worth schmoozing up to you to get ahead with their brand to A&R men trying to convince you that you’d be more marketable if you thought about having a ‘purer line up’ to people running up to you after a gig with glee in their eyes, trying to fight through the fact that English wasn’t their 1st or even 2nd language to say ‘Oh My God…You guys are like “Fuck EVERYTHING! I LOVE YOU!’ (Which is still probably the nicest thing ever said to me.)

(Matt’s work got me ready for that, and a trawl through the archives of my YouTube history led me to find my doing a cover of ‘Murder Time’ with the far more talented but quite incredibly drunk in this video Gabi Garbutt, who is now a bit famous. )

Whilst doing research for this, I discovered this comic very nearly didn’t happen. I’ll let Matt tell the story (Taken from the SLG website.)

‘DeGennaro met Elliott through a comic book message board, where he posted a want ad for an artist. After receiving many responses from well-meaning young artists who sent him sketches of superheroes, he says he “was just about to give up when I got an e-mail from Phil with a link to his site. It blew me away. I sent him a synopsis and later on some script, and he sent me back the first few pages, which were brilliant.”

They are, indeed, brilliant. Phil is some kind of Art Ninja Genius, distilling the page down to only its essential lines. Like a Toth, a Parobeck or a Kurtzman, this process looks like it’s easy, but it’s really the total opposite. Lesser talents can hide their weakness behind flashy layouts, unnecessary cross-hatching and other short cuts. If you’re working as Phil does, every flaw is going to scream out of the page at you. It never happens in Tupelo. The story pages are a beautiful discordant symphony. The…backmatter (hate that word) is both inspiring and a perfect approximation of prison letters, Zig Zag/Maximum Rock N Roll era music journalism and Punk Manifesto, with one issue containing an ideology that makes the likes of Fight Club sound like playing RATM too loud in your bedroom after your Mum’s asked you to clean up your room. Volume 2 is in the works and a preview is here

 

Matt’s as funny as fuck and posts some of my favourite links on Facebook regularly. Phil is an astounding talented artist who’s just published ‘In His Cups: Collected Tales Of Gimbley’. It’s bloody good stuff and you should obviously all go buy it.  Ideally, he’d be on a regular book and there are no end of comics being published that if I were given editorial responsibilities on the title, I’d just say ‘Give it to Phil. He’ll make it work.’ Personally, I’d hire him to redraw all those Todd Loren knock off rock biographies as and when he felt like it while he got on with whatever made him happy. Go check out his website here, and buy ‘In His Cups, Collected Tales From Gimbley‘, also.

Obviously, I couldn’t write something like this without making a playlist. Go listen to it here, and a glass to Matt and Phil. Cheers, Boys. You made it a little bit easier for me. I think that’s what we’re all here for, really.

*Missing from my slightly scathing overview of all music comics are a couple of Marvel Music’s efforts. Namely the Kyle Baker KRS-ONE: Break The Chain one-shot and Dave McKean’s Rolling Stones Voodoo Lounge comic. This is because I have literally never seen copies, although I’m assured they do exist. If readers have copies, please let me know and again, I WILL GIVE YOU MONEY! OR SOME OTHER COMICS. SOMETHING!

(This column is respectfully dedicated to the memory of Lester Bangs. Thanks, Mate.)

City Limits

Aside

‘You don’t need anyone’s permission for anything.‘ – John Lydon

The thing is, I haven’t really cared about a comic film since Hellboy 2.

In fact, between you and me, I’d be inclined to say ..I don’t really like most comic movies very much. It’s not even an ‘Indy’ vs ‘Superhero’ thing. I thought ‘Ghost World’ was a shopping list of annoying behaviours for rich kids who like Wes Anderson to emulate, ‘Crumb’ put me off the man and his work in 90 minutes straight. ‘Scott Pilgrim’ is the best argument for God sending in The Locusts I’ve seen for quite a long time.

I DIDN’T CARE IF ANYONE IN A JOHN HUGHES FILM HAD SEX AND I DON’T CARE IF YOU DITHERING, SOLIPSISTIC IDIOTS DO, EITHER!

DC films haven’t done much for me with the exception of the one with Heath Ledger’s Joker in, although for the possibly slightly deranged reason that I think The Joker is spot on with his analysis of Humanity most of the time. No Superman film will ever top the sheer Gonzo insanity that is Superman 3, or my preferred title ‘What If Bizarro Was A Drunk And Richard Pryor Insisted On Upstaging Everyone For Literally No Reason Except Drugs. Also Starring Jim Broadbent, Because Reasons.’

You have no idea how much work it took to pick just one image from this film.

