What I did on my Super vacation

So, you may have noticed that it’s been awhile since I posted anything. Several significant dates and bits of information have come and gone without my comment--the release of the Man of Steel trailer, the release of “Superman: Unbound,” Iron Man 3, Star Trek Into Darkness, the first three issues of the new digital Adventures of Superman book (sans Orson Scott Card, thankfully), the end of Superman Family Adventures, the coming and going of Andy Diggle’s run on Action Comics, etc. But the thing that I missed which stings the most was the 75th Anniversary of the release of Action Comics #1, celebrated on April 18th. Surely, no matter what real-world business has kept me from blogging, I could have found time to wish Superman and Lois Lane a happy birthday.

Except.

Except I woke up the morning of April 18th to find that my basement was flooded with water up to my ankles. My basement where my books are. My basement where my toys are. My basement where my comics are.

It was a traumatic morning.

One stack of longboxes had collapsed in the moisture, dropping two on their side in the water, and ruining pretty much everything therein. The boxes on the bottom were a mixed bag, and I spent two days going issue by issue to find out what was salvageable. In addition, we lost something like two hundred books, including most of my hardcovers--the Absolutes, the Omnibuses, etc., which were on a bottom bookshelf.

All told, I lost over 1,300 comics, including huge swaths of the Superman family titles. Some books from the late ‘60s and early ‘70s, but mostly stuff from the late ‘80s and mid-’90s. The electric blue era was devastated. More significantly, I lost a lot of issues that held a great deal of sentimental value, for one reason or another.

I have kind of a crappy memory for lots of important things. I can’t keep dates straight when I’m talking about historical stuff, I have a hard time remembering names, I don’t remember birthdays very well, and just keeping something in mind from one moment to another is difficult at times.

But a lot of those comics weren’t just paper and staples and ink. They were physical artifacts of my past, keys to memories locked deep in my brain. Those hologram-infused issues of Robin II came from the time my late grandpa took me around to all the comic shops in the Quad Cities, even though it really wasn’t his thing, and I was too young and dumb and self-absorbed to appreciate it. Those random issues of Amazing Spider-Man and Captain America were comics I got in bundles and packs from Sears and JC Penney catalogs, the very beginnings of my comic collection. I can’t tell you how many times I stared at images from What If...? #31, trying to draw that Captain Universe/Spider-Man costume, or how elated I was when I finally ordered the Cosmic Spider-Man issues from Lone Star Comics in high school (or how disappointed I was when he never actually wore that awesome costume in those pages). I bought Action Comics #363-366 and Superman’s Girl Friend Lois Lane #94 and #96 not because I had a great burning desire to read those issues, but because my mom always talked about having read the first parts and never being able to find the later ones. I remember seeing Superman/Doomsday: Hunter/Prey #1-2 on the wall at Land of Cran Comics in Canton, OH, and nearly buying two copies of each because the shop displayed both covers in separate shelves. I remember reading and rereading and rereading the first and third parts of “Dark Knight Over Metropolis” and Superman #51-52 and Action Comics #660, because for a long time those were the only modern Superman comics I had; each one, for whatever reason, had some kind of printing or storage error where the front cover curled around the pages a little, developing little rips from my careless over-reading. I remember getting Action Comics #679 on a trip and reading it in a hotel and puzzling out where Metropolis was in relation to real-world cities. When my mom went to Colorado to visit a friend, I asked if she could go to Mile High Comics--a nerd mecca that I’d only read about in ads--and pick up a list of issues for me. She came back with Superman #50, and it didn’t matter where she’d gotten it. I kept Superman: The Wedding Album in the front of my first box of comics for probably a decade, the only issue that broke my otherwise meticulous chronological-then-triangle-number-sorted Superman run, because I wanted to keep it in a position of honor and respect. My wife had the alternate cover to that issue printed on my groom’s cake.

The ones that hit the hardest were Superman: The Man of Steel #18 and Superman #75--not because I have any huge attachment to the Death of Superman, but because they’re what got the whole ball rolling. I think my first exposure to the news of Superman’s impending demise came from a house ad in a Wonder Woman issue my brother got, with a whited-out silhouette of Doomsday against a torn S-shield background. The storyline made the news, and I begged my parents, working out the math from a subscription ad, to let me subscribe to the four Superman titles (my subscription to Amazing Spider-Man was almost up, and once it ran out, I never renewed it). More than that, Dad took me down to whatever the local comic shop was in Cuyahoga Falls, and we preordered Superman #75. Man of Steel #18 was the first issue to hit our mailbox from the subscription; I gave the extra copy of Superman #75 to my brother and kept the one from the waiting list. I had the Superman funeral poster hanging on my bedroom door until we moved from Ohio--and I was amazed when I laid it out to dry that it was still in such good condition. I’d remembered it being far more beat-up, but you could barely even tell where I’d put the pins (not through the paper, just in the right spots to hold it in place). I thought it was enormously cool how DC sent extras--first the “Legacy of Superman” and "Supergirl and Team Luthor" specials and “The Superman Gallery” art comic and the special Newstime magazine tie-in, but eventually Annuals and random try-out comics and so forth. I held those subscriptions through the Man of Tomorrow era, through the cancellation of Man of Steel and the second volume of Superman. I finally let them lapse in college, when I’d started buying comics more regularly from retailers. I think, all told, it was 12 years, with only very occasional, very short lapses (like the one that forced me to buy Superman #123 at a markup from Reality Adventures in Rock Island).

