WTFDCU?

Its Sunday, June 12, 2011 and this is The Side. Sorry, I don't have anything on last night's UFC. Wasn't able to make it to go watch the fights. Congrats to Junior Dos Santos for the big win. I'm looking forward to him getting his shot at the title.

COMIX!!

I'm stuck in an awkward position, and not because I slept on the couch again. I review comics every Friday, but this isn't the only place that my reviews appear. They also appear over at the Comic Kings site. Comic Kings has been very good to me over the years, and I'm more than happy to put my reviews up on their site. Its minimal trouble, and decent exposure for my blog. I also put the occasional comic related piece or comic movie review up.

On here, I've been pretty clear about what I think about the impending DC reboot. However, I've been keeping my feeling on this mum on the Comic Kings site, because while I'm not going to be buying DC comics once this thing goes into full swing, I don't want the shops business to be hurt. They've been very cool about my feelings about this. They didn't say anything when I started scratching stuff off my pull list. Right now as far as my DC reading I'm down to ACTION COMICS, DETECTIVE COMICS, BATMAN INCORPORATED, and BATGIRL. But I have been adding other titles to my list like MORNING GLORIES, THE WALKING DEAD, and USAGI YOBIMBO. While I don't see myself quickly making up the gap in my reading, I'm sure it'll pick up a bit.

Let's talk about the point of this reboot: getting new readers. The Missus asked a brilliant question when we talked about this, "With them trying to get new readers, are they trying to get rid of the old ones?" I've seen the renumbering stunt quite a few times before. Its something I never really approved of. The thought is that people feel more comfortable jumping onboard a title with its first issue. I never thought I'd see the day that they do this to ACTION COMICS or DETECTIVE COMICS. That's not even my main gripe. They say that they want to move the DCU into the 21st century. I know that there's a problem with some things time-wise. There's characters from World War II still active who have to be pushing ninty and that's being generous. But I'm looking at who they have on board for this. A lot of these guys have had their heyday nearly twenty years ago.

Rob Leifeld is drawing a book? And the defenders of it are the people who read HAWK AND DOVE way back in the 80s? How's that going for new readers? Jim lee is designing outfits which look like the stuff he was designing back in the 90s. I've gotten a look at the covers for these impending first issues, and a lot of them really do look like early image books. This isn't a good thing.

And what on Earth are we doing having artists double as writers again? Tony Daniel, Ethan Van Sciver, and J.H. Williams III are all writing books. I'm going to say this as nicely as possibly: just because you can draw a comic does not mean you can write one. No one is asking Grant Morrison to go draw a comic, now are they. We saw a lot of this in early 90s Marvel and Image, and we got a lot of really stupid comics from that little experiment. Speaking of Image, a lot of Jim Lee's Image creations will be melded into the DCU proper. There's also going to be a "darker" side to the DCU. I bet it'll be dark and epic! Epic and Dark! And George Perez is writing SUPERMAN. You're not going to hear me say a single bad word about George Perez, but this is a guy who can draw any character doing anything and make it look like spot on. Why is one of the best artists ever in comics writing a book and not drawing one?

Where's Bryan Q. Miller in all this. I'm not seeing his name anywhere. They show Mark Waid the door. Greg Rucka gets out. Nick Spencer gets off the reservation. Now I'm not seeing anything by one of the most enjoyable writers currently in DC. But Judd Winick is still around. Yay.

Speaking of writers, there's a bit of confusion going on. Some people are saying that everything that's gone on in the DCU has still happened. Others are saying that this is taking the characters back to earlier points in their lives, hence Barbara Gordon walking again. (Sidenote: way to show diversity. Have your premier disabled character magically out of her wheelchair.) But Geoff Johns said that all the stuff he's done with "Blackest Night" and his other crap have happened. And somehow all of the Robins are around in some way. But Lois and Clark aren't married anymore. There's no consistency here, unless its "Geoff Johns is awesome and we won't write off anything he did".

So, obviously I don't what DC is up to one bit. But a part of me is stupid and thinks that this'll all just be temporary, and in six months they'll come back to their senses and put everything back as they found it. This is the same part that previously said stupid things like "There's no way they'd be dumb enough to bring back Barry Allen." I still can't bring myself to wish ill on the company because if this goes horribly, and it will, then likely they'll make an even worse decision to try to "fix" things. I love the DCU. I love the characters. Its the editorial shenanigans that should be helping books get out and not making dictates as to what they want to see. They say they want to move forwards, but all I'm seeing is a lot of looking backwards.