 

And to be honest, I feel the same way as Female Led Super-Hero Franchise movies as Bill Hicks did about women priests. Sure, have them if it helps anything, but I’ll still be ignoring them. Give Black Canary, Sif, Storm, Wonder Woman, Black Widow, Batgirl, Elektra, Supergirl or She-Hulk a film all you like. Marvel Films are the same self congratulating,quagmire of fan-service and waiting about for some post credit rubbish that makes Cinema Staff’s more difficult nonsense that their comics have become.  I gave up on caring about which studio owns which franchise or whether you could really see Cap in the Hulk’s post credit sequence on Blu-Ray sometime around Robert Downey Jr’s hilarious monologue at the end of Iron Man 3.

To quote Evan Dorkin, ‘You see Rocket Raccoon. I see Bill Mantlo.’

No, beyond my love for absolutely terrible films (Hello, Roger Corman’s Fantastic Four, the Cap movie with J.D. Salinger’s kid in the lead, Boob Wire, Tank Girl and that amazing straight to TV Hulk film where Hulk fights a BEAR!), I’ve little interest in comics being translated to the big screen.  I don’t think the nature of episodic story-telling lhat comics employ really translates very well to 2 hour films. In the same way that you can’t really just pick this week’s Avengers comic and start reading from there, I think Marvel Films are rapidly creating that culture of ‘But where do I START with this lot?’ and given just how many characters are appearing in ‘Superman V Batman: Dawn Of Justice’, it looks like DC are going the same way (I’m already asking myself if ‘Man Of Steel’ happens in the same reality as ‘Arrow’ and ‘Gotham’)

‘Hellboy’, ‘American Splendor’ and ‘Sin City’ are different, though.

What the three films have in common is that they were all created with a guiding eye from the person who created each property. Harvey Pekar is in ‘American Splendor’, Mignola kept a close eye on ‘Hellboy’ all the way through two movies. Meanwhile, Frank Miller had to be convinced by Robert Rodriguez on a number of occasions that he even wanted to do a ‘Sin City’ movie. He’d had his experience with Hollywood via ‘Robocop 2’ and wanted nothing to do with the process of creating films, let alone giving up the rights to his beloved work.

So, yes, if I were to try to find something that would get me to the cinema, the chances it would both A) Need to be overseen by the person responsible for the original idea and B) Be about something I cared about  (*’Art School Confidential” wins for being a observation on a collective of people whilst popping a series of pretensions. “Ghost World” loses for being some snark about people not as cool or deep as Enid who then literally gets a bus to nowhere.)

Which, finally, brings us to Frank Miller, Sin City 2 and him being ‘problematic’ (Which, as far as I can work out, now means ‘Things We’d Like To Censor But Don’t Want To Appear Censorious’ ) as he doesn’t seem to fit in with Internet Comics Community Think 2014. at all. He has been deemed ‘offensive’ by a section of said Community for his portrayal of women, his unique dialogue, Dark Knight Strikes Back not being exactly what.they wanted and his comments on the Occupy movement and such like.

I can only assume Frank was restrained from writing ‘Kiss THIS!’ as the caption to this cover after seeing early reactions to All Star Batman.

 

Personally, while I haven’t enjoyed everything Frank’s had a hand in over the last few years, I’ll credit him with the resurgence of DC via Dark Knight Returns, having the balls to be a very vocal part of the ‘Return Kirby’s Art’ campaign at a time when Marvel were trying to hush up The Kirbys with a disgusting document that would have silenced them talking about Jack’s contributions to Marvel in exchange for a mere and insulting 88 pages of artwork that could have been taken back at any time, making the work of Will Eisner cool and relevant again, explaining how much some unknown genre called ‘Manga’ had influenced his work at a time when no one really knew what it was, being one of the pioneers of being totally vocal about the behind the scenes scumbaggery going on at Marvel and DC at the time and a lot more, besides. His letter pages in Sin City were a monthly dissection of popular media thinking process and gleeful explanation of the utter bullshit those words contained.

Also, he read this out live in front of various Marvel members of Staff at a Retailer Meeting in 1994. If any of the vogue creators of today have half the balls to say anything like this at any live event where Marvel or DC Editors are present, I will grow my hair and beard for two years, shave it and donate the sponsorship money to the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund

And if none of that floats your boat, he’s one of three men who turned the Trade Paperback market into a thing that regularly generates money for the industry. Eisner was first with the format, and Sim was the first to think of putting out collections of previous comics to allow new readers to catch up with the newest issue, but Frank, Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons were the guys who blew the doors off the notion that Trade Paperbacks were a Collector’s Only Item. So if you’ve ever sold a trade paperback of anything, you can thank those guys.