I built my life on a foundation of paper and left it below the water line.

There was, of course, other stuff. The construction-paper book I won an award for in Kindergarten. All sorts of RPG stuff from Junior High. Notebooks from grade school. A couple of yearbooks. All the Rock Band/Guitar Hero instruments. And then the bigger ticket items, like our new washer & dryer (washer was fine, dryer cost a bit in repairs) and our four-month-old treadmill (anyone need treadmill parts?).

The last of the tubs of soggy comics was picked up for recycling this week. In the meantime, I’ve been spending hundreds of dollars trying to replace the things I most want to replace, and realizing that even with the insurance money, that’s not going to be entirely possible. At least, not all at once. But I amassed this collection over 20 years, so it’s not as though I’m really expecting to rebuild it in a month.

I’m reserving some of that money to finally do something I’ve wanted to do for years: upgrade my comics storage. No more ugly white cardboard boxes; I’m moving up to filing cabinets and hope to pick a couple out next week. I would appreciate any advice that anyone has on using them (I’m looking to get used cabinets, 36” lateral filing style, which is more or less what my local shop uses for the subscriptions/pull lists). For the first time that I can remember, I actually weighed a full longbox the other day, trying to estimate what the weight capacity of those drawers would have to be (since I’ve heard things about them not being able to carry the weight, and since I’ve seen the difference in bowing between a shelf of hardcover books and a shelf of TPBs). After seeing that one longbox weighed 55 lbs, I gave my younger self a lot more credit for upper body strength, thinking about the number of times I moved those damn things from the top shelf of my closet to the floor and back again.

Also, that top shelf in my closet held over 200 lbs, and that’s seriously impressive.

When I first started talking about all this, people asked what they could do to help, and that was absolutely awesome. As such a minor and intermittent blogger, it was incredibly cool to see the outpouring of concern and support from people I’ve only talked to online. We had insurance, it paid up, we’re doing fairly well at this point. Donate to someone who really needs it, from the fine folks who just lost their jobs in the tragic ComicsAlliance closing to the world’s various starving and homeless people.

That said, I have a list of the comics that I’m trying hardest to replace here, the oversized books here, and the paperbacks/random books here, and I would very much appreciate anyone telling me if they happen to see stuff in quarter/fifty cent bins or otherwise in super-cheap locations. There are also a few comics/books that I’ve been having trouble locating for reasonable prices/in good conditions, and wouldn’t mind some information on those--or on storing comics in filing cabinets, or on better economical bookcase options than the ones we had, or whatever. I’ll put the specific stuff at the bottom of the post, and you can leave a comment here or drop me a line at tfoss1983 [at] gmail [dot] com.

On the blogging front, I should be having more time as the summer approaches, and I’m planning to re-read chunks of these comics as they come in, and jotting down my thoughts and memories and such. So hopefully it won’t be another month before I have something to say here.

Once again, thanks to you all for the support and empathy, and for actually being here reading this stuff once more.

---

Things I’m having a hard time finding:

• Avengers & Power Pack Assemble #1,3
  
• Legion of Super-Heroes (1984) #37
  
• Spider-Man Loves Mary Jane v.1 hardcover
  
• Superboy (1994) #59-64, 75-80
  
• Supergirl (1983) #16, 19
  
• Supergirl (1996) #75-80
  
• Superman: Under a Yellow Sun
  
• Tiny Titans #1-4, 6, 14, 27
  
• Wonder Woman (1987) 141, 170, 189, 191-192
  
• World’s Greatest Super-Heroes oversized hardcover

Open the Fortress

Close the Fortress

It's Always Best To Do Nothing (or, Caring About Things Is Stupid)

Jim Mroczkowski at iFanboy posted this asinine article about the Orson Scott Card controversy, where he trots out all the usual lame arguments that the hemmers and hawwers have trotted out regarding this protest: "I missed you at the Iron Man protest" and it's just another fanboy outrage and "For everyone who writes an open letter to DC editorial [...] there is someone in line at Chik-Fil-A who will buy the book out of defiant solidarity" and "If DC spiked Card’s Superman story tomorrow, would that help someone?" and "I don’t see anyone’s mind changed" and "There has to be a better, more productive way to approach this." Someone in the comments adds "I think being Tolerant is the new intolerance," and that's bingo.

