Just something I'd like to see

Not that I want to add fuel to the fires of deconstruction, but there's still a trope out there I don't care for.

It's a pretty classic story, not one that's used too much anymore, but one I like to talk about. It's the "we must restore the King to the Throne!' story.

Usually, some evil warlord/barbarian invader takes over Atlantis/Attlian/Wakanda/where ever, and the heroes have to help their friend get back his "rightful" throne.

This only works for the following reasons:

1) The ousted royal(s) are friends of our heroes, the protagonists.
2) The "usurpers" are invariably more evil the ousted royal(s). They are harsher to the citizenry, insane, etc.
3) Because it's a common trope of fantasy fiction that dates back from an age where royalty mattered.

What's never really addressed, though its certainly under the surface in stories like these, is that the heroes are restoring a (benevolent) dictatorship. Which is a bit odd for American superheroes set in the modern era. Never mind that in many cases (i.e. Aquaman, Black Panther), the monarch tends to leave the country so they can go adventuring across the world and time and space instead of, you know, their job. Whatever your politics, you'd probably be a bit annoyed if the President of the United States spent 80% of his time outside the country, say, fighting robots from Mars because that's not what he's elected to do.

So, what would happen if a popular uprising of people back in the king's homeland came to power with the intention to install a democratic system? Would a superhero team like the Justice League of AMERICA help their friend go back to being an absentee ruler?

The other really disturbing factor about these stories is that implies very heavily that there is no other persons or parties or factions that could run said nation. Which have some negative connotations about that society, as well as the royals themselves.

Just a thought.

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What if we lived in a comic book universe? Part 107

Some Reflections on Grant Morrison's online commentary

So, over the last couple years, comic writer person Grant Morrison has said some things that I find...perplexing. So, let's talk about them.


From his afterword to the first issue of Mark Waid's Irredeemable, where he suggested that fans had pigeon holed Mr. Waid as "Mr. Silver Age" and himself as "Incomprehensible Mad Ideas Man". Well, I'm ust going to look up Mark Waid's wiki entry for a second here.

-Co-created the "Elseworlds" concept of stories. Which is really just a longform version of the Silver Age "Imaginary Stories."
-Revived the Silver Age Archie heroes.
-Effectively created the "Flash Dynasty", an in so doing, popularized the Dynastic superhero configuration. Of course, one can see the "Superman family" in this, but I'll let that slide.
-The Definitive Wally West stories, which also served to lionize Silver Age character Barry Allen. This one's a maybe.
-Kingdom Come, which in large part can be viewed as tale displaying the superiority of Silver Age values over 80s and 90s Anti-heroism.
-His Captain America run, which, among other things, brought back Steve Rogers' love interest from the Silver Age, as well as long absent Silver Age materials such as the Cosmic Cube.
-Presided over two reboots of the Legion of Superheroes that effectively tried to bring them back to their Silver Age roots, though the first was clearly more Silver Age influenced than the second.
-JLA: Year One and Flash/Green Lantern: the Brave and the Bold, which dwelt on Silver Age stories.
-Restoration of "The Brave and the Bold" series.
-The "Silver Age" crossover event from 2000
-And the restoration of the Lex/Clark Silver Age dynamic from "Superman: Birthright."


So, perhaps it isn't safe to make a blanket generalization of Mr. Waid, but it's also not fair to say that he doesn't incorporate a LOT of Silver Age material into his work.

As for Morrison's we have a few question marks, I suppose:
-The end of "For Tomorrow" from your X-Men run
-Final Crisis
-The end of "The Return of Bruce Wayne".
-Seven Soldiers
-and of course, the Invisibles and the Filth.

So while yes, broad generalizations are bad, it's not unfair to say there are patterns to call attention to.

And when it comes to broad generalizations, Mr. Morrison doesn't seem to have the same problem, oddly. Both in that statement, and a recent excerpt from his book, he makes quite a few assumptions about his fanbase. These are quite negative, and it strikes me as a bad idea to possibly annoy your customers in such economic times as these. Also, as far as "Superhumanly Angry" goes, well, given he's made several such statements as these over the last three years at least, it would be fair to question whether or not he was projecting.

