I spent two hours at the con on Friday, and attended for the full day on both Saturday and Sunday. The sheer emptiness of the aisles on Friday was pretty surprising, particularly combined with the fact that the floor size felt a lot smaller than it did last year. An entire end of the show floor was dedicated to lines and registration, rather than exhibits. My first thought was the obvious one– the economy struck again.

Saturday, though, was much busier. It was, as is normal for cons, extremely difficult to get through most of the aisles. Even the aisles with the retired TV stars and wrestlers seemed pretty packed. Retailers and artists all seemed to have good shows despite the economy, as the constant crowds around the half-off trades booths showed.

Attendance on Sunday seemed to slack again. It rained in the morning, which is brutal for a show that closes at 5. Traffic at the table was slower than on Saturday, which had the added bonus of allowing us to talk to people for longer.

Overall, though, the con was still a ton of fun, particularly from my new perspective. Check out the few dozen photos below to see what the con looked like first-hand. Thanks to Andi Wang, Peter McCullagh, and Keith McNeil for taking the photos while I was otherwise occupied!

I watched the finale of The Shield the other night. It was nothing I expected and everything I wanted out of the end of that series. Loose ends were wrapped up without it being obvious or rushed, characters moved logically in their arcs, and I was left with an overall sense of both completion and wonder. What’s next for the cast? Where are these characters going to go?

Like The Wire, the ending to The Shield was well-done and elegant. We found out what we needed to know, some of what we wanted to know, and it all made sense. It fit together.

It’s kind of funny that I read this the night before I read Batman #681, which was basically the opposite experience.

I thought the first half of the book was pretty good. The action kept going, the story cracked, and the typical Morrison Batman got to play his “I suspected all along” card. I don’t buy his admission that he never loved Jezebel Jet (that was very much a “I’m rubber, you’re glue” scene), but the rest of it worked. He was ready. He didn’t know what he was ready for, or when it was coming, but he was prepared for when it got there. The reveals were nicely paced with the Club of Heroes, too.

Just going on the first part of the book alone, it’d be one of the better issues of Morrions’s extremely rocky and uneven run. It’s good, but not Morrison Good. It isn’t that far from Rock of Ages or one of the better Chuck Dixon issues.

But, my problem is with the reveal of who Simon Hurt really is, the “death,” and the feeling of anticlimax I was left with. Those reveals and scenes dropped the book down to hovering just above average for me. Grant Morrison promised that the reveal of the Black Glove’s identity would be the biggest surprise for Bat-fans in 70 years and blow the lid off the series and so on and so forth.

Turns out that the Black Glove is a group of five rich people, and Simon Hurt is an actor named Mangrove Pierce, who must be nigh-on fifty years old and hates Bruce Wayne enough to try and ruin his life. I just checked– all the lids are still on the series and I have yet to spittake.

The reveal is the worst sin a comic book can commit- it’s boring. Hurt claims to be Thomas Wayne, but Batman tells him that no, you’re wrong, you are actually Mangrove Pierce. Hurt replies that Pierce is just the skin he’s wearing, bringing the idea of fictionsuits to my mind, and that he is actually just the hole in things.

I mean, really? That’s it? He isn’t Alfred, Robin, or anyone else that anyone has any reason to care about? He’s some rich, and old, jerk who looks just like Bruce Wayne and his father? That sucks.

I wonder if I’m not being fair to the story, but then I remember that Morrison’s run has been seeded with all kinds of clues and allusions and depth. It’s clear that something is supposed to be there, but what we got in Batman 681 was nothing. Less than nothing, in fact, considering the build-up to a nothing reveal.

Simply put– We, as readers, expect more from Morrison. He’s built a rep for writing comics that are interesting to talk about, and feature topics that can fuel conversation for weeks or months. Tim Callahan wrote a must-have book on the man’s work.

