Tomorrow is Free Comic Book Day.
Am I going? Maybe. While I do have another commitment on Saturday (it's studio photos at the dance studio), none of this year's Free Comic Book Day offerings are really exciting me that much. War of the Supermen? Eh. Not to mention, the local comic shop is, to me, a place dripping in awkwardness, and since nothing could add more to the awkwardness than me showing up in stage makeup right out of a photo shoot, I think I'm going to skip it. Though if I did go, I'd probably be the only person on Earth who went right from wearing a tutu in a ballet studio to browsing through a comic shop. I might just have to do it to break some sort of Guinness World Record or something.
Now, Free Comic Book day is, in my opinion, another missed opportunity by the comics industry to promote the medium. Nobody knows about FCBD, at least where I live. Though I had unwittingly participated in FCBD in 2002, I didn't know at the time what it was. The first Spiderman movie premiered in May of 2002, and right after the movie was over, there were a few guys standing in the hallway handing out Spiderman comics saying, "Here, have a free comic!" (who, in retrospect, must've been from the local comic shop. At the time I thought they worked for the theater or something.) I honestly had no idea what was going on, but I gladly took a copy, and then when we got in the car, took all the copies my family members were handed out, too.
After I read my free Spiderman comic, I had no idea what to do with it or where to go from there. I had no idea who had given me a comic, nor why it was free, nor how to get another one. No label with the store's name, a brochure, nothing. Handing out free comics right after a comic book-based movie could be a potential goldmine for drawing in new readers, but this local comic shop didn't capitalize on it at all. Neither do the comics publishers. Are there any ads on TV promoting FCBD? Ads on the web? Ads in the newspaper? Not that I have seen. Come on, guys! Promote this! Treat every recipient of a free comic as if it were their first. Tell us how to get comics! Explain the difference between single issues and trades. Let us know which characters belong to which company (honestly--the average person doesn't know who owns Spiderman or who owns Batman.) Put a little info--a post card, a sticker, a coupon--in with the comic so we know where it came from so we can return the favor and buy more. And get the kids involved, too!
And above all, venture out into the general community and give away comics at malls, grocery stores, movie theaters, etc. No one knows where the local comic shop is except the regulars. (Or even that such a thing as a store devoted solely to comics exists.) So take a little chance and go hunt for some newbies. It just might turn out that they like comics afterall.
Thursday, April 29, 2010
Tuesday, April 27, 2010
Even Mother Goose Knows Superman Is a Jerk
A student, who knows I like all things superheroes, pointed this out to me in today's newspaper:
Mother Goose & Grimm for 4-27-10
Superman just likes to rub it in, doesn't he?
What's even more amusing is when Clark has to carry Batman around when flying. That I found greatly amusing.
Monday, April 26, 2010
The Answer Is Out There...Maybe
One of my favorite parts about the magic of DVDs is all the special features, behind-the-scenes documentaries, and interviews with the movie's creators. I'm a special features kinda gal. I'll sit there and watch the entire director's commentary of a movie. (Except maybe Justice League: New Frontier. After Darwyn Cooke said "they did a great job making the movie look like the book" for about the fifth time, I had to turn it off. You're great, Darwyn, and I love you and all, but I need a little something more than that.)
Anywho.
I like to hear about how things are made. Even really silly questions like "How is baking soda made?" cross my mind and warrant research on my part. So when I started reading up on one of my favorite comic book characters, the Martian Manhunter, and found very little information about the how's and why's of his creation, I started feeling a little downtrodden.
While Frank of the Idol-Head has put together an always-intelligent rundown of who created the Martian Manhunter, I'm really feeling the need to hear something directly from at least one of J'onn's creators. I'm guessing that if a Martian Manhunter Archives volume was ever put out, DC might dig through their internal archives and put together at least a bio of Joe Samachson, Joe Certa, Jack Miller, and/or Mort Weisinger.
But I have this vision of a vertical file sitting in DC's offices filled with interviews from all sorts of Silver Age writers and artists, and maybe even some inter-office memos and notes on napkins detailing the creation of many a Silver Age hero. Now, I have no idea about whether or not such records actually do exist, nor how meticulous DC was about documenting its history, nor whether they'd let anyone have access to it. But if they do have that information, it would be the motherlode.