Finally, and I apologize that I don't have the link, and that I'm not sure if this should be attributed to Mr. Morrison or someone else at DC, but during the most recent San Diego Comicon, someone (and I do believe it was Mr. Morrison, but someone could correct me here), stated that the idea of Martha Kent sewing the Superman costume was "a bit ridiculous".

Now, just as a lark, I polled a few of my non-comics-reading friends - these would be people who could buy a comic, or at the very least, would buy tickets to movies, buy DVDs, and such. I aske them.

"Which of the Following is the most ridiculous:

A) A superhero having his costume made by his mother?

B) An alien with superhuman powers that looks identical to Caucasians?

C) An alien who claims to be solar powered, despite that the energy required to exert his powers in most instances is greater than the sum of all the solar light energy that could be harnessed over an area of several square miles?

D) That the world's greatest investigative reporter could be fooled by a pair of glasses and some method acting for years on end?"

I'll save everyone the trouble: D was the only answer I got from anyone. Actually, most of the responses I got went something like, well, this (Click to enjoy).

Now, this isn't to take away from Morrison's good work - there is a bit of it I quite like. However, one should consider strengths and weaknesses in a writer's approach and his opinions.

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Gamer Posters A-Go-Go!

Why the Avengers movie might tank

Yes yes, I know - The teaser trailer was awesome and Joss Whedon and How Dare I and blah de blah de blah.

Yesterday's post on Green Lantern should have been a clue here as to what the problem might be.

The problem: The Audience, whom are not comic people, have to A) remember, and B) Give a damn about what happened in the following movies at minimum:

2008's Iron Man
2011's Thor
2011's Captain America: the First Avenger

Other movies that they might want to care about include:
2008's Incredible Hulk
2010's Iron Man 2

Now, while this is not necessarily a big deal, there's no proof that it won't be a small one either. Consider, the only modern example of this kind of crossover movie is the Aliens vs. Predator 'franchise'.

Scared yet?

This is also why I have serious concerns over the presence of Joss Whedon; because outside of Kevin Smith, there's no one in Hollywood I've found who caters more to the extremes of the fanbases while ignoring the larger audience than Whedon. Hopefully, he'll prove me wrong, and hopefully audiences will be able to follow along a clearly defined story.

Hopefully.

If the people making the film have taken this into account.

GL: Why the Comic works (is also why the movie didn't)

It's actually not that hard; it's the difference between episodic fiction (TV and comics) and non-serialized (movies). You can only have a certain percentage of screentime devoted to introducing the characters, the situation, and the backstory. In serialized comics, you can spread this out over a very long period, as was done with the Rainbow Lantern concepts over about 3 years of storytelling.

The movie had to do it in less than two hours. See the problem? So because of that, the Green Lantern movie, even more so than most comic book origin story movies (and let's face it, most origin movies SUFFER for having so much time devoted to the origin stories) had to throw a lot of crap at the audience and hoped that they A) would keep and B) Give a damn. This is compounded by the fact that much of the Rainbow Lantern backstory derives in large part from the work of Alan Moore in his short stories - something a casual movie goer could not possibly care about (much to everyone's loss on that score).

Geoff Johns deserves some credit for Wold Newtoning up a unifed theory of Green Lanternhood and creating something that will make DC comics money in the years to come (though probably not so much money for him, but I don't have a lot of sympathy for this generation of copyright management, as opposed to previous ones), but it's not the most accessible story for a wider audience.

The GL movie just proved why that's important.

Whoa! whoa! Whoa!!

Guys,

Seriously, thanks for your comments and well words, but just to be absolutely clear.

IT AIN'T OVER JUST YET.


Over the years I've made about 3000 of these motivators. Maybe there's someone out there who's done more, I couldn't say. So I'm going to try and share all of them with you as best I can before I shutter things up. That means you'll have quite a few posts to trickle out before that happens. That's the whole point of my message to "stay tuned".