Fantastic Four: 1234, New X-Men, and The Invisibles alone have all dealt with the idea of ultimate evil and identity and done it fairly well. My guess for the identity of the Black Glove was that he was Batman’s tulpa, as seen in FF:1234. After enduring Thogal, Bruce expelled all the negativity that’s followed him around since his parents died. (One of the best bits in Year One is the picture of Bruce’s eyes just after his parents were shot. His eyes are not sad, or despondent, or closed. They are open, angry, and resolved. That is the moment Batman was born, though he wasn’t given shape until nearly twenty years later.) Expelling the energy healed Bruce, but all that energy needed somewhere to go.

David Uzumeri had a fun theory about Alfred being the glove. Graeme McMillan and Jeff Lester told me it’d be either Robin or Alfred one night, and had various reasons why. We’ve talked it over for plenty of hours and dozens of emails. Batman RIP 1-5 gave us plenty of things to chew on and discuss.

Batman 681 just gave us something to be disappointed about. Geoff Klock nails a lot of the reason why here, and I agree with his points. We got a lot of build-up for a payoff that would fit pretty well on any generic mid-90s “Superhero… no more!” story, complete with the exploding helicopter and leftover bit of costume.

I was expecting the next New X-Men (solid story, uneven art teams, good payoff), but I got the next Knightfall instead. A well-written Knightfall, but a Knightfall nonetheless.

I was raised in a black, church-going, military family. My grandfather did 30 years in the Air Force, my mom did a few, my dad was in Gulf War I, I’ve had various relative enlist, and it seems like everybody I knew from high school is either married or joined some branch of the military. I guess all of this is just to say that I’m not coming at Amazing Spider-Man #574 from the position of a total neophyte or someone who doesn’t know nothing about nothing. If you couldn’t tell from my body of work, I tend to pay attention to those things, if only because all three things are so close to my heart.

The crux of ASM #574 is that Flash Thompson was sent to Iraq, with the surprise revelation that he lost his legs rescuing a fellow soldier. The issue tells the story of Flash’s motivations during the story, even while massaging continuity (Vietnam quietly replaced with an unnamed jungle) and bringing the character up to date.

Overall, I really enjoyed the issue. Other than one hollow note (the origin of the name Flash comes from a high school date), this is probably Guggenheim’s strongest piece of writing to date. Careful attention is paid to the reality and treatment of the military in the book, including a desk-driving general and slang. These aren’t your cardboard cut-out soldiers. We don’t get the guy with the kid at home, or the crazy war-thirsty jerkoff. The little attention given to them paints them as just regular people.

It’s Flash’s story, though, and the issue is mostly told in the first person, as Flash tells his story to the general who is reviewing him for a Medal of Honor. It’s in an issue of Spider-Man because Flash is Spidey’s number one fan, and the text shows how Spider-Man has influenced Flash’s life over the years. When Flash needed a hero, his abusive father was found lacking. Instead, he looked to Spider-Man, resulting in iconic shots of Spider-Man versus the Sinister Six, or lifting a heavy thing, or fighting the Kingpin head-on, and so on, when Flash needed that extra motivation.

It isn’t clear in the text whether Spidey was on his mind during the action itself, or simply making parallels in the retelling, but both work thematically. Guggenheim is walking a fine line here, and could easily tip over into equating the exploits of Spider-Man, a fictional character, with the very real soldiers over in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere. Instead, I found that it was just a story about where heroism comes from.

Everyone has someone or something that they look up to. It’s that person in the back of your mind who inspires you, or whose memory you want to live up to, whether it’s What Would Jesus Do or I Wanna Be Like Mike. It’s a very human thing to look outside yourself for strength, and I think that this book does a good job of doing that. Flash’s father was abusive, so he was right out as far as heroes go. Spider-Man, however, was young, capable, and an easy target for a young guy who needed help. Flash latched on and became a huge fanboy. When he needed to push, he could look to Spidey.

I can see how this could ruffle some feathers, but I thought it was done perfectly respectfully. Nowhere is anyone but Flash’s motivations attributed to Spider-Man, and it’s always in an inspirational manner. It isn’t about how awesome Spider-Man is, but rather about how important heroes are to people, albeit illustrated on a very small scale.

