On the Convention Wars taking an interesting turn with an unexpected success

I chose not to attend Wizard World Philadelphia this year, mainly because there was nothing going on there I was interested in. I knew that the few artists I wanted to see would likely also be at Baltimore and/or New York later in the year. Also, I, like a lot of comics fans, have been decidedly turned off by Wizard's bullying tactics against other conventions, particularly against Reed and the NY Comic Con.

This started a few years ago, when Wizard scheduled their show the same weekend at Shelly Drum's Heroes Con, a show with a long history, a stellar reputation and a tremendous amount of good will. The first year it happened, Wizard swore they were at the mercy of the convention center, this was the only weekend available, hands were tied, yadda yadda yadda. When happened a SECOND time, many eyebrows were raised. DC only decided to attend at the very last minute that year, splitting its teams to provide both shows with a fair-to-middling roster of editorial and creative talent. But the next year, with the show safely on another weekend from Heroes, DC still chose not to attend anyway. Marvel had already chosen to stop attending, claiming a desire to cut back on convention appearances altogether.

But this year, with DC and Marvel absent (indeed, I believe Zenescope was the largest comics company to be attending, based on the website), a larger list of media guests than comics, and a general sense of inertia among online comics fans, many artists are reporting that WW Philly was a rousing success, with lots of fans, all with lots of money, all willing to spend. Ethan Van Sciver reports it's his most successful show this year to date.

So...what happened?

I think there's a couple of things going on here. First off, Philadelphia does not have any other comic cons to speak of. Many--bordering on most--comic fans in the area don't have the funds or resources to get to other shows in the area like Baltimore, New York or even strong shows out in Pittsburgh. So to a degree, they're a captive audience. Back in the '90s, the company I was working for chose to run a show in Philly, even though we were based in New York, on the assumption that while Fred Greenberg was doing a good job of providing NYC with shows, no one was doing the same for Philly. And we guessed right - we drew 35,000 fans for our first (and alas, only) show, which is tremendous for the first time out of the gate. I've been saying ever since that Philly is a woefully under-served city convention-wise, and the results Wizard had this year might shine a light on this. It seems to me that like New York and many other major cites, Philly could easily support more than one major show. If a second company chose to bring a show to the town, it could do very well, and not reduce attendance for either Wizard's show or New York. In the words of Daffy Duck, "If they like that mess, they're starvin' for some real hoofin'!"

Also, Wizard has been slowly making a change in its direction with their shows. Each successive convention they run has been less purely comics and more "multi-media". By appealing to fans of TV shows and films, wrestling and MMA fans, as well as comics, they've been able to appeal to a larger range of people, and thus expanding their potential customer base. In a way they're turning into the modern equivalent of Creation Entertainment, who used to dominate the media-con landscape in the '80s and '90s, and is still doing a brisk business with their branded Star Trek, Twilight et al shows across the country. Interestingly, the reaction of science fiction fans who were used to going to fan-run conventions had the same reaction to Creation then that comics fans have of Wizard now. "Mediafen" are somewhat looked down on by other more pure/traditional Sci-Fi fans, and the shows that Wizard are putting on are getting the hairy eyeball from the comics community. But in both cases, their continuing success points to the idea that they must be doing something right, infuriating as that may be.

The other point to consider is that, as much as it galls us, the online fannish community is not neccesarily representative of comics fans in general, and really makes up only a small sliver of it. Bloggers will endlessly bemoan the fact that one book will sell like the proverbial hotcakes while their personal favorite spends most of its time on the bubble. And while the Internetigencia will pooh-pooh the lopsided guest list of the Wizard shows, SOMEBODY is lining up to see Patrick Stewart and the Iron Sheik. While the talkative and verbose upper crust of fandom will cluck their tongues at the Great Unwashed and their tastes, the selfsame Great Unwashed goes through their day blissfully unaware of the very existence of the people who are clucking. It's not that "they don't know any better" as is so often said; it's that they know what they like, and it's not really our place to lambaste them for it. I mean really, they're not putting all those reality shows on just to spite you.

