This is the Brain Release Valve

And we like our women strapped the back of giant, feral cats.

Awake and strapped to the back of giant, feral cats, even.

The ONE and TWO

Now that the Pineapple Primary is back from the dead, we’re working on figuring out the proper art style to go with.

Initial discussions have lead us to a potential mix of clean, linear figures (borrowing heavily from Charles Gibson) on top of photo-sourced, then graphically rendered (think big, black lines) backgrounds.

We’re even planning on a trip to Chicago to grab source images at some point in the future.

But, before we do any of that, we’ve got to do a few test pages to see if this’ll be worthwhile or a complete disaster. I wrote two single page panel breakdowns to use as tests.

And here they are. ONE and TWO. Single acts of crime, completely devoid of context.

ONE

1-2
Man runs toward the camera down a darkened street. His trench coat flows out from him like a cape. He is clutching a duffle bag in his hand. Cash flies out of the bag, but he doesn’t notice – or care.

3
He rounds a corner into an alleyway, checking over his shoulder to see if he’s been followed. His eyes are narrowed, and suspicious, the rest of his face hidden by the up-turned collar of his coat.

4
Waiting in the alley for him is a beautiful woman, wearing an expensive dress, a fur coat and impractically high heels.

5
Close in on them as they embrace in a kiss.

6
Move in tighter as his eyes open wide in pain. She doesn’t react.

7
He falls backwards as we see the small pistol in her hand. Her rigidness in star contrast to his crumpling body.

8
His dead eyes stare up at us from the ground as she bends down to pick up the bag of money. Try to work her high heels into this shot.

9
Shot from behind as she hoists the bag over her shoulder and walks away. His extended hand can still be seen at the bottom of the frame.

TWO

1-2
Establishing shot of a town square. There are two groups of people. The one into foreground, hiding behind a car, is a group of three criminals. One of them is badly hurt. Hiding behind the elements in the background are the other group – the police.

3
Tighten in on the criminals behind the car. The one left is peering over the hood of the car, trying to get an idea of what they are up against. The one in the middle is splayed out, arms and legs limp, head hanging loosely to one side. There is a massive, wet stain of blood on his chest. The blood is streaked on the car behind him. The criminal on the right is looking at the bleeding man with concern, his hand on the man’s shoulder.

4
One of the criminals peaks his head out over the top of the hood of the car he’s crouched behind.

5
We see the array of guns pointed at him from across the town square. This doesn’t look good.

6
Pull back a bit as he slumps back down, gun to his forehead, like he’s praying.

7
The man on the left looks to the other two men. The man on the right is closing the eyes of the man in the middle with a bloody hand.

8
Downward shot of a the man on the left as he puts his gun to his temple and looks up into the trees.

9
Zoom out, show the tree and the sky A flock of birds fly out of the tree, startled by a gun shot.

My Top Ten Comic Books

So. You want me to recommend ten comic books. My favorite ten comic books.

I’m going to make an off the cuff remark here, and I apologize for it.

You’re out of your fucking gourd.

I’m more than a little biased towards certain types of comics, and I can absolutely not abide some classic works (See me and apathy toward SANDMAN). But, you asked for it, so I’ll give you what you’re asking for. My ten favorite graphic novels/series. No limiting to 1 per creator or anything like that.

…Except for the two big caveats I’m going to hit before we kick this off – WATCHMEN and THE DARK KNIGHT RETURNS are NOT on this list. Both are excellent – no, amazing – books that did incredible things for the industry. But neither of them are my favorite. WATCHMEN gets bogged down by the Dark Freighter story-within-a-story, and honestly, THE DARK KNIGHT RETURNS doesn’t age that well. It just seems paranoid and masturbatory to me now.

So, my top 10? In no particular order beyond the first one, are as follows:

PLANETARY

Warren Ellis and John Cassaday
It started off in 1999 as a superhero archeology expedition into the fiction of the 20th century. It changed the way I thought about comic books, about fiction, about stories. It mixes every single type of pulp fiction into a brew that is heady and affecting. I could go on for pages about this book. But I won’t, since there are othera to hit.

But, in all damn seriousness, read this book over anything else. Since you don’t have to deal with the horrifically missed shipping schedule that plagued the production run, this book is absolutely perfect.

AUTHORITY

Warren Ellis and Bryan Hitch

Rising out of the ashes of Ellis’s run on STORMWATCH, AUTHORITY was an answer to the question of “what would happen if super heroes really tried to change the world?” The answer was big, bold and shocking. Hitch and Ellis introduced the world to “wide screen comics”; their books that presented spectacle bigger than anything Hollywood could promise. And they did it all while holding together a tight story with interesting characters. While the team of characters that compromised AUTHORITY will never go down in history with the likes of the X-Men or the Justice League, they will always represent what those books could do, if they ever decided to let go.

BATMAN: YEAR ONE

Frank Miller and David Mazzucchelli

I suspect that the only DC character that has had his origin retold more times than the Joker is the Batman. And this is two greats telling the story of Batman’s first, horribly flawed, yet potential filled, first year. More of a story of the elements that make up modern Gotham coming together than a singular Batman story, there is a reason Christopher Nolan based his BATMAN RETURNS off of the events in this book.

And just to add to what I said above, this book holds up with age where THE DARK KNIGHT RETURNS completely collapses.

BATMAN: THE LONG HALLOWEEN

Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale

Should I mention that I really like Batman? And I really like Batman when he is done really well?

In this book Loeb and Sale are given a calendar year to tell the story of an investigation into a series of mob murders. Over the twelve months, they mix in the big Batman notes – Joker, Two Face, the mob, the Riddler, everyone. And what you’re left with at the end of it, is this feeling of empathy for everyone involved in the story – both good and bad. This is a pure Batman story, and excellent because of it.

KINGDOM COME

Mark Waid and Alex Ross

There was a thing in the 90s. A thing that was comprised in one part of tearing superheroes down, and in the other part of building them up as something legendary.

KINGDOM COME was DC’s answer to this, revolving around the next generation of superheroes and a world that has had enough of them. Superman and the classic heroes return, aged and bitter, to wage a war to end all wars against the younger generation. Things go badly, as you might could imagine.

