Random Comics News Story Round-Up

* my hunch is that today's "must read" is this Tim Marchman article driven by an interview with Len Wein about Before Watchmen. There are several interesting things to note there. One is that between Marchman and Alex Pappademas we have two new writers about comics untethered to any traditional writing-about-comics outlet. Another is that his bafflement as to the ethical constructions being used is pretty routinely funny. Another is that DC has a PR person in the room when a reporter speaks to a veteran like Len Wein, which strikes me as pretty amazing, anyway. Another is how complimentary Marchman is of aspects of what he's reading while kind of down on the whole enterprise, which strikes me as a reasonable reaction to reading some of those comics.

* so DC is turning the Joker's introduction into the New 52 into a bit of a "look at this" event, particularly in that this is being done by Scott Snyder, the big breakout talent of the initiative thus far. Ideally, this is the way that the revamped-series effort would work: press derived from big storylines and the talent they want to get over, not #0 issues or splitting a bunch of talent off of the line to do some ill-conceived event series. That's only my opinion, of course, and one that comes without ever having run a successful publishing anything.

* Joe Gross reviews a bunch of comics. Rob Clough on mini-comics adaptations. Bob Temuka on Hate Annual #1-9. Grant Goggans on The Underwater Welder. J. Caleb Mozzocco on Green Lantern: War Of The Green Lanterns. Bart Croonenborghs on Portugal. Johanna Draper Carlson on a variety of comics.

* so I guess a pre-arranged PR release through Entertainment Weekly confirms Marvel's plans to do a relaunch of their books. It's a weird thing to do something like that. Any time you break with the prime mid-1960s Marvel period by editorial-directed group think as opposed to individual creator effort I'm going to be a bit suspicious of the results. That's not historically Marvel's best strategy, although you could pull at the definition of those words and claim otherwise, I guess. I imagine those books will do well, though. Marvel has a lot of talented people working for them so the books are likely to be well-executed even if they sound kind of labored concept-wise. Also, there are a lot of fans with a lot of goodwill where Marvel is concerned that want to be told which books are important so they can buy and enjoy them. The danger is that after the novelty aspect of the move passes, those comics will no longer communicate that they must be purchased, and that this settling back into old habits is exacerbated by the fact that such a move is also a jumping off point for certain fans. I still maintain that there are deep structural issues involved here that you can game around with shiny content but only for a limited time.

* this strikes me as such a reasonable and personable pre-CCI post that it almost looks like some sort of anachronistic accident. Maybe that's just after ten days now of being pelted by bombastic e-mails, I don't know.

* finally, it's that time of the year when artists are at home working on commissioned art works ahead of Comic-Con International. Or just drawing Rogue because it's fun. Or adding to the growing body of Wolverine meets Freddie Mercury literature.
 
posted 2:00 am PST | Permalink
 

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