When Reed started the NY Comic Con and started its march West, Wizard went into overdrive. It started buying up conventions left and right, shows of various size and regional reach. This, bear in mind, came after a period of time where they CANCELLED several of their shows for various reasons, be it lack of funds, interest or what have you. Once they started grabbing more shows, most famously Mike Carbonaro's Big Apple Convention, they started counter-programming. First they ran a show in New York that they didn't go out of their way to make clear wasn't the New York Comic Con; Reed had to skip almost a year for its show, going from February in 2009 to October in 2010. Wizard ran a show in October of 2009 to fill that gap. The show was acceptable, according to most reviews, but compared to the size and professionalism of the NYCC, it was a fart in a hurricane. Wizard next set up a convention in LA the same weekend as Reed's first show in Chicago, C2E2. The plan was to draw many of the media stars away from the Chicago show with the allure of a shorter trip. It succeeded, in that both shows had lackluster attendance, compared to what either show could have drawn if it were unopposed. That seems a rather nose-to-spite-face way of scoring a win. Wizard then announced that they'd run their Big Apple Con the SAME weekend as this years NYCC, in a facility only a few blocks up the street. They have since pulled back from that play, moving both the weekend and location, retrating to the Penn Plaza, location of most of Mike C's major shows, a facility that has gotten scathing reviews by many attendees in past years based on its age, cramped quarters and general state of disrepair.

There have been endless reports and rumors of both companies wanting to sign publishers to exclusive deals. Those stories have (AFAIK) never been confirmed, but as time has passed, fewer companies have chosen to work with both companies, the lion's share choosing to go to Reed's side of the playing field. At least as far as the public face of the two companies are concerned, Reed has had the moral high ground. They've gone out of their way to never disparage Wizard, making it very clear that the country and the market is large enough to support two companies, and hopefully more. It's been Wizard who has given the impression that the industry must "choose" between the two. But even though most have chosen Reed, Wizard has still been able to hammer out successes with their shows by basically doing what most of the comics bloggers have maintained needs doing - appealing to a larger audience and drawing in more people. They're the underdog that the smart folks don't want to win...but the majority simply don't care, as long as they get to go to a con.

So Philadelphia is in a rather sad position - filled with people happy and anxious to go to a convention, and currently being served solely by a company that has done a bang-up job of burning bridges. So Philly misses out on its chance to get a "proper" comics convention and attends one that's better than nothing, and the publishers who've decided to stop working with Wizard miss out on a chance to reach a somewhat captive audience. It seems that everyone loses in the scenario loses...except Wizard. They get a perfectly acceptable and (presumably) profitable convention, and may get the impression that they "don't need" the stuff that the publishers can provide. If the market is happy with cheap hamburger, why bother to offer expensive steak?

Philly deserves a better comics show, and I maintain the company that provides one will be richly rewarded. If Wizard can get the publishers to return, they already have a solid reputation in the city, and presumably a contract with the convention center that may preclude another comics show from getting access to it for a good number of weeks in either direction. If Reed chooses to move in, they'll be able to provide a massive show, based on the tool chest it's already assembled, but will place itself in the position that Wizard has been in, stepping into "someone else's territory", similar to the scenario in Chicago this year.

Wizard endlessly argues that there's room for two, drawing comparisons to Coke and Pepsi, Marvel and DC, et al. But what Wizard isn't mentioning is that the aforementioned companies are available all year and the customer has the choice of sampling one at one time and the other at another, or both, or neither. A convention is a static limited event, and if the choice is between two options at a similar time, it's more difficult to choose to do both. It's the reason TV networks program similar shows in the same time slot as their rival stations. They don't want to to watch BOTH shows, they want you to watch THEIR show.

I still maintain that Philly is large enough to support two major shows in a year, and indeed the rest of the country is large enough to support two major convention companies, so long as they maintain a modicum of decorum and avoid direct confrontation whenever possible. But of course, humans are involved, so that outcome is as likely as people taking turns at a hard merge on the highway or choosing to go to the next show where there's only one ticket left for the current one.

