Random links and thoughts for the week of May 16th-May 22nd

—I totally missed Terry Moore’s talk at the Wexner Center last week. Vaneta Rogers did not; you can read her write-up of it here.


—Guy Gardner makes a surprisingly cute woman. Fred Flintstone, unsurprisingly, does not.


—Tom Spurgeon reviews DC Universe 0, and comes up with the central problem in the Big Two’s superhero constant-crossover statuses: Without a status quo to shake up with these events, they cease being extraordinary and become ordinary.

Steven Grant tackles the same subject, and comes up with some interesting analogies.

Personally, I really wish they would start compressing these things into tighter schedules (i.e. weekly or biweekly events), so that a summer blockbuster type of event might only take a summer, instead of at least eight months, plus a few extra to allow for inevitable artist delays.

I would be a lot more interested in Secret Invasion, for example, if I haven’t been reading build-up to it for two years now, and didn’t know I have a good six months left to go before it (hopefully) ends. It’s not a special event comic; it’s just Brian Michael Bendis’ regular Marvel comics. That’s not a value assignment (that is, never mind what you think of Bendis’ Marvel writing in general) so much a recognition that it’s business as usual instead of something out of the ordinary.

Likewise, reading DC’s August solicitations this week just dampened my mild interest in Final Crisis; in three more months, we won’t even be at the halfway point yet.

Say what you will about the annual Annual events at DC like Armageddon 2001 and Eclipso: The Darkness Within, at least they were over in the course of a summer. They were events that could be isolated as events occurring at a particular time; now event comics are more like periods of publishing history.


—I saw Paul Pope give a talk at the Wexner Center last night (full write-up to be posted shortly), and a thought occurred to me as I heard him talk up his affection for Jack Kirby and thought of all the times I’ve seen Pope’s version of Kirby characters. Imagine how awesome it would be if Pope were the artist illustrating Grant Morrison’s upcoming Final Crisis series. Pope + Morrison + Kirby’s New Gods = Comics Nirvana.


—To get a little more serious than I usually do here, as long as I’m linking to The Comics Reporter, I should also point out that the most important piece Spurgeon probably wrote this week was this one about the coming crisis that artist Gene Colan’s current health concerns likely point towards.

Give it a read, and some thought.


—The Panel guys have a great idea: Check out their first Character Wednesday, featuring Moon Knight and, in one brain-scarring example, Namor and Howard the Duck.