Month: July 2014

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Steve: Would you say that’s a particular problem for Marvel? Or do you think there’s a charm in having Wikipedia open while you read your first ever X-Men comics, to help learn backstories and origins?

Rachel: I think it’s a problem fairly common to shared-universe characters who’ve been around for the better part of a century. If someone did a similar podcast with the DCU, I’d listen in a minute, because I am so completely intimidated by that timeline that I don’t even know where to start.

Firstly: go read this interview Steve Morris did with Rachel and Miles, who X-Plain the X-Men on a weekly basis (Also, if you don’t listen to that podcast, then go and listen to that podcast).

Secondly: I made a joke awhile back on Twitter about wanting to do an X-Plain the X-Men for the Justice League, and now that I’ve seen Rachel talk about someone doing a similar podcast for the DCU, I really want to do it. This is clearly a bad idea and Rachel is accidentally enabling me without even know it.

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Not surprisingly, given the Level 10 top-secrecy surrounding all things Marvel-ous, exec producer Jed Wheon at first hedged, “We can’t say much,” when TVLine asked if the TV series is tasked with getting S.H.I.E.L.D. from “Point B to Point C” during its sophomore run. He then allowed — echoing the Season 1B theme — “Everything is connected, sometimes more so than other times. Obviously Coulson was born out of the films, and we can only hope to have that sort of impact in the other direction.

“But right now,” he added, “we’re just trying to make everybody as cool and interesting as we can.”

During a previous conversation with TVLine, Whedon’s fellow EP (and wife) Maurissa Tancharoen offered on the exact same topic, in measured words, “All of us are aware of the moving parts at all times. With that said, there are many opportunities for planting things that… end up in other things.”

Whedon himself then revealed this much: “Let’s put it this way: In the second season, there’s definitely a milestone that everybody needs to hit.”

Oh, look: the second season of Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD looks set to have the same problems as the first one. Great! (Also, how weirdly needy does “we can only hope to have that sort of impact in the other direction” sound?)

I’ve complained many times before about how bad the first season of that show was–and quite why I stuck with it for the whole thing, I can’t even vaguely explain beyond “masochism”–but what really sticks with me about the whole thing is how clearly it demonstrates the series’ lack of ambition and imagination.

Let’s take the idea that everyone involved with the show started things off knowing that SHIELD was going to effectively cease to exist at the end of the season because of events in the Captain America movie as read. Given that restriction, would you (a) create 15-odd episodes of filler and set-up for storylines that won’t get any payoff that season or (b) think to yourself, “Wait: we have SHIELD-as-is all to ourselves for pretty much a year? We can establish all kinds of weird shit and the movies won’t have to worry about it at all because there’s an in-built get-out clause right there!”

There was the potential for Agents of SHIELD to be the procedural that appeared to be spilling all kinds of organizational secrets about the Marvel Universe’s central intelligence agency, making it more of a destination for movie fans without any true risk to the movie continuity because the organization in question was primed to self-destruct. There was even the potential to, you know, actually create foreboding about the moral integrity of SHIELD along the way–which, to be fair, the show tried to do, except the morally dubious characters were the leads, who the show kept trying to convince us were the good guys all the way through the thing–in order to create something interesting about the show and anything to make the “Oh, yeah, we’re filled with sleeper agents from our evil alternate organization” plot not come out of nowhere. And yet–nope.

That’s the thing about Agents of SHIELD ultimately: It really did have a lot of potential. It’s just that almost every single creative choice the show made was made in service of ensuring that that potential would be squandered.

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And not just a movie; Snyder hasn’t created some processional of images or a living audio book. He’s made a film that feels like a living, breathing thing all its own while also being – almost completely – the book. Snyder’s Watchmen captures the themes and the meanings and the characters that Moore and Gibbons created but makes them his own, turning the movie from being simply an adaptation into something that feels closer to collaboration.

Had he only done that, Snyder would have earned a positive review from me. But he does more; Snyder had crafted a movie that flirts with honest to God greatness, that doesn’t just capture the events of the comic but also the humanity and the emotion. It’s a remarkable film, and an uncompromising one. It’s the sort of movie that major studios are simply not supposed to be making now that the 1970s are over.

When people try to convince me that I should feel convinced by a particular movie site with a ridiculous name, I suddenly remember this breathless review of the Watchmen movie (Elsewhere in the same review: “I believe that it is a monumental achievement, a alchemical balancing act that manages to serve the original material while feeling fresh and the product of a director’s vision”).
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The Washington Post’s Wonkblog then crunched the numbers against the approval ratings of upcoming presidential candidates and other politicians, and it’s not particularly flattering reading. Barack Obama can take heart from the fact that at least he’s not as unpopular as Jar Jar Binks, but is outdone by Emperor Palpatine, a man determined to let the forces of evil govern entire galaxies. Hillary Clinton will be similarly disappointed to learn than her 19% approval rating puts her on a par with amoral bounty hunter Boba Fett – but then again she doesn’t have a cool jetpack.

From here.
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Out of all respondents, 59 percent said they felt sexual harassment was a problem in comics and 25 percent said they had been sexually harassed in the industry. The harassment varied: while in the workplace or at work events, respondents were more likely to suffer disparaging comments about their gender, sexual orientation, or race. At conventions, respondents were more likely to be photographed against their wishes. Thirteen percent reported having unwanted comments of a sexual nature made about them at conventions—and eight percent of people of all genders reported they had been groped, assaulted, or raped at a comic convention.

To put these percentages into perspective, if 13 percent of San Diego Comic-Con attendees have unwanted comments of a sexual nature made about them this week, that would be around 17,000 people. And if eight percent of SDCC attendees are groped, assaulted, or raped, that’s over 10,000 attendees suffering harassment.

Janelle Asselin on sexual harassment in comics, and comic conventions.
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For FF‘s Sake: Graeme Jumps Over Onto The Companion Fraction Fantastic Title

For FF‘s Sake: Graeme Jumps Over Onto The Companion Fraction Fantastic Title

In which I follow-up on my look at the Fraction/Bagley/Kesel/Inaco Fantastic Four last week with a look at its companion title, which – as many people said in the comments to the first piece – is much better.

For those who aren’t following WaitWhatPodcast.com, hey! Jeff and I do written reviews every week on there in addition to the every-two-weeks podcast. Go and enjoy. And then support the Patreon because why not.

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Do you think comics publishers would ever commission series regular artists who missed issues and needed fill-ins to go back and re-do the missing monthly issues for trade consistency etc? I realize it would change the nature of the trade as a document-of-preservation but could make some multipart story-lines a lot less jarring and appear as originally intended. I also realize people are buying them “as is” but don’t singular artist trades sell better than random grab bag ones?

We’ve gotten part of the way there, with DC commissioning new pages for collected editions in the past (Final Crisis and We3 being the ones that immediately spring to mind, but I’m sure it’s happened with other collections) – they also had George Perez re-do pages from the Infinite Crisis series for collection, and Cameron Stewart re-drew Ashley Wood’s pages from The Invisibles for the final collection.

I’m sure it’ll happen eventually, if it’s not already been the case, but if/when it does, there’ll inevitably be those who’ll complain that either (a) they’re being punished for buying the single issues, or (b) the collection is somehow being unfaithful to the original incarnation of the story and demanding that the original version is also included in there somehow.