Random Comics News Story Round-Up

* Evan Dorkin has a nice report from the commencement speech he gave at CCS over the weekend. I bet it was a lot funnier and more memorable than the one at my college graduation.

* Dan Clowes is covering the May 24 New Yorker.

* Ben Morse talks in two parts about his five favorite Avengers and his history with Marvel's team title. That was one of the two books I collected when I was a kid -- I had issues #1-#200 -- so this is totally up my alley. My five favorite Avengers team members would be:

1) The Vision. It's hard for people who started reading superhero comics after 1980 to believe this, but the Vision was for several years the hardcore Marvel fans' favorite character. I liked that he had creepy powers, was totally red, was at one-time the re-animated and reprogrammed corpse of an earlier Marvel character, and with all of that working against him still managed to be one of the few Avengers we knew had sex.

2) 10-Foot Goliath. I think I liked him just because I was a big kid. He was also the most miserable character in the history of all comic books, to an almost comedic degree, which made me feel like I comported myself well as a prisoner in my 5'4'' body. Plus for some reason Roy Thomas seemed to think being 10 feet tall automatically put you in the Marvel heavy-hitters weight class instead of what that power would really give you: constantly sore feet and perpetual, targeted ass-beatings from smaller and stronger super-villains, by which I mean all of them.

3) Hawkeye. We all had someone in our core group of friends growing up who's just a little too into being a member of the group. That's Hawkeye. Hawkeye was also the emblematic character of the awesome Cap's Kooky Quartet era -- Captain America, Hawkeye, Quicksilver, Scarlet Witch -- where the uniting factor was that every Avenger had powers that were super-annoying to face in open combat. Can you imagine being tricked out in your finest Gear Of General Badassery, primed and ready for Go-Time, and some carny dickweed stands 200 feet away shooting paste arrows at you? Most of the stories back then ended when some heavy-hitting super-villain basically said, "God, fuck this" and took his invading army home as the various Avengers danced around in front of him, serpentine fashion, ready for round 17.

4) Captain America. Captain America in the Avengers was always sweating how to stay in the game with all the roster's heavy-hitters, something I found way more appealing than the bland, super-confident tough guy he always seemed to be in his solo comic. Also, I always liked how he was really good at fighting people in hallways. Like if there's a hallway with a bunch of dudes in it, he could totally beat up that entire hallway.

5) Swordsman. I liked the fact he just showed up out of the blue with his hooker girlfriend and decided he was going to be on the team. We all know someone like that, too. Plus he was great as Schneider on One Day At A Time.

Yeah, I could do that all day. My CPR training? Don't remember one bit of it.

* not comics: the problem with unimaginative superhero plot-lines is that they either sound like they've been done 50 times before and they probably really have been done at least a half-dozen times before. So then someone gets sued. It's like vampire stuff. If you say "vampire mobsters," I know without looking that someone has done vampire mobsters before.

* there is no greater joy perusing the comics Internet than an event-heavy update from Brett Warnock at his Top Shelf blog.

* not comics: will John Landis raise enough money to make a William Gaines biopic? Jonah Hill, your Oscar nomination is calling...

* finally, Johanna Draper Carlson addresses some perceived shortcomings in the Glyph Awards.
 
posted 3:00 am PST | Permalink
 

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