I must confess at this point to being surprised that people being offended in 2014 by things they see in various media is a thing that is taken seriously.I thought we’d been through all this with ‘Huckleberry Finn’, with ‘Frankenchrist;,with ‘Evil Dead’, with ‘Cop Killer’, with Alison Bechdel, with ‘Never Mind The Bollocks’, with Omaha The Cat Dancer,  with ‘Howl’, with Robert Crumb, with Michael Diana, I thought we’d learned this simple truth:

Nothing has to conform to your notions of what is acceptable, and you are always free to change the channel.

I get why people might have been annoyed or upset at Elvis or The Sex Pistols. Back then, in the 60’s and 70’s, we lived in a much more mono-media culture. By the time Steve Jones called Bill Grundy a ‘dirty fucking rotter’, the UK didn’t have more than three channels and none of them were broadcasting 24 hours a day, so it might well have literally been ‘Watch Bill Grundy awkwardly hit on Siouxsie Sioux or nothing.’ I don’t agree that your kids will have their fragile psyches destroyed by Johnny Rotten being on telly for five seconds,

Never Forget

Here in 2014, we could stop creating new music, TV, comics and such for the next 50 years and you’d be hard pressed to run out of entertainment before you died. You have so many options of what you want to be presented with that I suspect we’re becoming a culture more concerned with finding out what’s coming next than we are with actually engaging with what we’ve purchased.  The idea that one man or woman’s point of view or art is so abhorrent that it needs forcibly shoving into exile until it learns to toe the unspoken line is both disgusting and laughable.

Sin City 2 is going to come out in the cinema. The poster featuring Eva Green has already had some problems with the MPAA, the trailer was banned from broadcast by ABC TV. I really want to be wrong here and hope that this is the end of the issues this film going to have. I suspect it isn’t. I’m not sure what could crop up this late in the day, since Sin City: A Dame To Kill For has been in print since at least 1995, so there aren’t any surprises in the story coming. Mind you, I’m talking about a community who seems to think it has a say in what George Martin chooses to write in ‘Game Of Thrones’ and as I genuinely don’t understand that mindset, who knows what’s to come?

Turns out guns are..less offensive than breasts? Um?

Ultimately, you control your mouse, you handle your remote control. You choose what it is seen in your house. Please don’t presume to make those decisions for my household. You can argue that you think Frank’s fictional depiction of women is offensive or his writing isn’t what it was. That’s fine. For your home, Learn to live with the idea that not everything has to conform to your standards of what is decent, and I’ll keep quiet about the fact that I find the fact this generation of social media users not only seem utterly apathetic to how the people who created the big screen heroes were treated by Marvel so long as they get their hit of cinematic buzz, but actually focus on loving Marvel and it’s output to an almost reverential degree, to the point that critics of their films are treated like, well,

Heretics?

There are a lot of people whose resurrection would make the world a better place, Mary Whitehouse isn’t one of them.

Donate to the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund here.

P.S. Who was it who created Elektra in the first place? And who was it who outright lied to him about letting her stay dead?

P.P.S. I LIKE ‘The Spirit’ film he directed, I’m guessing you don’t. That’s fine, I’ll never force you to watch it. That’s how this is meant to work.

 

You’re Not Sending A Card, Are You?

Aside

UPDATED from original posting at ‘No One Is Innocent (05/07/2014): Queen has since retracted his DMCA appeal and apologised to Ami Angelwings, who admins the Escher Girls Tumblr. He posted the following on his Facebook:

‘Hey everyone, Just wanted to clear up a few things that happened this past week. I have been having a very hard time in my personal life with the loss of my mother and my marriage having fallen apart and found myself in a very vulnerable and fragile state of mind. There were posts on the web criticizing my artwork that were brought to my attention and added to my stress. I reacted without thinking it through, but have now stopped, realizing my response was the wrong one to take. I am doing my best, each day, to get myself back on my feet and getting my life in a better place and realize now that I have just try to move on and get back to my art, the thing I find the most joy in these days. I want to thank those professionals, friends and family who have been giving me their support, understanding and love. Thanks for listening. ~ R’

The facts first. There is a blog on Tumblr called Escher Girls. Escher Girls deals in taking panels of art featuring artwork from various media depicting women with bad anatomy, awkward boob physics and such. There are caption competitions, ‘Fixed It For You’ redraws and such. It’s a good idea and I hope operates as a low pressure conscience on the comics industry to try to up its game when drawing women as functioning human beings and not twisted spine no organ breasts carrying units. It’s been going for a few years now, and a cursory scan through their archive informs me that every major name in the comics industry has been mocked gently by them. They aren’t making any money from their efforts (although you can donate to them.). It’s just something they do as they think the balance needs redressing.