Read More

On a bit of DC Marketing that desperately needs to be done

So Geoff Johns posted this photo on his Twitter Feed of a guy's Green Lantern Tattoo.  For those too lazy to make with the clicky-linky, it's a tat of a Royal Flush poker hand, made up of GL playing cards.  Presumably, the fellow will then have Geoff's sharpie-on-skin autograph added to the tat, a practice growing in popularity.

But I got to thinking.  With the plethora of color Corps and members of same, a deck of playing cards based on the current Green Lantern Mythos could easily be produced.  With eight Corps, you could actually do two seperate decks, or one deck for a game of Cripple Mr. Onion.  But I think one deck ought to do, as a couple of the Corps don't have that many members.

Green for Clubs, Red for Diamonds, Yellow for Hearts and Black for Spades seems the most likely setup.  Violet (love) for hearts is pretty obvious too, But you can't very well leave out Yellow, and there's only four suits traditionally.  They tried to popularize five-suit poker many years back, but it never caught on.

Now in a lot of photo cards, they'll put images on each card, but IMHO that makes it slightly harder to recognize a Face card.  I prefer the numbered cards to be a number of the symbol and little else.  Maybe you could have nice art of the symbols in different quantties being generated by a Corpsmember, to get the best of both worlds.

It seems the Color Entity should go on the Ace, and the most powerful/popular member of the Corps go on the King.  So it'd be...

GREEN:
Okay, quite a bit of debate possible here. More than a few characters who deserve the Face card spots.  But how do you decide? 
Also, do you bow to the obvious gender-streotypes here and put a female in the Queen spot, or open oneself to endless snickering by putting a guy in that position?
Perhaps the best solution is to not make the choices, and going with popular characters NOT from Earth.  Luckily, there's a GL named Jack, so let's go with him, and there's no actual proof of Mogo's gender, so...
Jack - Jack T. Chance
Queen - Mogo
King - Hal Jordan (Maybe with Kyle, Guy and John in the background to shut everyone up?)
Ace - Ion

RED:
Jack - Dex-Starr
Queen - Laira
King - Atrocitus
Ace - The Butcher

YELLOW:
Jack - Despotellis (1st runner-up; Arkillo)
Queen - Kryb (1st runner-up; Lyssa Drak)
King - Sinestro
Ace - Parallax

BLACK:
Jack - Black Lantern Kal-L
Queen - Black Lantern Mera
King - Black Hand
Ace - Nekron

VIOLET (for argument's sake):
Jack - Miri Riam
Queen - Wonder Woman (1st runner-up; Fatality)
King - Carol Ferris
Ace - The Predator

And the Jokers? Well, Larfleeze, obviously, along with the Bizarro Yellow Lantern.  Tho if Avarice were a suit as well, I rather like the idea of dressing him in three different outfits (incliding a queen's robe) for the face cards.

So, DC...I'd get hopping on this.

Read More

On the experience of a voice from the past screaming at you like a homeless man on a street corner

One of the nice things about the electric-type Internet is it allows friends and relations, long ago lost to moves and parting ways, to re-acqauint with each other and restore ties, or at least share the odd witty comment on each other's walls.

And then there's the experience I just had.

Out of nowhere and with no prelude, I just got the most fascinating string of tweets from old an High School buddy. They are included below, un-edited and un-spell-checked, tweets separated by "//".

vinnie sending you a tweet last time to get your attention, then I'll let 25 more years go bye. If you want a friend ok //

but if you want to pontificate about comics, norbit, christianity and conservitive stuff, not interested. //

I sometimes wondered how we became friends in highschool at all. It really doesn't matter so take it easy, be what you want //

oh and Dr. Who really is some of the worst SciFi that they ever came up with. Look at Heinlien and Asimov if you want good.

I'll throw that again; the last time I interacted with this fella was 1984, when we graduated Chaminade High School, the school that also produced Brian Dennehy, George Kennedy, Bill O'Reilly and Glenn Hughes from the Village People.(not all at once, of course)

I saw him add me as a friend on the Facebook some time back, but didn't have anything to say to him, so I didn't.  He started following me on the Twitter TODAY, followed immediately by these stream of consciousness tweets.

