Tag: Comics

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But Moore is right to question some aspects of today’s comics culture. The banal Hollywood industry of turning piquant comics (including his) into mediocre blockbuster films is boring, and there is potentially something absurd about a civilisation that thinks graphic novels are way cooler than actual novels. There’s a smug complacency about, say, the New York Times giving comics masses of review space. Are graphic novels just cultural capital for the university-educated who dig the postmodernity of the medium?

This is why I fell in love with Moore’s comics. Unlike cool graphic novels about urban angst, his comics really are comics with a restless unrespectability. His dark ideas and savage humour make his works less cosy and more dangerous than any rival. He puts the shame back into the grownup comic, and that is as it should be.

Guardian, I love you, but you’re embarrassing yourself (Part 1).

“There is potentially something absurd about a civilisation that thinks graphic novels are way cooler than actual novels.” Ah, the concept of a hierarchy of media – or the primacy of prose, for that matter.

Also, why exactly “should” there be shame in the grownup comic?

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The heirs of Superman co-creator Joe Shuster got some bad news on Tuesday when the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals voted not to hold a rehearing in a dispute that challenged Warner Bros.’ grip on the Superman franchise.

But contrary to news reports out there, this isn’t quite the end to a dispute that stretches back decades in many guises.

The Hollywood Reporter explains the current state of the Superman rights case(s). Short version: The Shuster side of things is done. The Siegel side of things, not so much.
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Something of this sort does seem to be at work, with at least some of the criticism to which Moore responds in this interview; this is suggested by the lack of context to this criticism. I can’t help but feel as if Moore might have been manipulated — handed extracted quotes, to which he predictably responds with, among other things, no small amount of anger. If this is the case, Moore still ought to apologize, but a considerable degree of culpability lies with others as well. Not having been involved, I don’t know to what degree this is the case, and I have no evidence of it, outside of how in the interview Moore seems almost completely unaware of anything beyond the excerpts to which he responds.

Short version: Sequart’s Julian Darius realizes who Alan Moore was taking cheap shots at in his interview and, in trying to apologize, really tries to create a situation wherein Moore remains blameless. “I can’t help but feel as if Moore might have been manipulated.”

The full thing, which is worth reading, is here.

I’ve been interested in the ways in which people have reacted to the backlash to Moore’s comments. I’ve seen mention of the comics community “turning on” Moore, which doesn’t ring true to me on a number of levels, as well as commentary along the lines of “Well, he’s justified in being a dick because he’s Alan Moore,” which seems utterly ridiculous to me – no-one deserves that kind of free pass.

The idea that it’s more likely that Moore was “manipulated” feels like more of that. Even more defense of a man who neither deserves, nor needs, it. It’s strange seeing the amount of objectification Moore is getting from his fans over this. Instead of accepting that, hey, he’s a cantankerous old man who is filled with bile and has been for years – see, oh, every single friendship he has cut off for some perceived slight over the last few decades – he becomes some kind of character whose every trespass can be explained away as someone else’s fault, somehow.

Everyone deserves better.

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BTW, seeing all this go down—and seeing the results, and this initial package—well, it burns my ass in one way. This is proof positive and absolute that corporate Marvel COULD do the right thing, by all its past creators, if it wanted to—Marvel chooses NOT to. MM will never have the enormous revenue streams the legacy of Jack Kirby has—but Marvel, for various reasons, ended up doing right by all concerned for this MM #1 to hit the shelves. Marvel COULD do right by ALL its seminal creators. THEY CHOOSE NOT TO.

It’s a CHOICE.

Never forget that. This is the clear, undeniable evidence, in our hands.

Stephen Bissette, talking about Marvel’s Miracleman reprints over on Facebook.
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Due to editorial circumstances HAWKEYE will ship two upcoming issues out of its normal numbering sequence. HAWKEYE #16 will go on-sale 01/22/14, while HAWKEYE #15 will go on sale 02/19/14.

I know the reasoning behind this release, I just find it funny still that Marvel didn’t simply swap the contents of the two issues to avoid having to explain this over and over again.
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Hey Tom, What made you decide not to have a free digital code inside Miracleman #1?

brevoortformspring:

The need for differences between the material as originally printed, and what we’re permitted to release in the digital space. As aspects of the story are having to be adjusted in order to pass muster in the digital edition (whereas the print edition preserves the material as it was originally presented), it became untenable to link the two together.

“What we’re permitted to release in the digital space.”

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As someone in the industry what do you consider the best books about comics out there? (I just finished Howe’s Marvel Comics: The Untold Story and want to read more about the industry)

brianmichaelbendis:

tales to astonish by ronin ro

cavelier and clay by michael chabon

steranko noir by steranko

the modern masters series from tomorrow

10 cent plague

the art of George perez has a great long interview.  i like the art books that are also a autobio 

Reblogged just to add: Man, everyone who likes to read about the history of the comic book industry should make a point of picking up Men of Tomorrow by Gerard Jones. Imagine a Kavalier and Clay that’s actually true.

(Also, I’d probably throw Supergods and Douglas Wolk’s Reading Comics onto that list, although the latter isn’t a history-of-comics book and the former tends to drive people nuts, it seems. Oh, and Thrill Power Overload, which is a great history of 2000AD and British comics from the late 1970s through the turn of the millennium.)

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I don’t think in my twenties I had a long range vision of what I was about. We have no idea of what it’s like to not be in our twenties. But then, that’s what makes the first book kind of interesting to look back on. It feels to me that it was written by some person other than myself. Most of the problems between generations in our society derive from how easily we forget our frame of mind in one phase after we’ve moved on to the next.

The sage Eddie Campbell, from this Bleeding Cool article about Campbell’s Alec, which remains one of the greatest achievements in comics (I might not fight you if you disagree, but I’ll certainly think a little less of you).