Archive for July, 2010
I’ve been playing with the idea of kicking Susan Downs into the far-flung sci-fi future. To that end, I needed some crazy sci-fi costumes. What I got was a Fifth Element outfit for an extreme senior citizen. Her hair is white, and it’s in a snood (you don’t want your hair floating too much in zero gravity).
Underneath her is a crewman of the Earth Space Navy.The sleeves would unsnap at the cuffs for a more billowy look.
Comments? Thoughts? I should have a new version of this script in the next day or so.
Marvel posted a list of tips for breaking into comics pulled from C.B. Cebuski’s twitter feed. I’m quoting from the article:
Want to make comics? Get tips from Marvel talent manager C.B. Cebulski to help YOU at San Diego Comic-Con and beyond.
Pulled from CB Cebulski’ Twitter feed (@CBCebulski) and organized by topic, these tips, tweets and missives may help YOU get into the comic book biz at the San Diego Comic-Con 2010 or beyond!
My favorite is “Never underestimate the power of the mini-comic. Make them. Distribute them. Buy them. Enjoy them.” But by all means, read the whole thing.
The past few weeks I have obsessed over where LeBron would end up. Would he stay in Cleveland or leave for greener pastures? In the end he chose to go to Miami, and many in Cleveland are upset that he would abandon Northeast Ohio where he grew up. While most Clevelanders probably didn’t know Harvey Pekar, and he didn’t have a huge economic impact on the city, his loss this week was much bigger; he made the city a much more interesting place and touched everyone who knew him.
And everyone who knew him seemed to have a story that could have fit into an issue of American Splendor. I worked with a woman who lived in a downstairs apartment from Harvey and had many stories about his eccentricities. I’ve run into people at conventions who wanted to share Harvey stories. I even have my own Harvey story:
In 1994, I moved back to Cleveland after transferring from University of Buffalo. I had been a comics fan my whole life, but between a lack of money and a growing disinterest in superhero comics, I was looking for something else. My local library had the first two American Splendor collections, and I was hooked. Later that year, a sociology professor at Cleveland State invited Harvey into speak.
There were only about 20 of us in small classroom in Rhodes Tower when Harvey shuffled in, pulling a hand cart filled with books behind him. He gave a short talk about his experiences self-publishing, getting kicked off the Letterman show, working with Crumb, and his lack of financial success in the comics industry. After the talk, he offered to sell the books he had.
I hung around and picked out four of the old magazine sized issues and asked how much he wanted for them. He told me the price for three of them and then hemmed and hawed on the fourth. “This is one of my last copies of this book. I won’t have any more Letterman books after this. I probably shouldn’t sell it to you.” It was the legendary, curmudgeonly Pekar complaining about money! I didn’t care what I was going to pay; I was experiencing Harvey as he was in the books.
He finally settled on a price and I handed over the money. I asked him to sign the books and between the two of us, all we had was a stubby #2 pencil. “To Sean, from Harvey” he scratched in the narrow margin on the bottom of page 1 of each book. Those books, along with my Amazing Fantasy #15, are the only books in my collection I won’t sell.
A few years ago, I had an idea of doing a tribute book to Harvey. I mentioned it at Panel. I’d approach a number of artists and writers who knew, met, worked with , or were influenced by Harvey and ask them for stories about Harvey. Then I’d get Harvey to write the introduction to it. I figured he’d get a kick out of it. I don’t think he felt he got the recognition he deserved.
Unfortunately, I never acted on my idea, nor did I even write out the script for my story above. Even in the few hours since his death, I’ve seen a number of tributes from people I had no idea were influenced by Harvey and I expect more over the coming days. It is a shame that he isn’t around to see them and realize how respected he is.
It is easy to forget now how influential Harvey was. He basically created the autobiographical, quotidian memoir that any number of indy comix creator are milking to this day (including myself!). More importantly to me, he showed that you could just be a writer, not necessarily and artist, and still create a unique style.
Recently he had spread his wings even more and moved away from autobiography toward a number of diverse subjects: The Beats, Vietnam veterans, Studs Terkel, the Students for a Democratic Society, Macedonia, Michael Malice. They weren’t all great–in fact an artist of one of the books was surprised when I asked him to sign one; he didn’t think anyone had bought it–but they all showed his varied interests. I believed he had even more written and waiting for artists. I hope these see the light of day in the upcoming months.
As Matt said earlier, he was “true Clevelander”–not great looking, shabby, beaten down, the lovable underdog, overlooked by the elite in major metropolitan areas. He was often disappointed in his city, but you know what? He never left and was loyal to it until the end. He was the anti-LeBron. Unlike LeBron, he will be missed.
From the Comic-Con International program guide:
“1:00-2:00 CBLDF Master Session: Rob Liefeld: Designing Iconic Characters— Learn what it takes to design a character that’s lasting, iconic, and cool. Using his legendary creations Deadpool, Cable, and Youngblood as examples, Rob Liefeld shows you the values that go into creating a character who can leap from the comics page and into games, film, television, and merchandise. The original art from this session will be auctioned off on Saturday night at the CBLDF’s Art Auction! Room 30CDE “
I’ll save you the cost of the trip out to the con by giving you the Cliff’s Notes version: “Learn what it takes to design a character that’s lasting, iconic, and cool”: big guns, belts with lots of pouches, and metal bracelets.