The book requires a little bit of prior DC knowledge, but the characters are iconic and you pick up what you need to know fast and are off to the races.

RUNAWAYS

Brian K Vaughn and Adrian Alphona (originally)

Originally an attempt by Marvel to engage their wavering tween audience, RUNAWAYS ended up being a book that connected more with alienated 20-somethings than the intended audience. The story deals with a group of children who find out that their parents are super villains, and that they all now have powers. The ensuing conflict deals with the classic idea of what you want to be versus what you are expected to be.

Just make sure you stop after the first three hardcover collections. Vaughn leaves the book, and it doesn’t develop well from there.

THE ULTIMATES

Mark Millar and Byran Hitch

Following up his run on AUTHORITY, Hitch moved his “wide screen comics” to Marvel’s Ultimate line. They were attempting to relaunch all of their classic books – Spider-Man, X-Men, Avengers, etc – under a new imprint for the movie-going audience. The books were given to up and coming creative teams who proceeded to knock them out of the park. And THE ULTIMATES, the Avengers book, was my favorite of the bunch.

SAGA OF SWAMP THING

Alan Moore and Stephen Bissette / John Totleben (originally)

Redoing for American audiences what he had done with MARVELMAN in the UK, Alan Moore takes a legacy comic book character and completely sweeps away their history, replacing it with a more modern backstory. In this case, Swamp Thing is no longer a chemically mutated human, but rather a plant elemental that has bonded with the memories of a dead human. The surreality of Moore’s first breakthrough book takes over from there.

Forget WATCHMEN, SAGA OF SWAMP THING is where Moore lays out his modernist take on comics.

ASTONISHING X-MEN

Joss Whedon and John Cassaday

The X-Men are hard to nail down. They are without a doubt, some of the most popular comic book characters in the whole of the medium, but they are also prone to have horribly uneven runs and several-year long spouts of mediocrity.

Fortunately, ASTONISHING, was for the most part continuity-free, entanglement-light, and perfectly done. Like with KINGDOM COME, there is some prior knowledge required, but you’ll clear the hurdles with no problem.

There are parts of this book that still give me chills.

INVINCIBLE

Robert Kirkman and Cory Walker (originally)

What if Superman had a kid, and that kid was Spider-Man? That’s the nut of INVINCIBLE. The book takes cues from the big action books like THE ULTIMATES and AUTHORITY, but doesn’t skimp on the character bits that make the book interesting, and ultimately noteworthy.

And that’s my top ten.

Close but not quites to this list would be Ed Brubaker’s CAPTAIN AMERICA, Warren Ellis’s IRON MAN: EXTREMIS, Mike Mignola’s HELLBOY, Mark Millar’s SUPERMAN: RED SON, Grant Morrison’s NEW X-MEN run and probably dozens more that I’m going to savaged for forgetting.

If you’re curious, I’ve written a list of non-superhero recommendations as well. It avoids the “body condoms and fetish-set” and keeps to people who have the common decency to have real names and breast that aren’t impossibly large.

DAMAGE, Limited

You have men like Richards, Stark and Pym, but you haven’t cured AIDS and no one is living on Mars. That is more villainous than anything I can think of.

Working on a comic idea that centers around a reformed child genius super villain trying to make the world a better place by actively applying the talents of super villains in a way that will get them to personally invest in the betterment of mankind. Think THUNDERBOLTS, but instead of them using their powers for combat, they use their power for civic improvement. The Living Laser powers the entire eastern seaboard. Graviton closes the mouth of an oil spill. Doctor Goodwrench saves the American auto industry. Things like this, the useful application of super human power. All of it juxtaposed against a military-industrial complex that fears him, super heroes that don’t trust him, and personal skeletons that refuse to keep themselves in the closet.

Sort of an Ex Machina for the 616 Marvel Universe.

The Pineapple Primary

A few years ago I started writing something called THE PINEAPPLE PRIMARY. It was going to be a one and done graphic novella about the most violent election in United States history. There was an artist lined up, my research was done, and I was making great progress. I sent the first 18 pages off to the artist and wrapped up the rest of the book in a week.

It was about this time the artist disappeared into some kind of alternate dimension I’m going to call “New York Theatre”. I think I’ve mentioned my trouble keeping artists. They mainly get eaten by wild boars and I have to shelve whatever project I was working on. *cough* *cough*

But, I guess the stars weren’t right because a dying hard drive took the first complete draft along with it. The sad part is I didn’t even realize it for close to 6 months because I didn’t think about the project. Then, for whatever reason, I went looking for it and realized that it was literally the only thing I didn’t have backed up. Luckily, I had the first 18 pages I’d sent out, plus my script notes for the whole thing, which were essentially all of the words, but without the paneling. I shrugged, left it there and figured that if I ever needed it, I could come back and rewrite it.

Well, that moment of need came around about two weeks ago. I was talking to an artist friend of mine, asked him if he wanted to draw something, he said sure, and I said I’ll send you a script on Tuesday. The girlfriend went with some friends down to NOLA, and I went to work (re)finishing THE PINEAPPLE PRIMARY.

At this point, the script is in what I’m referring to as a “production draft” state. I haven’t gone through with a fine toothed comb and picked out all the typos and confused grammatical bits. I haven’t even gone through and checked my pages to see which is a facing page and which isn’t. The bottom line is that I’ve got something that is good enough for the artist to start working from, but not the finished product.

Here’s where you come in, Internet. A common intermediary step in writing is the workshop. I give something to you, you tell me what you thought of it. The more feedback I get, the better I can edit.

And there’s absolutely no one I trust more than the fervid, raving mass that is the Internet superconsciousness. Which really says a lot about me, doesn’t it?

So, here is the production draft of THE PINEAPPLE PRIMARY, in .rtf form.

Read it, and let me know what you think. You can post your thoughts in the comments, or you can email me at brainreleasevalve [at] gmail [dot] com.

Thanks in advance to anyone who reads it.

The Delta Silt Juried Graphic Anthology

Don’t get hung up on the name. I came up with it in two seconds. But, do get hung up on the idea behind it.

