Linkblogging

Compliments of Simon Pegg's Twitter site, fans and press alike have been clamoring over a four-minute clip from the American, McG-helmed remake of Spaced that was almost unleashed on an unsuspecting public a few years back in the wake of The Office and House proving that British television can work on a major American network. See for yourself why it was axed after only the pilot (little things like the original creators freaking out and a Facebook campaign to boycott the damned thing notwithstanding, I mean). For my part, I'm skeptical of what this proves. Certainly it's pretty godawful, but it's hard to figure out for my part whether it's awful because it's awful, or just because it's beat-for-beat a ripoff of the UK show and so I know how it "should" look and sound. Bear in mind, the US version of The Office is a critical and audience favorite six years in, and the pilot for that show was basically a line-for-line ripoff of the UK version, too.

Kirby Krackle's new record, E For Everyone, hit this Tuesday. I'm checking it out now and will have a review and interview when the band return from this weekend's Emerald City ComiCon. A single from the record, "Ring Capacity," was released a few months ago. The ode to Green Lantern was clever and catchy, and bodes well for the album.

Warner Home Video has a Scooby-Doo promotion starting on Monday. Originally it was going to start today, but after I'd already written this column the press guys wrote back to ask reporters to hold off on the announcement until Monday, presumably so they can get the website to the stage where they want it or something. More on that later.

Hill & Wang, a division of Farrar, Strauss & Giroux, will publish Ted Rall's forthcoming book about his forthcoming trip to Afghanistan (a kind of sequel to his popular 2002 NBM hardcover To Afghanistan and Back)--assuming there is a trip. Rall's success in getting the project funded through Kickstarter haven't panned out yet, and the amount he says he needs isn't just to cover crappy hotel rooms. Rall describes the $25,000 goal as necessary "for travel expenses, including bribes to avoid capture." Rall's last graphic novel, an autobiographical confessional with art by Pablo Callejo called The Year of Loving Dangerously, was one of last year's best.Listen to me talk to Rall about it on Comic Related's "Related Recap" podcast.

Gearing up for convention season, a couple of smaller publishers have reached out to fans this week: Brant Fowler has put out some feelers about low-cost print advertising for as little as $5 in his upcoming comic, and Alterna Comics has approached their mailing list about both paid advertising and website advertising trades. Gotta pay for gas somehow when you're driving all over the country, folks!

Following on the heels of the Amazon debacle, apparently not only has Barnes & Noble faced some similar glitches, but Amazon has revoked the "buy" buttons from comics and graphic novels until the issue is resolved to their satisfaction. Ouch.

“World’s greatest superheroes?” I just don’t see it.

The first issue featuring the newest incarnation of the Justice League of America’s lineup hit this week, and over the top of the title, DC blares that the book features the world’s greatest supeheroes. While no more inherently ridiculous than the Fantastic Four’s long-held claim to being the greatest comic magazine, this one’s a lot more offensive. Why? Because the cover features Congorilla, Mon-El/Valor wearing a Superman logo (everybody’s doing it—the Eradicator, raised from the dead without explanation in this month’s issue of The Outsiders, is back to sporting a big, red S as well) and Starfire, who’s come to this team straight from the orgy of failure that is The Titans. Joined in this comic by fellow Titans (not Teen Titans—Titans. There’s a difference) Donna Troy, Dick Grayson and Cyborg, it soon becomes clear that the Justice League of America has become the dumping-ground for promising characters who just don’t fit into DC’s idea of what they want to do with other titles (like letting a crazed badguy who’s already been overexposed since Identity Crisis lead his own team of “Titans”). Mon-El and The Guardian, both so incredibly popular with the fans that during the time they’ve starred in the Superman titles, sales have dropped by about forty percent, represent the Metropolis contingent with Batman’s understudy and Hal Jordan (currently featured in three monthly books as well as guest-starring all over the place) being the closest thing this team has to A-listers. Seriously, folks, I think that the upcoming Justice League: Generation Lost by Keith Giffen and Judd Winick, which will feature Guy Gardner, Booster Gold, Fire, Ice and the rest of the old JLI—once known as the all-time bottom of the Justice League barrel—may feature a more prestigious lineup than these clowns.