While the obvious likes of Turner, McDaniel, Lee (Jim), Liefeld and such have all featured in their ‘Seriously how would that even work?’ I don’t believe anyone has called them up on their activity in a ‘cease and desist this mockery’ fashion previous to this week (starting 4 Aug 2014) However, Randy Queen (Darkchylde artist from the 90’s) requested that Escher Girls remove posts of his artwork they critiqued via a use of the DMCA. Escher Girls responded by removing the said posts and asked that their intensely loyal followers not give Randy any grief over this. It has sparked an…um, interesting debate on their message board which is proving intriguing reading, to say the least.

(Also, this has proved, if nothing else, the worst thing you can do in this situation is draw attention to something you don’t want everyone to see, as Bleeding Cool is hosting all the posts on their website, which is seen by far more people than Escher Girls would have been.You can see them here. )

As I said, I’ve been expecting something like this to happen for a while now. Reviewers and Creatives have been sharing the same conversational space on Social Media for a while now, the conflict of being honest whilst being, well, social.

 

• Here’s my take.Creative Types:Literally the only thing you’re entitled to in relation to your work is the monies you’re arranged with your publisher. I see a far bit of updating from artists and writers after their product has hit the shelves, usually to the effect of ‘Well, I think this reviewer needs to take in that it isn’t just the writer who decides the theme of the books.’ or ‘Has this reviewer never heard of Pauline Kael? That’s not how she would have reviewed a work?’ Or one particularly bitter ‘But I had to do all the housework, take my dog to the vet, look after my grandmother, etc, how dare they not recognise how much craft has gone into my work?’ It must be remembered at all times when responding in this way that the reviewer doesn’t (or at least, shouldn’t) care you, or your life. The only thing they are reviewing is the work in front of them.
• Said people also have a rather annoying habit of linking to favourable reviews whilst using weasel words like ‘Interesting’, ‘Unique’ or worst of all ‘Nice’. Which, if you’re not also linking to reviews that aren’t so keen on your output, make you look like a shill for your own brand, like an infomercial that quotes previous positive testimonials for your work. Less a person and more an egotist offended by the notion that anyone DARE dislike your creative process.Guys, you seriously need to knock that shit off or straight up stop reading reviews of your work. If all you’re looking for sycophantic praise, then you REALLY shouldn’t be reading reviews and I have to question your motivation as an artist in the first place. Here’s why:No one is obliged to write about your product in any form except for the way what suits them.I can hear your rebuttals forming already, so I’ll say it again:

  ‘NO ONE IS OBLIGED TO WRITE ABOUT YOUR WORK IN ANY FORM EXCEPT FOR THE WAY THAT SUITS THEM.’

  You can hope that the person looking through the pages of your magnum opus understands your subtext and allusions, gets the in-jokes and personal tributes to friends, that they’ll be inspired to recommend more of your work and provide links to where your other stuff can be bought. Maybe said reviewer has studied Twain, Swift, Kael, Bangs, Groth, Thompson and can explain exactly why your work is something to be placed on that special bookshelf next to Eisner, Moebius, Bilal, Jodorowsky, Watterson, Kurtzman, Spiegelman. That lot.

Maybe.

It’s none of your business if they don’t, though.

It’s equally none of your business if they’re sent a PDF of your new comic, read through the first six pages and say ‘I couldn’t get through the horrible artwork. Couldn’t be arsed finishing it. Total crap, I wouldn’t pay anything for it and deleted the file as soon as I got a chance.’ You have to accept that nobody is obliged to say anything except what they want about your work. Your standards, desires and hopes for how your stuff is perceived do not matter. There are no rules or obligations for reviewers to follow to make you happy, and the worst that can happen is that the reviewer will be taken off a publisher’s comp list, although again, this just makes the publisher look like they only want positive feedback.

You had full control of the work, got a chance to say everything you want to say before publication, and the reviewer is only bound to get their reaction to how much they’ve paid for the output and what they think of it. ‘Yeah, but they made this video, and they just dismissed my work as crap and…’

No.
Shush.

That is their right.

All your preconceptions and preferences in this are irrelevant and should be abandoned. Failing that, don’t read reviews.

On the other side of the coin.Reviewers: No artist or publisher owes you anything. NO ARTIST OR PUBLISHER OWES YOU ANYTHING. There’s a creeping tone of entitlement cropping up quite a lot in fandom of late, that a comic has displeased the reviewer because a story didn’t finish the way it ‘should’ have. Or a comic is going to fail to please elements of the customer base because it’s being drawn by Greg Land rather than the artist Marvel ‘should’ have used. DC ‘should’ get rid of The New 52 and revert to the pre-Flashpoint continuity. Zenescope ‘should’ employ some artists who have a better grasp of the female anatomy.Why ‘Should’ they?