To answer the dumb points:

1. I missed you at the Iron Man protest: while there was at least some discussion of Card's bigotry when Ultimate Iron Man came out, it was also 2006. Several things have changed, most notably the fact that Card didn't join the National Organization for Marriage until 2009 (and that NOM wasn't really significant until 2008). The rise of Twitter has made organizing these kinds of protests easier (for better and worse), and the cultural attitude toward marriage equality has shifted as its passage in various places has not led to the end of the world. But most importantly, in 2006, the extent of Card's bigotry was a bunch of articles he'd written, not helping to drive the most prominent organization that's fighting against people's basic rights.
   
   Oh! And Card also openly advocated overthrowing the government in 2008. But hey, I'm sure there's nothing about Superman that would make us reconsider letting a guy who advocated treason write him, right?
   
2. It's just another fanboy outrage: Sorry I didn't quote that bit, Mroczkowski goes on at length about how this is exactly the same as the Superior Spider-Man and Avengers Arena protests, and a dozen different outrages before that. Because it's not at all completely dismissive to suggest that getting angry because Doctor Octopus switched brains with Peter Parker for a limited series is on the same footing as caring about the actual rights of real-life human beings. But let's pretend that Mroczkowski isn't being a giant asshat here, and that these bouts of outrage are just the same.
   
   So what?
   
   Yes, they'll probably lead to the same outcome (that is, the company not changing anything and everyone eventually moving on), but so what if it is just another example of fanboy outrage? Is the alternative staying silent about things you care about? Not calling for any change on any topic ever (if these dumbasses can use these slippery slope all-or-nothing fallacies, so can I)? If this is just another fanboy outrage, why not do what most people do: roll your eyes and be done with it?
   
   Is it, perhaps, because this isn't exactly like those prior situations? Were there any retailers who didn't stock Superior Spider-Man or Avengers Arena because of those outrages? Did any other prominent authors step up to say they would write those books instead/also, for balance? Did those protests get picked up by NPR, CNN, The Daily Beast, Huffington Post, or The Guardian¹?
   
   But boy, if there's anything nerds love more than getting outraged and protesting, it's doing absolutely nothing while smugly telling other people that they're wrong and the things they care about are stupid.
   
3. For everyone who writes an open letter to DC editorial [...] there is someone in line at Chik-Fil-A who will buy the book out of defiant solidarity: Again, so what? Even if you could back up this statement (which you can't), so what if the protest does nothing--or even makes the book more successful? What's the alternative, staying silent and hoping no one notices? This is a call to do absolutely nothing because you can't control what the outcome will be. Anything to avoid action, right?
   
   Look, speaking out (and signing petitions, and organizing boycotts, etc.) isn't doing a whole lot. It doesn't take much effort, it doesn't accomplish a whole lot of real-world change, and it may not actually hurt the book's sales in the long run. But it sends a message. It sends a message that some comics fans care more about their human friends and family members than four-color Kryptonians. It sends a message that there are writers and causes we won't support with our dollars or our patronage. It sends the message that some of us care, and maybe others should too.
   
   But yes, other people care more about four-color heroes than any flesh-and-blood person, and lots of people are terrible bigots. And now DC is courting them as a fanbase.
   
   A last point: imagine if DC had instead snagged an author without this cloud of bigotry hanging over them. Imagine if they'd snagged Neil Gaiman or Joss Whedon. Would they be trying to crunch the numbers trying to figure out if the lost sales due to protests will be made up by the gained sales due to defiant solidarity? Or would they be too busy dealing with the "cha-ching" noise that their eyeballs keep making now that their pupils have become dollar signs?
   
4. If DC spiked Card’s Superman story tomorrow, would that help someone?: What a dumb question. What makes you think that "helping someone" is the point? Even if it were, did hiring Card to write this story help someone? Would doing and saying nothing help someone? Does asking dumb rhetorical questions help someone?
   
   The point is making a statement. The point is telling DC that they can't have it both ways: are they committed to diversity and LGBT individuals or not? Do they want the GLAAD awards or the accolades from the Chik-Fil-A crowd? Were Alan Scott and Batwoman and Shining Knight just a matter of lip service so they could pat themselves on the back, or do they represent something bigger with more real-world consequences?
   
