1.) The subject nobody could shut up about in 2006 as gay superheroes. The Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD to it's friends) has its final list of elegibile comics titles for the group's 2006 LGBT in Comics award. I'm not going to comment, since Dirk Deppey does such a fine job dissecting and dissing the list in today's Journalista! blog entry. (Jesus, DC and Marvel do have a lot of non-human homosexual relationships, don't they?). Scroll down to the "Comics Culture" section, and check out the responses as well.
Wait, I am going to respond to one thing—How weird is it that Monsieur Mallah and the Brain and Midnighter and Apollo are suddenly paragons of positive gay portrayals these days? Both relationships essentially started out as throwaway gay jokes. In the case of the former, it was simply the most surreal ending that Grant Morrison could come up with for one of his most surreal one-issue stories during his Doom Patrol run (Geoff Johns and Judd Winick seem to have failed to realize Morrison was just screwing around with that one). And while Mark Millar and others have done some interesting things with Apollo and Midnigher since they were outed, I thought they're gayness was more a slam against Batman and Superman than anything else.
2.) Less controversial but just as talked about is the subject of late comics. Tim O'Neil at When Will The Hurting Stop has a smart essay about the problem of late comics and how to fix it, Tom Spurgeon at The Comics Reporter has a nice take on the latest Civil War postponement (and comicdom's ho-hum response to the news), and Paul Semones at The Comic Glutton checks in with his monthly reporting on the sad state of DC and Marvel "monthlies."
3.) Big news at Newsarama regarding a project spinning out of 52, one which, from what Dan Didio says will be explained within, sounds like it was conceived by reading the Newsarama.com messageboards and listening to what DC fans were most annoyed about during the "One Year Later" jump. I'm glad to see they'll be addressing two of the things I personally found most galling—Batgirl suddenly turning evil for no reason in a story that couldn't be more out of continuity if it had an "Elsweorlds" logo on the cover, and J'onn J'onnz's sudden mid-life crisis—although the creators involved are somewhat worrisome.
One writer is John Ostrander, a guy who can seemingly write any character in the DC Universe and, do it in continuity. Considering how good his Martian Manhunter monthly was, he's probably our best hope at making some sort of sense out of J'onn's bizarre makeover, but let' s hope half-Asian heroine Cassandra Cain is handled by the other writer, Keith Champgane. Ostrander hasn't had much luck writing Asian characters lately.
4.) Another issue of Civil War, another brilliant improvement of it. Without getting too deep into it, I think it's safe to say that the bloom is off the rose of Mark Millar's main miniseries, and, oddly enough, I found myself looking forward to the next re-dubbing of it more than the actual comic itself. Note how not only is the remix hilarious, but everyone is also in character and aware of their past histories.
The bit with the Punisher is just fucking priceless, and he seems a lot more like a "mad dog" here than he did in Millar's version. Best of all, whether you're paying $2.99 for the headscratching plot outline that is Civil War #6 or reading this online for free, either way you get to enjoy the McNiven/Morales/Hollowell art.
5.) Finally, this has absolutely nothing to do with comics, but the Central Ohio Film Critics Association, of which I'm a member, has just announced its awards for 2006. You can read the full list of winners here. Oh wait, I guess we can find a comics angle to it—Hellboy and Blade 2 director Guillermo del Toro's latest film, Pan's Labyrinth, was awarded Best Foreign Language Film. Columbusites may want to check in at cofca.org weekly (after visiting donewaiting.com, naturally), as it offers a nice one-stop shopping place for reviews from local critics.
This is a random question from one c-bus person to another... Do you know if Robert Kirkman is stationed out of Columbus? Someone told me he lives in Columbus and regulars the Laughing Ogre? Do know if this is true? I've searched google for any indication of his home town and I couldn't find anything.
ReplyDeleteThanks,
LWC
Okay, well here's a random answer.
ReplyDeleteI'm going to say no, but I don't know for sure. I'm, like, 90% positive that he's not. I'd bet maybe up to $200 that he's not based here, but I'd be afraid to risk anymore.
I don't know where he is stationed, but I know whenever a local person makes it big, Gib (until recently of the Laughing Ogre) would suggest a story on them to me for the newspaper I used to write for, and Kirkman was never one of them.
And whenever I hear someone boosting C-Bus as a comics town and they mention big Columbus creators like Jeff Smith, Chris Sprouse, Daryl Banks, Sean McKeever, etc., Kirkman's name's never one of them.
So I suspect not, but I don't know for certain. I DID do a signing at the Laughing Ogre within the past few years, IIRC, though.