I like Barry Allen just fine, but bringing him back after over two decades just as you’re offing J’onn J’onzz just highlights the idiocy that is “death” in superhero comics. Also, as a nerd, I have to say I’m not crazy about characters like Wally West and Kyle Rayner getting sidelined because somebody wanted more stories with the original guys. The appeal of a legacy character is that the mantle is passed on and this sort of nostalgia leaves that storytelling element dead.
Speaking of needless expansions of existing character concepts: Anti-Venom? Really, Marvel? Don’t get me wrong: I laughed, but still, that joke’s going to get old so, so fast.
Marvel got Entertainment Weekly to cover Mirror Universe Venom. DC got the New York Daily News, a paper that I forget exists for months at a time, to cover the return of a Silver Age icon who had his own TV series. That’s sort of amusing.
Even with tragedy hanging low over the shop, staff picks must go on. Funnily enough, just when Aaron’s has something horrible occur in his life, Lydia has the Best Comics Week Ever.
This week, I’m going to be in decidedly low-content mode, as I’ve given myself a few projects guaranteed to ensure my inability to blog very much. That’s why I’m opening up the floor to you with Questions for the Masses.
Here’s the first one:
There is frequently talk of a comics canon, or a body of work that is generally accepted as the most valid representation of the medium. For instance, Watchmen , Maus, and Stan Lee and Jack Kirby’s run on Fantastic Four are generally considered part of the canon.
Does porn have a canon? Do regular pornographic viewers and critics feel that you have to have seen and reviewed the merits of Where The Boys Aren’t 7 or Analyze These before engaging in a discussion about the genre as a whole?
Batman #675 The Batman-vs-Ten-Eyed-Warriors bit in 52 was an issue that stuck out like a sore thumb, so getting a return of the Ten (now Nine) Eyed Man wasn’t exactly welcome, and my displeasure was compounded by Ryan Benjamin and Saleem Crawford’s inability to leave any panel un-uglified. The big reveal concerning Jezebel Jet seems rather sudden – she’s only appeared in a few pages in Morrison’s run so far and has made no real impression on me other than “It’s African Angelina Jolie.” I did enjoy the brief interlude with Damian and his mother, however, and Morrison’s dialogue, even when straddled with elements I’m not crazy about, always crackles just so.
GØDLAND #22 At this point, it’s sort of impossible to relate to what’s going on in GØDLAND unless you’ve been deep into its psychlorama since the beginning. Scioli’s art continues to grow and change, using Kirby as the beginning versus the slavish imitation that others work. My only complaint is the fact that I wanted more of the supervillain hotel gathering. That shit’s hilarious.
Hulk vs Hercules I picked up this one-shot because I was only buying two singles this week and hey, Pak and Van Lente have earned my cash. The main story was fun stuff, even if I’m not super-familiar with the point in Marvel’s timeline (Strange sends Hulk into Limbo or something, Hulk pops up in random places) when the story was supposed to take place, and the reprint of the first Hulk vs Hercules clash from Tales to Astonish #79 was a hoot, but boasting a 64-page count when a few of those pages are a preview for an upcoming issue of The Incredible Hercules is the sort of thing that just plain irritates me. Not enough to set the book on fire or anything, but enough to make me mutter a bit in my Dome Of Nerditude.
(This was alleviated a bit by the return of the Unlimited Class Wrestling Federation. Marvel: Chris Sims and I will write that comic for you, cheap.)
The back cover compares this book to Rush Hour and Lethal Weapon. This is a comparison the powers that be should not make. They sell their book too short.
Yes, Cover Girl is a buddy movie in graphic novel form, so that comparison bears fruit. But its story is better than any Rush Hour film and about half of the Lethal Weapon franchise.
As I mentioned earlier, I ran into Brigid from Mangablog on the train back to Boston from NYCC and we had what was, frankly, a fantastic conversation about comics, creators, the state of the medium, its future, and just about everything else. Somehow, we got around to fonts (of course we did – this always happens when I’m around) and Brigid innocently stated “I like Comic Sans.”
I let this pass because the company was too pleasant to mar with an extended diatribe about her utter wrongness. In fact, I forgot about the conversation until Monday afternoon, when I was in the co-op grabbing dinner materials and I came across a locally-made whoopie pie that featured the font proudly on its label. That’s when the reasoning for my fonthate bubbled to the surface: it’s lazy.
While I may just not like the damned thing’s form factor, I can understand people in offices using it to liven up what is most likely the dullest of dull paperwork. Forgive? No. But I understand. I’ll even let family get a pass in those dreary annual letters about how they’re doing because they’re not really supposed to care like I do.
It’s when this typeface works its ways into commercial applications that my hackles are raised. I was looking at this label and it hit me: if this company cares so little about their image that they’re using a crappy basic Microsoft font in their marketing and packaging. how am I supposed to trust they’re going to not take shortcuts everywhere else? Customer-facing materials are their first chance to sell me on their goods and if a label looks like something that could have been hacked out by my sister-in-law, it makes me question the company’s ability to make the right decisions elsewhere at some level.
This isn’t a conscious process (really!), but I was made very aware of it as it’s a nice confluence between some of my favorite things: desserts, fonts, and marketing.
Hey, if any Second Life programming, incredibly smart, college student-types are out there and want to do a little intern gig for the comics business, I’d love if you’d shoot me an email: kevin(dot)church(at)gmail(dot)com.