‘Oh no. My childhood is dead. Etc.’

Honestly, beyond your personal desires and whatever delusions you’ve told yourself, you have to understand that no comic, no record, no painting, no film, no game, no work of creative endeavour was created to please you, specifically. Everything is a crapshoot. Shoot enough crap and hope an element of it sticks, whether it’s Scott Snyder’s writing, Adam Hughes’s covers, The Winter Soldier, Doc Ock as Spider-Man or Sam Wilson as Captain America, all of these things are done to try to appeal to the broadest market possible whilst hopefully maintaining the current audience enough that they won’t drop the book

The idea that a work is bad because Peter Parker died, because Poison Ivy didn’t show up, because The Hulk is red instead of green, because Rick Remender wrote things happening that you personally didn’t like is an almost laughable sense of entitlement in action. Whatever you’ve told yourself, or connections you’ve formed in your own mind about how these corporate franchises should be handled, the decisions remain entirely the business of Time/Warner and Disney.

You are free to say what you like, but if you get into the world of what ‘should’ be happening, you’ll never see what actually is and adversely, never actually review the work fairly due to it not living up to your groundless expectations. You cannot, realistically, expect every comic creator to sit down and look at every single person in comic’s Twitter/Tumblr and expect them to take in all of these desires before sitting down and writing their newest thing. The only thing I really expect from an issue of Amazing Spider-Man is that the Amazing Spider-Man shows up at some point in the comic.

On both sides of the argument, it strikes me that neither side is happy about the state of affairs, whether it’s artists and writers wanting the right for their work to be only reviewed the ‘right way’ or reviewers too fixated with their own values of what a comic should contain to fairly and properly consider the work they’re dealing with*.

Obviously, these are ideas that need exploring further. There has to be an understanding from each party of the other’s view for things to start moving forward without one side feeling they haven’t ticked off the other’ checklist of imaginary and unnecessary requirements. It’s only by communicating that anything evolves.

Which is why we, both reviewers and creatives absolutely had to utterly reject the notion that Randy Queen should think that blocking reviewing sites from using his previously published art was an acceptable practice. While I disagree with the notion of Escher Girls should have any influence on art and anyone ought to look at their redesigns and suggestions before drawing any women, because any artist worth their salt is going to follow their muse and training, regardless of the voice of their critics, they HAVE to be free to take published work and recontextualize it for their purposes.

If Randy hadn’t had a change of heart and pursued his case with Escher Girls, he might well have helped set a dangerous precdent. One that would allow DC to stop The Outhousers using DC promo images in juxtaposition with their ‘Has DC Done Something Stupid Today?’ section, Rob Liefeld to block anyone pointing out his rather voluminous swipe file, or maybe Rupert Murdoch to stop Private Eye running images of various Sun Employees in phone-hacking pieces.

This had to be treated as an aberration, a laughable display of wounded ego and nothing more. if you allow someone else’s right to express themselves, you can’t be surprised when yours disappears also. This is a terrible period to be an active critic of pop culture and much else. I’m very gratified that the Streisand Effect appears to be working time and again as a principle, but between the incidents involving Total Biscuit, Janelle Assassin, The Jimquisition and last week’s attack on Stephanie Zacharek, who was called a ‘Harlot’ for not liking a film most of her attackers couldn’t have seen at the time she posted her review, it’s clear some kind of…anti-dissent is going on, both from a corporate standpoint that would rather shut down negative opinion of their product and a collective fan (Which I remind you is a shortening of ‘Fanatical.’ ) that fears any suggestion that product from The Church Of Marvel is anything less than a Holy Offering gifted to it’s loyal subjects.

It’s a thought process that needs a swift kick in the bollocks. I am told that the professionals don’t care and that I’m ‘making the industry look bad’ for pointing out this kind of thing. I am not interested in preserving any notion of Comics as some kind of Shangrai-La nor give a fuck if a bunch of comic professionals think the treatment of reviewers and human beings being shut down by Youtube or being called names is something they can laugh off whilst promoting their new work with a callous and cynical ‘Hey Guys’, as if we were all in some kind of arrested development online Goonies alike compound.

Because it is ‘You Guys!’ and not ‘Us Guys.’. You’ve made that very clear, and either you’re on the side of free expression without fear of reprisals from companies nor abuse from Fanatics, or you just have some more shit to try and sell me, and if the latter is the case, Fuck Off. You were only in the way anyway.