And I don't see it as quitting? leaving blogging? Yes, but I'm not sure I see that as quitting. To me, quitting implies that I'm beaten, that I'm too down and out to go. Quite the opposite; I'm more optimistic than I've been in years. The fact that that optimism isn't reflected in corporate supercomics? Totally not my problem. I'm not angry with them, I don't wish them anything good or ill, I'm just moving on.

After three thousand posters, I've gone through just about every permutation of a poster I can think of. You really can only use so many images of Iron Man in his armor standing about looking all tech and cool and then add some kind of caption to it. Granted, one wishes the cover artists could show a bit more variety, but that's a subject for another day.

I've said what I wanted to say, and will continue to do so until the end. Because as I've stated in the past, I don't have a deep personal connection to the larger concept of "fandom" because I disagree with a lot of common fan notions (i.e. those people who think Batman is cooler than Superman - AS IF!). The one time I really got mixed up in Fandom? A couple years back, and it just convinced me to do what I do, and hope the right audience would find it. Well, I look at the commenters and followers and I know that to be true. So thank you, and please, keep reading.

And Tom, thank you for the comparison to Chris Sims (but spell it right, he's quite touchy about that - ask the guys at the Daily Show). That said, as the years have worn on, I've become a bit disillusioned with Sims: yes yes yes, Smallville sucks and the jacket sucks - but I'll put down money that Sims will gush all over Grant Morrison giving Superman a baby t-shirt and towel cape in 'Action Comics' despite that being EQUALLY RIDICULOUS. Overall, I'd rather be Chris Bird or Tim O'neil instead - on target, insightful, and genuinely intelligent and persuasive.

Thanks again for your comments. Because of this, I've decided to move up my "secret origin" post to sometime this month instead of the late fall as I'd originally planned - you've all convinced me you need to hear the story of how this all got started....

What If We lived in a comic book universe? Part 106

Been a while since I threw out this feature.

So, this is a thing that has happened

If you've been wondering as to the lack of post and posters of late, my reasons are pretty straightforward:

1) It's summer. There's sun and beaches and warm air.
2) Complete and utter apathy towards Big Two Corporate supercomics.

The second one may or may not be important to you, but let me explain. Normally, I go through the solicits for upcoming books, and if there's a cover that really grabs my interest as poster material, I plug it into the macro and ...well, see for yourself.

However it has now been about two months since the Marvel or DC solicits have any images worth posterizing. DC is all about the reboot, and I just don't care about that at all (and in an upcoming post, I'll explain as to why that may or may not be a good thing), and all the Marvel series are in ALL OUT WAARRRRRRRR! mode with three major "WAR" crossovers (Fear Itself, X-Men Schism, and "Spider-Island") which simply fail to grab my interest because it has become so repetitive and boring.

Now, the cover images make about 50% of my poster material (I don't have hard numbers - someone can do that if they really feel a burning need). But this is combined with my genuine apathy towards all but a precious few series that grab my attention (Love and Capes, PS238, Farscape, Dungeons & Dragons, and occasionally Mark Waid's Incorruptible and some of the Zorro and Star Trek material). And while I could expound on those books endlessly, I don't know if it's enough to sustain a blog. In reality, I've probably said most of what I want to say on the comics I've read, and what's out there (not much in my mind).

So, will I be closing down? Eventually, yes. It's inevitable as other interests and concerns in my life are taking over. The reason I restarted this blog a few years back was to share with people my poster images. There's actually a secret origin story for that, so stay tuned and you'll see it. I don't have a set quit date yet, as there are other posts I'll throw up - the secret origin, a few thoughts on the DC reboot, and other items of interest to me. But for the most part, the majority of the posts from here on out will simply be poster-only posts for you to enjoy and share with one another.

Thank you all and please, stay tuned and keep reading!

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Something lighter - for the Gamers

Cheap Drama: All that Marvel and DC have left, I guess?

At least according to best-selling writer Grant Morrison, in his own words below


Oh, he's just talking about Animal Man...so I guess that's different...why exactly?

New posts soon.

For my American friends

Happy Fourth of July