Now I've done some horrible things in my life (ask any McDonalds counter-person within a ten-mile radius) but I've no idea what I could have done to him to warrant this mad rambling.

The part that's fascinating is that he seems upset with me for what I'm doing and talking about now.  To the best of my awareness, I don't have a mailing list or anything that was cramming my rapier-like wit down his throat, so I'm not sure how my rampant pontification invaded his personal space.

Upon investigation, I see his twitter feed is only slightly less crazy than Yoko Ono's.  Some samples:

Where is my sanity when I worry about yesterday's thoughts?

We waste so much time with ego, anger and pride. We think the little things we do will last beyond us. We are mistaken...

If we feel we know the truth, we have nothing. It is only by "dropping all" that we have all, become all, find ground.

Thought in all actions is need until finally, thought is no longer needed.

Pain is what occurs when you allow yourself to be wrapped up in emotions and attachments...

There are times when I allow myself to take offense at things my ego points out as "offensive", and then there are times when I am well.

Anger, love, passion, all just spitting distance... First you gotta breath... Then you have to know what breathing truly is....

All this touchy-feely inspirational poster speak, and he spits vitriol at me like I was wearing a fur coat at a PeTA meeting.  I feel..oddly honored.  I mean, to be able to make such an impression on a person that he'd seek you out 25 years later to insult you...That means either I'm that impressive, or he's that impressionable.

When we were in in school together, his favorite author was Michael Moorcock, and his favorite word was (as he pronounced it) was "mye-rid".  After having him use it in a sentence, I asked, "do you mean "Myriad"?

He did.

When I showed The Wife the tweets in question, she guessed EXACTLY who sent them, having never MET the man, based SOLELY on the stories other Chaminade Men have told about him.

Out of courtesy, I won't mention his name, or actually give his twitter feed.  But if you went to school with me, you already KNOW who it is.  And you are in no way surprised.

Read More

On a glorious return to the 30th century

OK, fine, 31st century, you nitpicking yahoos...

After months of anticipation, years of setup, and decades of patient waiting from hardcore fans, Paul Levitz has relaunched the Legion of Super-Heroes with a brand new number one.  It carries on from the new iteration of the team that Geoff Johns et al has been writing for the last few years, as far back as the Lightning Saga.  The original Legion is back, their adventures with Superboy are back in place, and Levita has the job of taking a team that has floundered for a couple dozen years now and whiping them back into shape.

Paul Levitz was the publisher of DC Comics.  He has a large collection of whips.

In a single 48-page issue, Paul does the following:

Creates almost a dozen new characters (tho to be fair, several of them may be dead already)

Restarts the Green Lantern Corps by recreating the event that gave it its start in the first place.

Hands a Power Ring to literally the last character anyone would have expected, all the while playing fair about who it would be.

Destroys the homeworld of one of the Legionnaires, and in a way that doesn't make it feel like a cheap death at all.

Slips in the first major reference to the upcoming Flash event "Flashpoint" in a perfectly logical way.

Sets up no less than five plot threads for future use.

He could have started off by picking up on any of the threads Geoff Johns laid out.  He picked up exactly one (the new GL member)  and took it in a way I'm dead positive Geoff never thought of, made passing reference to another couple, and just went off on his own.

Yildray Cinar (a name that sounds more like a character FROM Legion, not that of  its artist) knocks it out of the park with a plethora of new character designs, solid story telling and only three splash-pages in the entire book.  And one of those is so choked with action that it's really more a multi-panel page without borders.  Awesome work.  His covers were a mere taste of what he can do.

I swear to you, if this book doesn't become a juggernaut, I will lose all faith in comics fans.

Read More

On the latest chapter in a vey messy custody battle

The Siegel and Shuster estates have been in a death-struggle over the rights to Superman over the last years, as I'm sure you've heard.  Their lawyer Marc Toberoff has made great progress on his clients' behalf, so much so that DC has tried a new play that, if successful, coiuld get him booted off the case entirely.