I’ve always been of the opinion that the interesting bits in the Midsouth are buried under the same kind of mud that you’d find in a lake. Things fall to the bottom, and the moving water brings in silt. Stop moving, even for just a little bit, and you’ll get covered up, buried in muck. But, all you have to do to find something interesting is drag your fingers through the mud. I think there are dozens of creative people out there that just need a hand to come along and pull them out of the mud to produce something great.

Which is where the idea for a juried anthology comes in. Originally, juried shows were designed to give no-bodies the chance to compete along artistic greats. Was your stuff better? Then you were going to win, regardless of what your name or prestige was. Now imagine this for comics. A free to enter, categorically organized contest. Winner takes all (well, all the bragging rights), and you print the best of the show as a POD book, maybe even fund it with a Jumpstarter project.

To top the whole thing off, if your recoup costs, donate any profits to something like the Comic Book Legal Defense fund, or the charity that helps people in the comic industry get health insurance (the name escapes me at the moment, and Google is being stingy).

Dropping this idea here as a reminder to myself to bring it up to some friend of mine who might be able to make this happen.

Hope Larson’s Girls & Comics Survey Results

Hope Larson has been asking young women about the comic consumption habits, and what appeals to them in the medium. Here are the results:

What can authors, publishers, retailers do to better serve teen/tween girls?
1) More and better female characters, especially protagonists. Girls want to see strong, in-control, kick-ass women calling the shots.

2) A welcoming atmosphere in local comic stores is key. Many respondents reported feeling uncomfortable in comic stores. They were stared at, talked down to, and generally treated without respect.

3) Pink, sparkly cutesy comics about boyfriends, ponies, cupcakes and shopping are widely reviled. Condescend to female readers at your peril, writers and comic publishers.

4) The hypersexualization/objectification of female superheroines makes female readers uncomfortable, and sexual violence as a plot point has got to stop.

5) Girls need good stories in a variety of genres.

6) Most girls don’t even know comics exist, or that they would enjoy them. Publishers need to advertise in mainstream media and comic shops need to reach out to girls.

7) Make comics for boys and girls. Comics with dual male and female protagonists. Comics with large casts that offer something for everyone.

8) Use licensed properties to lure new readers into comics.

9) Availability is a problem. Get more comics into schools. Get more comics into libraries—especially school libraries. Get more comics into bookstores, especially large chains.

10) There need to be more women creating comics and working in the industry as editors and publishers.

She’s got more details on her LiveJournal, and the list has pretty much become a must read for anyone who is making comics.

I agree with all of her conclusions. No hemming or hawing, no qualifying of my statements. She’s right.

If comics makers want to appeal to a female audience, moving away from musty shops run by fat slobs and into places that sell Starbucks is the way to go. We need more books like Runaways and fewer Avengers books.

We need less things like this:

And more things like this:

….actually that’s a terrible fucking example. All comic book t-shirts are horrible. We just need less shit like that stuff above.

An odd aside – she interviewed 198 women, which is the same number of mutants left in the Marvel Universe, and X-Men was the most common comic named in her survey. Weird how things line up sometimes.

Millar is looking for new creators for his start up magazine

CLINT MAG LOOKING FOR 1, 2 AND 3 PAGE STORIES SCI-FI, HUMOUR OR HORROR

New or established. Young or old. I don’t care. The only specification is that your little short stories have to be good and you need to pair up with a collaborator and post your FINISHED SUBMISSION below as a sample. Note: I don’t want to see general art samples. This is where you submit a two or three page story for our consideration in the magazine. The cream of the cream will get printed in the magazine and you’ll get a decent page-rate. I want to find new talent here and, like the old 2000AD training programme, all new guys will have a year on short stories before graduating to anything bigger. You need to learn your way around a short before you get your hands on a feature.

So go for it. My all-time favourite TV show is The Twilight Zone so that kind of thing with a clever twist or a great high-concept is mainly what I’m looking for here. I’m also looking for something that normal, very mainstream readers would understand and enjoy. The rest is up to you, my friends.

MM

Bleeding Cool has all you need to know about what CLINT is.

(You know, besides a bad comic book joke.)

(Ok that needs some explanation. Think about the placement of the L and the I. Now think about how most comics are lettered in thin block capitals. So, imagine if a letterer got sloppy or a printer didn’t align a press plate properly. Suddenly that L and I get squashed together into a U. You can fill in the rest, I hope.)

COMMONPLACE – The Remainder

I’m trying to figure out how to make a person forgettable.

Really, and truly forgettable. I know that may seem like the opposite of something that you’d want to do for a character you’re creating, but it is the crux of this one.

You see, we’ve got a guy who the entirety of creation has forgotten. Even Death has forgotten him, making him ageless and immortal.

I hear him in my head describing it to some one:

It is like trying to leave tracks in a blizzard. Every indention made in the snow, proof that you’d been there, is filled up and covered over. The universe is actively working to unmake any record of you.

But the horrible irony of that conversation is that they’ll just forget it the second he’s out of sight.

It is easy to just wave your hand and say something like “Everything has forgotten him”, but something completely different to give hard rules to something like that.

The situations and iterations are maddening

What if he writes something down and hands it to some one? Can they then remember what he’s written? If so, then that’s them remembering him, and therefor against the core of this idea.

So, solve that by saying that the writing fades once it is away from him, and then the memory fades from the person who read the writing. That works, but it then raises the question of if we’re not just talking memory here, but a physical record, a physical record that can be erased, what else could that affect?

If he beats a man to death, do that man’s injuries stitch themselves back together after the character wanders off?

I guess you could go that route, but any tension that could be built would be gossamer thin. You’ve got a guy who can’t die and who can’t actually make an impact on the world.

But what if he was helped in his actions? Like, say he saved a drowning child with the help of some one else. Sure, they’d both forget him, but what would happen if there hadn’t been anyone else to help him? Would that child spontaneously drown the second he walked away?

It gets awkward and convoluted very fast, you see.

The idea is very simple and I think has legs for days, but the minutia, the continuity shit, that’s where this falls apart.

