The Renegade's Guide to C2E2 2012.

Seemed like Lance Fensterman started loading my inbox with notices early this year, and to be honest, that made me all sorts of happy.  

The Chicago Comic and Entertainment Expo has been knocking around the convention halls of McCormick Place for just a few years now, but it seems as if it has finally become the Pop Culture Event of the City.  Actual advertisements for it are visible in train stations. Non-nerds are talking about it.  Renegade geeks are blogging about it. They have their iPads nestled between their energy drinks and stacks of comics from Wednesday. 

I remember its first year, where the panels were sparsely populated, the Brightest Day Presentation was disappointing, and Cup o Joe was a little too audience aggressive for my tastes.  But once everyone got their feet wet, it felt like the following year was more confident and abundant in nerdery. Also some very smart panels given by people of a wide variety of intellectual pursuits and cultural interests. 

The buzz generated from its presence in Chicago is palpable.  Open your window. Lean out. Hear that? Thousands of tiny boom boxes playing the intro to Torchwood.  John Barrowman and John Cusack in the same building?That's cray, yo.  There will be an organized conflict between a zombie horde and garishly costumed crime fighters? Be still my beating heart.

Like a zombie apocalypse, but smellier.

But in all seriousness, comic book conventions in Chicago deserve the grandiosity that McCormick Place provides.  It's got a palpable presence, a vastness akin to the hotel in The Shining, minus ghost bartenders and psychotic caretakers. As the popularity of C2E2 has been growing exponentially larger with each passing year, this year should be exceptional in scope.  People from all over the country will make their presence known.  Profiteers from the obscure nooks and crannies of the entertainment industry will emerge.  Synergy will run rampant.  Autographs will be sold and irrelevant dork questions will be presented at panels.  Secret geek handshakes will be offered, some taken, and the rather exceptional industries that provide us with such a wide variety of entertaining distractions will swell, briefly, like a toad in a bog.

This is not a badly taken photo. It was taken as super-speed.

But where does the renegade, that exceptional convention-goer who needs to get everywhere, do everything, find himself something of interest to browse through? Here are a few pointers for the nerd on the go.

1: Bring a Buddy.  I know this one almost goes without saying, but comic book conventions are best taken in groups of two or more.  You can cover more ground, geek out with someone over the treasured discoveries made, and more sets of eyes can pick out the best the convention has to offer.  Of course, if you're anything like me, you'll find yourself alone and attempting awkward chit chat with comics professionals. Usually it ends badly. 

2: Double check the schedule of events.  It's best to plan out your course of entry.  If you're just there to buy fifty cent back issues of Stormwatch Team Achilles from a retailer that came in from Houston, you could probably get a better deal online.  Half the heft of conventions such as these, for fans and professionals, are the panels and screenings. 

Remember, post convention dumpster diving can be an excellent source of swag.

3: The C2E2 FAQs are common sense, but if you're the sort that makes a habit of missing the point, definitely double check them.  There are also guides online concerning personal hygiene and the treatment of rashes that could prove useful.  

4: If you didn't already, besiege Lance Fensterman's Twitter account @LFensterman with questions about the bathroom sanitation standards of the convention and harangue the official show account @C2E2 over the poor quality of the local White Castle and McDonald's, then download the Official C2E2 Mobile App, which is so exclusive I won't even provide a hotlink to it.

The key is not to stop and ask for people to pose for photos, but to wait until other people do.

5: If you want to go that extra mile and pre-plan to the minute, just to squeeze all the spontaneity out of the event but infuse all the good texture of quasi-intellectualism, try checking out the handy show planner that the organizers have designed for technologically enabled individuals.  Remember that panels are all located on Level 4. 

6: Like so many odd locations along the lakefront in Chicago, McCormick Place is not the easiest place for some people to get to. Sure, you can get off at Chinatown and do the character-building trek that is walking the rest of the way, or cram cash into a cab driver's hands and hope for the best, but there is a free shuttle service for Nerds in the Know. You can find the schedules and locations here. 

7: Remember, this place will drain the money right out of you.  Take advantage of free energy drink samples.  Bring your own everything, within reason. Don't bring guns, weapons, or things that look like guns and weapons. Unless they are made of flimsy cardboard. In which case, totally bring them.

And if you are posing for photographs at C2E2, make certain you're using the buddy system.

8: Remember, you're here to have fun. If I hear about another fight between cosplay freaks, I'll find you.  That said, if you're coming in costume, you better be ready to represent, because the competition at C2E2 will be deadly. Contests will be held daily.