Warner Brothers filed a suit against Toberoff himself today, claiming that he convinced the heirs of the Superman creators to sue DC and attempt to cancel the copyright agreement between them and the company to regain the rights to Superman, not to benefit the heirs, but himself.  Citing papers gained through means that could potentially be described as "questionable", they claim that the agreement he entered into with the Siegel and Shuster families would put HIM, not them, in controlling interest of the characters.  This could be seen as a way to unfairly benefit from the work, much in the same way he and the families are claiming Warners is.  Many articles are calling this a low blow by Warners, and accusing them of "by any means necessary" tactics.

Here's the thing...All told, it's a pretty damn good play.

If they can make the case that Toberoff talked the heirs into grabbing for the whole pie (as opposed to the small piece they had) solely to ensure himself a nice commisionary payday, they could pull it off. They'd need to show that getting a larger share of the right is not in their best interests, and if the ownership breakdown as reported in the story is true, they might be able to.  WB further points out that while S&S were alive, they were always happy to work with DC ad its owners and never made any attempt to sue or reclaim the rights from DC (in fact Jerry sued several times, mostly, as I understand it, under the advice of his latest wife.)  It's only after their deaths and a discussion with Toberoff that the families showed any interest in such a move, which might suggest the idea came not from their heads, but Toberoff's.  It puts Toberoff in the role of bad guy, not the heirs.  And he's safe to tar; he's a lawyer after all.

Toberoff comments that it's perfectly legal for a lawyer to be working on contingency or commision, ad he's absolutely correct.  But if the WB can show (or at least present the possibility) that his motive is for himself and not his clients, he might have to recuse himself.  And odds are that whoever they get as his replacement will not have teeth as sharp as he, and would place Warners in a better position to reclaim victory.

Toberoff is also respresenting Jack Kirby's family in their quite similar case against Marvel.  If this play works, expect Marvel/Disney to try something exceedingly similar.

The sad story between Siegel and Shuster and DC Comics (in all of its iterations) is well known in the industry.  It's the story that every creator remembers (or should) when they prepare to sign an agreement with a publisher.  They signed the worst deal since the sale of Manhattan.  But to be utterly fair, neither they nor National Periodical Productions knew what they were holding.  If either party could have POSSIBLY known what a kick in the zeitgeist Superman would be, they'd have gone through some positively epic negotiations. 

To be blunt, S&S signed a contract, they weren't misled in any way, and if the current holders (WB) really wanted to, they wouldn't have to drop them a dime.  And for decades, that was the position - fuck 'em.  It wasn't until the Superman movie was coming out that Neal Adams and a number of other creators pressured DC into doing what they believed should have done a long time ago - re-establish creators' credits for the pait and let them share in the impossible profits the character has garnered.

This all comes back around to the subtle differences between "Must", "May" and "Should" do.  DC didn't HAVE to give the boys a penny.  They CHOSE to do as a result of pressure by its creators.  And it also provided some good publicity for the company and the film.  In the decades since the original agreement, the amounts provided to the creators and their families have been increased, voluntarily, by DC.  The amounts were, to be fair, the merest fraction of what the character was making and had made.  Many would argue that DC SHOULD give/have given them more, but the point is they didn't HAVE TO give anything.

It's exactly because of this that so many creators have gotten very nice checks from DC, along with very thick sheafs of paper to sign, promising that they won't sue if the characters become a big hit.  Neal Adams and Denny O'Neil got nice payments for Ras Ahl Ghul, and Jerry Robinson got a nice check and an editor emeritus position at DC for his (finally recognized) creation of the Joker.  DC wants to make sure this doesn't happen again.  Tony Isabella can likely tell you a few stories about the creation of Black Lightning.  But all told, DC and the other major publishers have learned a few things since 1939, and we'll likely not see a series of events like this again.

The opinions of the fans is rather varied.  Were Jerry and Joe the ones behind this case, DC wouldn't stand a chance in the court of public opinion. But it's not; it's their kids, and in the eyes of many, they don't deserve a penny.  One could easily argue that if Jerry and Joe had made this move and gotten the rights and money, it would have ended up in the kids' hands anyway, so so what if it just happens a few years later. 