Of course, the entire idea behind this character is the ret-conning in comic books. Some crazy force ret-cons an entire comic universe, but since they can’t remember our character, they rec-con everything but them. The character is the only person who remembers the previous world, but all record of them has been erased in this new one.

Wiping out a physical record that way and allowing a new one to be rebuilt is the easiest solution, but it just feels cheap in a way that I can’t put my finger on. Like I might be asking too much of what I need this character to do.

You’ve been reading the COMMONPLACE – where I talk shit that no one understands and’ll never see the light of day.

The Non-Superhero Comic Book Recommendation Post

I posed the question on Twitter today if any of my followers had never read a comic book or graphic novel, and I got enough responses for me to justify what is sure to become a rambling and multi-tangent post.

So, I figure by this point and with the prevalence of spandex superheroes in the cultural consciousness, if you haven’t read a comic book yet it is because that stuff just doesn’t appeal to you. That stuff being impossibly proportioned people flitting about the sky in spandex blasting each other with laser beams. Which is perfectly understandable. One of my favorite (comic) writers, Warren Ellis, describes the current dominance of that one sub-genre as walking into a book store and finding nothing but romance novels…about nurses. And some people just don’t want to read about nurses in torrid love affairs. (While the rest of us are probably perverts who do.)

However, I could be completely wrong in this assumption. If I am, then stop reading after this short list of really, really good starter superhero fiction:

• Batman: Year One (DC)
• Batman: The Long Halloween (DC)
• The Ultimates, vol 1 (Marvel)
• Invincible (Image)
• All-Star Superman (DC)
• Runaways (Marvel)
• Astonishing X-Men (Marvel)
• Watchmen (DC)
• The Authority, vol 1 (DC/Wildstorm)

Yes, I’m avoiding the more complex/self-referential bits like Sandman, Kingdom Come, Swamp Thing, Dark Knight Returns, Superman: Red Son, Sleeper, Planetary and amazing on-going books like Thor, New/Dark Avengers, Captain America, Powers, et al. Again, we’re looking at starter books here.

Still with me? Yes? Good.

Then on to the non-spandex wankery.

A few ground rules first, I figure. The books that I’m going to post below all have two things in common.

First: a lack of any kind of traditional super hero. You aren’t going to find people with capes and cowls and logos on their chests. But, that’s not to say there won’t be stories about people with extraordinary abilities. Sure, Jesse Custer from Preacher may be able to make you do his will by invoking the Voice, but he’s not a super hero.

Second: They are all self-contained books. You don’t need to have read anything else to get what’s going on in them. They are what they are, and you can pick up and go from page one.

The Crime Books

100 Bullets

The idea is simple. A man appears with a brief case. Inside is a gun, 100 bullets of untraceable ammunition, and proof that some one in your past has wronged you. Now, the question is, do you act on this information knowing that you will never be prosecuted, or do you close the case and push it away, accepting your fate. The idea is simple, but what spawns out of it is the greatest crime epic in the history of comics.

Criminal

A series that deals with a single criminal in each volume. The book explores questions of guilt and innocence, the things that drive people to commit crimes, and where all of this intersects with very real characters.

Jinx/Goldfish

I’m grouping these two together because of their writer, Brian Michael Bendis. He’s basically the creative rudder at Marvel Comics right now. And he got his start with these wonderfully dense, but minimal crime stories. The dialogue is the focus here. Wonderfully written conversations between characters spill out onto the pages in a completely natural way.

Fell

A tightly gridded process comic about a recently transferred detective who finds himself in a town that is quite possibly the maddest place in the world, and most assuredly out to kill him. Think Monk, but on recreational ketamine.

The Big Epics

Preacher

I’m not sure why it took a drunken Irishman to write the quintessential ode to the American cowboy mythos, but it sure enough happened. Preacher deals with a Texas preacher, on the cusp of losing his faith that becomes possessed by a creature called Genesis, who sends him on a man hunt to find God. Along the way the titular preacher comes across the love of his life, a hundred year old vampire, the Saint of Killers, and a society that guards the secrets of Christianity.

Transmetropolitan

Hunter S Thompson a thousand years in the future. That’s the easiest way to describe this scifi assault on the reader’s mind. Full of screeds and rants and drugs and the possibilities of the future, the thing that will shock you most about Transmet is how completely the simple, sad moments will tear through you.

Y the Last Man

An unknown plague has swept across the world, killing all the male mammals save for Yorick and his pet monkey. That’s the set up for what is one of the most lauded comics in recent memory. A book so good, in fact, that the creator and writer now writes for Lost.

The Walking Dead

The only on-going book on this list, which means I can’t tell you that it isn’t going to drop off in quality. But I can tell you that the story so far has been amazing. The story revolves around a sheriff in a coma who awakes to find the dead have risen and his family is missing. Violent, gritty, depressing and moving, this is the best zombie story out there.

The Misc

Global Frequency

There are 1,001 people on the Global Frequency, and each of them does something better than anyone else on the planet. Each issue of this short-live series tells the story of how those people use their abilities to save the world. Every chapter is completely different from the last, save it the quality and originality of the story telling.

WE3

The story of three government test animals on the run from their creators. A rabbit, a cat and a dog, all blended with cutting edge weapon tech. One of the most moving books I’ve ever read from two of the best in the business. If you read this and don’t get misty when you think “Gud dog” you’re not fucking human.

Addendum

I don’t really go for books like Blankets and Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth. I see why they are good examples of comics as a medium, they just don’t appeal to my love of serialization. They feel bloated. You may like them, but I can’t recommend things that I don’t enjoy myself.

Thanks for sticking around, let me know if you’ve got any questions/comments/suggestions.

Chins.

That’s Larry North. An pink butterball of a man from East Texas who planted dozens of pipe bombs in mailboxes. Because of”he was disenchanted with the federal government” and “he was disenchanted with an individual who he perceived that had wronged him”

That’s David Stone, leader of the Hutaree Militia.

These are his people:

This is a panel from Garth Ennis’s comic Preacher.

In which the preacher Jesse Custer, whom the book is named for, confronts a group of Klu Klux Klan members.

An Irishman’s graphic novel ode to the American cowboy mythos says this better than I ever could.

