Random Comics News Story Round-Up

* Sean Gaffney on Planetes Vol. 2. Henry Chamberlain on Why Would You Do That? and Rikki. Johanna Draper Carlson on Goldie Vance #1. J. Caleb Mozzocco on some graphic novels he's recently read. Cosmo on Beasts Of Burden: What The Cat Dragged In. John Seven on Panther.

* Ng Suat Tong, one of the fine writers with whom it was my pleasure to work when I was at The Comics Journal, wrote two pieces I've seen pick up some traction elsewhere: one on Frank Miller, one not comics on the Civil War Marvel movie. I saw that movie: I thought it was genial and passed the time, with lots of fighting that 8-year-old me would have appreciated. (I also thought all the fighting very easy to follow, which I'm told via reviews was not the case for most people.) It didn't seem very nuanced or sophisticated to me -- quite the opposite -- but I thought that was to its advantage. I'll watch parts of it again someday, I'm sure. That would be a good movie to watch if you woke up early at San Diego con and couldn't get back to sleep. In contrast, to me the big DC movie seemed aggressively terrible, inward-looking to proctology levels and deeply unpleasant right down to its core, but again, I'm so not the intended audience for either at this point.

* not comics: the Guardian covers an on-line "fantasy is bad for you" back-and-forth. The novelty here is that's it's not a literary junk food style argument but one suggesting that fantasy literature is way too disturbing for those whose full sense of reality has yet to develop. Most of the kids with whom I grew up were straight-up horror fans at 10-13, with little effect that I can discern on their future lives.

* Eric Deggans did a thought-piece for NPR on the black superheroes in the Civil War movie. It's coming from a place that engages with the characters as having a distinct cultural force all their own, which of course they do. The thinking that Marvel brings to its casting of the major superhero roles is going to be something worth talking about for a while yet. I don't know why their characters aren't all wildly, matter-of-fact diversified in the comics and on screen at this point, given the prominence of the do-over button at these companies. I was legitimately surprised when white men were cast as Iron Fist and Doctor Strange in their forthcoming film/TV iterations, and am slightly baffled why the guy who died in Avengers seemed a natural for a spin-off series while a Black Widow movie is still being debated as some weird, out-there option.

* Alex Hoffman talks to Andy Barron. Andy Oliver profiles Kim Clements.

* finally, Todd Klein discusses his work on a Black Condor logo.
 
posted 5:05 pm PST | Permalink
 

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