It’s called “diffusion of responsibility” when a group of people all assume someone else in the group is going to do something. Thus it is that at nearly 9 p.m. on Thursday, we finally get sround to posting this week’s Character Wednesday pieces featuring Matt’s pick, The Shaper of Worlds!
Brent Bowman
Craig Bogart
Tony Goins (depicting Matt’s fantasy landscape of well-oiled Daras)
Matt Kish
Next week, my choice: Sentry 459 of the Kree Empire!
A couple of short animated comic book movie reviews. I actually saw these a while ago, but better late than never, right?
Superman/Batman: Public Enemies – The 6th in the line of DC Universe Animated Original Movies, released September 2009, this one’s based on the first story arc in the monthly Superman/Batman comic book, by Jeph Loeb and Ed McGuinness. The main voice talent includes Tim Daly as Superman, Kevin Conroy as Batman, Clancy Brown as Lex Luthor, and C. C. H. Pounder as Amanda Waller. Here’s all you need to know about the plot, courtesy of Wikipedia: “President Lex Luthor uses the oncoming trajectory of a Kryptonite asteroid to frame Superman for the “pending destruction of the planet” and declares a $1 billion bounty on the heads of the Man of Steel and his “partner in crime,” Batman. Superheroes and super villains alike launch a relentless pursuit of Superman and Batman…”
Needless to say, that premise means we’re treated to dozens and dozens of on-screen portrayals of different DC superheroes and super-villains, from the well-known (Powergirl, Metallo, etc.) to the more obscure (Katana, Giganta, etc). Honestly, for me, that was probably the most enjoyable part of the movie. I’m not a huge Superman fan, I’ve never read the source material by Loeb, and I’m not a fan of McGuinness’ art. So yeah, there wasn’t much this movie could offer to knock me over. In fact, to my eyes, the producer’s decision to try and translate McGuinness’ style to the animation made for a very awkward, ugly look. Over the years a lot of people have commented how his style evokes animation on the comic book page, but if this experiment shows anything, it’s that it doesn’t translate back too well. Powergirl and Amanda Waller, in particular, look really wonky. The former often looks like a cross-eyed Asian caricature, and the latter just looks lumpy; the Micheline Man of covert Ops (I guess for me, the definitive Amanda “The Wall” Waller is the squarish, angular one drawn by Luke McDonnel in his Suicide Squad run).
Anyway, the story moves along at a brisk pace, and there are lots of fun action sequences. But overall, it’s just a big, dumb action flick. Which isn’t becessarily bad, but also nothing to write home about.
Green Lantern: First Flight – Released in July of 2009, this is DC’s 5th direct-to-DVD animated movie. It’s also probably my favorite one out of the series. The voice talent includes Christopher Meloni as Hal Jordan, Victor Garber as Sinestro, and John Larroquette as Tomar-Re. Rather than focus on a specific story arc from the comics, this is a straight-up character origin and first adventure movie, which actually works quite well. The movie’s director, Lauren Montgomery, describes it as such: “It’s a cop-thriller set in outer space, with very little time spent on Earth. It’s a training day sort of story where the veteran (Sinestro) space cop meets the rookie (Hal Jordan) space cop, but because the veteran has been ‘around the block’ it may have skewed his perspective a bit.”
And that’s exactly what this movie does right: they get GL’s origin out of the way in the first 5 minutes of the movie, and then BAM! he’s off to outer space to meet dozens of strange aliens, an intergalactic police force, and start his first mission under the tutelage of…Sinestro. In fact, this is almost as much a Sinestro movie as a Hal Jordan one. I thought the writers, Alan Burnett and Michael Allen, did an admirable job of presenting Sinestro’s world view, elevating him from a maniacal supervillain to one with depth and logic behind his actions. The action scenes are dynamic and fun, the alien landscapes and cities a feast for the eyes, and the appearance of lots of the more recognizable Green Lantern Corps members (Kilowog, Arisia, Ch’p, Boodikka) is certainly a treat for the fans. I also liked the return to classic solid-objects-formed-by-the-ring style of combat, complete with giant bats and tanks and nets, instead of the visually boring beam-of-energy approach. Also, the animation style is in the familiar style of Bruce Timm, which to me is always a plus
I’m a big fan of the GL characters and concepts, though I’ll admit I haven’t read the monthly books in many years (too grim-and-gritty and too much crossover madness for my tastes). But I have to say, I was thoroughly entertained by this movie, and would definitely recommend it to all.
While we (and the entire Internets) is on this whole Wonder Woman topic (which, incidentally, has gotten more press coverage inside and outside the comics community than WW has probably gotten in the last few decades, so from that standpoint, I’d say DC achieved exactly what they set out to do) I thought we could take a look at one of the more bizarre events in the character’s publication history. I am, of course, talking about when she met Fritz Lieber’s Fafhrd and The Gray Mouser in issues #201 & #202:
I mean, WTF? That’s got to be one of the weirder prose-to-comics crossovers, right?
BONUS:
Jim Lee already redesigned Wonder Woman once in the Just Imagine Stan Lee With Jim Lee Creating Wonder Woman one-shot…and she was wearing invisible pants:
Heidi MacDonald has a nice review of Wonder Woman covers through the ages: What Wonder Woman covers tell us about ourselves.
If you need more snark, Superdickery.com makes fun of the bizarre, and often sexually suggestive Wonder Woman covers in their Suffering Sappho Index.
And finally, Comic Book Resources looks at the different Wonder Woman costumes in Wonder Woman Throughout the Years.