The Amazing Comic Collapse!

i didn't like the Daredevil movie. maybe it was Affleck's fault and maybe it wasn't, but one way or another it was just... kinda crap. it was too much like Spiderman without providing enough stylistic differences to set it apart, and who wrote that goddamn script?

"How do you kill a man without fear?"
"You put the fear into the man."

WHAT??? i know it sounds dramatic if you're braindead, but otherwise it's just fucking retarded! a quick look in IMDB identifies one Mark Stephen Johnson as both writer and director. bear in mind here that this man's history shows such unmitigated shite as Jack Frost (meh), Grumpy Old Men and the utter abortion that was Elektra. oh, and he made the new Ghost Rider movie with Nick Cage too. oh dear - i was going to go to see that at the cinema, too. i guess i'll just wait for DVD now. i'm not throwing good money after bad...

anyway, many moons later i found myself in my favourite comic store with a budget surplus, a desire to read more of Frank Miller's work and and a sick curiosity, which is why i picked up the first of the Frank Miller collected trades.

it was odd reading old comics from '79 through to the early 80's. yes, it's retro. yes, it's kinda corny... but it was still a good read. Daredevil actually has some depth - it's not just the movie, although i discovered that the movie drew heavily on Miller's work (remember here that Miller created, and later killed, Elektra... sorry if that's a spoiler for anyone). another week or two and i was back in there having decided to grab some more, but in a desire to keep expanding i picked up the first of the trades written by Kevin Smith. yes, for those who don't already know, Kevin Smith of View Askew (Clerks, Mallrats - the Jay & Silent Bob movies) fame spent some time writing Daredevil, and it's actually really good. as much as i respect Miller's work, it was still a vanilla, monthly serial comic of early 80's era and most of that stuff bores me more than a little. Smith's work has more than a little grit to it, not to mention Quesada's artwork which is really quite special.

i'm going to have to give the movie another go, although it'll be the Director's Cut i'll watch which, i have been assured, is Less Crap than the theatrical release. i'll discuss if i decide it's note-worthy...

When I first heard that they were making a movie based on Frank Miller's graphic novel, 300, I was intrigued. I like most of Miller's work and was looking forward it the movie.

Then the trailer came out. I watched it a couple of times. Then I showed it to Raven. We are in agreement. It is beyone any of our hopes. This trailer, at least, will go down in history as one of my favourites ever.

Take a look.

i'm guessing that i should treat this as something of a learning experience. i have a habit of reading through half or most of something, writing about it, then having what comes next change everything i thought i knew beforehand. Alias was like that - edgy, interesting, a little slow up to volume 3, and then on a trip to Sydney i picked up volume 4 since a store happened to have a copy.

up until #3 i thought i had a decent handle on things. here was a character who Had Issues and got Fucked Up a lot to the degree that you start wondering whether she's just irritatingly disfunctional, or if she's got something going on that made her this way. #4 deals with the Jessica Jones' mysterious past like a slap in the face and explains not just why she got out of the superhero game, but also that she's not just disfunctional - she's Seriously Fucking Damaged.

what makes this even more interesting is that throughout most of the series the art is done in a very ink-heavy, almost unfinished style. the grittiness of the art emphasises the grittiness of the narrative. suddenly we see a very different style as #4 flashbacks to her past - going to high-school in the 80's the art is in a quintesential 80's Marvel style. not long after we start to see flashbacks to her life as a costumed hero in the 90's which is all done in a clean, colourful mid-90's style. the cover (above) shows a little of what of i'm talking about. it's amazing how effective this is at driving the point home that we're barely even looking at the same person here - think how much your life has changed in the last 15 years and you'll understand what i mean.

without resorting to spoilers, i'm going to say only that What Happened To Jessica Jones classifies as not only the Most Disturbing Psychological Depravity i've seen in comics to date, but also justifies dragging yourself through the rest of the series. with this knowledge in mind i'm finding that re-reading what came before makes a LOT more sense.

from what i've been hearing, The Pulse (Bendis, Marvel) is effectively more continuity of the core charaters, except that Jessica has (finally) acheived some closure, and the swearing's been "bleeped" out. i'll get my hands on it and discuss more at that point.

It has been announced by Marvel that Joss Whedon (Astonishing X-Men, Buffy, Angel) and will be taking over writing duties on Runaways when Brian K. Vaughn (Y: The Last Man, Ex Machina, Ultimate X-Men) steps down on issue 24.

I for one am a huge fan of this idea. Runaways has been one of my favourite series recently, and to see it go from Brian K. Vaughn (one of the best writers today) to Joss Whedon. Whedon's writing in Astonishing X-Men has been amazing and he will do well with the characters in Runaways.

Greg bought the first 3 books of Alias and, because he couldn't find book 4 bought the collected hardcover and gave the old ones to Phrancq. 10 minutes later i had them in my "IN" pile with instructions that i read and report.

the introduction makes a big deal about Alias being the first Marvel comic to not only make use of the word "fuck", but to use it on the front page. this was, apparantly, the first release by Marvel's new "Max" line - comics that you'd normally consider to be MA or R18+ rated.

ordinarily i don't read introductions, but when i noticed that it was written by Jeph Loab it piqued my interest. it's funny how certian names instantly lend cred to the book - i still remember getting all excited when i saw an introduction in one of the Transmetropolitan (Ellis, Vertigo) books written by Patrick Stewart. similarly, there was a quote by Stephen King on one of the promo posters for the first Evil Dead movie. that said, having a quote from Uwe Bol on a new movie would make me run screaming, which is just proof that you need to be careful with these things and make sure that the names you're using for credibility have some cred themselves...