The marketing people at Marvel are evil fucking geniuses

As if outselling DC 2:1 wasn’t enough for them, they are going to add insult to injury.

In an effort to provide assistance to comic retailers in 2010, Marvel is offering retailers an opportunity to turn unsold comics into an extremely rare Siege #3 Deadpool Variant!

Retailers – for every 50 stripped covers of the following comics sent to Marvel, you will qualify to receive one FREE Siege #3 Deadpool Variant. The 50 stripped covers can be any combination of the comics listed below and all submissions need to be received at the Marvel office at the address below by Tuesday 2/16/2010. Also included with the stripped covers must be your store contact information including Diamond Account # and email address.

Stripped Covers To Be Sent:
Adventure Comics #4
Booster Gold #26
Doom Patrol #4
Justice League Of America #39
Outsiders #24.
R.E.B.E.L.S #10

Those are books that retailers had to order large amounts of to qualify for the Blackest Night rings promotion. They had to order X number of books to get a pouch of colored plastic lantern rings that the fanboys went apeshit over.

Can’t wait to see how DC will respond.

Via i09.

The Perfect Introductory Comic

I posted an open question to Twitter earlier today:

Question: What comic book do you give some one who is a complete comic virgin? Do you go spandex, stand alone, serious? Gimme some thoughts.

I was looking for the notes that make a comic the perfect introductory book for some one who’s never read a single comic, doesn’t know any of the characters, doesn’t understand a single trope. The answers were pretty surprising.

On the whole, people prefer books that are self-contained, ie not part of on-going continuity or dependent upon knowledge that you couldn’t gleen from the book. So, collections from the Big Two are out. No X-Men, no Spider-Man, no Avengers, no Green Lantern, no Superman, no Flash. There are a few Batman examples that break this rule, but mainly because people can get away with rewriting his past so often.

But that’s not to say they don’t want super-hero books. Comics work best as modern day mythology, and a myth isn’t a myth without something extraordinary in it. Alan Moore once pointed out that comics are the perfect medium for big ideas because there isn’t a budget. Anything you can think of, you can draw. You don’t have to worry about paying for the visual effects to show the whole of Los Angeles getting fired by an errant solar flare, you just have to put a pencil to paper and go. The “super” stuff is like a spice, and it should be used to give the dish a kick, but not over power it. You want to still rely on the base elements of a good story, such as interesting characters with a dynamic arch, interesting setting,  and good pacing for most of your flavor. But that spice, that “super” spice, is what can push it from being good to being unforgettable. And if something is unforgettable, then you’re going to want more of it, which means it was the perfect introductory book.

When you think about this, all of it makes sense. And you’d think that when the comic industry is experiencing a massive year over year growth in revenue for the better part of this last decade you’d see tons of sales of books like those I’ve touched on above. (Looking at print only, not movies.)

But, you’d be dead wrong.

I checked the sales numbers for all of 2008/2009. Stand alone series trade paperbacks rarely spike into the monthly top 100. Sandman and Preacher, two of the greatest comic series ever, languish around the 170-190 mark. The highest selling books are compilations of the big events from the Big Two.

Here’s my reading into all of this: More people are reading comics. But, most of those new people are reading comics in trade format. It is far easier than going to the store every week. The Big Two are putting out more books than before, and fans are suckers, so they are buying them. I counted once, and there were like 6 X-Men books you had to read to stay current. Hell, Spider-Man was in 5 different books until they parred him down to one book that comes out three times a month. People are certainly reading the big stand-alones, but it doesn’t look like they are finishing what they are starting. Probably, people are giving them as gifts, and then the person isn’t finishing out the series.

From a creator’s stand point, stand-alone creator owned books are pretty much the only way you are ever going to retire. All of the huge selling books will make tons of money for the publisher, but not for you. You work on page rate, with a pretty minor residual from the sales. Robert Kirkman is the example to look at here. You build a lot of fan loyalty with Big Two books, then step out and only work on creator owned stuff after that.

Apparently her lashes are what makes her wonderful

Attention: Comic Book Publishers

To the Comic Book Publishers of the World,
An Open Letter

I want to give you money.

I like your products.

But, your medium is inherently flawed. Being a lifetime collector of comic books is a dangerous course of action. You end up with whole tracks of your house taken over by longboxes, stacks of unsorted singles, bookshelves full of trades. And the longer you’re a fan, the more you collect, so the mass swells to mammoth proportions. I know people who rent houses. Whole fucking houses, mind you, to store their metastasizing collections.

In an era when we’re attempting to go green, this is an untenable state of affairs. God only knows how many trees are being felled so Billy can have his next issue of SUPERHERO SPANDEX FETISH ACTION DELUXE. I think it is time that the industry looses their attachment to paper products, and starts to embrace the pixel products.

So here’s the deal, comic publishers, I’m willing to give you money for your products in a digital form. Not to even own, mind you, to borrow. Think of it as a Netflix for comics. Charge me a monthly fee, I’m fine with that. Tier off your archives, so I have to pay more to read archives of older books, I’m fine with that. But, you’ve ignored this business opportunity for too damn long. I want you, either together or separately, to get off your collective asses and join the 21st Century and the digital revolution.

Here are a few general ideas to get your noggins rolling.

-Marvel. I know you’ve got this digital comic thing going already. But, here’s the deal, it fucking sucks. You’re trying to short your digital subscribers by holding back on the hot, on-the-shelf, titles and giving them spotty coverage on back issues. For God’s sake, I don’t even know why, but you were hyping Civil War #3 today on your website as a new comic. That book came out THREE YEARS AGO. When I can, with a few clicks, some loose morals and a bit of patience download EVERY COMIC YOU HAVE EVER PRINTED, having a digital service that is this bad almost criminal on your part.

-DC. Admitting that the Internet exists might be a good idea. Marvel’s got you beat across the board here. And with the level of complexity and crossing-over that your stories have, offering me a digital package of all BLACKEST NIGHT books (something like 80 books over 10 months) would save me and you a hell of a lot of pain in tracking them all down.

-Dark Horse. I know you deal in a lot of movie properties, so this could be weird for you, but there’s no reason you couldn’t let me read all of Hellboy in a digital format for $20.

