Occasional Thoughts

Thoughts. I do have them.


So Incredible Herc beats Grant Morrison's Batman in January sales?

How does that happen?

Shouldn't Batman written by Grant Morrison be at least in the top ten?

I mean...this is a book starring Hercules. Hercules not written by Grant Morrison.

Can a total investment in Morrison for Final Crisis pay off? Will it be the instant blockbuster a comic with the name "Grant Morrison" had been in the past?



So JMS is no longer exclusive with Marvel.

"There's also something to be said for cross-pollination, for embracing a variety of universes and creative opportunities."
--JMS

Huh.

How long until we see him at DC?

Better damn well finish The Twelve, first. Thor is ok, but maybe Marvel can get Brian Wood to write it.



So, first Ms. Marvel's Aaron Lopresti defects to Wonder Woman, and now Wonder Woman's Terry Dodson is doing an interconnecting Ms. Marvel/Captain Marvel cover?

Do the publishers plan this out beforehand?

"I'll see your Lopresti for a Dodson!"


Why shouldn't Brian Wood write Batman? Jason Aaron is writing Ghost Rider.

I argue that Brian Wood's Batman would generate more excitement than Grant Morrison's Batman.



Yes, DC, we get it -- Teen Titans is a brand you want to "push," your X-Men.

Teen Titans, Titans, Titans Year One, Tiny Titans, Amateur Titans Go Wild, Retired Titans Adventures...

So The Perry Bible Fellowship's Nicholas Gurwitch is "retiring" from his popular webcomic.

He should write Batman.

Or at least Retired Titans Adventures.

Occasional Reviews: Buy Ms. Marvel & She-Hulk!

She Hulk #24
Writer: Peter David
Artists: Shawn Moll & Victor Olazaba

Ms. Marvel #22
Writer: Brian Reed
Artists: Aaron Lopresti & Matt Ryan

The current arcs of She-Hulk & Ms. Marvel are surprisingly introspective and sensitive works in the sense that a lot of attention is paid to the psyche of the superheroines in question. I hesitated to type the last line for fear that unless I wrote "She-Hulk becomes a celestial goddess with the mind of a fetus who is emotionally enslaved by Cosmic Spider-Man" the books might lose that all-important "mass appeal" cachet. And that would be a shame.


Which brings me to a broader (see, I said "broad," I made a funny) point --

I do not believe that superheroine comics that are not simply cheesecake vehicles can survive depending on the "usual" Wizard Magazine reader demographic alone. Comic books starring complex, strong, clothed females need a broader (puns I have a million of 'em) reader base. They need a more vocal reader base. They need a reader base that communicates with the publishers in question & let them know when they're doing it right.

Because the fact is, if books like She-Hulk, Ms. Marvel, and the current Wonder Woman and Benes-less Birds of Prey fail, they communicate to the publishers that positive superheroines don't sell books. What is even more crucial, if Birds of Prey with its new female artist Nicola Scott fails, or if Wonder Woman with scribe Gail Simone fails, that will also communicate that "women can't sell comics."


Never mind the other factors. Never mind marketing (or lack thereof). Never mind previous successful track records. I'm telling you, that's how it is perceived when the higher-ups have the numbers of sold books in their hands. And in the end, while I think the fact of the gender involved does make things a bit more complicated, it all boils down to those numbers.

But the Ms. Marvel "The Monster and the Marvel" & She-Hulk "Jaded" storylines are the sort of complex, textured character-studies of superheroines that critics complain they don't see enough of. Carol Danvers and Jennifer Walters are active, independent, and hard to pin down. They aren't mentally-fragile Suicide Girls or "full-bodied women" with the brains of newborns.


But hey..."Suicide Girls: The Comic." That would make a lot of money, wouldn't it? I mean, the idea is pure genius. And that's the tragedy of it in a nutshell. As a marketer, I know that "Suicide Girls: The Comic" would sell a million copies. It's a great license for a comic book company. It would get a ton of PR, and sell a million copies. Even if the art was so-so. They could even skip the art and go straight to a fumetti, just use photos and word balloons like those soft-core porn mags from the 1970s.
She-Hulk & Ms. Marvel could easily become cheesecake books on the level of Red Sonja and Shanna the She-Devil and sell a lot more copies. But then you soil these strong characters. Do I think in the past some of the covers of each title were devised to "reach out" to the cliche fanboy Wizard Magazine readership? Sure. Do I think DC's Catwoman has sexed-up covers by Adam Hughes in order to attract that very same readership? Sure.

But see, that strategy ultimately fails because you've enticed the readers with boobies on the cover and then there's no or not enough boobage inside. It's false advertising.


In the end, like I said, it comes down to numbers. Sales. If we do not support books like She-Hulk, Ms. Marvel, and Wonder Woman now, we cannot complain. The companies have room for only one "superheroine" book each to "carry." And those are currently Spider-girl & Manhunter. Those are good-will superheroine books that are carried by publishers irrespective, to an extent, of sales. They meet the quota. Everything else comes down to numbers.

Only when a comic book starring a white heterosexual male gets cancelled, nobody questions whether white heterosexual males can really "sell" comics.