Now, considering that my line of work involves teaching other people how to research stuff, you'd think I'd come up with something. Well, not yet. Just a cursory search proved harder than I thought. Part of the problem is not knowing what I'm looking for (a published interview, personal letters, etc.), and whether or not it actually exists and was archived somewhere. Plus, it's my professional opinion that the archives world is just plain dumb for never developing a federated search infrastructure (i.e. something like Google or the Library of Congress), because I believe archivists are greedy little miscreants hiding away the great treasures of history from the public, and are definitely one notch above librarians on the Grand Scale O' Evilness. I can't say any of this anywhere else because my best friend is, in fact, an archivist. (Muahahaha.)
The second problem is that comics aren't really considered "academic" by many people, including universities, who are the main holders of archived materials, and therefore probably weren't collected, or not even donated in the first place. A university is going to be a lot less interested in the private papers of Joe Samachson than they are the guy who invented the cotton gin. Yes, I know, it's a great tragedy to all, but it's a sick world we live in.
So, I will keep looking. There are university archives with historical comic book collections, but unless it was published in a magazine somewhere, there probably aren't any author interviews. Searching archives is not difficult but accessing material is laborious, as it often takes a personal visit, or, remotely, a phone call or e-mail to an archivist to obtain photocopies of materials. (That is, if they even allow them to be photocopied.) Rarely are things digitized and made easily accessible online, becuase, again, archivists are evil. So I find the odds stacked against my favor and coming up empty. I had already tried to ascertain the exact fictionopolis of the Martian Manhunter (as anecdotally documented in a letters column) and come up with nothing after searching for weeks.
Maybe I'll find something. If I do, I'll let you know.
Anywho.
I like to hear about how things are made. Even really silly questions like "How is baking soda made?" cross my mind and warrant research on my part. So when I started reading up on one of my favorite comic book characters, the Martian Manhunter, and found very little information about the how's and why's of his creation, I started feeling a little downtrodden.
While Frank of the Idol-Head has put together an always-intelligent rundown of who created the Martian Manhunter, I'm really feeling the need to hear something directly from at least one of J'onn's creators. I'm guessing that if a Martian Manhunter Archives volume was ever put out, DC might dig through their internal archives and put together at least a bio of Joe Samachson, Joe Certa, Jack Miller, and/or Mort Weisinger.
But I have this vision of a vertical file sitting in DC's offices filled with interviews from all sorts of Silver Age writers and artists, and maybe even some inter-office memos and notes on napkins detailing the creation of many a Silver Age hero. Now, I have no idea about whether or not such records actually do exist, nor how meticulous DC was about documenting its history, nor whether they'd let anyone have access to it. But if they do have that information, it would be the motherlode.
Now, considering that my line of work involves teaching other people how to research stuff, you'd think I'd come up with something. Well, not yet. Just a cursory search proved harder than I thought. Part of the problem is not knowing what I'm looking for (a published interview, personal letters, etc.), and whether or not it actually exists and was archived somewhere. Plus, it's my professional opinion that the archives world is just plain dumb for never developing a federated search infrastructure (i.e. something like Google or the Library of Congress), because I believe archivists are greedy little miscreants hiding away the great treasures of history from the public, and are definitely one notch above librarians on the Grand Scale O' Evilness. I can't say any of this anywhere else because my best friend is, in fact, an archivist. (Muahahaha.)
The second problem is that comics aren't really considered "academic" by many people, including universities, who are the main holders of archived materials, and therefore probably weren't collected, or not even donated in the first place. A university is going to be a lot less interested in the private papers of Joe Samachson than they are the guy who invented the cotton gin. Yes, I know, it's a great tragedy to all, but it's a sick world we live in.
So, I will keep looking. There are university archives with historical comic book collections, but unless it was published in a magazine somewhere, there probably aren't any author interviews. Searching archives is not difficult but accessing material is laborious, as it often takes a personal visit, or, remotely, a phone call or e-mail to an archivist to obtain photocopies of materials. (That is, if they even allow them to be photocopied.) Rarely are things digitized and made easily accessible online, becuase, again, archivists are evil. So I find the odds stacked against my favor and coming up empty. I had already tried to ascertain the exact fictionopolis of the Martian Manhunter (as anecdotally documented in a letters column) and come up with nothing after searching for weeks.
Maybe I'll find something. If I do, I'll let you know.
Thursday, April 22, 2010
Why Comics Are Not More Popular, Part 4A
I'm really not justified in making this a completely different topic, since it's pretty much along the lines of #4. Hence, I numbered it "4A." What compelled me to add a 4A to the list was that I actually saw my advice put into practice and therefore was able to judge my suggestion via a real example and not just as conjecture.
Here's #4A: Make characters and conflicts relatable.