-MP3 downloads come with vinyl records at Best Buy. Why don’t digital versions of comics come with trades? It’ll give you another reason to shrink-wrap the trades and keep those wankers at Barnes and Noble from reading them all.

-The basic model should be something like this: A base rate that lets me read all of your new books for, say, the month of their release. Maybe delay them two weeks to keep your brick and mortar stores happy. I can live with that. From their you start tiering up. For another few bucks, I get access to all books from the last year. For a few more, I get access to all books from the last five. Give me the option to read a few trades a month, and then charge me once I hit my limit. Finally, the big package should include access to all of your archives. And I know you have them. If the nerds out there have them, you have them. And if you don’t have them, you’d damn well better get on having them otherwise you’ll loose your history forever.

-Next year, we’ll start seeing the rollout of the big tablet devices. Tabloid-ished sized devices from Apple and a few of the PC manufacturers. I imagine at some point there will even be on running Google’s Chrome OS. The point being is that these devices are perfect delivery methods for your digital content. Sure, I love holding a comic book in my hand and turning the page, but these devices are going to get close to that without cutting down tree.

-I don’t want to hear that any part of this is hard. I know that what ever program you are using to print your books can spit out a PDF. All you need to do then is find a DRM partner and build a system that lets me stream those PDFs. Take a look at services like Issuu. Things like that were made for digital comics.

-If you want me to put a dollar amount on what I’d be willing to pay for a top-level subscription to just Marvel, then how about this: I was paying ~$100/month for hard copy books. I’d be willing to pay $60/month for the full blown archive subscription. You could even put the ads in the books, I’d be fine with that. And if that doesn’t make you stop and think, then you’re out of your mind. Cutting out the paper middleman would probably save you at least 70% on production costs and distribution alone.

There is a great line in SportsNight, an early TV show from Aaron Sorkin. It is toward the end of the show when the characters don’t know if their fictional sports show is going to be picked up or not. A character appears who says “Some one who can’t make money with SportsNight shouldn’t be in the business of making money.” It was, of course, a fuck-you to the network that was canceling them, but it holds true as a mantra. You comic publishers are leaving gobs of money on the table here, now get off your ass and grab it before I do something else with it.

Your truly,
//–Zachary Whitten

Illustrated Catsylvania Chronicles

My friend LT just moved into a new house, taking her two cats with her. And as anyone who’s ever moved with cats can tell you, they don’t enjoy the experience. But, there is always humor to be found in the suffering of another, and LT’s one-upped her normal feline schadenfreude by drawing comics of her cat’s experiences. Not just comics, good comics.

You can find the rest of the series here.

The Science Pirate of the Atomic Age

I am prone to have really, really terrible ideas. I am also prone to tweet about them so I can get them out of my head and forget about them.

Like this:

lofidelity Science-pirate. Yes. I need to be this. With zappy death rays, rusty cutlasses, dashing facial hair and a crew of clacking robot wenches.

The problem? My friends have grown used to me doing these things, and sometimes instead of being rational, emotionally stable people, they encourage me. For the rest of the afternoon, Twitter devolved into us tossing back insane shit about Science Pirate. I made his flag, L made him a type treatment, and then Pat completely lost his mind and offered to do his 24 Hour Comic Day on the Science Pirate if I could get him a script by the next morning. So, being a complete mental patient, I went home and knocked something out for him.

I expected him to read it over, blink a few times, calmly put it down, and then politely ignore my phone calls for the rest of his life. But, much to my surprise and the death of his sanity, the fucker actually started working on it. He knocked out half the script on Saturday before drawing page after page of a naked Science Pirate got to him and his vision gave out.

The whole script is up at The Great and Secret Thing today, and Pat’ll be posting the pages as he finishes them.

Here’s an excerpt:

PAGE TWO

Panel 6
Futura pops around the corner over the bulkhead to the captain’s quarters, still smoking. She couldn’t care less about his yowling if she tried.

FUTURA: What?

Panel 7
The Science Pirate stands, back to the camera, completely naked staring down at a ruined chemistry set up. The set was one of those glass jobbers with spiraled condensers, fluted beakers and all of the rest of that stuff you’d see in a bad 50s super-science movie.

SCIENCE PIRATE: There’s been a disaster!

SCIENCE PIRATE: My chemistry lab has been smashed!

Panel 8
The Science Pirate turns to face her. She tries to cover her eyes from his nudity, like you would if a naked pirate started waving his junk in your general direction.

SCIENCE PIRATE: Futura! How could you let this happen! You were supposed to be on watch last night!

SCIENCE PIRATE: Instead, I find you’ve let some one sneak aboard and destroy my lab! I shall have you flogged for this!

Panel 9
She leans against the door, massaging the bridge of her nose, trying to keep the rage in check.

FUTURA: Look, no one snuck aboard last night. This mess is all you.

Panel 10
Taken completely aback, the Science Pirate indignantly protests this accusation. Protests it as indignantly as some one who is completely naked can.

SCIENCE PIRATE: That makes no sense, Futura! I love science! Why would I hurt it?

Panel 11
Leaning forward, her patience wearing thin, Futura jabs at the Science Pirate, cigarette in her hand.

FUTURA: You tried making rocket fuel last night, but decided it went better in a cocktail than in an engine. You drank the whole batch.

Panel 12
She gestures out to the broken beakers and test tubes.

FUTURA: That’s all you, you crazy bastard.

PAGE THREE

Panel 13
The Science Pirate tugs at his beard, eye brow arched, considering her story.

SCIENCE PIRATE: An experiment gone awry, hrmmm?

SCIENCE PIRATE: Such are the dangers of science!

Panel 14
He grabs Futura by her shoulders. She is both shocked and disgusted that a naked man is touching her. She is thinking about throwing him overboard. Repeatedly.

SCIENCE PIRATE: Futura! Fire up the robot wenches!

Panel 15
He storms past her, out the bulkhead, leaving her confused and annoyed at having to do real work.

FUTURA: What the hell for?

Panel 16
He walks down the hall, leaving her head poking out of the door after him. His hand is up in the air, index finger straight up. He’s going full blast now.

