Frank Miller Calls ASBAR #10 Fiasco "Terrible and Glorious"

Via the LA Times:

"This is the first I've heard of it. I have no idea how this awful thing happened. It's just one of those terrible and glorious things that happen time to time in publishing."

And he provided further illumination on why the actual words were used under the black censor bars:

"I wrote the actual words in the script and had them put on the page so the black bars would be the right size on the page..."

ASBAR #10 and The Coming Comics Witchhunt?

Would a parent accidentally buy these comics for their child?



Look folks, I don't have kids to accidentally buy these comics for, and I know too much about what's currently going on to make the mistake even if I did.

But when this crowd:


finally decides to make this the bee in their bonnet du jour, there's going to be a lot of fucking problems.

And you can say: "well, fuck them anyway, they're a bunch of reactionary maniacs." And you might be right. But as time goes on, and the gore and the sex and language gets more extreme on books that are both not clearly enough marked for adults only AND feature characters that are cross-marketed to kids -- there becomes less and less of a defense.

But what really scares me is the possibility that books of real quality -- such as Watchmen, Preacher, etc. -- will get lumped into the comics witch-hunt. That the good stuff will be taken down because of the crap.

Not that I think books like Watchmen, etc. would get banned from libraries and certain bookstores just because some conservatives were pissed off. You only gotta worry about that if, say, some religious fanatic gets into office after her aged and sick running mate bites the bullet. And I mean -- what are the chances of that happening?

But a book like Watchmen is far too deep to them, too far removed from the funnybooks to really make a lovely self-righteous case out of it. It's not sexy enough for Fox News.

But you know what is?

This.

The utter fucking stupidity of insisting on printing black censor bars over the actual lettering of All-Star Batman and Robin #10 -- why, so you can be real cute and have the letters peek tantalizingly over the sides, so you can only imagine what curse word is being used?

The fact that, even with the black bars, you would think that dialog like this was acceptable in a comic starring characters which are licensed full-tilt to little children, in a comic with a cover that looks like the most iconic and "safe" Batman story you can find:

"...little jailbait CUNT's making us look bad... we cut her come on...

...sweet piece in sweet slices... tasty sliced booty the little CUNT..."

It's not even justifiable by saying "artistic license" -- this is like eight grades down from one of Quentin Tarantino' s lesser films. This is Frank Miller simply picking up his paycheck, the same way he plunked his arm down on hunk of bristol for the cover of Dark Knight Strikes Again, traced it, and got a big paycheck for an awesome cover.


You know what's missing on that cover? The middle finger.

But while discussing the pulping of All-Star Batman and Robin #10, these weren't the biggest issues on my mind. First question I asked: "Who will get blamed?"

And I thought about it, and said: "I don't think there's enough assistant editors left over there to scapegoat over this."

Fangirl Thursdays

I finally removed When Fangirls Attack off my feed and blogroll. I have nothing against people who visit it, and I think if you find it useful or entertaining you should continue to do so. I've been at the receiving end of pretty inexplicably nasty and bitter comments by one half of that team for some time now, and I see no reason to continue to support them. I used to justify keeping them on the blogroll, long past the time when I visited the site on a regular basis, out of the feeling like "well, they're doing this great service for women in comics, and well heck that makes it all okay." But, I think the fact of them being female and writing (or rather, linking to) female topics is not enough for me, based on some sense of "gender unity," to overlook their pettiness.

Perhaps it's my support of their occasional critic Dirk Deppey that soured them; to which I say that, despite the fact that Dirk has disagreed with some of my opinions (and has even been quite snarky with me on occasion), he has never addressed me with the sort of personal attacks that I have experienced from Ragnell at WFA. With Dirk, it's just commentary and different points of view. With Ragnell, there seems to be this bitter and bitchy edge that has finally made me decide to keep WFA at arm's length.

I stopped reading WFA a while ago, around the time I discovered Journalista existed. Between Journalista, JK Parkin's & Kevin Melrose's work on Blog@Newsarama, Tom Spurgeon's news round-ups, and the occasional Beat update, I'm pretty set for my comics news for the day. (though just to clarify, I do read a variety of blogs for commentary & reviews. I also read Comic Mix, but more for the columns).

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As for Kevin Church's bizarre and adamant objections to, of all things, a post on search engine optimization (as if two posts on that subject cannot exist at the same time or teh internets blow up), I am content to believe this is his version of an Andy Kaufman routine, and leave it at that.

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The Spoiler Train:

RE: Last page of Captain America #36 --D'oh! D'oh! D'oh! D'oh! Do'h! D'oh D'oh! D'oh!
However, since it's Ed Brubaker, I'm sure he has some twist on the whole thing that will exceed expectations and make it worthwhile.

RE: Last page of Avengers: The Initiative #10 --I know at least one really happy camper who jazzed off that reveal :-)
Now, can we have this New Old New Warriors team go up against that New New Warriors team and clean house?

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You know who wins from having Bendis on both Avengers books? Dan Slott.

I know so many readers who don't follow the Bendis Avengers but will read The Initiative.

I know a bunch of readers who don't even follow Marvel's superhero comics but follow The Initiative.