9: For those of you 21 or older, there is a bar at C2E2, specifically, the Hyatt attached to McCormick Place, run by the fine people at Comic Book Resources.  Sure, overpriced drinks with names like "Unstoppable Force" sound cool, but in reality this is a spot where you hope to find some celebrity level comic book creator knocking back one too many and telling you what he really thinks of Stan "the Man" Lee.

10: You want autographs, right? Of course you do. Well the place to be is the IGN Theater, located in room S100 on Level 1 of McCormick right after you come in the front doors.

Other items of note: the effervescent Jhonen Vasquez will be present at C2E2, and rumor has it that he LOVES PIE.  What you should do is bake a pie, any variety whatsoever will do.  Bring them to the Jhonen Vasquez Q & A (Sample question: "So what's it like living off Invader Zim residuals?") and, when presenting them to him, just run at him full speed. Try not to trip.

Also: A strange rumor has started, completely unfounded, right here, that superhero Ryan Gosling, who will be playing Dr. Hank Pym in the Avengers 2 (total lie) may be visiting the convention on Friday, on his way to meet with Oprah Winfrey to consult over the next phase of his hair and feminist-saving agenda.  Be on the look out. And remember. Before you go convention hopping. Wash.

Yes, that is a banana in his holster. Yes, he is glad to see you. Yes, you. With the beard.

A Convoluted Digression concerning the Braddocks

Marvel Maniacs be warned: Spoilers ahead.  

We will in the course of this entry be examining the Braddock family and commenting on the most recent developments in their lives.  This will not be an intensive examination, so certain details may not be mentioned, while others will be closely scrutinized.   

Betsy Braddock, also known as Psylocke, entered the X-Men during the fabled Chris Claremont era. She was a telepathic precognitive with a moral code informed by aristocratic British sensibilities, her powers manifesting as pink butterfly effects and psychic knives.  Her conservatism was evidenced for some time by her dress sense (below) and general avoidance of outright mind control.  Of course, she did kill use her psionic powers to convince the X-Men to kill themselves once, to avoid being butchered by cyborgs... 

Pre-skank.

... which led in to a rather patchy plot device of the sort that Claremont was so fond of in his soap opera-like run with those wacky mutants.  The Siege Perilous. When one passes through this mystic gem/gateway, one is transformed according to the judgments of mysterious cosmic forces and teleported back to Earth, often naked and suffering from amnesia.  This may sound akin to an unfortunate night at a Fraternity, but is it convoluted enough? No.  A Japanese crime lord's lover, Kwannon, fell off a cliff, suffering brain damage she'd never recover from.  This same crime lord discovered the returned Psylocke washed up on shore, and with the help of a six armed magician named Spiral (who worked for an interdimensional television network that had been using Betsy's bionic eyes as cameras for a show about the X-Men) brought his lover back, only mind-swapped with Betsy.  So we've officially transitioned into the realm of the almost inexplicable and utterly ridiculous.  But we do get a very different Betsy Braddock out of all this convolution.  She's got a ninja assassin edge to her now, and what's more, she lost her sense of modesty at some point during that whole Siege (Rohipnol) Perilous experience.  So g-strings and skin-tight outfits are go.

She puts the "ass" in "Ninja Assassin".

We're not even going to get into the part where she discovers the woman she swapped bodies with contracted the Legacy virus, or the part where gets disemboweled by Sabertooth and is cured by a magic potion and can suddenly teleport through shadows, but it should be noted that at a certain point she falls into a romantic relationship with founding X-Man Angel, which is well developed in the series Uncanny X-Force, but is for the moment besides the point.  Let's get into the details of Betsy's twin brother, Brian.  That's right. Twins. Even though he's a blond and she had purple hair her whole life.  Whatever.

Brian Braddock is one of the most insufferable pricks in the Marvel Universe.  His whole life was handed to him on a silver platter.  Needless to say, we have his father James to thank for this.  Turns out there's this little thing called the Multiverse, of which the Marvel Universe we known and love is only the 616th iteration, and which is accessible most efficiently through a transitive plane known as Otherworld, or Avalon, a mystical realm of super-significance that doesn't actually matter whatsoever.  Turns out that James was sent to Earth-616 on a mission to breed by Merlyn, or Merlin, yes, that Merlin, who it turns out is Sorcerer Supreme of Otherworld, or Avalon, depending on which writer remembers Otherworld exists in the first place.  James Braddock, being your standard supergenius comic book father, designs an organic supercomputer in his basement to monitor his progress and sets about the difficult task of breeding superhumans.  Years later, Brian was out on a date (for once) when his father's organic supercomputer killed his parents and made it look like a lab accident.  Then Brian got in a car wreck and was presented with a choice between a giant sword and an amulet. Like the chump he is, he picked the amulet and got loaded down with a suit that gave him superpowers.  He became Captain Britain, which fit the outfit's flag motif, and wandered around trying desperately to seem useful and special, even rooming with Peter Parker as an exchange student at one point, and fighting contrived British villains with stupid names and powers.  When it seemed silly to writers that he was just some guy with a suit (thus being a lame knock-off of Iron Man and Captain America simultaneously, "cosmic significance" notwithstanding and minus military training or super-genius) the cosmic benefactors that manipulated him into existence granted him powers that derived from the "friction between universes", which sounds much cooler than it actually is. All he's ever used it for is to punch things and generate force-fields.  Or similar stupid crap.  His powers have changed fifty times in desperate editorial efforts to make him seem significant.    