Okay, now this, I think, is a fine line to walk, especially for DC. I've read hardly any Marvel comics, but I get the impression that many conflicts residing in the Marvel Universe are of the "mundane" or "everyday" variety. Which is why I think Marvel heroes have been stereotyped as being angsty/whiny/emo, I guess.
Anyway, one of the basic rules of storytelling is to make the main characters relatable, a.k.a. identifiable, a.k.a. empathetic. Meaning, there's something about them that "rings true" to real life: they've undergone tragedy, they want the same things we want (justice), their personality type is similar to us or someone we know, they desire something despite great odds, they're in a situation we've been in before, they've made the same mistakes we have, etc. The same rules of audience identification hold true for villains, as well, and in fact, a great villain needs to be relatable to be a great character. If we understand his or her motivations, even if whatever he or she does is completely horrible, then we're invested in that character, no matter how evil they are.
One key, I think, to helping readers identify with characters is to keep motivations and situations small. It was Josef Stalin who said, "one death is a tragedy. A millions deaths is just a statistic." The vast majority of us don't have experience (thank goodness) dealing with millions of people dying on an everyday basis. And even if we were living in some region embroiled in a holocaust resulting in the deaths of millions, we couldn't process that many tragedies in our minds; what we probably would remember are the specific people affected. Great storytellers know the power of the particular, which is why anyone who's seen Schindler's List can never forget the little girl in the red coat.
So, seguing awkwardly to the comics world: lots of people die in comics, probably on a weekly basis. Insanely large groups of people also die, too, like the entire planet of Xanshi, which got obliterated in Jim Starlin's Cosmic Odyssey. I read Cosmic Odyssey last summer, and remember feeling more frustration than sadness when the planet was destroyed. (Much like Alderaan getting blown up. Not feeling much there, either.) The greatest comic book tragedy in a long time however, I mean, the kind of tragedy that literally made me say outloud, "Oh no! I can't believe they did that!" (yes, I really do talk to myself when I read) was this panel, from last week's Booster Gold #31:
...where Booster, when recklessly pursuing a villain, accidentally killed a little girl's dog. Yep. I was pretty upset. Few of us have seen a planet explode, but I'm sure many of you have experiences with the passing of a family pet. See? Instantly relatable. Oh, and remember the end of I Am Legend or Old Yeller? By finding the everyday and putting it in context of the fantastic, the writers have established an emotional tether to the reader.
Now, because this is an instant touchstone to reader reaction, it can be misused. It wasn't misused in Booster Gold, becuase it served the purpose of the story. The fact that it was accidental added even more to the pathos, and our hero learned a lesson from it. However, you can't kill off innocents gratuitously like was done in Cry for Justice, or the only affect you will have on the reader will be to anger them.
I'm not saying that every comics writer should go out there and put a small animal in peril to engender audience sympathy. I'm just using the example of a pet in danger because it's something most of us can relate to. There's plenty of other things that writers can come up with to connect with readers. And that's also not saying comics should be mundane, either. "Small" conflicts--universal situations that we can all identify with--can be used in spectacular, epic stories as well, and in fact should be used, or else there's no soul. That's why the original Star Wars worked and the prequels sucked.
Just a "little" food for thought for all you aspiring comic writers out there.
Here's #4A: Make characters and conflicts relatable.
Okay, now this, I think, is a fine line to walk, especially for DC. I've read hardly any Marvel comics, but I get the impression that many conflicts residing in the Marvel Universe are of the "mundane" or "everyday" variety. Which is why I think Marvel heroes have been stereotyped as being angsty/whiny/emo, I guess.
Anyway, one of the basic rules of storytelling is to make the main characters relatable, a.k.a. identifiable, a.k.a. empathetic. Meaning, there's something about them that "rings true" to real life: they've undergone tragedy, they want the same things we want (justice), their personality type is similar to us or someone we know, they desire something despite great odds, they're in a situation we've been in before, they've made the same mistakes we have, etc. The same rules of audience identification hold true for villains, as well, and in fact, a great villain needs to be relatable to be a great character. If we understand his or her motivations, even if whatever he or she does is completely horrible, then we're invested in that character, no matter how evil they are.
One key, I think, to helping readers identify with characters is to keep motivations and situations small. It was Josef Stalin who said, "one death is a tragedy. A millions deaths is just a statistic." The vast majority of us don't have experience (thank goodness) dealing with millions of people dying on an everyday basis. And even if we were living in some region embroiled in a holocaust resulting in the deaths of millions, we couldn't process that many tragedies in our minds; what we probably would remember are the specific people affected. Great storytellers know the power of the particular, which is why anyone who's seen Schindler's List can never forget the little girl in the red coat.