   If DC spiked Card's story tomorrow, it would answer those questions, it would show that DC cares about how they and their choices appear to the world around them, and it might send the message that maybe openly working to deny people their rights might actually have consequences on your employability.
   
5. I don’t see anyone’s mind changed: You also didn't see the difference between 2006 and 2013, so that doesn't say a lot. But whose mind are you talking about changing, and about what? Presumably you mean that this protest isn't going to change anyone's minds about LGBT people or marriage equality. That's probably true; people usually don't change their minds about big emotionally-charged issues based on a single event or argument or thing they read on the Internet. Usually it's accomplished through a lot of little things, especially ones that hit close to home. It's possible that this protest will change minds in that way, it's possible that it won't. I don't think that's the main point, but even if it were, it has a lot more of a chance at changing minds than doing nothing, which is ultimately what you advocate.
   
   I would like to see DC change their minds about whether or not Card is worth the hassle that employing him creates, but we'll see how that goes.
   
6. There has to be a better, more productive way to approach this: Great. Figure it out and get back to us. But in the meantime, we're going to try the imperfect, less productive ways to approach this, because there is no way less productive than doing nothing. The whole "there's no perfect solution so you shouldn't do anything at all" is fallacious reasoning.
   
7. I think being Tolerant is the new intolerance: No, you don't think, or you wouldn't have said something so transparently moronic.
   

I think it's weird that fans have such vehement opposition to being made to care about their entertainment choices, that it's somehow gauche to care about things that affect actual humans. But then, I think it's weird that fans care more about fictional superheroes than actual human beings, whether it's the people whose lives are directly impacted by the actions of the National Organization for Marriage, or the creators and their heirs whose lives are directly impacted by the big soulless corporations who treat them like content-generation tools to be used up and discarded. And I'm as guilty of that last bit as anyone. But the solution isn't to write big long articles concluding that it's best to do nothing, the solution is to change and do what you can, or what you think is right. Because doing nothing does nothing.

---

1. In short, the answer is mostly "no." The Guardian had an interview with Dan Slott, where they mentioned in passing, that "fans expressed skepticism," and CNN ran a TV segment on the fan reaction to the end of "Amazing."

Open the Fortress

Close the Fortress

Comics I bought this week

Avengers Arena #4: I still haven't decided if I want to follow this series, so it's still not in my pull list. And this issue left me so ambivalent that I think it might finally be my last. I'm just not curious enough about what's going on to continue reading. There's nothing offensively bad about the issue or anything; it's nice to see Chase and Nico from Runaways again, and their encounter with the Avengers Academy kids ends up being a fairly nice inversion of the usual superhero team-up story (they're friends first, then they have the big misunderstanding and fight). I think I see where this is all going; I don't think many (if any) of the "dead" characters are actually dead, but that it's all misdirection and illusion on Arcade's part for some larger, more nefarious plan. At least, I hope that's what's happening, because the alternative is kind of gross and dumb. And I'm not entirely sure that I want to find out which option it ends up being.

Batman and Robin #17: I caught up on "Batman and Robin" and "Detective Comics" last week in hopes that I'd dislike one enough to drop it, and that didn't actually happen. That said, I think this issue of B&R would make a fantastic jumping-off point. It's a pretty touching, heartfelt story about the dreams of Damian, Bruce, and Alfred, which acts as a coda to the entire series up to now, even flashing back to the playbill boat Bruce made back in the first or second issue. It's structured like a last issue, to the point where I had to check that this wasn't Tomasi's last issue as writer or something. Rumor has it that something's going to happen with Damian in Batman, Inc. this month, and the solicit for Batman & Robin #18 isn't giving anything away, but I guess I'll be finding out in a few weeks.

Katana #1: I've tried all of Ann Nocenti's first issues in this New 52, but I haven't actually stuck with any of the books so far. Green Arrow turned me off with the art, Catwoman just didn't hold my interest, and Katana? Well, I like the story, and Nocenti does a good job making Katana distinct (and fleshing her out more than she was the last time I caught up on "Birds of Prey") and strong, while also setting up an interesting conflict and environment. That said, I'm not a big fan of Alex Sanchez's art, which at times obscures the action and has some poor continuity. I'll check out the next issue to be sure, but I wish they'd pair Nocenti with a better artist for once.