Most fans don't give a flying rat's ass for the kids, they just want their comic books.  They see the families (and more so Toberoff) as evil people who are going to make it impossible for them to read about Superman anymore.  The arguments about rights, fairness and the concepts of immortal corporations owning and controlling creations in perpetuity all shrivel before the blazing light of the question, "Does this mean DC can't do any more Superman comics?"

Again, if this was Jerry and Joe, the fans would be on their side without a blink of an eye.  Because the fans would believe that they would want to keep the characters at DC and largely, nothing would change.  But the families and their counsel are unknown entities.  The mindset that this is solely about money.  They can talk about wanting to restore the legacy of their fathers, but that falls flat, as their legacy has already been restored, and has been for 33 years now.  So there's a feeling that these kids don't "deserve" the rights, or the money.

To be honest, I don't really mind the fammilies getting a nice payday; again, if S&S had gotten one, it'd end up in their hands.  But I think that Warners should do everything in their power to get sole control of the rights to the characters when all is said and done.  If the families retain rights to the characters in any amount, especially if those rights involve having say over how the characters get used, I can absolutely envision scenarios where they put the brakes on the occasinal deal in exchange for another payout.

Shared ownership of the characters will result i the cliche'd "two parties with half the map" scenario.  S&S will own the rights to the origin, much of the design and description of many of the characters, and DC will own the trademarks.  Neither party will be able to truly create a complete project without the cooperation of the other, and in such a situation, all it takes is the slightest hesitation to throw delicate negotiations into a gin-fueled tizzy.

So in honesty, this puts me in the "I just want my comics" camp, but at least I'm willing to say the families deserve a good payday for their trouble. 

This is far from over.  It's going to get uglier. 

Read More

On the hopes that the third time will be the charm

In the past few years, DC has made announcements about three stables of comics being folded into the DCU proper. The introduction of the Milestone characters was by far the one that generated the most excitement among fans. Milestone put together a solid and impressive set of books and characters in the early 90's, and only The Great Comics Glut could stop them. One character, Static, got a very good animated series based on him, and numerous crossivers with the other DCAU series. There wasn't a convention that came by where someone didn't ask about their eventual return to the DCU, and when they finally made the announcement, there was much rejoicing.

And then it sort of...well...

First Dwayne McDuffie get to write JLA, another move that got a lot of people excited, considering he had been story editor on the Animated series for years. He would get the introduce the Milestone characters in a major plotline in JLA, as well as have a number of other appearances across the DCU, including a series of issues of Brave and the Bold. Well, Dwayne's run on JLA was interrupted numerous times thanks to required tie-ins to Final crisis et al, last minute changes to plots that resulted in him having to re-dub panels at the last minutes, and by the time the Milestone story started, many people had written off his run etirely.

Dwayne's stories stories were all stellar, be was never "given the space to let him do the work", as Webb Wilder likes to say. As a result, the triumphant return of the Milestone characters was more of a wet firecracker. Now that the two issues of Milestone Forever have been released (also with lines taken out at the last moment for nebulous "fair use" reasons), the only evidence that they are back at all is that Static is a member of the Teen Titans. And there's more than a few people of the opinion that Static was the only character they really wanted, and were willing to take a bath on the rest just to get him. I don't quite buy it, but I don't quite discount it entirely either.

So now, save for Static (and a plotline in Teen Titans involving Dakota running right now), the Milestone characters are part of the deep pool of backup characters that might or might not get used by a creator down the line should they have a good idea for them. And for all the good it did, it would have been just as well if they never returned at all.

Last year and change, DC announced they has secured the rights to re-imagine the Red Circle characters, the characters Archie Comics held. If that announcement sounded familiar, it's because it was the same stable of characters they used to create the 90's Impact line of characters, a line that featured soe of the first DC work of Mark Waid, Tom Lyle and the late lamented Mike Parobeck. Rather than try again with those characters, DC chose to start again from scratch and create brand new interpretations of them. We got new versions of The Web, The Shield, Inferno and The Hangman, all introduced by J. Michael Straczynski. In addition to the new titles, the characters made appearances in other DC books to introduce them to the fabric of the world. And DC heroes appeared in the Red Circle books- The Shield locked horns with Magog and the Great Ten in his first few issues, and Web has come to loggerheads with Oracle. So while the Milestone characters were almost snuck into the DCU (and their sudden appearance wasn't explained for MONTHS, leading to great confusion), the Red Circle books would be definitely linked to the DCU from square one.