I mean really. Look at this prick.

Whenever Captain Britain seemed to have a stable sense of existence, things would be shaken up, because nobody likes him, not even the people that write or draw him.  He can't do anything right.  Ever.  Example: early on in his career, he got into a fight with his future wife, the shape-shifting Meggan, and ended up accidentally killing one of her friends.  He ended up just being the whiniest punk about the whole thing.  Later, he tried to lead Excalibur, the lamest superhero team of any reality, ever, and ironically the one somehow tasked to deal with alternate reality nonsense and cosmic incursions, which should be cool and important.  It turns out, in fact, that Roma, the female counterpart to Merlyn, inflicted a "blunder jinx" on Brian to negate his effectiveness when acting alone.  Which makes absolutely no sense whatsoever, except to explain why Captain Britain was, is, and will always be the lamest character in the entire Marvel Universe.  Did I mention the Captain Britain Corps?  They guard all variations of Britain in the various universes.  The convolutions of Captain Britain's back-story acted for years as a sort of editorial kiss of death for any writer unfortunate enough to receive him as a character, or any artist with the onerous task of redesigning his costume.  Fashion sense in the Braddock household is quite a disturbing and often perverse thing.  Which brings us to the eldest Braddock, Jamie. 

Clearly not a fan of clothing.

James "Jamie" Braddock Jr. is the other mutant in the family, though ten years older than his siblings.  He's of the "schizophrenic and possessing reality warping powers" ilk of villain, always a popular trope to explore, but unfortunately always a failure in terms of actual execution.  For whatever reason, just like the Beyonder before him, cosmic reality altering menaces such as Jamie, limited as they are only by their imagination's scope and intrinsic frailties are, well, always disappointingly limited.  In poor Jamie's case, he was a race car driver (yes, of course) who got mixed up with the Maggia (the Marvel Universe's attempt to thinly veil the word "Mafia") and then, while being purged of his intrinsic evil (because these things happen when you insist on wearing only a white Speedo and ankle bracelets) unlocked his inner schizo-reality-warper.  Of course, despite all this, it took roughly five minutes and one well-placed psychic knife to take him out.  He popped into a coma at some point, then a very vague sequence of time wherein he helped Captain Britain out, in a pinch, since Brian's so freaking useless. Jamie was shuffled under the paperwork of reality, and at some point reformed, off-panel.  Which brings us to his most recent appearance in the pages of Uncanny X-Force.

My question is: who designs their outfits?

Uncanny X-Force is one of the best titles to hit Marvel in recent time.  Imagine if the dream Xavier had of a world where peaceful coexistence between man and mutant was undercut by the covert actions of a crack squad of the Marvel Universe's deadliest mutants pulling jobs that all the brightly colored hero types couldn't stomach.  Their first mission is to assassinate a resurrected Apocalypse, who it turns out is just a little boy.  Psylocke doesn't want them to do the kid in for something he has not become yet.  Faux-French Weapon Thirteen Fantomex puts a sentient bullet in the kid's forehead and that's that.  Except everyone involved reacts to it on an emotional level.  Psylocke actually provides herself with a little confessional booth psychotherapy session in the Danger Room, where she confesses her sins to Brian.

That face he makes is worth the death of an evil child, any day of the week.

Of course, once the Captain Britain Corps catch wind of Fantomex killing Kid Apocalypse, they nab him, drag him to Otherworld, put him through a quick trial, and order his execution.  Fun side-note: Fantomex is wholly unique in the Marvel Universe, in that he has no parallel version on any reality.  Of course that's dangerous to the Captain Britain Corps, since they're so lame they need countless alternate selves to pick up the slack for each other.

Villains reforming in the Marvel Universe is an old concept, especially among the mutant population. 