Will this help bring in new readers? No. I'm honestly expecting the numbers to go down. All of this won't bring in anyone who doesn't currently read comics. If you want to see new readers you have to get comics in view of people who don't normally read them. Can't really get them on newsstands anymore. Even 7-11 is doing away with selling anything more than newspapers are far as reading material. Really it comes down to the current readers. They have to be willing to say to a friend "hey, I think you might dig this" and put an issue in their hand. I did that the other day with one of my students. They forgot the book they were reading at home. I had an issue of TEEN TITANS in the car and she wanted something to read while her father's class was in session. She loved it. I've created more new readers than this stunt DC is pulling will.

So, if you're excited about what you are seeing from DC's plans, then by all means go buy the books. Hope you enjoy them. I'm going to be off reading something else.

MUSIC!!!

Any time is a good time for some Warren Zevon.



That's it for me today. See y'all Wednesday.

Honor Jackson doesn't approve.

It's Sunday, November 7, 2010, I kan't speel, and this is The Side. I've attempted to put together some information about literary characters. I've begun taking a bit of an informal poll about them and have come up with some interesting results. However, despite being present on a few social media outlet, I've not gotten as much information as I'd like, but will still go on to post up my findings on Wednesday one way or another.

Lot of birthday's this time of year. My niece's birthday is today and she's 7 now. Delightful young lady. Her party last night consisted of all of us parking our cars sideways in the front yard while my brother set it up so that a movie was going to be projected on a big sheet strung up from a tree and a step ladder. There was a little ticket table and concession stand too. So we all popped our tailgates, grabbed some blankets and watched THE HANNAH MONTANA MOVIE, which is now totally my favorite movie EVER!!

In other news, reading back through previous posts I have discovered that I am indeed a semi-literate e-troglodyte and a total spell check invalid. Maybe I should wait until I've actually had some coffee before typing this stuff. So, to my glorious readers, I apologize and will try harder to actually make this stuff readable.

But enough of this stuff. Its time to talk about Batman. Again.

COMIX!!

Events in the Batman corner of the DCU are moving forward, which is cool. Grant Morrison is working his way through his "The Once and Future Batman" with his return of Bruce Wayne to the role, and we'll be seeing him going around the world creating a "Round Table" of Batmen in the upcoming BATMAN INC title. Its been obvious that Morrison has been driving things with the character for a while now, and other have for the most part been pretty well on board. There's been some things that fit nicely with the narrative (WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE CAPED CRUSADER?), some needless but harmless fluff (BATTLE FOR THE COWL), and some pretty goofy hiccups from those who didn't seem to be paying attention but wanted to play too(BLACKEST NIGHT). All said and done the character has made very cool and thoughtful progression in the last few year.

However, that's not sitting quite right with some people. They want the dark, angry, fractured psyche Batman. The thing with an iconic character like this is that there's room for different interpretations of him. This is how you can have cartoons like THE BRAVE AND BOLD and also have a depressing marathon of pseudo-terrorist porn like THE DARK KNIGHT. Everyone's happy. In comics though we do have continuity. We have editors who, supposedly, are to keep track of this stuff and keep things something resembling consistent. So if a hero has a major change in costume or powers or attitude that happens in their core book, if that character appears elsewhere in another book that change is to be reflected, or a not can appear "This story takes place before the events of...." Which smart because you might make a reader curious as to what exactly happened in that story and the reader could buy another book. So continuity in comics is pretty important. Just ask any hardcore fanboy. They'll argue continuity for days.

So we have Batman as a character moving in one direction. Its a definite thing that obvious to all that have been keeping up and not writing reviews for GAME INFORMER. But now we have a new comic coming out featuring Bruce Wayne as Batman, and the writer makes this statement in an interview.

I've read a lot online about how people think that, ever since Dark Knight Returns, Batman has been to dark and gritty. But I don't agree. That's what made me love Batman. I think a Batman that is too fun and happy and has a little sidekick dog and all those types of things doesn't speak to me at all. This is the character that speaks to me: The dark, angry, vengeful, almost hateful character. That's what I love. And that's what I'm doing. I want to push that as far as editorial will let me push it.

OK, fine, BUT writers have spent the last few years moving Bruce Wayne AWAY from being that guy. We had our fill of Batdouche. It started with INFINITE CRISIS, and I've had a lot of brutal criticism of Geoff Johns, but in this story he started Batman on the road away from being a complete prick. He reached out his hand and trusted Hal Jordan, despite his history with him. He didn't kill Alex Luthor despite Luthor nearly killing Dick Grayson. From there we moved onto 52, which has Batman along with Grayson and Tim drake traveling the world and finally had Bruce chilling in a cave for a month for meditative purposes and to get his head back on straight. Then there was his return to Gotham and we saw him handled by Grant Morrison and Paul Dini on writing duties. Dini had Batman handling a bunch of fun interesting cases which invoked fond memories of his old 90s animated series. Morrison began his epic which had Batman facing ultimate evil.