This issue prompted me to put some real thought as to whether or not it was appropriate for comics, and superhero comics in particular, to address real world issues. One man’s “respectfully handled” is another man’s “complete travesty.” Why can we do World War II comics by the boatload, but more modern issues are taboo? Is it the time and distance that separates us and makes it seem less real? Is the War on Terror, or Insert Cause/Injustice/Action of Your Choice Here, somehow more real and troubling than the Big One?

I don’t think so, and I think this issue is a good reason why. If you can do your best to treat an issue respectfully, do the research (we can call it “due diligence” so we can pretend to be adults), and generally just put your best foot forward, I don’t think that any subject is taboo.

I believe that fiction is important. As much as I hate to quote a Superman comic to support a point, I have to say that one of my favorite Superman moments is in Action Comics #775, where Superman defeats the hot cynical superteam of the moment and says, “Dreams save us. Dreams lift us up and transform us.”

The fictional nature of something does not decrease its importance any more than relating something fictional to something real insults the real thing. Sometimes you have to push toward that fictional ideal to get the job done. Sometimes it’s your father, sometimes it’s Spider-Man. There is little difference between the two, and both serve different purposes for different people. Sometimes, dreams are just what you need.

I’ve personally known people who were big on the Punisher, Sgt Rock, or (X character) who spent some time in Iraq. We didn’t spend a lot, or really any, time talking about how the adventures of Clint Barton helped them in the field, but people generally have pet heroes, or tattoos of heroes, for specific reasons. One guy in Iraq using Spider-Man as inspiration? I can buy that.

Comics helped a lot in teaching me to read. Obscure science terms, made-up words, and things that sounded like made-up words but were actually real words after all littered my early comics reading experience. So, comics taught me a love of words.

Rap taught me to love wordplay. It’s about taking a phrase you know and turning it on its head. High School Me would hate me for being about to quote Young Jeezy, but this part from his verse on Put On is great and he’s from the next town over, so suck it, 2001-me.

Passenger’s a red bone, her weave look like some curly fries
Inside’s fish sticks, outside’s tartar sauce
Pocket full of cel-e-ry, imagine what she telling me
Blowing on asparagus, the realest shit I ever smoked
Ridin’ to that trap or die- the realest shit I ever wrote
They know I got that bro-cco-li, so I keep that glock with me

And yeah, it’s typical ignant thug rap– this is still Jeezy, after all. He makes the extended food metaphor work, and for some reason, it ends up being pretty clever. There are other great examples. Big Pun had that killer tongue-twister flow (Dead in the middle of little Italy, little did we know that we riddled some middleman who didn’t do diddly) and Ghostface is still rap’s very own Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

Another place where rap and comics intersected for me was in that they both portrayed heroes and role models for a very young David Brothers to take in. The difference between the two is that comics had heroes, black or white, who were generally written for white guys by white guys, while rappers were generally black guys who were usually aimed at a black audience.

The majority of black comics characters were, for years, either black characters filtered through an extremely non-black lens (Storm), unrelateable (Panther), parodies (Cage), or awful (Bishop).

Rap offered a slightly different perspective. I was just old enough to sneak in on the tail end of the pro-black movement of rap. Midnight Marauders hit when I was nine or ten (along with the Malcolm X movie). I had the Wu. I had Nas. I had a ton of people who taught me that being black is awesome, having money is great, and that crime is exciting. When it came down to choosing Iron Man or Tony Starks… I went with Ghostface Killah.

Most comics, with the notable exception of Milestone and occasional “outreach” books, aren’t aimed at me. That’s changed somewhat in recent years, but Marvel and DC are still relying on the same fanbase they’ve had for forty-plus years.

This brings me around to what I think are the two most important books in comics since… I dunno, the Jemas-era began. Nat Turner by Kyle Baker, and Sentences by Percy “MF Grimm” Carey and Ron Wimberly are books that are aimed at me. They’re by black people and aimed, if not at black people directly, at a wider audience than just “fanboys.”