The books were quite interesting, with some bold ideas in them. But alas, both titles were cancelled this week with issue 10. Mirroring the Impact line, the last try was a team book, The Mighty Crusaders, which will come out the month before the books' last issues. Since the characters were not bought by DC but merely licensed, it's assumed they will vanish entirely from DC once the contract with Archie expires, just as the Impact titles went away with never another mention.

Now, in both cases, the idea was to bring in new characters to the DCU that new people could get into without having to sift through decades of history. This is a solid idea, and needs trying again. But there's a simple fact in comics - new ideas face an uphill battle. Unless a new characters or title has an "A-list" name attached to it, it's a battle getting current readers to try something new, simply because they're likely already buying quite a few books now. And getting completely new readers to a new title is even harder, since precious little comics news makes out of the comic shops.

There have been plenty of successes with new characters in comics over the last couple of years. They just haven't come from DC or Marvel. Image's comics are ALL brand new characters, but as I mentioned before, they all have the benefit of A-list creators to draw attention to them. Marvel has gotten a bunch of hits thanks to folks like Bendis, but most of them have been unconnected to the Marvel Universe itself. The Sentry is about the only truly new character to be a breakout hit in the MU, and if the rumors are true, that may change in the near future.

DC has usually gone the route of legacy heroes - taking a character name or concept that has been around a while and handing it to a new character. The new Blue Beetle is one of the latest examples of that. While his book was recently canceled after a VERY entertaining run, the character's become a breakout star on the Batman: Brave and the Bold animated series, with his action figures selling quite well. But again, he was brought down by the reticence to try something new, combined with a fairly sizable readership who were still smarting from the way Ted Kord, the previous Blue Beetle, was uncerimoniously shuffed off this mortal coil. In many eyes (not mine) it seemed as if he was killed off expressly so they could create a new version, a move that didn't exactly make any friends when they tried it with Hal Jordan and Kyle Rayner.

New characters at DC are few and far between. The Power Company had a brief but well-received run, Secret Six is a new version of an old title, featuring old characters used in a new way under the stady hand and twisted mind of Gail Simone, who's also getting to spread her magic on Birds of Prey again. But all told, save for those few exceptions, DC makes most of its money bringing us what they've been bringing us for decades. Being a to-the-bone DC fan, I have no problem with that at all, but whenever they try something new, I try to give them a fair hearing, and nine times out of fourteen, I enjoy it.

Last summer DC announced they had finally secured the rights to the THUNDER Agents, the Tower Comics characters created by a sadly underappreciated diety of the medium, Wally Wood. I was,am, and will remain to be over the MOON about this. I've gone on and on about the characters before, so I won't do it again. But based on the past two failed experiments, I am quite keen to see what DC can do this time to make the characters of interest to the new readers. I'm rational enough to know that they will have to rise or fall on new readers; there's simply not enough people who remember them to carry a series.

The Milestone characters were re-introduced with no explanation at all. If you didn't know who they were, you had no idea what was going on. The Red Circle books started on square one and were introduced to everyone at once. Both fizzled. So what's plan C? How do you introduce a whole set of characters to new readers and not overwhelm them? Off the record discussions with DC editors revealed that there are a lot of folks at DC who have been begging to waork on the characters, so I think we'll get some solid work from them; stories written by people who want to write them, as opposed to those who get assigned to. Will they tie the characters to an existing story concept like Checkmate, or even STAR Labs, or will they create something new? Will we see a big name or two involved, at least for the launch to draw attention?

All I know is that once the announcements are made, you are not gonna be able to shut me up about them. So go buy some cotton, cause you gonna have to block out the thunder...