It's fitting, in a way, that Jamie Braddock is the prosecutor in Fantomex's trial.  His reform as reality-bending schizoid into the fold of Otherworld's bureaucratic hodge-podge perfectly fits the convoluted roller-coaster of the Braddock family.  Clearly their father James had high hopes for the boy, who you know damn well is still wearing that super-tight Speedo under his billowing white robes. 

Don't you just wanna slap him?

There is a brief moment between Betsy and Brian where we establish that the Braddocks actually have psychic links to one another, through her.  Also, at some point it seems that Jean Grey, who's been dead for close to a decade in real time, amplified Betsy's powers.  Of course Brian knows everything, and of course he, along with all the other Captain Britains of Otherworld, hold the wholly unique Fantomex in contempt for it.  Flawed justice systems such as this are all that hold the Multiverse together, right?

Gotta love that British sense of tradition, ey wot?

And in one page, we have a most masterful example of comic book storytelling.  We have character development, foreshadowing, and realistically paced natural dialogue.  Brian's admiration and love for his brother, Jamie's influence on Betsy, and Betsy's natural predilection for killing are all here, in one page. It establishes, on page one, what is to follow. And every contrivance that came before it, every convoluted plothole and misdirected characterization, is somehow worth it.  When Betsy frees Fantomex, it's in the midst of an invasion by an evil Goat Wizard Monk thing that has been assaulting the Tower Omniverse and hacking the Captain Britain Corps to pieces, then reanimating them.  At a certain point it's established that the Goat possesses three Orbs of Power that are already present and accounted for in the Tower.  So who is this goat and how can he have three artifacts that cannot be physically replicated?When Betsy touches the Goat's mind, she finds the answer.

Of course.

Now as we mentioned before, X-Force has come a long way from the Liefeld days where the team name was coined.  This is the team that gets their hands dirty in ways that nobody else will or even can. The Goat Demon is consuming millions of souls every minute.  Jamie is the Goat, and a proxy in many ways of the child Apocalypse, such that he's guiltless, but predestined for atrocity. Psylocke enters into Captain Britain's mind and tells him what he has to do.  When he refuses, she mentally dominates him, then forces him to break his own brother's neck like a chicken for suppertime.

She told them both that she loved them as she did it, too.

Sure enough, the Goat Demons invading the Tower Omniverse vanish, screaming "Our line, erased!"  Holding his dead brother in his arms, weeping like a big Union Jack coated baby, Brian insists that they could have found another way.  Betsy feels completely justified in her actions.  Millions were dying by the second.  Countless realities were saved.  There was no other choice.

The parallels between the action that Fantomex was on trial for and the actions that Psylocke took are obvious.  Looking even deeper, the pragmatic cruelty of using her twin brother as a murder weapon against her elder one shows that Betsy Braddock has evolved greatly from her days of simply forming knives and butterflies, a frail character for the background or, at best, ass-cheek eye candy.  We've not even explored that prior to these events she wiped out her lover's mind after he turned evil.  From fluff to skank to emotionally rich and somewhat tortured individual, Betsy Braddock has come a long way in terms of characterization.  Brian, who's now a Secret Avenger, will be forced to deal with his own role and failings in this event, and chilly encounters between these two will be interesting for competent writers to explore in the future.  As for Jamie, the villain who reformed, the reality-bender who got his neck snapped, we can rest assured of one thing and one thing alone.  He will return.  Nobody stays dead in the Marvel Universe except Uncle Ben.

A few words

I could quote a series of intellectual elites that have seen the value of the sequential artform that has come to be known as comics, but the fact of the matter is, the biggest obstacle to the matter is also the solution. Superheroes.  With the recent DC initiative called We can be Heroes, the company is discussing providing aid to the ailing.

So what is a superhero?  Heroes arise from the humblest men.  Superheroics has been thoroughly dissassembled since Alan Moore's Watchmen. Is Nietzsche's overman what comes to mind, perhaps? The superhuman passes a moral tipping point at some point in every universe they manifest in, because they are no longer truly human.  Laws of physics sometimes don't apply to them, so how could rule of law? The matter of caste system immediately arises if the superhuman becomes a certain percentage of the population. This antagony arising from "You think you're better than me?" arguments arises on media and over the dinner table.  Buzzwords infiltrate conversation. Internet slang proliferates.  The future becomes the now, and tomorrow becomes today.  We design edifices of acronyms and false equivalencies, hoping that the next step will bring greater understanding.