So, seguing awkwardly to the comics world: lots of people die in comics, probably on a weekly basis. Insanely large groups of people also die, too, like the entire planet of Xanshi, which got obliterated in Jim Starlin's Cosmic Odyssey. I read Cosmic Odyssey last summer, and remember feeling more frustration than sadness when the planet was destroyed. (Much like Alderaan getting blown up. Not feeling much there, either.) The greatest comic book tragedy in a long time however, I mean, the kind of tragedy that literally made me say outloud, "Oh no! I can't believe they did that!" (yes, I really do talk to myself when I read) was this panel, from last week's Booster Gold #31:
...where Booster, when recklessly pursuing a villain, accidentally killed a little girl's dog. Yep. I was pretty upset. Few of us have seen a planet explode, but I'm sure many of you have experiences with the passing of a family pet. See? Instantly relatable. Oh, and remember the end of I Am Legend or Old Yeller? By finding the everyday and putting it in context of the fantastic, the writers have established an emotional tether to the reader.
Now, because this is an instant touchstone to reader reaction, it can be misused. It wasn't misused in Booster Gold, becuase it served the purpose of the story. The fact that it was accidental added even more to the pathos, and our hero learned a lesson from it. However, you can't kill off innocents gratuitously like was done in Cry for Justice, or the only affect you will have on the reader will be to anger them.
I'm not saying that every comics writer should go out there and put a small animal in peril to engender audience sympathy. I'm just using the example of a pet in danger because it's something most of us can relate to. There's plenty of other things that writers can come up with to connect with readers. And that's also not saying comics should be mundane, either. "Small" conflicts--universal situations that we can all identify with--can be used in spectacular, epic stories as well, and in fact should be used, or else there's no soul. That's why the original Star Wars worked and the prequels sucked.
Just a "little" food for thought for all you aspiring comic writers out there.
You know, for a guy who screws up all the time, you're awfully popular, Booster. Hey...maybe that's part of the reason why we like you...
Saturday, April 17, 2010
Saturday Comics
I'm still not quite sure how to incorporate reviews into this blog (if at all), but I decided to do a "live reading," kind of like what Sea-of-Green did for reviewing the Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths DVD.
Okay, so I'm reading The Flash #1 by Geoff Johns and Francis Manapul. I know very little about Barry Allen, though I read Flash: Rebirth, other than he is a forensic scientist who runs fast and wears bowties.
--Not sure I like the cover. Dynamic, but Tony Harris's figures are too angular for my taste.
--Wario wants me to create games. Okay.
--You can put icons next to your name in text messages? News to me.
--Nice car, Trickster. Also, love the gloves.
--Flash can stop bullets?
--Neil Gaiman's promoting National Library Week. Just what I need in the middle of my comic: something to remind me of work.
--Central City apparently doesn't have child labor laws in place for construction sites. Good. Make the kids earn their keep, I always say.
--The Flash saves a kid from falling debris and introduces himself using his logo. See, now THIS is what comics should be all about.
--Barry Allen's late to work again.
--The Weather Wizard rains out baseball games just to be a jerk. These are the kinds of villains I love.
--Who can turn your eyeballs into glass?
--Sigh. Retconned childhood trauma to give Barry Allen more "edge." This is NOT what comics should be all about.
--Barry seems to be looking younger and younger with each passing panel...the hoodie doesn't help. Would it kill someone to draw a superhero as a mature adult? He looks nineteen.
--Mirror Master? Oh noes! What happened?
--"Does anyone know how to adjust these chairs?" Bwa-ha. I have that problem at work all the time.
--Forensic scientist and inter-office politics talk. It looks like this series might have a strong focus on Barry's secret identity and day job. Normalcy! In a comic! I'm liking that.
--Um...should you be telling the press all that secret police stuff? And Iris, way to use your man to get a scoop for your paper. Sheesh.
--Dinner with the Hawks? Awwz.
--Cliffhanger!! Dun dun daaaaaa!
--Wait, what? Is this another story? I'm confused. Oh, wait. It's an ad. For a story not happening for another year. Like I'm going to remember. Wait a second..."the Flash's world will change." Greaaaat. Just when I got used to the whole "business as usual" here comes another crisis. And there's a White Lantern ring involved.
--Uncolored Zatanna preview. My eyes hurt from all the backwards reading already...