*Which brings to mind an ex-colleague who popped into the shop and asked me what my favourite comic was that week. I suggested ‘Superman:Secret Origin’. He came back looking disgusted and said ‘Man, that was AWFUL!’. ‘Really, it’s Gary Frank and Geoff Johns? I thought you liked them?’

‘YEAH, BUT I HATE SUPERMAN!’

 

That time I had a bit of a meltdown with Comics Fandom on Twitter.

(Since I’ll be off doing stuff at LOCATION REDACTED when this is due, here’s a collection of my tweets reacting to Female Thor, Sam Wilson as Captain America and $5 Marvel comics. Back to normal next week. Possibly.)

No words that can convey my disgust. None.: http://brevoortformspring.tumblr.com/post/92144213323/just-because-planet-of-the-apes-is-a-big-hit-doesnt …

‘A female Thor isn’t true to the Norse Myths.’

True.

Nor is ULTRON!

 

Downright non Útgarðarian, I’d say.

Okay, Been out for a walk. I was going to write this as a column, but it’s too hot for that kind of thing. You might want to put me on mute.

It’s been a bloody terrible month for fandom, honestly. Between #firerickremender, the reactions to Sam Cap and Thor, I’m just ashamed.

It isn’t anything new. I remember the disgust when Northstar was formally outed in the pages of Alpha Flight 106.

Or the reaction by some Hulk fans when Peter David wrote the A.I.D.s issue of Hulk. (One fan suggested that Hulk should have killed Jim.)

Bruce Banner, a hero, should have killed Jim Wilson (Sam’s brother) for carrying the H.I.V. virus. Someone wrote this as a serious letter to Marvel Comics.

So, the sexism shown towards Thor and racism towards Sam Cap? I’m not shocked, but surprised it’s so blatant. But it does beg the question:

For those of you who are actually offended by the notion of a Black Captain America or a Female Thor or a Latino Spider-Man:

(And I’m not being sarcastic, here, I really, honestly want to know.)

What do you think the future looks like?

Do you really, honestly believe there’s going to be a time where people who aren’t white will go back to being slaves?

That women are going to just forget the last 100 years of feminist thought and go back in the kitchen?

Because I’m at a loss to what the long term goal is here. Do you really think if you shout at Marvel over Sam being Cap?….

The…, I dunno, ‘Enforced Diversity’ Agenda will be stopped or something?

Because to me, I love comics, and as much as I might hide it, I love people, also. I WANT people to enjoy comics.

I don’t want the Exclusive Straight White Guy’s Club to be running things anymore, because if nothing else, it doesn’t work very well.

Even if you hate anyone who isn’t a white guy in his 40’s arguing over Green Lantern, you MUST see that the smaller the comics audience is..

The more comics are going to cost, and we’ll be sitting there in 10 years saying ‘God, remember when these things were only $5.’

Even if it’s only out of self interest, you have to see that Marvel and DC trying to expand their audience is a good thing, right?

Because if all you want is your own clique to be able to enjoy whining about the same stuff being sold over & over again for higher prices, that will be the sum result of your struggle to keep everyone but White Guys out of comics. And then they’ll die. The End.

I like comics. I like people. Anything that gives the kids I know an ‘In’ to start reading them means funnybooks’ll be here to entertain them when I’m dead & gone. Your way: Forget it.

And honestly, if you can’t see your racism, your sexism, your homophobia, your transphobia is as laughable and obselete as Flat Earth theory.

Then, I’m sorry, but you are a dinosaur. Your time is up as are your ideas. We will wait for you to die and we will enjoy comics without you.

Ask yourself before you post the next basically anti everyone who isn’t you tweet/post:

Would Superman post this?

Probably. Fucking. Not.

 

Twitter, yesterday.

 

Last shout out to The Outhousers crew. My favourite comics website except this one at the moment. They’re currently running a Patreon thing to raise money to keep themselves going. I don’t know what a Patreon is, except the result of bad spelling, but I assume you give them money: Donate Here and follow me on Twitter, if you like.

I Have Two Thumbs And I Don’t Care: Thoughts On LFCC 2014

Image

This column is respectfully dedicated to the memory of both Lou Reed and Tommy Ramone.

(Thanks to the chap who give me his ticket, without whom, I suspect this column would be a fountain of seething rage, bile and a potential lawsuit waiting to happen. Thank you, Sir. You’re one of The Good Guys.)

‘You know what? I don’t even care anymore. I don’t care if you have a table, or a creator or even have a ticket. I’m not gonna check your hand for stamps. Just go in. This whole weekend has been a mess from start to fucking finish. Go in, start a riot, I don’t even fucking care anymore!’

(Overheard said by LFCC Volunteer. Around 3:30pm, Sunday.)

