Being an internet refuge for Graeme McMillan
Kevin Brueck: Comic Con villain
On July 25th, my friends and I were walking down the street towards some place to have lunch during the San Diego Comic Con (SDCC) 2014. A man stops us, asking my cosplayer friend to do a quick interview for his documentary on cosplaying. Which is a common project for…
Must-read.
It may just be another big summer movie that opens with $90 million+ and then fails to hit $250m domestic. As big as this debut is, and I don’t want to remotely discount it, it’s basically in the same sandbox as The Amazing Spider-Man 2 and Godzilla which both struggled to cross $200m domestic… [Nonetheless,] this debut, an original space opera starring a cast of mostly (aside from Vin Diesel and Bradley Cooper in vocal roles) non-stars (Chris Platt, Zoe Saldana, Dave Bautista, Lee Pace, Karen Gillan, Djimon Hounsou, John C. Reilly, Glenn Close, and Benicio Del Toro are names of varying recognition without being box office draws) proves two things. First it means that there is no summer slump. Audiences will flock to theaters if the film debuting is something they all want to see. Second, it means that Marvel can do whatever it wants now. So if they choose not to make a female-centric or minority-centric superhero film, it’s because they just don’t want to.
In a sense, Thanos has accomplished more good deeds—helping heroes overcome their differences and learning to work together as a team—than bad ones. His master plan better explain why he wanted to create all these groups to stand against him, otherwise he’s officially a dope. At this point, a better comparison for Thanos than Emperor Palpatine is Dr. Claw, the shadowy puppet master from the Inspector Gadget cartoon, who spent the entire series ordering people around while he sat in a chair, and was repeatedly outsmarted by a little girl and her dog. Thanos even kind of sounds like Dr. Claw.
Thanos’ incompetence wouldn’t be so problematic if every Marvel villain besides Loki wasn’t a complete and total dud. From Iron Monger to Abomination to Whiplash to Ronan The Accuser to the guy from Thor: The Dark World whose name I couldn’t even remember until I looked it up on Wikipedia just now (it’s Malekith), they’re all interchangeably generic evildoers with interchangeably generic evil plans. The glimpses of Thanos are used to paper over their blandness with the promise of excitement down the road. These bad guys might be bad, they insist, but just hang in there; this purple guy will be really nasty.
The metaphor at the center of the X-Men is like chum in the adolescent water: Our bodies are changing in ways we don’t understand and aren’t prepared for; we all want to be special, but more than that, we want to be special together. We want kinship and purpose, and to have the power to lash out at those who hurt us as well as the restraint to not.
For all of that inclusion, you still didn’t encounter too many black faces in the pages of comics. For every African Princess or African Prince or Inner City Disco Mercenary, you had…well, a princess, a prince and a hero for hire.
Continuity is Tribulation: Graeme on the new Captain Victory | Wait, What?
If nothing else, you have to give Captain Victory and the Galactic Rangers credit for refusing to ape the Kirby aesthetic in any way.
In which I am cautiously won over by the new Captain Victory and the Galactic Rangers series, out this Wednesday.
And because I am terrible at pointing this out, I shall now. Hey, people who follow me on Tumblr and may not know this yet: I do a every-two-weekly comic book podcast with the inspired, inspirational Jeff Lester called Wait, What? which you can find here. If you like my random comic ponderings here, it’s like that only with better humor and more conversation. As part of the whole shebang, Jeff and I both do weekly written reviews, which you can find here.
We also run a Patreon campaign to ensure that the time spent making comics ponderings for you doesn’t send us to the poorhouse, which you can find (and support!) here. As of this month, 10% of what we make via Patreon goes back into other comic-related Patreon campaigns, because both of us wanted to give back in response to the generosity of our listeners and readers.
Feel free to share with all your comic-loving buddies, especially if they have too much money and time on their hands.
Herein ends the plug.
I could’ve sworn I answered this last week, but apparently not. Hrm.
Anyway: I can’t listen to music when I write. It bleeds into my head and ruins my concentration. Even if I’m writing outside the house and there’s ambient noise, I’m nowhere near as focused as I am when at home in the quiet. It’s annoying, because I like music so much and feel limited in my time to enjoy it, but it’s the way it is.
As to the second question – let’s cheat and say I’m downloading three books to the Kindle so I don’t have to worry about weight/storage issues. Given that: Alec: The Years Have Pants by Eddie Campbell, a Kirby Fourth World collection – maybe the second of the DC HCs from the other year? – and All Star Superman, off the top of my head.
I think this September event would’ve been a damp squib no matter what, to be honest – it’s not like there’s really been a massive groundswell of interest about Futures End at any point, so I think it’s as likely to be a success now as it would’ve been had it launched before the main series. I’m actually more curious whether or not the event, which is likely to be more successful than the series just because of the scale of DC’s September events as a whole, will somehow jumpstart interest in the series. We’ll see?
(Also: surely interest in this stunt month can’t be any lower than “Villain’s Month” from last year?)
I’m kind of surprised seeing people sharing that Guardians of the Galaxy credits still as evidence of a good thing on Marvel’s part. Given that the creators actually listed as, you know, character creators in the credits are (a) two creators who threatened legal action–or, in Gerber’s case, actually went to court–to try and wrest control of their creations back and (b) a creator who has been the subject of a massive social media campaign to shame Marvel into appropriately crediting him and renumerating him for his work (and associated artists who worked with said creators), it really doesn’t seem like something to boast about.
Also, the effect of crediting Jim Starlin, Bill Mantlo, Keith Giffen, Steve Gerber and Val Mayerik with “created by"s and only giving Englehart, Kirby, et al "special credit” is to create a weird caste system. Why don’t the creators of the movie’s lead character get credited with “created by”? Aren’t they important enough?