Both aren’t necessarily the most marketable “comic books.” One is a book about a guy whose claim to fame was killing a lot of white men, women, and children after he was given a sign from Heaven. The other is about a rapper, but the greater message isn’t about “bitches and switches and hoes and clothes and weed,” which is what you’d usually see out of basically anything involving rap in the media at large.

Sentences was probably my favorite complete book out of ’07, including single issues, and it totally got robbed for that Eisner. I think it’s an important step in a lot of ways, and the least Vertigo-style title Vertigo has published. It isn’t a long and boring, goth-y, about vampires, religion, or your usual Vertigo cliche of choice. It’s just about a dude, his life, and the choices he made that got him to where he is now. It’s also about growing up black, falling into traps, and digging your way out of a hole you’ve dug for yourself.

There were any number of scenes and references in that book that I immediately got. I thought the bit with the mom in the beginning was hilarious. Why? Probably because I’d seen my mom swing on a grown man for messing with my little brother and any number of verbal sonnings while out shopping. I can relate to Carey’s love for his grandmother because we’re on the same level there.

In a very real way, it’s a book about me and my experiences. It’s about someone who looks like me, has gone through some of the same things I’ve gone through, listens to the same music, and even hung out with some of my own heroes. I don’t have to play down the obvious racial and class differences between me and most comics characters. I don’t have to worry about shocked stares when I say I haven’t heard of some apparently huge band. It’s the power of shared experience working in my favor. I finished the book feeling like I could go “Midnight Marauders or Low End Theory?” and “Ether or Takeover?” and get into an hour-long fight or an hour-long conversation, depending on the answer.

(Midnight Marauders and Ether are the right answers.)

Kyle Baker’s Nat Turner was my Sentences for when it came out. I recently re-read it on a long plane ride few weeks back, and finishing it prompted a few things. First, it made me realize that I had to do this essay. Second, I resolved to give the book (which I had just purchased a few days earlier) away the first chance I got, because people need to read it. And I did.

Nat Turner, the person, has been an interesting figure to me since I first heard of him. It could have been from a rap song, or from one of the footnotes in a school textbook that Baker mentions in his text pieces in the book. I know (off the top of my head) that he was mentioned on Wu-Forever, Sean Price’s Brokest Rapper You Know, and the Talib Kweli + dead prez joint off Lyricist Lounge.

Nat’s claim to fame, and I’m not embellishing anything here, is that he killed fifty-plus white men, women, and children. He led the largest slave rebellion in the States. Obviously, he was a murderer, and that isn’t something to be proud of. At the same time, though, he stood up tall and spat in the face of a system and country that believed him to be less than human. There’s a lot to appreciate in this story, though that probably makes me sound like a sociopath.

Baker’s approach to the book gives it a storybook kind of feel. There are only a few word balloons, leaving the action to stand on its own. The majority of the text is taken directly from The Confessions of Nat Turner. It comes in chunks and often relates to the scenes being depicted on the page, but its tone is jarring. The rebellion happened 160-some years ago, so the language and times are different. It’s like peeking into another world, or reading about a faraway land. The essay is very methodical and sometimes stilted. Premediated is an apt description, as well.

The art sells every emotion and scene perfectly. Sadness, determination, hate, and love all come through clear as a bell. One scene expertly shows a situation in which killing your own child is the greatest act of love you can perform. It’s depressing, it’s tough, and it’s a downer, but it’s a necessary one. It’s like medicine. You have to take it, and after you get past the taste, you’ll feel better.

I feel like it’s a book you should have to read at least once. It tells a story that doesn’t get a lot of attention, but is still well-known and loved by a lot of people. It’s a story that illuminates both universal rights and what happens when someone is pushed too far and too hard.