Batman #17: I think there's definitely some weight to the argument that Death of the Family went on too long and got too big, and I haven't even caught up on all the tie-ins (I don't read "Red Hood and the Outlaws," and I'm way behind on "Nightwing"). But this issue--and the main saga here in "Batman"--is pretty great, and I think I'll probably try to re-read the whole thing sooner rather than later (especially since there are a couple of bits in this issue, namely the comment about the boat and Bruce's little blank book, that I didn't understand, presumably because they were referenced earlier). Capullo is a top-notch artist, and I think Snyder injects some very interesting notions into the Batman/Joker relationship, playing on the classic tropes, subverting them, and re-enacting them in other ways. People have criticized this series for its gruesomeness, and there's been some of that in previous issues and tie-ins, but most writers in recent years wouldn't have made most of Joker's bits in this issue tricks and misdirection the way Snyder did. It'll be interesting to see how the radioactive tracer pans out, and how the fallout of the Bat-family affects this book going forward, since it looks like the Joker toxin's suggestion-inducing feature hasn't worn off quite like the rictus grins have. I kind of can't wait to buy this story in trade paperback form.

Green Arrow #17: This is the second time I've tried following "Green Arrow" as a series since the relaunch, and it looks like it's the more successful of the two so far. Lemire does a lot here to try something different with Ollie's status quo, setting up what appears to be an ancient conspiracy of archers and a lot of surreal "everything you know is wrong" stuff. I think I'd kind of prefer to have Ollie as the superhero Robin Hood or the politically sensible Batman, but I'm interested enough in this take to see where and how it goes. As far as the art goes, Sorrentino's got a sketchiness similar to Tolibao's or Sanchez's above, but it lacks a lot of the flaws that I think hampered those books, and has a nice detail and dynamism to it. It doesn't hurt that the coloring and staging of panels seem to have taken a page from that other successful book about a superhero archer.

Open the Fortress

Close the Fortress

The Card Thing

I've weighed in on this elsewhere, but I keep seeing people who otherwise should know better saying utterly stupid things about this fiasco. Nothing I'm about to say here hasn't been said better by Dave or Siskoid or Brett White, but I felt like it was important to put all my thoughts on the subject in one place.

Orson Scott Card has been tapped to write the first (digital) issue of a new digital-first Superman ongoing series, "Adventures of Superman." Card's story is to be illustrated by the immensely talented Chris Sprouse, and in the print edition, will appear alongside a story by Jeff Parker and Chris Samnee, who are great.

Orson Scott Card's comics work has been rather limited. He's worked primarily at Marvel where, as far as I can see from the Wiki page, the only thing he's done that wasn't an adaptation of his prose works was a run of "Ultimate Iron Man" that has been widely panned and retconned as a not-very-accurate cartoon or something.

But his name is recognizable outside of comics fandom, and so DC placed him on the first issue of their new digital series, presumably hoping it would go as well as the last time they hired a big-name sci-fi author to write Superman. Scoff if you want (I certainly did) but Straczynski's presence gave the books a big sales boost, at least until he got distracted by something shiny and let better writers clean up his messes.

There's been a backlash, for good reason, because Orson Scott Card is an enormous bigot. I've seen people framing this as a "difference of opinion" or a "belief" or a "personal political position." It's certainly the latter two, but I think calling this a "difference of opinion" is an insulting trivialization. It's easy for the privileged to suggest that other people's basic rights and humanity of are matters of opinion, but such opinions affect actual people's actual lives. At best, Card's opinions are reprehensible, ignorant, often based on blatant falsehoods, and in some cases borderline treasonous.

But if you frame this as a "difference of opinion" and a matter of "personal beliefs," then it makes the people suggesting Card should be pulled from the issue, fired, or otherwise penalized, look like unreasonable, irrational censors. Doing so allows DC to distance themselves from Card's views while also trying to shrug off the controversy without actually doing anything.

We can ignore, I suppose, that this is a company that has fired at least one writer for expressing his opinion that their dealings with creators and their heirs have been unethical. So, for the record, believing that a corporation should treat creators with respect is a firing offense; believing that people should overthrow the government if certain groups of unnatural sinners obtain equality under the law, that's "steadfastly support[ed] freedom of expression" and "personal views."

But Card's bigotry goes well beyond beliefs or views or even odious essays filled with the typical clichés of homophobes. He has been actively campaigning against LGBT causes for several years, and serves on the board of the anti-LGBT National Organization for Marriage, which works to prevent equality by trying to force a particular religious definition of marriage on public policy and a civil, legal institution. I can't decide which is worse: that they hypocritically couch their discrimination in terms of others trying to force their beliefs on the nation, or that a group opposed to "redefining marriage" has strong ties to the Mormon church.

In short, calling the boycotts and protests and petitions a matter of Card's views and opinions is dismissive not only to the people affected by Card's activism, but also to the magnitude of his bigotry and the actions he's taken on behalf of those beliefs.