Well, it’d be difficult to write this as THE defining column on LFCC 2014, as I suspect my experience was quite different to others. I was neither there in my role as FA Online Writer (Ta to those of you who’ve called me  a Comics Journalist, but I’m still not sure what that means, So I’ll stick with ‘Writerist Of Stuff’ for now.) nor Retailer, but simply as ‘Bloke who wanted to have a wander about  and catch up with mates’. Saying that, there are obviously a few things that need to be said. I’ll drop in previews of things I saw, but it’s going to be far from an extensive list.

My LFCC experience began without my even being at the venue on Saturday afternoon while I was at work. I usually have my Facebook account switched on while I’m there for shop orders and such, but had left it unattended for a bit. My Inbox was at something like 20 messages when I returned, all about being stuck queuing at LFCC and general outrage concerning having to wait literally hours to get in after being told tickets would be available on the door. It took a fair amount of time to convince people to actually post their problems on the official LFCC Facebook page rather than, you know, telling me. Not a great deal I can do, there.

This whole experience of trying to get into a show  obviously falls under the umbrella of ‘No, you need to rethink this.’  and not in a way that ends up charging people more money to hang out with Stars, either. Nor do I think lengthy statements on Facebook explaining that it looks like you’ve screwed up but really you haven’t is particularly helpful. Whatever the possibly totally reasonable justifications that might have brought this situation about, the end result is still hundreds of people in a queue in the heat for hours. Having read through the message boards, it seems a fair percentage have rightly put the blame at the door of Showmasters, pointing out a similar occurrence only a few weeks at the Newcastle show. For others, it’s entirely reasonable that if this is the first experience of a comics convention, they’d assume they’re ALL like that.

What was a nice change, for this particular collector of the Odd, the Rare and the Wrong was how much the comic dealers went outside of their comfort zone to bring along stock outside the usual ‘Silver Age & Modern Variants And That’s It.’ fare that gets bumped along from Mart to Show to con and back again. A wander around at LFCC helped me find back issues of Mars Attacks, Solo, various odd Vertigo comics I never thought I’d see again, and the total highlight (for me, anyway.):  The Topps Mars Attacks Baseball Special.

I realise that tables were hella expensive and obviously the need to make that outlay back asap is paramount, but if every dealer has the same stock, then I ‘m just going to go looking at each table until I’ve worked out who’s got the cheapest copy of Superior Foes Of Spider-Man Skottie Young Variant, buy it from them and that’ll be it. Breaking that standard and bringing in more diverse stuff at the cost of a box of Secret Invasion/Dynamite variants has to be a step in the right direction. Special shout out to Incognito Comics for only charging me a pound for the super rare Generation X: Undeground Special.

Mahfood, tho.

 

Ivy Doomkitty looks even more stunning in the flesh than in pictures. That is all. Hubbah, also.

Justification Here.

Then there was my continuous signing conundrum.

A thing that happens when you get old is that you realise people are just…people, really. For my sins, I’ve been lucky enough to meet most of the people I’ve really wanted to talk to in this life and more often than not, put them in a cab home due to my drinking  Orange Juice while they necked pint after pint trying to keep up in conversation with me. While there are still a few I’d like to get to have a chat with, the idea of paying £30 upwards to do that is just sheer anathema to me.

Saying that, I was sneaky enough to hang about George Romero and be utterly astounded by just how on point, how aware and bright George remains. I totally regret my decision not to get something signed by the Master Of Zombie/Political Analogy. Next time, George.

My other signing regret is someone who I absolutely admire the hell out of, WWE Diva Lita, AKA Amy Dumas. People always refer to Mick Foley or Chris Jericho when talking about the Great Wrestling Writers, but Amy’s book title is one of the great biographies that explains exactly what’s going to happen to you. I wrote a review of it here, if you’re interested. I would have done it, for no other reason except she’s utterly gorgeous, but there’s something incredibly inhumane and weird about paying to talk to someone for a short period of time and write their name on a thing that I just can’t get my head around.

 

Smarter than you. Could break your face.

This is probably the same reason that I’ve never paid for sex.

You know, dear reader, one tries not to assume one is…stupid. Whenever faced with an obstacle, I try to work out all the possible solutions before asking for assistance. It helps create the veneer of competence at least. So I followed the crowd into LFCC, skipping the queue with my Early Bird ticket and steeled myself for…the smell of fandom. It’s really a thing. Within 10 minutes of wandering about, I was accosted by Jon Anderson of Soaring Penguin fame, who called me over to his table.  (More on this in a bit.)  Now, obviously foolish, I assumed because Soaring Penguin were in the main hall, so were all the other comic creators. It’d just be a case of searching around to find the likes of Simone, McCarthy, Rude, etc.