SCIENCE PIRATE: What for? For piracy, of course!

Panel 17
Close up on the Science Pirate, crazy glint in his eye, arm out, finger up, manic grin on his face. Sort of like a Phoenix Wright pose on PCP. (Google that if you don’t know what the hell I’m talking about. The Phoenix Wright bit, no the PCP bit.) (Or, you know, go wild. Start Googling drugs. But don’t come crying to me when the FBI knocks down your door.)

SCIENCE PIRATE: PIRACY FOR SCIENCE!

Kirby’s heirs are looking for their pay day

Jack “King” Kirby had four biological offspring. He also gave birth to nearly every character that Marvel Comics relies upon to make their daily bread.  Now his biological children are looking for their share of profits from their fictional siblings.

From the New York Times:

Heirs to the comic-book artist Jack Kirby, who has been credited as the co-creator of characters and stories behind Marvel mainstays like the “X-Men” and “Fantastic Four,” among many others, last week sent 45 notices of copyright termination to Marvel, Disney, Sony Pictures, Universal Pictures, 20th Century Fox, Paramount Pictures and others who have been making films and other forms of entertainment based on the characters.

The legal notices expressed an intent to regain copyrights to some creations as early as 2014, according to a statement from Toberoff & Associates, a Los Angeles firm that helped win a court ruling last year returning a share of the copyright in Superman to heirs of the character’s co-creator, Jerome Siegel.

You can believe two things from this: 1. If Marvel wasn’t in the process of selling themselves to Disney, then this wouldn’t be happening. 2. If Toberoff hadn’t convinced a judge to give partial ownership rights of Superman back to the heirs of Siegel, then this wouldn’t be happening. The very fact that an intellectual property still in regular use can fall out of legal copyright to the current owner and then be reclaimed by the heirs of some one who created the character under a work for hire contract is mind boggling to me.

Companies that leverage intellectual property for their primary source of income are completely different than companies who make something. I can understand why you want patents on fuel efficient engines and life saving drugs to fall into the public domain, but is anyone going to have less of a life because Marvel is the only company that can make Spider-Man comic books? No. Not at all.

A blood-thirsty, one-titted Queen of the Amazons

So, I never liked Wonder Woman.

She’s a feminist icon created by an S&M pervert draped in the American flag who flies an invisible jet. There’s not a whole lot to like in that, because none of it has shit to do with who she’s supposed to be. Her back story is that she’s an Amazon queen sent out in the world as an ambassador to solve the problems in a world of men. Which, in and of itself is solid, but it got all mucked up with they started layering on the weird patriotic crap and the overt sexual domination.

Until just recently she’s been written exclusively by men. Which adds another layer of mind-fuck to the character. The corner stone of female comic characters has been written entirely by men who, somewhere in their brain, wanted to diddle her. But, in their defense, they have managed to push her away from the stars-and-stripes corset and panties into a more “believable” armored skirt and bustiere. On the whole, Wonder Woman has had great notes, but has never really had her own, unforgettable song.

A momentary aside here, but, did I mention she can fly? Like, fly without the need of an invisible jet? But, no, she decides to get inside an invisible jet that doesn’t make her invisible. She might as well be flying around on some invisible shitter. We’d never know the difference.

Anyway.

I think about DC’s characters a lot, trying to figure out why exactly I don’t like them. Most of my reasoning revolves around the fact that they are so perfectly iconic, but unable to exist within a shared space. DC’s characters are paragons, and a team full of paragons is just boring. Superman? Pretty much a god. Wonder Woman? Same thing. Green Lantern? Yup. The Flash? Ah, yeah. Martian Manhunter? Even more than Superman. The only one that isn’t a god is Batman, and DC’s done a pretty good job of getting people to believe that Batman could take any and all of them down if he wanted to.

It may seem like a nerd argument of who could beat up who, but compare a team like the Justice League, who’s roster I just listed, to a team like the X-Men. Marvel’s teams, across the board, are much less powerful and much more flawed. Hell, the only thing the X-Men are paragons of is being fucked up and socially isolated. Well, and having the most bizarrely complicated sexual history of any group of characters this side of an Aaron Spelling TV show.

Errrr….

The point is that I try to find ways to work with DC characters that make them human and flawed, less iconic and godlike.

Kneel Before Zod was my attempt at doing this to Superman, and I think this is what I’d do to Wonder Woman.

So, first thing you’d have to do is toss out the visual you have when you think of Wonder Woman. No longer would she be the pretty lady wearing stars and stripes underwear with the gigantic breasts.

My Wonder Woman would be a real Amazon. Muscular, scarred, dirty. Her hair would be caked with mud and matted into dreadlocks. Her right breast would be entirely gone. In its place, a huge, ugly cauterized scar. The left breast would still be there, but it would be strapped down with leather bands and bronze armor. Her remaining breast would be a utility organ, for the feeding of a child, not an object of fantasy or pleasure.

The scar would be a sign of pride for her. For her people, becoming a warrior is something they choose to do after puberty has had its way with their body. They would stand in front of a fire, pull out their sword and lop off their right breast. The breast would go into the fire along with the sword. When hot enough, the sword would be removed and the wound would be cauterized with the red-hot metal. From that point on, the scar would never be covered. It was a sign to the rest of the world that this woman had mutilated her own body in order to be able to kill you easier. This is not something that would be done lightly, and certainly not without intent. If one of her people went through this, then they would become a killer.

She would carry a short gladius sword, a bronze-headed spear and a wooden recurve bow. No silly golden lasso of truth. If she wants the truth out of you, she’ll just torture you. No bullet blocking wrist guards. Her skin is magically as hard as diamond, why would she worry about bullets? No patent leather boots, a huntress always moves silently in her bare feet.

Starting to see where I’m going here?

The book would open on a dark night near the waterfront. The Flash would be doing his normal patrol and she would slip out of the water. He’d stop to confront her, and in the standard Flash moment, he’d end up saying something sexist. And, well, she’s break him. Not just a little bit either. We’re talking about a woman who’s as strong as Superman beating on a guy who’s just a normal guy if you can catch him standing still.