One would think that a corporation that just a month ago seemed so proud to announce their GLAAD award nominees would be more aware of Card's views, actions, and how the hire would be received, but I'm increasingly convinced that DC has absolutely no idea how their actions and stories might be received by anyone outside of mainstream comic fandom.

I'm not sure what DC can do at this point. I mean, this is a company that pulled a Superman comic because it might cause controversy for Superman to have a Muslim superhero friend (and replaced it with a story pulled years before because a Krypto-centric tale didn't fit with the current tone of the series), so if they're standing behind this story, they must have some serious investment in it (more on that later). But I'd certainly be happier if they pulled the story and led off with the Parker/Samnee joint.

I've bought every regular Superman-starring comic for years (the last one I missed, near as I can tell, was "Superman/Batman" #77 or #78). I'm not sure what the last Superman #1 I didn't buy was, outside of maybe a few one-shots or miniseries. But I'm not buying this one. I'll get Parker's story digitally, and I might eventually check the issue out when I can get it on the secondary market and not put any money into DC or Card's pockets. Or Hell, I might pirate it. It's unethical, but then, so was hiring Card, so I think it pans out. My local comic shop has said that they won't stock it on the shelf, joining at least a few others around the country, and that continues to convince me that I'm shopping at the right place.

Orson Scott Card shouldn't be writing Superman. He really shouldn't be working for any company that promotes diversity, justice, and equality, but I'd settle for him working only on his own creations and adaptations. DC has dropped writers and issues for reasons that didn't involve making a group of people into second-class citizens or inciting armed rebellion, so they must have a reason for trying to keep him around and happy.

My suspicion? They wouldn't snag a big-name sci-fi writer for one short digital-first story. But they might snag one to headline a sci-fi series where the long-time writer is leaving an epic run. I'd lay odds that we'll see at least one arc on a Green Lantern book by Card, and I imagine we'll see at least part of one by JMS. And, well, you wouldn't want to drive away the guy who you hope is going to keep one of your tent pole lines from collapsing come June. I hope that's not the case. I hope that this hoopla makes DC rethink whether or not they want to associate with Card and his toxic hate. I hope a lot of comic fans and professionals who should know better learn that a boycott is different from a ban or censorship, and that the right to free speech doesn't mean "free from consequences" or "the right to a paid platform and audience."

And I think those all have about equal chance of happening.

Open the Fortress

Close the Fortress

Not So Marvelous

I've been enjoying Marvel's new Captain Marvel series, but for the book's run so far, my enjoyment has been largely in spite of the art. Dexter Soy has never seemed like a very good fit for the book's tone, and it was sometimes hard to follow the action, but I was getting used to it by the end there. I just read Captain Marvel #9 though, and I kind of wish Soy was back.

There's a definite stylization to Filipe Andrade's art, which could make the book more expressive and dynamic, and that's almost certainly what they're going for. It'd work, too, if it weren't quite so inconsistent. The character work is really ugly, with characters eyes sliding around their faces and whatnot. Most of the close-up shots are actually quite good, so I don't know if he was just rushed or what, but some panels make Carol look like a flounder or Sloth.

Andrade's art, at its best, reminds me of Humberto Ramos, and at worst, like the late Carlos Meglia, whose work on Superman in the early 2000s was some of the worst professional comics pencilling I can remember seeing. It had the same problems as Andrade's: inconsistent, deformed characters, unclear perspective (there's a panel in this Captain Marvel issue where Spider-Woman looks like she's been shrunk because there are no indicators that Capt. Marvel is meant to be closer to the reader), and visual continuity errors (besides the dramatically shifting size of Carol's tablet/phone in the early pages, there's the issue that since the redesign, Carol has had notably and intentionally short, and not flowing butt-length, hair).

To add insult to injury, on the last page Carol is told she has some kind of lesion on her brain, a ticking time bomb. And, well...

Look, it's a minor thing, but there's a writer, a letterer, and two editors working on this book. Somewhere along the line, someone should have noticed that a bomb is defused, not diffused. The goal with a bomb is to remove its fuse (literally or figuratively) so it won't blow up, to de-fuse it. The last thing you want is for it to be spread evenly throughout the area; in fact, diffusion of the bomb is what you're trying to prevent.

Altogether, the sloppy art and editing error make this book look rushed, which isn't totally surprising given Marvel's wacky scheduling antics. I can't speak for everyone, but I'd certainly be more happy with one polished issue a month than two or three that were rushed to meet an unreasonable deadline. Especially when they end up with the same cover price.

Open the Fortress

Close the Fortress

The Sad State of Things Today

Comics that are not currently available from the DC Digital store:

• The comic where Superman and Wonder Woman realize that they wouldn't work as a romantic couple.
  