--DC Universe: Legacies. A history of the DCU. I'm intrigued. This could be good for newer fans. But where's Dr. Mid-Nite in that JSA photo, or does he come in later?
--"Sworn to protect! Born to kill!" Wait, is that the guy's motto, or the dog's? That's certainly my dog's personal motto. That and "kill all pizza delivery men."
Okay, so I'm reading The Flash #1 by Geoff Johns and Francis Manapul. I know very little about Barry Allen, though I read Flash: Rebirth, other than he is a forensic scientist who runs fast and wears bowties.
--Not sure I like the cover. Dynamic, but Tony Harris's figures are too angular for my taste.
--Wario wants me to create games. Okay.
--You can put icons next to your name in text messages? News to me.
--Nice car, Trickster. Also, love the gloves.
--Flash can stop bullets?
--Neil Gaiman's promoting National Library Week. Just what I need in the middle of my comic: something to remind me of work.
--Central City apparently doesn't have child labor laws in place for construction sites. Good. Make the kids earn their keep, I always say.
--The Flash saves a kid from falling debris and introduces himself using his logo. See, now THIS is what comics should be all about.
--Barry Allen's late to work again.
--The Weather Wizard rains out baseball games just to be a jerk. These are the kinds of villains I love.
--Who can turn your eyeballs into glass?
--Sigh. Retconned childhood trauma to give Barry Allen more "edge." This is NOT what comics should be all about.
--Barry seems to be looking younger and younger with each passing panel...the hoodie doesn't help. Would it kill someone to draw a superhero as a mature adult? He looks nineteen.
--Mirror Master? Oh noes! What happened?
--"Does anyone know how to adjust these chairs?" Bwa-ha. I have that problem at work all the time.
--Forensic scientist and inter-office politics talk. It looks like this series might have a strong focus on Barry's secret identity and day job. Normalcy! In a comic! I'm liking that.
--Um...should you be telling the press all that secret police stuff? And Iris, way to use your man to get a scoop for your paper. Sheesh.
--Dinner with the Hawks? Awwz.
--Cliffhanger!! Dun dun daaaaaa!
--Wait, what? Is this another story? I'm confused. Oh, wait. It's an ad. For a story not happening for another year. Like I'm going to remember. Wait a second..."the Flash's world will change." Greaaaat. Just when I got used to the whole "business as usual" here comes another crisis. And there's a White Lantern ring involved.
--Uncolored Zatanna preview. My eyes hurt from all the backwards reading already...
--DC Universe: Legacies. A history of the DCU. I'm intrigued. This could be good for newer fans. But where's Dr. Mid-Nite in that JSA photo, or does he come in later?
--"Sworn to protect! Born to kill!" Wait, is that the guy's motto, or the dog's? That's certainly my dog's personal motto. That and "kill all pizza delivery men."
Thursday, April 15, 2010
Just Some Things I Want
Now, I'll start things off by saying I'm not a huge toy collector or anything (because Toy Story 2 ingrained the moral that "toys are meant to be played with" into my brain), but every now and then I see something I want to buy that makes me want to level off the nearest end table, install some proper halogen lighting and pronounce it my Official Action Figure Shrine of Awesomeness.
This is one such item:
This is one such item:
It's a little hard to see becuase it's a screen grab from a video, but it's a set of DC Infinite Heroes that recreates the cover of The Brave and the Bold #28, the first appearance of the Justice League:
Unfortunately for the figures, Starro's colored a bit differently, and J'onn's collar is approaching dangerously high levels, even though he never had a collar in the Silver Age. (Which might make a certain Green Lantern fan happy, though.) But still, how cool would walking around doing this be?
I could walk around work punching people I don't like and blaming it all on Starro...!
Now, there's also another cool Martian Manhunter toy-related item: J'onn is going to be included in DC Universe Classics Wave 15, as was leaked by Amazon.com. Fans have been waiting a long time for J'onn to make an appearance as a DCUC figure. I haven't gone crazy collecting them yet--so far all I've got is Blue Beetle and Booster Gold. A DCUC J'onn will look great next to the....two other action figures of J'onn which are already sitting on my Nerd Display Area, right next to the Darth Vader cookie jar wearing an Indiana Jones hat. (That counts for double nerd points.) Hopefully he'll be tall enough to look okay next to my DC Direct Adam Strange, who unfortunately is out of scale with every 6" figure and looks like a giant. (Must've been an effect of the Zeta Beam...)
If you want to see the whole video about the San Diego Comic-Con exclusive toys, you can click here, becuase Blogger won't let me embed it. Also, some extra coverage is here.
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