But this is all tangential to the nature of comics the medium, infiltrating all media, potentially the freest artform in and of itself, and most of all the univerality that arises from comics.  Perhaps you'd be best served calling the subject bande dessinee, or drawn strips? Pull forth from the froth of those that came before, the Winsor McCays and Krazy Kat Ignatz genuises that designed and delineated our time in the first place.  The genius of the medium itself lends us to new innovations, always. Superheroes and comic books are complimentary because the comic book medium is the most superior and yet juvenile form of art in existence, the optimistic young go-getter with potential as-yet untapped.

In the end the best comic is one you can put on your shelves and be satisfied with.  But a book is merely bound sheets of paper.  Strips of glyphs. 

On Quotes, Picasso, Warhol, Genius, & Country Matters

“Good Artists Borrow, Great Artists Steal”

“Immature Poets Borrow. Mature Poets Steal.”

I have had these two quotes knocking about in my head for a while, live-ins that have overstayed their welcome.  The first we attribute to Picasso, the latter to T.S. Eliot.  Stravinsky has his own variation.  It takes time to understand these statements, to get at their marrow, though they seem simple enough.

Art is a mystery to anyone outside of the maybe those twenty or so people claiming to have a cohesive grip on the Art World, whatever kaleidoscopic chimera it happens to be at this moment, whether it’s nostalgic/romantic, natural/contrived, passive/reactionary, or sublime/vacant.

The greatest joke in Picasso’s statement is that he very clearly wanted to be associated with the Artist as Genius archetype (and nobody but a few bitter unknowns in Postmodernism’s soup here, well after he’s been dead for decades, dare to argue against his embodying that). His definition of artist extended into the poetic and musical arts, whereas public education has, for America, at least, marginalized it into a hobby.  Humans need art, I cannot stress that enough. It’s food. Stored information on a sunbeam of thought, a record of a thought’s passing. The human story is so simple it seems complex, and the devil is as always in the details, but one should recall that a letter is only a symbol, a word only a character, a sentence only a section of canvas, a layer of gesso first, then a well-worn trope dollop of this color or that. Let the devil worry about the details. What style of painting would you consider this short essay?  Rococco purple prose?  Minimalist realism?  Abstract Expressionism underscored with Dadaist wit and Imagist sensibilities? 

Genius is misunderstood in our times as it has been in all times and sadly will be in most times to come.  

Dreamers are marginalized for the sake of fools and sociopaths that inerited their shameless mother’s verbiage and calculatingly mean father’s sense of entitlement. Often limited to associated patterns (imprints) set up by those that came before them, the populace as a whole struggles with the sheer stupidity of excess that is provided them by modern convenience. If you want a Q.E.D. on that, look out a window.

Picasso was one of the final geniuses of the Modern art world, and his kind no longer exists. Most burned out, shot themselves, or faded away like family postcards.  Sad but sweet.  

Warhol made it acceptable for the Artist to Not be a genius, and with his “factory” he fulfilled the promise that the Industrial Revolution & (following WW II) the Plastics Revolution made, effectively that nobody is special, but slightly varied wholly interchangeable components of a great and merciless machine that runs society for the sake of profit and prestige. But that’s cool, that can be worthwhile if the material excess is your game, as the New Archons start inculcating a whole new generation of artists with tacky kitsch advertising that owes its roots to everything that fateful Campbell’s Soup Can represents.

You can hardly blame Warhol for the resulting Revolution of Lowered Expectations. If it hadn’t been him, it would have been someone else. The same could be said of Hitler or Bush.  Shills are corrosive when they are in power. Reactions such as black presidents or stock market crashes occur when a corporate stooge instigates needless conflict in the name of a prophet whose name was been abused repeatedly since the Holy Roman Empire came into being.   

With the rise of new technologies and interfaces there are now numerous means of producing the Ultimate Cool.  The responsibility is staggering.  The collective imagination is such that certain areas in the shallower regions stagnate and compromise the entirety of the deeper, stiller regions.  

Those that access the ocean of Art World are usually open minded, and they react according to the parameters indoctrinated into them by their family and their friends and their social expectations, just like a closed minded person would, but often with a better sense of humor.  The voice of the closed minded are staggering but in truth very minimal in scope. They cannot rewrite a history based on light particles and keyboards.  The future will bring more shame to the closed minded, in a historical sense. 

The only cure for this malady I can prescribe may be the revival of an old archetype, that of Artist as Magician, though on the more exoteric levels of the Art World, one can easily see how information media is already pervasive enough that, even if at times somewhat ignorant, the common man cannot claim innocence to searching for that in his media.  Harry Potter and various other fantastic characters from books and movies inhabit an adult’s dreamtime as well as those of children.  

