Comics in the Classroom, Camelot and Candidates (of the Rogue Variety)

Some quick notes on things I’ve noticed in the last few days…

First of all, it was called to my attention after I wrote up JMS’ new-to-video release Ninja Assassin yesterday that Straczynski’s bestselling and wildly controversial Spider-Man: One More Day is available for only $6.97 in hardcover in the bargain section of Barnes & Noble bookstores all over the country. Seems like a great chance for continuity junkies who didn’t like the story, but feel like they ought to own something so important, to get it cheap.

There are only 60 days remaining to make yourself part of the upcoming Reading With Pictures Anthology, which is being funded through Kickstarter. It’s 45% funded, with $4,500 of its final $10,000 already pledged. The book involves a bunch of really cool creators working together for a good cause, so I’d say to at least check it out. If somebody else doesn’t contribute in the next month, I’m going to have to raise the level of my contribution. And I’m a cheap bastard, so don’t make me do that!

Speaking of worthy causes on Kickstarter, Ted Rall’s sequel to his great To Afghanistan & Back is still up in the air, with only about half of the total cost donated and a little under two weeks before he’s got to report back to the publisher. Rall’s one of the most fearless and funny graphic novelists in the market right now, so I’d suggest everyone check his work out and think about helping him get funded.

Third and final fundraising shill (for now): Zach Roberts, who masterminded the Greg Palast/Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. comic book Steal Back Your Vote (of which I was an editor–full disclosure here), has a forthcoming documentary about Sarah Palin called Rogue Candidate; it’s not up yet, but he’s been discussing some very interesting and comics-related promotion avenues for the film, so keep your eyes and ears open; it may be the first documentary film ever to have a comics adaptation.

Starz is not only taking some stories from England, but a style of televising them, too; the network has greenlit a Camelot miniseries that will run for ten episodes and be written by Chris Chibnall of Torchwood fame. Removing “Starz” from this sentence, when I first heard that this was happening, I assumed that it was a BBC or BBC America series being reported. It will, however, go nicely with their Spartacus: Blood and Sand series.

Last week at South by Southwest, Warner Brothers announced that they planned on using DC superheroes as tentpole films starting in 2012 or so to replace the departing Harry Potter franchise. There’ll be some overlap, of course, with the last two Harry Potter movies not yet released and Green Lantern already shooting, but it’s a sound business idea on paper, I think, and setting them up as tentpoles unto themselves means that people will have to start thinking of them as viable commercial franchises instead of just talking about how there are all these random superhero movies being made and when will they go out of style. Should be interesting and really fun for comics fans…provided that Warner can make it work.

Booster Gold #30: “Things Are Booming in Coast City, OR Rip was tripping on mushrooms and no one was even there.”

Check this article out on ComicBook.com!

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.

Yes Men Press Release

ADM Tries to Take Down Funny Video; Big Business Has No Solutions; Now What?

• ADM video still available here, here, and (for download and reposting) here; page here
• Fake initiatives pages, with links to organizations seeking change on these issues
• More information about last week's website and videos
• Contact: scurrilous@theyesmen.org, bportello@cinemalibrestudio.com

A legal complaint from agribusiness giant ADM has resulted in the removal from Youtube of a fake video of ADM's CEO making over-honest pronouncements. (The video is still available here, here, and, for download and reposting, here.)

Last week, the filmmaking team behind The End of Poverty? partnered with the Yes Men to create a parallel, imaginary World Economic Forum in which world leaders came up with real solutions to poverty. The leaders seemed, in a < href="http://www.we-forum.org/en/events/AnnualMeeting2010/index.shtml">series of videos, to be supporting a set of initiatives based on 10 Solutions to End Poverty, a petition for which the filmmakers are trying to get ten million signatures by the end of 2010.

Each of those initiatives pages has links to organizations that are fighting hard for change on these issues.

In contrast, the actual World Economic Forum ended Sunday with a profound lack of results, some seemingly satirical but all-too-real headlines (like Goldman Sachs's Lloyd Blankfein's rumoured $100 million bonus), and one fruitless complaint to Youtube.

"If we can bail out bankers to the tune of trillions of dollars, surely we can solve poverty, which will just take a few structural changes, plus a whole lot less money," said Beth Portello, the producer of The End of Poverty?

"All the crises we're facing are rooted in massive inequality and poverty," says Philippe Diaz, the film's director. "If these leaders really wanted to make a difference, they would work towards ending poverty, however uncomfortable that might be for business."

"It's easier to remove funny videos from Youtube," added Portello.

“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.

Creative Team Changes Imminent for Booster?