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The upcoming Speed Racer movie is either going to be really really awesome or extremely sucky. It's tricky, because on one hand it's the Wachowski Brothers, so there is that expectation. On the other hand, it seems, by viewing the trailer, rather high-concept -- and high-concept, I have found, either goes really really awesome or really really terrible. Whereas sheer mediocrity, as in the case with the Scooby Doo or Garfield film outings, will almost guarantee you a two-picture deal.

Also saw the Hulk movie trailer. Loved everything up to that gloppy Abomination. The big fight scene between Hulk & Abomination at the end of the trailer looked kinda cartoony. I've heard they still have F/X to put into the final film, so maybe it will look better. If not, it's all sort of resting on Edward Norton's shoulders. I'm sorry, every time I see him in the trailer talking about how he has this other personality, I think Fight Club. A YouTube video mash-up between the two seems inevitable.

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This flyer for a Christian church, found on Scans Daily, takes a page from comix (and Frank Miller?), I believe...
You know, I remember when we got that cover for "Dark Knight 2" in the office. Somebody remarked that it was like Frank Miller plunked his hand down on the bristol board, traced it, and picked up his check. Some of us were pretty disappointed; and as you can imagine, that was only the beginning. (though the stack of concept drawings he did at the beginning were really nice)

DC's ARENA: "Fan Fiction At Its Finest"

C'mon, like you never asked yourself, "If Rorschach went up against Dark Knight Batman, who would win?"

Other battles I'd like to see in DC's "Arena":

Neil Gaiman's Sandman Vs. Jack Kirby's Sandman

The cast of "Camelot 3000" Vs. the cast of "Ronin"

Jim Aparo Commissioner Gordon Vs. Tim Sale Commissioner Gordon

Evey from "V For Vendetta" Vs. Arrowette

Grant Morrison's cat from "Animal Man" Vs. Power Girl's cat from "Justice League Europe"

Jacques Derrida Vs. Mother Teresa

REM's Peter Buck Vs. Rico Suave

Barbara The Potty-Mouth

To DC's credit, I rush to read these previews for "All-Star Batman & Robin" as soon as they are posted.

Barbara Gordon kissing her dad hello on the cheek:

"Hi Daddy. I'm going to hit the books. Big test tomorrow -- With Miss Ainsworth who is totally a total bitch."

Later, in captions:

"Never have a detective as a dad. Not unless you're really good at bullshitting him."

"And always throw in a smile when you're bullshitting your dad."

Cursing teenagers are fine if the book in question has a "mature readers" label on it. But thankfully, there is an option on the stands for those younger persons who wish to get into reading about Batgirl:

Phone Call With A Legend and Other Stories

Phone Call With A Legend and Other Stories

Me: "Hello?"
Him (in fake Italian accent): "Yessa, may I-ah havah pizza-pie?"
Me: "Excuse me?"
Him: "Bonjourno! I would-ah like-ah pizza pie."
Me: "Who is this?"
Him: "I am-ah Italiano, just like you-ah!"

He wasn't Italiano, just like me-ah. Just an eccentric genre mega-legend who thought it was funny I had an Italian last name. When ever I hear that this guy has stepped into another pile of poo-poo I just roll my eyes and go, "yep!"

Not talking about John Byrne, by the way. Met Byrne once, had lunch with him. A gentleman. Though the editors I was with were a bit unfair, they would go, "Hey John, who was more responsible for the X-Men, you or Claremont?" This is what's known in the nomenclature as "a leading question."

Chris Claremont himself was a pretty cool guy. I had to rewrite a few balloons of a story he did for "Batman Black & White" and I was scared to death of his reaction, because I totally idolized him. And he was so zen about it, so cool. Which was great, because he's God.

Actually, there are many comic book gods. When you're a total geek like me and you finally have the chance to work in the industry you have to learn how to greet these gods. Slavish adoration will put most of them off -- though there are a few of such intense ego that such devotion is not only appreciated, it's required. Your boss will probably brief you beforehand who those bombastic few are and how to deal with them. But chances are, if you are a total geek like me, you won't mind. Unless they start talking to you like some bad Super Mario character because you are Italian.

Someone like Howard Chaykin is such a larger-than-life, impressive figure that you will look out the window when he arrives at the office to see the replica WWII bomber he heroically flew in on. On the flip-side, a guy like Frank Miller just sort of gets ushered in to see his editor and ushered out and you didn't even know he was there, you just hear about it after the fact. And an artist like Walt Simonson will hang out around the office, as down-to-earth as you can get, happy to discuss comics or sign a book.

Out of all the comic creators I have met or talked to on the phone, only one stands out as a total prick. He started out very friendly, then overly-friendly, then I had to avoid his phone calls, then he left a message that he "psychically sensed I was in trouble" and needed to speak to me immediately, then he did something like call the president of the company and try to have me fired. After something like this happens, you try to go back and enjoy some classic comic he worked on and it's really hard. But then you explain it away to yourself by figuring he was so damn talented that the sheer talent drove him completely insane -- and apparently gave him psychic abilities to boot.

However, most male comic creators have been pretty respectful to me, a good number with that chivalrous sort of "Ye fair maiden! Are those gorillas bothering you? I shall bean them on the head with this here Mjolnir!" attitude.

And yeah, I guess I'm sort of feminist but that sort of talk just turns me into a Wally Wood heroine with a Valkyrie helmet, a Smurfette smile, and a freshly-picked daisy pressed up against my nose.