The cynical old man or the optimistic young one would perhaps come to blows on this issue, given proper inclination and circumstance, but how is it that a middle-aged man who has never so much as entered a museum in his life may, upon observing a post-Warhol piece, let’s say an enormous example of abstract expressionist painting, say something to the effect of “Hell, I could do that.”

This man doesn’t take into account that artist was able to create this or that work only at great personal expense, believing in this or that benefactor, conceding this or that ideal for the sake of a commission or a show.  The man that says “Hell, I could do that” hasn’t been shaken by art and thus does not understand art because he has better things, more practical things to think about.  This is one of the reasons why Dada died & Surrealism grew to the point that it saturated the worldwide thought-currents, impacting the following century of advertising, design and illustration overall.  

People are strange and stupid and mean, as the whole.  Hobbes is oft quoted as referring to human life as “nasty, brutish, and short”. People as a whole are not prone to enjoy ideals beyond their grasps, but rather, to become frustrated and even frightened by them. This is proven time and again throughout the Internet, an aggressively growing entity that a whole new generation of people have lived with for their entire lives.  In the years where the future seemed bleak, I call on the Artist to shake people awake. Don’t you understand? Don’t you remember?  The future is now. Today is quite obviously tomorrow.  It should but doesn’t go without saying that Art is forever bonded to humanity.  I cannot stress this enough.  The scope of its impact on  the collective imagination can be found in elemental traces one may identify within all the forms of media humans consume.  

Just as the consumption of high calorie sweet treats may rot the teeth, so it would seem that in many cases the consumer mindset, wholly abhorrent to most truly creative efforts due to its being a democratically stymied system, has rotted down to the nerve. Overstimulated, cold is too cold, lukewarm is perfect. 

The efforts of a handful of old men have led us on a limited run high-stakes rigged game up until this point, gamblers and salesmen, confidence men with a very deliberate brain-washing schemes, their method of approach unsustainable but seemingly irreplaceable due to the very powerful sedatives provided in our drinking water and by our doctors, but we have to bear in mind that though it is a terrible game, it’s the only game in town.  

Sedation has its advantages for profiteers. For instance, any number of unfulfillable delusions or worries concerning one’s station and purpose and debt can be washed away by the warm glow of cable television. You can tone down your dreams until they’re monochrome, lower your expectations to the point of dramatic refusal to participate at all, though even inaction has its consequences.

But I digress, wander into a briar patch, fall into a ditch. No.

In light of the Obama Hope Poster/Shepard Fairey incident (in which we should stress he told NPR he recouped expenses and used the rest to make more prints and donate them) and having read the commentary and criticism from various vitriolic pundits in the internet’s Peanut Gallery, I put forth a point that few Doctors of English will argue with, simply that Shakespeare did not write every line of his work.  All right? Can you guys please understand how that worked? He was a Master of Form and composition, true.  But he and most of his fellow playrights adapted and outright stole from one another.  Overall he was able to use his pilfered portions to tell the essence of Old myths and histories and address the time and place in which he lived.  Even in a time when the populace at large was illiterate and filthy (in our own times, voluntarily so), creativity did not stagnate. True, copyists are eternal as art itself, and we are regurgitating Shakespeare in awkward clips and have been for centuries, but we moved well beyond that, didn’t we?  Language evolved, like you do.  

Creativity is subjective, as are All Things.  One does not escape themselves.  An artist does not steal as a thief.  An artist captures the essence of something, Anything at all, and reflects it at an audience, participating as scientists in an experiment, waiting for a reaction to occur.  If one is dishonest in their artwork, it will either show or they will be uncovered as hacks, frauds, or worst of all completely unoriginal fools.  

If they’re able to mix equal parts charisma and courage, working the industry to their advantage, manage scheduling with the galleries, all the things you’d expect, then perhaps they’ll get a break from some kind-hearted patron or foundation, one of these few gifted people will stand out from people who have to hone their honesty to be noticed.   

Twitter has Exploded over Before Watchmen

Carefully examined by numerous industry professionals, the events after the announcement of DC producing a series of prequel comics based on Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons' Watchmen.

Some artists did not want to get the press that would hit them over this.  It's an intimidating project on several fronts. Back when Watchmen hit the scene, it acheived, loosely speaking, status as a type of Bible amongst geeks. A little later Neil Gaiman's The Sandman series filled the role of Shakespeare.  Remember Brave New World? Anyway.

The twitterverse has an intricate and closely monitored network of comic book industry professionals, and each one chimed in at some point on the issue. Fans emotional range was disgusted to apathetic to vaguely interested.  The joke of course being that they hand picked some very fine comic professionals to do the job, people who have credible resumes with various big project accomplishments. They are close to legends in some cases, like the riddle-monger of 100 Bullets fame, Brian Azzarello, and in other departments we have the accomplished Jae Lee and early era DC revisionist Darwyn Cooke.