The costumed heroes get all up in arms over this, and they go looking for her, thinking she’s some new villain come to town.

Superman is the one that finds her, or rather, she’s the one that finds him. In the few days between her attacking the Flash and their meeting, she’s been learning about this strange new world. She sees Superman as this world’s greatest warrior, and therefor worthy of her. Her method of expression in this case just happens to be tackling him out of the air while he’s on patrol, pinning him to the ground, and attempting to rip off his costume. They struggle, and eventually he gets out from under her and explains that he’s flattered, but involved with some one else. Our Wonder Woman, in her normal tactful way, demands to know where this woman is so she can challenge her for possession of him. Eventually, Superman tries to bring her in, and she knocks him out by bringing the butt of her sword down on the back of his head. When he comes to, she’s gone and he gives us a little bit about how he’s vulnerable to magic.

Later that day, back at the Daily Planet, Lois and Clark are talking at their desk about this new crazy woman in town. Which is convenient, because she swings in through the window and challenges Lois to ownership of Clark. The moment hangs in the air as the surprise dances between them. Wonder Woman realizes Lois isn’t a warrior at all. In fact, Wonder Woman goes into explicit detail about how a warrior like Superman could stoop so low to be with such a fragile thing that frets about the shape of her udders, wears perfume and couldn’t even give him a proper fuck without dying. Superman’s surprised because no one’s ever figured out his secret identity. Lois is surprised because a feral one-titted woman just crashed through a window and threatened to kill her. I really plan on playing up her perky girl reporter personality in this bit. Disgusted with Superman and his choice in women, Wonder Woman leaves just as suddenly as she arrived. Superman can’t follow because of the whole Clark Kent thing.

That night, Batman finds Wonder Woman sulking in a rooftop. He actually manages to get the drop on her, but he’s no physical match for the Amazon. She’s learned about him, too. He’s a hunter like her, canny and dangerous. The two start to talk, and he asks her why she’s here. She reveals that people came to Themyscira – Paradise Island as the rest of the world knows it – and took something very important to her people. She’s tracked it here, but the trail’s gone cold and this world is full of distractions.

Batman presses on, and finds out that Paradise Island isn’t paradise at all, the Amazons spread that lie to trick sailors into crashing on the reefs. The Amazons would capture the men and use them as slaves or prey to sharpen their skills. Sometimes, a Great Hunt would happen when one of the men was possessed by a demon boar, a spirit of consumption and gluttony. By slaying the monster, the Amazons would ensure continued favor with the Gods. But the world has changed. Ships are made of steel instead of wood, and it has been decades since there was a Great Hunt. Wonder Woman’s people, while nearly immortal, are slowly dwindling in number. One day, a great metal ship appeared and men came ashore on small boats. They had strange equipment, and took samples of the soil and plants. One of the landing party fell ill, something foreign to the men from the boats, but known to the Amazons. The demon had chosen him, the Great Hunt was on. But, before they could take him, the men retreated to the boats and fled the island. As queen, it is her responsibility to ensure the Great Hunt is successful, so she swam across the ocean, following the ship until it stopped here.

Batman agrees to help her find the demon and finish the Great Hunt. She thanks him, and tells him that she would couple with him, but she would shatter his mortal body in the throws of passion. But, she’ll let him be her chief eunuch.

From here, I don’t know exactly where I want to go with it.

I know that it’ll end up being a throw down between the demon and Wonder Woman, Batman and Superman. The demon will have spread out into the world, and will have infected every man in America. Small bits will hint at this along the way. Things like Congress passing the largest spending bill in history, the Flash getting addicted to pain killers from the beating Wonder Woman gave him, and the Green Lantern getting fat from eating too much junk food. (Yeah, I never really liked Hal Jordan. Sue me.)

Batman and Superman are immune to it because they are beyond physical desire.

Superman has Lois, and is honestly completely and totally happy with her. He doesn’t want for anything else. Which Wonder Woman will continually mock him for.

Batman has his mission. Wonder Woman will point out that while Bruce Wayne goes home every night with a different woman, she doesn’t smell a hint of a woman’s musk on him. That’s all a show to keep up appearances. She wonders openly if he’s ever been with a woman, and then reiterates how good of a eunuch he’ll be.

The final symbolism I want to convey is that of the balance that comes from the hunt. Herds must be thinned to sustain the land. Bones of prey must pass into the soil to make nutrients. If the demon doesn’t die, then it will burn through all the resources in the world in a matter of weeks. Balance must be restored, the hunter must hunt.

Oh, God. 1900 words of me rambling about a crazy, blood-thirsty woman with one breast. Four pages of me doing terrible things to Wonder Woman to try and make her an interesting character to me. You are a saint, a drunkard or both if you’ve held on this long.

But, I’ll leave you with one last bit, I want a scene where some kind of monster or villain is rampaging through the city. The heroes seem unable to stop it because they won’t do anything that might kill the bad guy. Wonder Woman is watching this from a few blocks away, gets bored, strings her bow, notches an arrow, and draws a bead on the target. She lets the arrow fly, it goes through four or five buildings like a cruise missile before cutting through the bad guy’s neck and showering the heroes in blood. They’re aghast and what’s just happened. She shrugs and moves on.

They are never going to let me do this even if I sell ten million books a month.

Quotations

I’ve worked in television, and there are a hundred people between you and the audience. I’ve worked in film, and there are a thousand people between you and the audience. In comics, there’s me and an artist, presenting our stories to you without filters or significant hurdles, in a cheap, simple, portable form. Comics are a mature technology. Their control of time — provided you’re not intent on reversing universes (or even if you are) — makes them the best educational tool in the world. Hell, intelligence agencies have used comics to teach people how to dissent and perform sabotage.

When done right, comics are a cognitive whetstone, providing two or three or more different but entangled streams of information in a single panel. Processing what you’re being shown, along with what’s being said, along with what you’re being told, in conjunction with the shifting multiple velocities of imaginary time, and the action of the space between panels that Scott McCloud defines as closure… Comics require a little more of your brain than other visual media. They should just hand them out to being to stave off Alzheimer’s.

-Warren Ellis from his talk at Dundee University