Thursday, July 28, 2011

It is 2011, right?

1.) Matt Wayne posted a tribute he wrote to the late Dwayne McDuffie and submitted to the folks at Comic-Con International for inclusion in their program, having been asked to do so. They asked him to change it, and he declined. Wayne wrote that the industry needs to understand that, "Dwayne should have been running the comics business, and instead he was barely tolerated," and, more saliently, "[T]here’s no question in my mind that, given the finite length of Dwayne’s career, he would have been better off both financially and creatively to have never worked in comics at all, and gone straight into animation instead."

2.) When recently asked about the continuing legal debates regarding the deal Joe Shuster and Jerry Siegel struck in the 1930s with what became DC Comics regarding Superman, Grant Morrison quite unfortunately seemed to blame Shuster and Siegel, question their motives and even laugh at them (In only the space of a few sentences!).

It was an especially unfortunate statement because, while Morrison is an incredibly talented and imaginative writer who would no doubt have been equally successful writing in any medium or industry he chose, the fact of the matter remains that the medium and industry he chose was comics, and the mainstream American comic book industry, with almost all of his work of note being published by the corporate entity that bought Superman off those kid artists he mentioned, and much of it in the superhero genre, which Siegel and Shuster invented.

One can't really say that if it weren't for Siegel and Shuster, Morrison would be a hobo today, and no, I don't think it's fair to say that Morrison is riding on Siegel and Shuster's coattails. But he has spent a great deal of his creative life living in a city that Siegel and Shuster founded.

Morrison's statement was doubly especially unfortunate given the fact that just yesterday a prose book of his was released. The subject matter? Superman. (Please see Abhay Khosla for more).

3.) Matt Seneca assembled a time line of the late Gene Colan's history working in comics.

4 comments:

Aki Alaraatikka said...

I hope that what Morrison said, was merely something he said without thinking about it so much.

David page said...

considering his ongoing crap involving the 2000ad series zeniths reprint issues...

that is a wee bit dubious...

Will said...

Morrison could be taking his point of view just to rile people up or he is an elitist (but talented) douche bag

David Charles Bitterbaum said...

Morrison tends to be one of the nicest and coolest guys around (from what I've read and seen, I haven't actually met him), so I think of that as an uncomfortable mistake on his part to even dare comment on the issue in way that is negative towards the people who gave him the character he outright idolizes (Superman).

As for Gene Colan, I always loved his art, and thought it was a damn shame how much he was screwed over by the comics industry. That post you linked to on Death To The Universe is going on my blog as I couldn't agree with it more.