Batman has not beaten ultimate evil because he was HaRdCoRe or more badass than the devil. It was, ironically, because he killed a man, sorta. A bum told him that he had a nice face. Batman had a couple hundred buck in the glovebox of the Batmobile. Seemed like a harmless little moment. What he didn't know is that the bum in question would use that money to buy drugs that would cause him to overdose. That bum's spirit in his final act before moving on, would aid Bruce Wayne after Doctor Hurt left him drugged and out of his mind. An act of kindness turned the tide.

Now we have a Bruce Wayne who is still a driven and formidable character, but also values his family and friends. He's kind to people who deserve it. He's kind to people who may or may not deserve it, but being kind would be more useful than scaring the crap out of them. We now have a well balanced and full on awesome character, not a charactiture.

But, there are still those who want to seem him in that nearly insane light. These are the people, and I used to be one when I was young, who thought that Batman was only one step away from being The Joker. They tout the "one bad day" theory from Alan Moore's "THE KILLING JOKE" despite the fact that the work is a repudiation of that theory. So despite the fact that everything I just laid out has been going on for the last five years and everyone's been on board with it one guy want to go the exact opposite direction, like a trout trying to get up stream.

I'll probably buy the first issue for review purposes, but its not something I'm looking forward to. I need Batdouche back like I need a hole in the head.

MUSIC!!

Hey, speaking of holes in the head...



Alrighty, hopefully you folks remembered to fall back with the whole Daylight Savings time thingie and won't be late for church. Because after reading the stuff I write y'all probably need some chuchin'! See, y'all Wednesday.

Flirting with continuity

I've gotten to the point where I've webpublished enough NIGHT LIFE stories that continuity may become an issue. I've got the comic going on the main site. I'm getting ready to wrap up the third short story here on Blogger. And I did a story on Twitter. That's not including the original NIGHT LIFE story that I did back when I was a student at JMU. Also, there were a few short stories that got written for classes that featured characters that should be very familiar to my readers, all five of you. So that's five different stories on three different sites, a couple of short stories and one college newspaper. Multiple mediums to boot. So which ones don't count?

Well, all of them do. Although the college one, you can pretend doesn't exist, especially since I have the only complete collection of those strips which I occasionally go back through just to cringe at how terrible they were.

When I did the college strip, Wade Granby was already well established as the Night Rain. Keith Sheen didn't come in until the final year I did the strip, but it was clear that they had a history. If you were to get your hands on the old strips and pour over them, you can even spot Danny Blade in a flashback scene. When I wrote the short stories for classes I set most of them in the NIGHT LIFE world. While the professors weren't terribly thrilled with this, it turned out that a few of the students that read these stories for the classes followed the comic and got a kick out of it.

Continuity is a double-edged sword to be certain. It's great when things are clear. However, with enough people involved and if things go along long enough it can turn ugly. That's why the major comic companies with their metric ton of characters and stories supposedly have editors. Someone has to keep it all straight.

My first brush with continuity happened at a very young age. It was an issue of THE INCREDIBLE HULK and the big guy was on some alien planet battling The Gardner. Now this was a major threat because this dude was in possession of one of the "Soul Gems" which we now refer to as the "Infinity Gems". Insanely powerful, and I as a reader got to learn about this due to a quick flashback to another story. It seems some major big bad got his hands on one and it took the Avengers, Captain Marvel, The Thing, Spider-man and Adam Warlock "Reincarnated as the Ultimate Avenger" to stop him. It was nearly twenty years later that I actually had a chance to read the story that the flashback referred. It went down in an old AVENGERS annual and a MARVEL TEAM-UP annual. But referencing that story in the Hulk story I was reading gave me a glimpse that this was something major and this huge battle had gone down. I really wanted to read that story. So there's where continuity was a major bonus.

It turns into a problem when you have two stories directly contradicting each other. Then the writers have to jump through hoops. Problems like that should be caught before books go to press. Back in the day Marvel gave out "No prizes" to readers who caught things like that. Now they just try to avoid the meteor shower of bitchy comments that descend upon them via the internet.

How much danger am I in from this unwieldy beast called continuity? Not much. When there's only one writer it's much easier to keep things straight. I'll be putting in footnotes for people as necessary. Besides, this is the internet, it's easy enough to get a hold of me on here if there's any questions?

You want to know what I think about having enough content out there that this topic warrants a blog post? I think it's a damn good start.