Obviously, I was wrong.

Literally three hours later, I received a text from a comics creator, saying ‘Come find me in the Comics zone when you’re ready.’ The conversation went something like this:

‘Come see me.’

‘Love to. Where are you?’

In the Comics zone?’

‘Where the fuck is the Comics Zone? I’ve been up and down this place looking for it for the last three hours.’

‘It’s in a different building, come out and turn left.’

‘A…different building. Right.’

Eventually, I found it, but not due to any information posted around the site at all. No signs that said anything along the lines of ‘Be aware that comics guests can be found here and this is how to get there.’ When I finally arrived at the Comics Zone, I was taken aback at how ill-attended it was. There was never more than one or two people at anyone’s table, which was great for me, as it gave me a chance to catch up with some old friends and even make some new ones for a bit, but it must have been a staggering financial blow for people who’d paid to book tables for the benefit of…basically looking awkwardly at the people opposite them for two days. Some of the Indy tables were buried behind the only entrance to the room, and I’ve seen various reports of creators just packing up on the Saturday and going home because there was no real point in staying.

Again, this is something that really can’t happen again. If I were on that side of the business and I knew, coming in that I’d be essentially ghettoized in a different building with no indication whatsoever for the public to understand that I wasn’t in the main hall, I wouldn’t bother attending a Showmasters run event. I imagine the information was in the £5 programme, but If my potential income was depending on everyone buying said programme, I’d give the whole thing a miss.

Saying that, I did get a chance to check out some awesome new things at the show. Here they are:

Gary Erskine has the lovely Roller Grrrls Sketchbook out for sale at a fiver. Hit him up at his Twitter for copies.

Brendan McCarthy is working on the upcoming Dream Gang for the new volume of Dark Horse Presents, which ships in August.

Bryan Talbot: alongside promoting current critical darling ‘Sally Heathcote‘ is also looking forward to Dark Horse releasing ‘Arkwright Integral’, a new HC collecting both ‘Luther Arkwright’ and the follow-up ‘Heart Of Empire’ along with an interview with Steve Bissette and other goodies.

Soaring Penguin:has a number of projects coming up, but I was most excited by ‘Meanwhile…,’ a new anthology featuring Krent Abel, a new strip by the ‘Man Who Laughed’ team of David Hine & Mark Stafford and NEW STRANGEHAVEN! IN COLOUR, NO LESS!

 

Steve Rude currently has prints for sale available through him

Then there’s the Stan Lee thing….

I’m guessing if you’re reading this column, the chances are you have an opinion on Stan The Man. He’s the Angel who invented Marvel to some, the Demon who screwed Kirby to others, He will always be a source of debate that’ll never die to this business. I suspect we’ll never know the exact truth behind the birth of the Marvel Universe. An absolute indisputable fact, however, is that Stan Lee is a 91-year-old man. Not a particularly sturdy looking one, either. I’m fully aware that the closest to actually travelling to The Marvel Universe most of us will ever get would be spending some time, no matter how brief, with Stan.

But, again, Stan Lee is a 91-year-old man, and as many of us might want to touch the hands that wrote Spider-Man, The X-Men, The Avengers, The Hulk, The Fantastic Four, we have to recognise that a 91 Year Old Man is only capable of so much and we ought to accept that he can only do so much over three days. IF he is passing out during photo sessions or just plain exhausted, the morally correct thing to do is NOT increase his workload, regardless of whether he says he can do it, but to ask him to honour as many bookings as he’s physically capable with and offer full refunds to those who’ll have to be disappointed by the fact that Stan is, ultimately, only A man. Not an ATM for convention bookers.

Finally, a bit of sentimental slush.

I’m unsure quite why this struck me, but I was wandering about post con from pub to pub, seeing people dressed up as their favourite characters, dancing, singing, touching, hooking up. It was incredibly sweet and touching to see, and I turned to my mate and said ‘Lou Reed was right, wasn’t he?’

And he looked at me and smiled ‘Yeah, yeah he was.’ He predicted all of this. Everyone just getting together, hanging out, being cool, being whoever they wanted to be, doing what they wanted. The Straights can harrumph, pretend to read and look uncomfortable with people behaving out of the approved patterns, but they’re free to just…go home. Home to their vanilla sanctity. Lou saw it all coming I just wish he was here to see it.’

‘Raises glass as the sun sets over Earl’s Court

To Lou?’

Clinks glass

‘To Lou.’

Somewhere on the District Line, I hope Jenny made it here.

Oh, and to my emergency beard. Thank you, you were amazing. And so was I. We’ll do it again one day.