Inside, Red Tornado has been torn to pieces for something like the 185^th time in his last 185 appearances. Vixen, the only representative of the Detroit Era JLA to make it into this volume of the title and who has been, to the disappointment of many fans, a member of the team since J’Onn J’Onzz left for no reason after having been with the team since its founding, decides that she’s got to quit the team, because she’s ashamed of what they did at the end of the hideously misguided editorial abortion known as Justice League: Cry For Justice (yes, the end of the miniseries that hasn’t ended yet).

The rest of the team struggles to recover from the aftereffects of Blackest Night (yes, the end of the miniseries that hasn’t ended yet), which raised many of their old teammates from the dead as villains, and even forced some living heroes to play dead for a while so they could be villains. Don’t worry, James Robinson assures the readers, “We ‘awoke,’ though. We survived.” That’s good news, I guess, for the thousands of readers who are eagerly awaiting February 24^th’s Blackest Night #7 (of 8), in which the story of those heroes who have been taken over by Nekron continues to play out. I’m sure nobody would mind being told that the biggest event of the year, in which many fans have invested hundreds of bucks following every arcane tie-in, comes out alright enough in the wash.

All of these little editorial gaffes might be forgivable…if the comic were any good. Or original. Or fun. It’s none of those things. Mark Bagley’s art looks rushed and is outright hideous in some places (look at Damien’s face as he declares himself part of the Justice League, or Donna’s as she arrives to invite Batman. Also, if Hal Jordan’s body hasn’t been horribly mangled on a torture rack of some kind by the end of Blackest Night, there’s no reason whatsoever for the length of his torso and legs in comparison the rest of his body on the final story page). The story is dull and something we’ve all seen a hundred times before—Wonder Woman, acting as the only member of DC’s trinity not currently dead or living in outer space, picks a League and the rest of the issue is spent on a recruiting binge. There’s very little in terms of logical, reasonable cause to bring the characters together. Instead, it’s a team that’s being forced together out of the disparate pieces that DC editorial have decided, and Wonder Woman has prescribed, will compose it. It’s a whole issue of going through the motions, and the cardboard dialogue and pedestrian plot has to remind readers of last week’s awesome Starman #81 that James Robinson is best when he’s not handling the icons. Taking a franchise that nobody believed in or cared about, he crafted arguably the best ongoing monthly of the 1990s. Taking control of Superman and the Justice League of America, he’s created a directionless mess filled with uninteresting takes on third-tier characters.

Hal Jordan Calls Out Superman as an Elitist

It's funny--when Infinite Crisis was new and on the stands, the scene that struck me the most was the one where DC's "trinity" of characters split, after Batman declared that the last time Superman inspired anyone had been when he was dead.

The funny thing about it, is that I'm a Superman guy. My entire "mature" comics-reading life, I have been. I loved Kingdom Come and I came back to comics after a hiatus when Supes died. Now James Robinson--whose Superman comics I haven't been reading becuase they don't, after all, revolve around Superman anymore--is writing Justice League, a miniseries wherein a number of Justice Leaguers and other DC Universe heroes start their own team and pursue bad guys in a proactive, aggressive fashion. It's retribution, not really justice, and so a lot of what founder Hal Jordan says is nonsensical on the face of it...but the panel at left is one of those great moments

where you really see the superhero as a human being and understand a little of what he's facing every day. It makes Hal more real, and even though it's a little bit petty, you know it to be true. Think about high school and how everything that happened was always viewed through the lens of the small handful of cool kids who ran the athletics teams, the student government and the activities. That's Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman.

Of course, a little of the strength of his argument is undermined when he makes sure to include Supergirl and Batwoman on "his" Justice League, which according to interviews with Robinson was "to make sure we got those logos on the book" or something like that.