All of this is of course par for the course when it comes to Alan Moore, a pioneer of the industry.




Moore ultimately seeks to advance comic books along the lines of literature, akin to but much more intense than his once-Miracleman-co-writer Neil Gaiman to infuse and mature comic books as a whole.  Moore seeks to advance the medium from his place of power in Northampton.  What he refers to as draconian contracts were in fact standard boiler plate for comics professionals for some time.

He was smart enough to build beautiful work after his runs with Mainstream professionals.

He's refined like a bottle of wine in a gentlemen's club cellar in London.

We'll just see how the whole thing turns out, eh?

Gaiman and McFarlane have reached a settlement in their decade-old Spawn copyright lawsuit

The Washington Post noted it here.

Todd McFarlane has gone on record as the most egotistical trash to emerge from the 1990's comic "boom"... rather a businessman more than a standard industry "grunt"...a glory hog and foolish. He got sued for using a Canadian hockey player's name in his Spawn series as a mafia stereotype. Todd McFarlane's a rich jerk.

Neil Gaiman exists as one of the most diverse and interesting writers to emerge from the more independently oriented version of that same industry "boom", and stands by the idea, rather unlike McFarlane, that writers and artists, regardless of ego, split down the middle any rights on any character created in the course of a given series, if said series is driven by the credo of "creator's rights". Neil Gaiman, also no doubt rich, is one of the nicest people working in the industry.

I am pleased that the matter is over, and hope that both parties know better than to ever deal with each other again.

One-line reviews of the New 52

Action Comics presents a new take on Superman, fighting corruption in a darker than usual fashion.

Animal Man draws on aspects of Swamp Thing, with fantastic art and a compelling storyline.

Batman and Robin provides us with an expansion of the troubled relationship between Batman and his newly introduced son Damian.

Demon Knights offers bloody violence in the Dark Ages, with an ensemble cast of characters.

Frankenstein, Agent of S.H.A.D.E. is that perfect fusion of superheroics and monsters you never knew you were missing.

Sinestro schools Hal Jordan in the new Green Lantern series.

DC seems determined to prove Aquaman is some sort of badass, as evidenced in the new JLA.

Justice League Dark calls together all the occult heroes to fight magical threats.

The  (soon to be cancelled) Mister Terrific series was a surprising pleasure to read.

Jack Hawksmoor, the King of Cities, consults with Paris, Metropolis and Gotham in the new Stormwatch series.

Villains fighting for redemption take the stage in the new Suicide Squad.

Swamp Thing may prove to be the most important series emerging in the New 52.

The final Review written in 2011 (Grant Morrison's Flex Mentallo)

You've been participating in the world's first fully interactive quantum comic book, starring us! 

I discovered my secret magic hero word in a crossword puzzle my future self passed me. 

2012 is the year of many endings and the one beginning. 

Thank you for your participation. I love you. Look up!

A Quick Review of Wolverine and the X Men Issues One and Two

Post Civil War, the Marvel Universe has been in the market to shake things up considerably every few months in terms of character development and overarching "big change for reals" story-lines.

Also, Wolverine is everywhere.  The Avengers, Uncanny X Force, X Men, his own title, multiple mini-series, a new animated cartoon, and every single cover of Wizard the Guide to Comics ever printed.

It should come as no surprise then that one of the new X-titles to make its way onstage claims a "bold new direction" for mutantkind as well as featuring our favorite vertically-challenged Canadian with an indestructible skeleton.

Wolverine and the X Men is, on its surface, the natural outcome of the Schism story-line that ran itself into the ground anticlimactically a scant few months ago. The plot for that so-called "Civil War of mutants" was pretty pat and shook the few remaining mutants of the world up, ever so slightly.  A new generation of the Hellfire Club (literally children) opened itself up to not simply exterminating mutants but making a tidy profit off the fears of mankind with the latest Sentinel tech, a tried but true X-trope (see: Claremont's Nimrod, Morrison's nano-Sentinels).  When the latest "suitcase" Sentinel is aimed at Utopia, the last bastion of mutant hope just off the Pacific coast, a rift between Wolverine and Cyclops emerges, interestingly enough with Cyclops taking the more militant position, and Wolverine seeking to follow Xavier's old premise of a "school for gifted youngsters".