Read More

On the labeling of an entire group by the behavior of its worst members

Let's get a few facts out of the way straight away.

1. There are some outrageous assholes in the tea party movement.
2. The Democrats are happy to point to them and say "You see? That's how they all think".
3. In so doing, they are being delightfully hypocritical.

The act of pointing to a small group of people and claiming that they represent the entire group is a practice that Liberals take great glee in excoriating its enemies when they do it.  Yet, as is true of anything when it benefits you, they see no problem when they do it, likely because they maintain that in THIS case they're right.

Protests, like talk radio and anything that will get you on television, attracts the most shrill and radical members of a movement.  And television loves to show shrill and annoying people, usually to give you an opportunity to lord it over them.  It's the reason they don't talk to the particle physicist or computer programmer who goes to science fiction conventions instead of the fat guy in the Klingon outfit.  And every time they show them, all the perfectly rational people who like science fiction just facepalm and shake their heads. 

Look at the folks that turn up for Earth Day, or any political protest.  Not the kind of folks you want showing up in the halls of Congress.  But again, for every hemp-wearing yahoo coming out for Global Warming, there's hundreds, thousands who have rational reasoned opinions, who grasp that you can't shut down industries but see the benefit of reducing pollution as much as can be without causing undue strain on the business of the industry.  They just couldn't (or wouldn't be caught near) the protest because they have jobs or other such responsibilities.  So they suffer the result of having people believe that the movement is made up of Burning Man refugees who think everything can be solved with a hug and a carbon shell game.

Lots of people have hesitations about the Health Care bill of varying levels of reasonability.  The ones who bought the "Death Panel" line are sadly, tragically deluded.  The ones who see great challenge in the government being able to keep such a large system under control and not grow wildly expensive...perhaps not so crazy, based on past performance. But as is traditional, it's far easier to point to the fringey tips of the wings than to spend time discussing the more rational arguments nearer the middle of the bird.

Frost/Nixon has a great speech at the end about the reductive power of television - the ability to compress an entire complicated issue to a soundbite or a closeup.  And depending on the choices made, you can make someone appear a hero or a fool.  The Tea Party folks are giving the media very little source material for the "hero" image.

Insane signs that can be easily twisted to appear racist (and statements and expletives this weekend that require no twisting at all) make it highly tempting to tar the entirety of people who disagree with the bill with the epithet "looney".  And the binary "all good or all evil" culture that we more and more live in tempts us to believe that the other side is entirely wrong with no worthy ideas to be listened to.  We may not agree with the entirety of our plan, but it's comforting to know that their plan can be discounted entirely.

There's nothing going on in this whole health care mishegas that hasn't been done before.  Politicians have ever wrangled programs and funds for their home districts in exchange for their votes. (Indeed, I consider that far less "corrupt", as the talk show crowd have taken to calling it, than the ones who try to get benefits for themselves alone. At least they're trying to get something for their voters...)  Parties have ever used interpretations of parliamentary procedure to get their bills through in scenarios where they're not sure they have the votes.  We have seen endless examples of perfectly good ideas that turn into wishy-washy do nothing boondoggles that serve no purpose but to allow the politicians to be able to say they Got Something Done.  And we've got lots of plans that the opposition has spent great time pointing out every shortcoming and failing of, so as to drive home the point that The Other Guys made a mistake, and you better vote us in before it all gets worse.

The big difference here is that all of these activities are being dragged out into the light by those who would see the bill fail, rather short-sightedly forgetting that all they're doing is alerting the people to the tricks that they'll be using four or five years hence.  This isn't some new set of tricks and schemery, this is standard operating procedure for the Beltway, magnified to the point where it's visible to the naked untrained eye.  By drawing attention to it, there's the remotest of chances that people will realize that twas ever thus, and might ask it be changed.  If they can stop coming up with embarassing slogans to mis-spell on signs.

Now, the cynical among us might point that I myself am painting all politicians with the same brush, making myself guilty of the very infraction I attack them for.  But of course, here it's perfectly acceptible, because in my case, I'm right.

Read More