• The comic where Clark Kent proposes to fiancée Lois Lane.
  
• The comic where Clark Kent reveals his true identity to Lois Lane.
  
• The comic where Clark Kent and Lois Lane get married.
  
• The comic where Superman and Wonder Woman fight for a thousand years in Valhalla, but Superman won't break his vow against killing or his fidelity and love for Lois Lane.
  

Comics that are currently available from the DC Digital Store:

• The comic where Clark Kent lectures Lois Lane on proper journalistic integrity.
  
• The comic where Clark Kent lectures Lois Lane about her love life and how he doesn't really want to be just friends with her.
  
• The comic where, five years after she entered Man's World, Wonder Woman gets the idea of a secret identity from Clark Kent, who takes her out for her first real date despite the fact that she dated Steve Trevor for an extended period of time.
  
• The comic where Superman beats Lois Lane, his pregnant wife, to death in space.
  

Happy 75th anniversary, Lois and Clark!

Open the Fortress

Close the Fortress

Let the Power Return!

I don't talk about it very often on the blog, but my early online life was dominated with He-Man. Very shortly after getting my very first AOL account, I signed up for the He-Man Mailing List, which I eventually became the head of (and...kind of let die when I stopped using my AOL account). I cut my argumentative chops on the He-Man.org message boards, fighting conspiracy theories and the obviously mistaken notion that "Grayskull" is properly spelled with an e. So when I heard that there were going to be new He-Man comics, I was pretty thrilled.

And then they were...not so good. The main story was a weird 'Lord of the Rings' pastiche, and the one-shots were generally awful. This was back in the early 2000s, which also gave us such disappointing 80s-revival comic ideas as "WilyKat and WilyKitt are sex slaves!" and "Pat Lee should take credit for someone else's Transformers art!" I understand that there was a lot of interference from Mattel in terms of what kinds of stories the folks at Image/Crossgen/MV Creations could tell, and it's not like they weren't big fans of the franchise. Heck, several of the people involved in making the Masters of the Universe comics were folks I'd chatted with for years on the mailing list and message boards. But in the end, it might have been better for some seasoned comics writers to be working on the series, or for Mattel to give some creative latitude. The failure of those comics, and the weird toyetic costume and focus change on the cartoon, really helped to kill my interest in He-Man. To date, there are still a bunch of episodes and issues of the 2002-era Masters of the Universe series that I haven't seen. Though, of course, I own them all.

About my only outlet for He-Fandom is that I still buy the occasional awesome, overpriced Masters of the Universe Classics figure, and sometimes I'll annoy my wife by turning on She-Ra reruns while she's trying to sleep. But I still love the property and the characters and the mountain of He-Man figures I have in my brand new basement. So I approached the new "He-Man and the Masters of the Universe" comic series with cautious optimism.

I've picked up the main series since it started, breathing a bit of a sigh of relief when James Robinson left and Keith Giffen took over. Robinson's been more than a little hit-or-miss for me, especially of late, but Giffen is always good.

The main series has been all kinds of mediocre. The main story is decent enough--Skeletor has finally won, taking over Grayskull and erasing all memory of his hated foe, and the driving conflict of Prince Adam trying to set things right has been a good idea.

A side-point: when it came time to create the spin-off She-Ra cartoon, the writers (most of whom had worked on He-Man as well) made the smart choice to put the protagonist in the position of fighting against a dominant enemy. Skeletor and his henchmen came off looking like buffoons not only because they were, but because the status quo left them as the underdogs, fighting against King Randor's rightful government, and constantly losing. Making the Horde a dictatorship occupying Etheria meant that even though every She-Ra episode ended with Hordak's forces losing, they still ruled the world, making them seem a whole lot more dangerous.

The execution has been somewhat lacking, however. The art is...I don't know, sloppy? Rushed? It just feels unfinished, and redesigning all the characters to be even more naked than usual leads to a lot of that same uncomfortable sexualization that plagued the ThunderCats reboot ten-ish years ago.

I'm curious to see where the ongoing series will go, but so far it's very much a book I'm buying out of nostalgia rather than any considerable interest.

In the last few days, though, I checked out the digital series. I'd downloaded a couple of issues already, but only really skimmed them. With the wide variety of creative teams, it's an understandably mixed bag. Geoff Johns' indulgent tale about his original character Sir Laser-Lot was mostly fine (even if it doesn't appear to have gone/be going anywhere), and I liked Mike Costa's Cringer/Battle Cat story (even if the person at the end--Teela? Queen Marlena?) was completely unrecognizable because apparently Eternia was besieged with an anti-redhead spell. But boy, Costa's story about King Randor fighting zombies and slaughtering Leech was awful, and representative of the same "let's add blood and ultraviolence" mentality that typifies these misguided attempts to rehabilitate children's media by making them more "mature." The "kids' cartoon character was an old soldier who fought zombies" was dumb when it was Kup in a Transformers: Spotlight issue, and it's doubly dumb here. And while I liked Kyle Higgins' story about Man-At-Arms, I could have happily gone my whole life without seeing Evil-Lyn screwing a guy to gain his loyalty.