And that's why, along with the quality of the titles, I'm pushing for Ms. Marvel & She-Hulk. Plus, it looks like Ms. Marvel might be a Skrull according to some solicitations art. And She-Hulk's sidekick is a Skrull. You like Skrulls, don't you? What role will they play in the great "Invasion" event? Ooohhh, don't you want to find out? Captain America might come back! And Irving Forbush!

Aaron Lopresti Signs With DC

Well, holy f**king s**t.

"After helping to give the look to Planet Hulk and Ms. Marvel at Marvel for the past few years, artist Aaron Lopresti is packing his bags and moving across town. The artist and DC have confirmed that Lopresti has signed an exclusive with the company, and his first work (yet unnamed) will appear in early 2008."

I'm a big Ms. Marvel fan, so this is pretty earth-shaking news for me.

"While he was naming names, Lopresti picked one out at DC to cite as the main reason for his move from Marvel to DC: Dan DiDio."

Doh!

And what about Lopresti's unnamed DC project?

"Well, I’m under the impression that it will be fun to draw and it probably fits within the context of what most people would expect me to be doing,” Lopresti said."

So it probably has a chick in it.

(counts off on fingers):

Batgirl? Supergirl?

Supergirl?

(thinks)

Power Girl?

And who will the new artist be on Ms. Marvel?

Occasional Reviews: Supergirl #23 and Ms. Marvel #21

If I had only waited to lump in my review of She-Hulk #22, we could have had a trifecta.


Supergirl #23, featuring the new creative team of Kelley Puckett, Drew Johnson, and Ray Snyder, starts out promising enough. Supergirl gets a mysterious package. What's in the box? Who gave it to her? And is Jean Loring involved? Many questions flood into your head. And then you see him. See who? Batman. But not just any Batman...stubble-faced creepy sorta crazy-looking Goddamn Batman. It's awesome. Did the editor put Goddamn Batman in on purpose? Was Drew Johnson given a stack of ASBAR to use as drawing reference? Who knows? It's not important.

Then Supergirl gets sucked into this sketchy galactic mission involving Superman and these Green Lantern dudes. It's all very colorful and Johnson's art is pretty. But it feels like a fill-in. It free-floats much as Supergirl herself does through space during most of the story. It isn't bad. It just that it's a vignette.

Drew Johnson's art isn't that much different than that of previous artist Renato Guedes, only there is a bit more hip-bone drawn in above the belt and it's not as photo-realistic. Most of it is pretty good; there are a few panels that stray into wonky territory. Snyder is a good inker for him, holds together the lines nicely.

But I can give you no real forecast or opinion on how the Puckett/Johnson era is going to be, because #23 reads like an inventory story. Maybe next month the new status quo will finally be established. Who knows? I'm still trying to get over the Goddamn Batman on page 4.
Rating: B-


With Ms. Marvel #23, Carol Danvers is back from the superheroine love-doll -- excuse me, living art -- farm in Chile just in time to have some sort of alien stick a tentacle through her spine. She becomes psychically connected to the alien, who in her mind looks like a hot blue chick with dreadlocks. Somewhere along the way, Machine Man gets a female body, continuing the meme started a few weeks ago with Hawkeye in "Marvel Zombies 2."

"Ms. Marvel" is just a good, readable comic. It's not quite Grant Morrison. But, much like the "Iron Man" monthly, if you follow it every month you get a pay off with an interesting supporting cast, a continuing story not bogged down too much with the event-of-the-hour, and a complex superheroine.

That said, a great deal of the success of "Ms. Marvel" is due to the work of artist Aaron Lopresti. Lopresti invests Carol Danvers with a very definite personality through his art. Yeah, it's a little cheesecakey at moments. But it's also very human. And I feel for Ms. Marvel through that art, those facial expressions, the way I did for "Strangers In Paradise" through Terry Moore's art. And I know that sound like the ultimate blasphemy, but it's the truth. Go look at Katchoo and Lopresti's Carol Danvers side-by-side.
Rating: B+

Should Superheroine Comics Have Sexy Covers?

I know, I know...we've only tread over this issue five billion times before. but Lisa Fortuner's post about talking to a female shop clerk about Greg Horn covers sort of brought it all back. So bear with me.

At issue is the question of whether comic books featuring superherones should have sexy covers.

And on that topic I'm thinking specifically of Adam Hughes on Catwoman, Terry Dodson on Wonder Woman, and Greg Horn on Ms. Marvel & She-Hulk.


Does a sexy Greg Horn cover immediately delegitimize a She-Hulk or Ms. Marvel book?

Do comic companies purposely assign "cheesecake" artists to draw covers of their superheroine books?

Questions, questions....

Point One: Is Greg Horn a bad artist?

No, Greg Horn is not a bad artist. He paints photo-realistic covers much in the same vein as Joe Jusko, the Hildebrandts, Frank Frazetta, and just about every other classic Sci-Fi, Adventure, and Romance paperback cover artist.


This style, while possessing a mass appeal, is not universally embraced by the more high-brow comic aficionado (with Frazetta being the possible exception). In this rejection of the photo-realistic style I see the same rejection art critics have had for "classic" realistic art versus more abstract modernist works.