After some unnecessarily proverbial team-divvying around a metaphorical campfire, the new title is born, rejuvenating the long-bombed-out Westchester County mansion.  Hope is a scarce thing in the Marvel Universe, on a best day.  Wolverine calls in Shadowcat, Beast, Iceman, Husk, Doop and others as teachers and administrators, and populates the school with all the easy-to-relate-to quirky mutant teens floating in editorial limbo since the school was last blown up.

The initial issue starts with the seemingly mundane task of passing an inspection by the state board of education.  Predictably, things go sour from the start.     Second one features a new leimotif common enough in Marvel these days: Pym particles mixed with bioengineering, replicating a power or a creature, Sauron and Wendigo, Frankensteins with Flame Throwers. Chris Bacchalo's art is the sort of complicated scenework that keeps fanboys rereading.   His expressions have always been down (evidences available for Logan and Oya) but he seems to have expanded his sense of motion since Generation X and his work in the Ultimate Universe.  The writing is fluid if predictable. Playing on obscure tropes like the Living Island Krakoa, keeping pace with new concepts such as Danger Room being a constant hardlight physical challenge, Professor X's dry humor regarding the eventual and seemingly inevitable destruction of the school.

All in all, the title shows great promise, despite Wolverine's overexposure at all times. Give the snail's pace of art and plot a few months, we may see something pan out in the Kid Omega subplot, followed by more problems with the Marvel Evil Youth League popping up all over.

Speaking of popping up everywhere, please note the Nightcrawler imps Bacchalo has a blast drawing, mentioned ever so casually by Hank McCoy, the supposed ace-in-the-hole candidate to charm the inspectors, shortly before hurling a coffee pot at them.

But more than that we can see the expansion of Bobby Drake, Iceman, via actions taking place in a recent issue of Uncanny X Force, another winning blend of good art and complex plot that takes no prisoners.  Iceman defeats the Frankenstein soldiers using a multiple man trick, expanding his consciousness into avatars.  Rachel Summers seems somewhat free of her usual clumsiness in a plot, Kitty Pride is a Jewish goddess, and Doop of the old X-Statix team would seem to be in charge of Registration.  There are throwbacks to the Sh'iar in the arrival of old egomaniac Gladiator himself with the introduction of his son and bodyguard...

The writer and artist have found a competent inker, a good crew of colorists, and a couple dozen interns to churn out this particular pile.  Their villain is children, seemingly growing more common in Marvel 616, with his own secret assassin squad in Uncanny X Force having murdered a reincarnated child form of Apocalypse which would inherit at accursed villain packed with Celestial technology.  But not really, because Fantomex, AKA Weapon XIII, misdirected everyone into thinking that was what happened, and has seen fit to keep En Sabah Nur in a laboratory protected by Weapon XV. Right. Meanwhile?

Wolverine's constant exposure pays off greater dividends, surely, or they wouldn't farm him out so much.  Touches for characters like poor Toad, old veteran of all the incarnations of the Brotherhood of Mutants... he's gone through so many changes over the decades, and if there is one thing in this new series relevant enough to note is that Toad's a janitor. Finally. At last.

And the toilets shoot fire.

Four and a half stars out of five for the inevitable delay of the book. Bacchalo takes forever to draw. But he's worth the wait.

A Quick Review of Alan Moore's League of Extraordinary Gentlemen

If you were to ask me my personal opinion of what Alan Moore's enduring legacy as a writer will prove to be, I'd be straightforward. In my opinion it's his run with League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.

The evidence speaks for itself.  The initial serial exploits of this League were compiled into two volumes, and after a long wait the Black Dossier arrived (with 3D glasses!).  Now, via Top Shelf, the latest (though hopefully not final) three part series runs through the amalgamated literati universe inhabited by the very fictions we have as a culture cultivated, to be adapted, patch-worked like a fine quilt, in the manner with which we have become accustomed to the Northampton magician.

The initial premise sounds like a promising pitch, collecting classic characters such as Captain Nemo, the Invisible Man, Dr. Jekyll and his Mr. Hyde, colonial hero Alan Quartermain, and set them under the direction of Wilhelma Murray (once the focus of Dracula's affections, if you recall), all in the service to late 19th century England, God save the queen, etc.  Coupled with the supremely talented Kevin O' Neil (of Judge Dredd fame), Moore sets these gaslamp understudies in adventures that at the outset play with conventions of literary heavyweights, icons that got to play opposite of Abbot and Costello.  Moore is a writer who likes playing with the toys of others, so to speak, in a world where many, and perhaps all fictions Moore is aware of, in some capacity, collide, coagulate in an ancient and more resonant sense of storytelling.  Cut him or any other writer free of restrictions, and if they're smart, talented, driven, or all of the above, they'll stay consistent and prolific.