Sex! Blood! Violence! Look, I understand that He-Man has always been more than just the FILMation cartoon. I understand that those early comics and minicomics were a lot heavier on the horror-fantasy art (thanks mostly to Alfredo Alcala) and straight sword-and-sorcery concepts. I understand that the cartoon was mostly goofy, and was hamstrung in terms of what it could do and show by watchdog groups and a group of companies who were reticent to do anything that might result in a reversal of the law changes that allowed the show to exist in the first place. I wouldn't expect a new, more free version of He-Man to feel beholden to the tone and rules of the '80s cartoon; I'd expect to see people getting punched and cut with swords. But, you know, I'd also expect to see some attention given to the things that make He-Man...if not actually unique, at least not Conan.

The thing that really sets the Masters of the Universe um...universe apart is that it's a mashup of a relatively typical fantasy world with kings and princes and magic and an evil skull-faced wizard sorceror, with a hi-tech sci-fi utopia of spacecraft and lasers and cyborgs. And then there's the occasional guy with a robotic elephant head, or a villain whose power is his overpowering odor. That's the stand-out element, and often the one that gets pushed to the side in favor of more by-the-numbers fantasy/barbarian storytelling. Without the fantasy/sci-fi meshing, He-Man is just Conan + Captain Marvel.

Of course, DC isn't doing any better with Captain Marvel either.

There's only one issue of either series that I've read so far that feels anything like the He-Man I grew up with, and that was Jeff Parker's brilliant Orko-centric issue. It could have ended with a moral and a wink at the reader, for crying out loud (and basically did). It embraced the goofy, silly, cartooniness of He-Man, while the other comics (while nearly all DC Comics) have avoided it out of a pathological fear of looking silly.

Look, the MOTU Universe is one where 90% of the inhabitants wear furry underpants. Two of the main characters are a magic floating laundry pile and Scooby-Doo's tiger cousin. The main character's name is He-Man. If it's not at least a little silly, you're not doing it right.

But that's the problem with so many comics. There's this notion that "silly" is going to cause comics to lose all that mainstream respect and regard they gained in the '80s and '90s, that if comics were to embrace the old-school goofiness, somehow Watchmen and Maus would vanish in a puff of smoke, and newspaper headlines would start reading "Bam! Pow! Comics are Only for Kids Anymore!"

The thing is, comics were at their most successful when they were silly, when they were for kids. Comics aren't going to draw any new attention by racing away from all that as fast as they can, and as fast as they have been. The readership has shrunk for a variety of reasons, but one of the major ones is that there are so few comics for kids being sold where kids can get them, and at kid-friendly prices.

Publishing a He-Man comic where the Sorceress's costume now features cleavage and a navel isn't going to draw any new readers or new attention to comics. Publishing a kid-friendly one probably wouldn't either, but it also might not just blend into the background noise of comics as a whole so easily.

And unfortunately, that's all this He-Man revival has been, mostly--one more entry in the long list of comics that instead of being an all-ages book is full of the same boring blood and sex and scantily-clad characters that every other book on the shelf is full of. Only the names are different.

Open the Fortress

Close the Fortress

Resolutions

The last week and a half have been seriously stressful. Mostly just work (and a good deal of procrastination and disorganization coming back to bite me in the butt), but it's left me with almost nothing even resembling free time. Certainly not time to write, and barely even a few stolen moments to watch old Star Trek episodes or read a comic or two. I'm three months behind on Action Comics. Action Comics!

That said, I want to do more writing, and I've been doing a lot of thinking (about comics, naturally). I even thought about trying a daily posting thing for January called Jan-u-Arrah, where I'd post something about Element Lad every day, but at this point I'm just glad I didn't.

All that said, I'm going to start budgeting my time differently just as a necessity, so I'm going to try to start posting here more often. I'm setting the goal at once a week or more, which should be fairly easy by this time next week. And since it's Superman's 75th anniversary this year, I'm going to make this an even more Superman-focused blog than usual. My new tablet, loaded with comics, should make that fairly easy (and has already given me lots of ideas).

So hopefully you'll be seeing more of my writing in the near future. I've got something percolating that should be interesting, if I can get it off the ground. Check back here soon!

Open the Fortress

Close the Fortress