Thursday, March 06, 2008

This week's links

—I realized while watching this latest trailer for Iron Man that it was probably the first time I’ve ever been genuinely excited about Iron Man as a superhero or interested in Tony Stark as a character. I do hope this silly Skrull business is able to de-douche-ify and un-neo-con the character successfully enough for the comics Iron Man to capture some of that roguish Robert Downey Jr. charisma.


—Speaking of Iron Man, I found it interesting that in Tom Spurgeon’s last “Five For Fridays” feature, the subject was to name things that should always be a certain way in the Marvel Universe. There were several opinions about Stark—he should be cool, he should have a heart condition, he should be an Avenger—but the most common one was that he should either always be drunk or always be dealing with being an alcoholic.


—It must be great to be Dan DiDio. He could surf the Internet, see something cool like this or this, and then turn to a flunky and say, “See this idea for a comic on Monitor 3? Make it so!”

The former looks beautiful, and would make for an interesting read, I bet. The title is probably about as good a one as you could come up with for a comic starring Batman’s mom. Like, Lady Gotham certainly sounds a lot better than Batman’s Mom. The latter would make for an awesome single-issue special, or an entry into a future Bizarro Comics anthology. Speaking of which, where the hell is a third one of those?


Nooooooo! John Rogers is taking a sabbatical of indeterminate length from writing Blue Beetle, with Will Pfeiffer coming on in the mean time? Man, it looks like I’ll be taking a sabbatical of indeterminate length from Blue Beetle too then.


—Newsflash: David Rees is funny.


This Chick Tract about the evils of Dungeons & Dragons, the link to which I found at Beacoupkevin.com, is way off the mark about the reality of the fantasy-based role-playing game. I mean, there are no less than four hot chicks playing it, compared to the three dudes.

Anti-D&D propaganda of this sort—and I’ve been exposed to a lot of it, both as silly as this and slightly more serious in more reputable media, since I went to Catholic school in the ‘80s—always makes me think that maybe I bought the wrong edition of AD&D. Was I doing it wrong? Was I missing out on something by not being approached by Satanists or possessed by demons with 20-sided die for eyes?


—How smart is it to release this the same week as an issue of this?


—I was really looking forward to the Brian K. Vaughan/Eduardo Risso Wolverine miniseries Logan that launched yesterday. And then I saw the cover price. Marvel was charging $3.99 for it? I flipped through rather thoroughly to drink in all that Risso art, but I didn’t actually count the story pages. It didn’t feel like it was an oversized book…were they really charging an extra dollar for a 22-page story? I ended up putting it back on the shelf. Why spend $12 bucks over the course of three months to read it in installments, when, right after the third one comes out, I know I’ll be able to get the whole thing in trade, without having to look at ads for Iron Man cake-decorating kits between pages?

And that’s how to drive single-issue readers toward graphic novels.

RELATED: Jog points out the insanity of Marvel’s packaging of Sky Doll as a serial comic book.


—I’ve hoped and prayed that the Watchmen movie would never actually get made, but at this point in the process, it now seems inevitable. They’ve even released images of most of the protagonists today. They’re depressingly…wrong. Rorschach and The Comedian both look okay, but the rest? I’m surprised how heavily influenced by the Batman movies the Nite-Owl and Ozymandias costumes are. And the fact that the Silk Spectre’s costume seems to be completely devoid of silk. Sigh. Oh well, I guess I just have to accept that this movie will exist. I had best turn my hopes and prayers toward the Justice League movie never getting made now…

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Eh. Terrence Howard was a better choice.

Patrick C said...

Does Ozymandias have nipples on his suit? You think they would learn. I'm OK with the other costumes, but I'm on the fence with Nite-Owl. I'd need to see it in motion before I can pass judgment.

malpractice said...

I get what they are trying to do with the Watchman movie in that they are trying to make it superhero movie archetypes as opposed to superhero comic book archetypes, but the fact still stands that superheroes aren't that important to film while they are extremly important to the comic book medium.
Watchmen is a story about superheroes and comic books which uses the comic medium to it full advantage in telling the story. Making a film out of it makes no sense whatsoever.
So yea i won't be seeing the Watchmen movie lol

And Will Pfeiffer is a good writer on Catwoman, but i am not so sure that he would be a good fit on Blue Beetle. I'll have to wait and see though.

Anonymous said...

Pfft, that little neocon jab is kinda funny. I know we all have our little political illusions, but out of today's stew of ideologies, the neocons would *obviously* provide the philosophy behind more sOOperheroes than almost any other flavor.

Neocons, right or wrong, pretty much believe in taking forceful action to make the world a better place (whatever that means).

Unless you imagine your caped crusaders talking endlessly about Hope and Change while not actually doing anything, I'd say it's a good bet most of the superpowered set would actually lean pretty hard to the Right.