As Michael explained in a telephone interview, the focus on his brother has encouraged the studio to reconsider its obligations to him. “The more often Bill’s name gets mentioned, and the more often he is given public credit for something that he did, the easier it is for me to go to Marvel and say, ‘You might want to consider raising your offer.’ ” …“My attorney is very good,” Michael said. “I’m not going to say Marvel came to me and opened up their hearts and their purse strings.”
On Bill Mantlo getting recognition, credit and renumeration for his work, from here.
Important edit: Mike Mantlo has since said that he was very misquoted by the NYT story – I’ve talked to him for THR for a story that’ll go live hopefully very soon. Suffice to say, he’s pretty much disowned the above quote and is far, far more complimentary about his dealings with Marvel.
Kevin Brueck: Comic Con villain
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.
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.
Matt Singer on the problem that is Thanos in Marvel’s movies so far.
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.
The wonderful Marc Bernardin writes about the creation of Genius, his series with Adam Freeman and Afua Richardson, over at Wired.
Continuity is Tribulation: Graeme on the new Captain Victory | Wait, What?
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.
Special Credit
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?