anyway, i found Alias interesting. i saw a lot of the ideas of Powers in Alias - a world where super-powered heros are accepted and people are used to the idea. the pace feels, to me, a little slow, but the stories gritty... sometimes gratuitously so, but then i appreciate this for what it is. perhaps i wouldn't be so blase about it all if i hadn't read other titles such as Transmet, Preacher (Ennis, Vertigo) and bits of 100 Bullets (Azzarello, Vertigo) hmm... noticing a trend there anyone?

still, as interesting as it was to read and as glad as i am to have read it... i don't know that i'd go out of my way to buy it. maybe later if i'm bored, feel like reading it again... and don't have anything else i feel like picking up at the time.

we need more comics like these. i'm glad Alias is out there if only because it's worth being able to trundle out as an example of an early example of how comics came of age. we're not 13 years old any more and it's damn good to read stories that i can appreciate more now, more than a decade on.

(no links in this - i'm feeling lazy tonight. just bash the names into google or wikipedia.org if you want to know more about anything here...)

Various things have been announced or spoken about at Baltimore Comic-Con this weekend so here is just a quick list. All info found at Newsarama.

- Jimmy Palmiotti and Justin Gray have announced their exclusive contracts with DC.
- As many of us predicted, Spider-Man will be returning to his original costume.
- Joss Whedon will stay with Marvel after Astonishing X-Men wraps up. In what role is unknown at this time.
- Marvel have approached writer William Gibson unsuccessfully and also writers Neal Stephenson and Stephen Hunter.
- DC may be bringing us more western comics in additon to Jonah Hex soon.

Phrancq and i have been itching to try this and even though it took about an hour to record and then four or five to edit, we're prettymostly pleased with the result. hope you enjoy - feel free to let us know how crap we are!

Audio Blog #1 - What's with these Ultimates comics, anyway?

23min:59sec

i remember when i was young and the only authors i paid attention to in comics were Goscinny & Uderzo and Herge. the people writing other comics like Batman and Superman never really got on my radar - i treated them like sitcoms (which have teams of writers) and got on with things.

more recently i've started keeping an eye on these things - ever since i heard about these madmen Frank Miller and Alan Moore. things got a little more interesting when Phrancq handed me the first two trades of Astonishing Xmen (Marvel) and pointed out that it was written by no other than perennial nerd Joss Whedon (of Buffy, Angel and Firefly fame). not long after that came Ultimate Iron Man(Marvel) by Orson Scott Card (famous for Ender's Game). this has perked my interest - both of these guys are primarily responsible for "regular" literature - Whedon for his "nerdboy Aaron Spelling" TV series' and Card for his SF work.

i'm sitting here wondering whether this is an emerging trend - the idea the growth of the comicbook medium has come of age, allowing authors who might never have considered writing comics to give it a go... although the cynical side of me wonders if it may just be that that market for comics has reached the point where enough money can be made to make the whole thing worthwhile. the thing here, though, is that when you get into it this is nothing new. J. Michael Straczynski was involved in a number of works (including Amazing Spiderman(Marvel) and Fantastic Four(Marvel) as well as his own Rising Stars title) after becoming famous for Babylon 5, an he's just the one i can think of quickly.

this all makes me wonder who else might be interesting? what about William Gibson writing a series of (the now finished) Global Frequency? or something wierd like Spider Robinson writing for an Xmen spinoff... Excalibur maybe (is that even still running)? one suggestion Phrancq made was having Neil Stephenson write an Ultimate Thor - or similar... although i'd be just as happy to see him create a comic version of one of his other works (and while we're at it, where's the 6-part miniseries of Snow Crash you bastards?).

as the comic format increases in popularity and public-credibility we're going to see more and more regular authors giving it a shot. i'm curious to think of the possible combinations we could see in the next few years...

Writer: Geoff Johns
Pencils: Carlos Ferreira

With issue #38, Teen Titans kicks off its second major story arc following Infinite Crisis. Entitled "Titans Around The World", it sees the Titans beginning a world tour to discover what has become of former member Raven and discern which of the 20 teen superheroes who briefly joined the team over the last year is a traitor.

As DC readers may be aware, Raven is about to get her own miniseries (as is fellow former Titan, Terra), and this story arc is clearly the set up for the spin-off. At the same time, it's introducing a bunch of new teen heroes that we've briefly glimpsed in previous Titans issues, including a new teenaged Zatara, the gaudily clad Miss Martian, Black Adam's offsider Osiris, and a huge cast of others.

Ordinarily, that sort of storyline would be a road wreck, with too many characters and not enough characterisation, but Geoff Johns so far is pulling off the writing with the same aplomb as he's handled the rest of Teen Titans to date. It's a good story, and the focus stays firmly on the people at its heart. At the forefront in this issue is the insecurity of Ravager and Kid Devil, who Robin has announced he intends to kick off the team, and the burgeoning relationship between Robin and Wonder Girl.

Unfortunately, the art doesn't match up. Veteran Titans artist Tony S Daniel has departed the series, and been replaced by Carlos Ferreira. Ferreira's art doesn't thrill me in any particular way. Anatomies are out of proportion, faces are devoid of character, and the pencil-work does little to support the dialogue or the story. There are probably comics that would benefit from Ferreira's style, but he does no favours for Teen Titans.

All up, the quality is still definitely there in what has been a consistently excellent ongoing series, and the new storyline promises an exciting ride, but I'll continue to hope that the art duties get transferred back into the hands of someone more appropriate to the title.