Ergo, "Paul Pope is a better artist than Greg Horn."

Why?

"Pope's work is unique and fraught with deep meaning and Horn's is nothing but commercial lifeless shill."

Really?

I think some of Horn's more absurdist covers for She-Hulk & Ms. Marvel are actually quite good. For example, the "Awesome Andy" cover for She-Hulk #14. The combination of Horn's hyper-realistic style and the absolute absurdity of the cover subject matter creates a surreal, humorous effect.


I would also point to "American Gothic" cover parody for She-Hulk #12 that Lisa referenced in her Newsarama blog. I don't buy the argument of the shop clerk that the cover is ruined because Horn didn't paint She-Hulk exactly as plain as the woman in the original painting. Again, the contrast between Horn's photo-realistic style & the absurdity of the subject matter works for me.


However, Greg Horn is generally not hired to paint quirky absurdist covers. He is hired mostly to paint covers that, to a large extent, do fall under the rubric of "cheesecake."

Rather than savage him as an artist, it might be more helpful to examine why there is a need/market for these covers in the first place.

It is true: look at past and present runs of superheroine-centered books like She-Hulk, Wonder Woman, Elektra, Catwoman, Ms. Marvel, Supergirl, Emma Frost, and others, and there is a clear pattern of cheesecakey covers. (I'm not even figuring books like Lara Croft, Witchblade, Vampirella, and others of that type into the equation, since it seems like a forgone conclusion in these books that cheesecake will be a large part of the story.)


Do comic book publishers feel a need to put cheesecakey covers on their superheroine books because they're afraid that not enough men will buy them if they don't?

Do these publishers feel that they can't count on enough female readers to pick up comics about female characters -- and so they increase the odds of getting good sales by at least making the covers appealing to their biggest demographic?

Honestly? I think in some cases this is absolutely true.

But are these covers at the same time chasing away the very same female readers that publishers complain do not support the books?

She-Hulk has a new cover artist, Mike Deodato, as of issue #22. While his She-Hulk is undoubtedly beautiful & buxom, the main accent of these covers seems to be much more about Shulkie's strength and fighting ability than sex.


If you are a woman and are too embarrassed to read a She-Hulk trade or an issue of Catwoman because of the cover, what can you do?

You can give your opinions online. You can write polite e-mails & letters to Marvel & DC explaining your point of view.

But you can also bear in mind the Catch 22 in all this:

If you do not support these superheroine-centered comics because of the covers, and are not counted as readers, it only fuels the editorial belief that there are not enough female interest in these comics. And when the editor feels that there will not be enough female interest to keep this female-centered superhero comic afloat, turning to gimmicky cheesecake covers in order to stir up more male readership may happen (or outright cancellation).

Let Ms. Marvel Say It Like It Is

I was reading a blog/forum called P.O.W.E.R. In Comics Call To Action this weekend, and it made me think.

At first I had a knee-jerk reaction to one of their suggestions that readers should send to DC & Marvel a bra along with their letters of complaint as to how women are portrayed in their books.

But then I thought -- well, this blog is well-intentioned. Sending underwear to DC or Marvel is not the first line of defense I personally had in mind -- if for no other reason than you don't know who'll be taking those bras and panties home with them.

I'm suggesting that perhaps those who champion the cause of women's equality in comics might use instead the rallying cry of Ms. Marvel, as written by Chris Claremont in King-Size Avengers Annual #10.

The Avengers King-Size Annual is notable for several things -- the first appearance of Rogue, awesome Michael Golden art, and Carol Danvers's dressing down of the Avengers.

After explaining the bizarro circumstances surrounding her mind-rape and impregnation by Immortus, Carol faults her former teammates for not taking her seriously when she needed them most. It's classic Claremont angsty goodness, and I think, especially at the end of the speech, it is rather apropos (the emphasis mine):

"There I was, pregnant by an unknown source, running through a nine-month term literally overnight -- confused, terrified, shaken to the core of my being as a hero, a person, a woman

"I turned to you for help, and I got jokes. The Wasp thought it was great, and The Beast offered to play teddy bear. Your concerns were for the baby, not for how it came to be -- nor of the cost to me of that conception.

"You took everything Marcus said at face value. You didn't question, you didn't doubt. You simply let me go with a smile and a wave and a bouncy bon voyage.

"That was your mistake, for which I paid the price.

"My mistake was trusting you.

"After a trauma like mine, it's easy to wallow in bitterness and self-pity. But both grief...and guilt...have to be faced, dealt with, exorcised.

"There's more -- there has to be more -- to being heroes than simply defeating villains. You have a role, a purpose, far greater than yourselves. You represent what we should be, what we dream of becoming, not what we are.

"You screwed up, Avengers. That's human. What is also human is the ability to learn from those mistakes. To grow. To mature.

"If you do that -- even a little -- then perhaps what I went through will have a positive meaning.

"It's your choice."

Doesn't It Look Like They're Smiling On This Cover?

Also, at first I thought they were wrestling under a Christmas tree.

...

ok, I need some more coffee now. Coffee and a donut.