On Monday, in an exclusive interview with CBR, DC honcho Dan DiDio announced that Jaime “Blue Beetle” Reyes will lose his co-feature in Booster Gold and be relocated to another book, but not as a co-feature or as the headliner of his own title. Additionally, DiDio announces that Manhunter will be dropped from Streets of Gotham. That’s a huge disappointment for this Manhunter fan, who has repeatedly written to DC in support of the title and who has bought dozens (literally) of graphic novels to hand out to potential new readers and get them hooked. So, already–not off to a great start…and then he says that there are “creative team changes” imminent for Booster Gold.

Dan Jurgens, who created the character and has drawn virtually every solo Booster story ever told, is currently the writer and artist; he participates in a monthly creator commentary here on Blog@, and also at Comic Related, that looks at Booster Gold shortly after publication. The possibility of Dan’s imminent departure hasn’t come up in any of our interviews, or off-topic e-mail conversations; I can say, though, that in order to replace Jurgens, the team would have to be phenomenal for the book to remain afloat.

I don’t think Booster Gold is as marketable a character as DC apparently does; it seems clear to me that the thing that’s kept the character going this long is that Jurgens has connected with the title’s (and the character’s) core fans. That his art keeps a level of consistency in the title that’s rarely, if ever, matched by a book in mainstream publication is an added bonus. For the title to work without Jurgens…I don’t know. It seems like it would have huge potential to feel a lot like when Aaron Sorkin was dropped from The West Wing, and the show deteriorated into mayhem, which they had to bring Sorkin back to attempt to salvage so that it could go out with dignity rather than be canceled after seven seasons as one of TV’s most respected shows.

As a Booster Gold fan, I actually am not as frustrated as many of my column's readers are with the loss of the Blue Beetle backup. Frankly I always thought second-features for mid-selling or low-selling books were a dicey proposition. Adding an extra buck to a title that was selling somewhere in the vicinity of 50k at $2.99 seemed like a pretty bad idea, unless the backup brought in a TON of extra readers, which didn’t seem to be the case. I’ll miss Jaime in a starring feature, but would be just as happy if he were starring as a backup in Teen Titans or some other title that’s less likely to shed readers for the extra buck.

Certainly I might be overreacting to the announcement–and I’ll of course keep readers posted as information comes into my hands–but the last two times they’ve needed a fill-in penciler, they’ve gone to Patrick Olliffe who, while a perfectly serviceable draftsman, is not right for the title. Rick Remender, whose two-issue fill-in as writer was the undisputed low point of the title’s publishing history, also expressed a desire, during his turn at bat with The Gold Exchange, to return to Booster in a more regular fashion so that he could tell the Chronos-and-Booster story he’d had planned during his time as writer of The All-New Atom. He is, as far as I know, Marvel-exclusive, but just the idea of him as the title’s ongoing writer makes my skin crawl.

Just so he's an equal opportunity disappointer, in the same CBR interview where DiDio talked about this, he also discusses the disappearance of basically every backup we know. Some titles (the lower-selling ones), like Booster Gold, Doom Patrol and Green Arrow, will revert to $2.99 and just be single stories again. Certain other books will get new backups. The Flash family appears hardest-hit, losing both the Wally West backup feature AND the Kid Flash monthly in the shuffle, leaving only Barry Allen, whose last turn as Flash ended in 1985. Way to reach out to younger readers, there, Dan!

Blue and Gold

So, following the revelation at the end of Booster Gold #27, I decided that Booster Gold: Blue and Gold was something that needed to be read through again. I did pick up on a few things that might be worth mentioning, but not worth an actual story, so...BLOG!

First of all, I noticed that there was a lot of items on Rip's blackboard that are, or seem to be, already explained:

• "The Perfect Peter Platinum isn't so perfect" - That guy appeared in Booster Gold #1,000,000
• "Listen to Libra - The Prince will fall on his sword." - J'Onn? Makes sense, given the time of the issue (I think), but why call him "The Prince"?
• "Why, Captain Atom? Why?" Given his role in Countdown, as Monarch, I'm guessing that's what's being referenced here.
• "Jean-Paul Valley Lives," immediately followed by "That's not him" was likely foreshadowing a new Azrael, which we've seen the fruit of already.
• "Trigon = Red herring" was actually the central plot point at the end of Booster Gold #24 and 25 - the last story written before "Blackest Night".

There still hasn't been a story to follow up on Rip Hunter's claim that he knows better than anyone else that you can't save people who are "supposed" to be dead, however badly you want to. It'd be interesting to know what the intent was there, and whether Jurgens still intends to follow up on Katz and Johns's idea. And there also hasn't been a direct follow-up on Jon Carter/Supernova calling Black Beetle "Joshua." While the throwaway line of his being from wherever he wants to go, whoever he wants to be, can pretty much make that irrelevant, it's the only time he's been referred to by a name, and it's by an ally, not an enemy, so he may have less of a reason to lie to Jon.