Nat Turner and Sentences were like comics dipping their toe into the pool. They were warning shots. They are saying “We are here, we have always been here” to the industry and “Don’t go anywhere, there is something here for you, too” to the audience. I really wish that these books had been around for when I was younger. They’re exactly what I was looking for, but didn’t know I was looking for.

It was the equivalent of one of my favorite images from the past.

Now, though, I just want more. My two loves are on speaking terms. Let’s keep at it, yeah?

Fresh out! 4l!tv 03: Continuity Patch Comix.

This week, I talk about why we don’t really need books like Green Lantern: Rebirth, One More Day, or Infinite Crisis. It comes complete with audio/visual aids.

Artist of the Week is Esso, out of Harlem. I dug through the 2dopeboyz archive and pulled out a few treats: Paper Planes remix, Hip-hop Will Never Die w/Nas, and Get Ya Beat Killed. Add in three mixtapes, ESSOcentric v1, ESSObama, and E3: E-Day and you’ve got over fifty new songs to bump.

I’m way too fond of Anti-Backpack, too. It’s self-conscious as all get out.

Anyway, I’m still working on the sound mix. I’ve heard that the backing music is a little too loud, so I’ll work that out. I’ve also been told that I should get a green screen so that I can report live from the Daily Planet, but one thing at a time, right? I’ll fix the sound first, then some bitrate issues, and then move on from there.

You can catch my page on Vimeo. I’ll look into other distribution methods later on.

Next March, in time for Spring Training 2008, Fantagraphics will publish Wilfred Santiago’s graphic novella about Puerto Rican baseball legend, Roberto Clemente — 21: The Roberto Clemente Story. Santiago is a native of Ponce, PR, my father’s hometown, and while I was too young to have seen Clemente play before he died tragically in 1972, I remember his name was always spoken with pride in my otherwise die-hard, Yankees-loving neighborhood, 10 blocks north of the House That Ruth Built, on the other side of the Grand Concourse. (Yes, I dumped the Yankees for the Mets in 1982-1983 while I was still living there.)

Santiago has a great promotional web site up that includes a trailer, sample panels, and a couple of nice wallpapers. He’s also selling a couple of promo items on CafePress that are worth a look.

I’m really looking forward to this! Thanks to Rich for the heads-up!

“Beetle” grew partly out of its creators’ desire to write “a different kind of hero,” one whose adventures would appeal to kids, without being too dark and violent, says writer John Rogers. As a result, Jaime isn’t an orphan like Bruce Wayne or Clark Kent, but a high school kid who lives at home with his working-class family in El Paso, Texas (just as Manny lives with his dad and grandfather in the fictional Miracle City).

Jaime doesn’t hide his predicament from his parents. Instead, he talks to them about his confusing new responsibilities. “When Jaime has to ask his parents to break curfew to fight crime, that’s a lot more interesting to me than a 35-year-old angry white millionaire who fights samurai villains and killer clowns,” says Rogers, a TV and film scribe who recently moved to Canada. (“Beetle” is truly a modern-day collaboration: 25-year-old artist Rafael Albuquerque lives in Porto Alegre, Brazil; he got the job last summer after meeting his New York-based editors at a comic book convention in Chicago.)

“As people do with any fictional entertainment, [kids] look for points of identification,” says Seattle-based Greg Hatcher, who teaches comic book writing and drawing to middle school kids. He recalls two students becoming “absolutely mesmerized” a few years ago by an old comic he brought to class featuring Marvel’s Luke Cage, an African-American hero for hire.

“They read it together,” Hatcher says. “One boy was black and one boy was Latino. But what grabbed them about Luke wasn’t his ethnicity; it was his poverty.”

When Dr. Doom stiffs Luke out of his fee, the hero borrows the Fantastic Four’s jet “and flies to Doom’s home country to beat [the money] out of him. To this day I remember [the student] saying, ‘Five hundred bucks is a lot of money! He better go after that guy!’ “

(That Cage line is a classic: “Where’s my money, honey?”)

Towards the end of the article, Rogers notes that his “fondest wish is that, 10, 15 years from now, a Hispanic kid is going to take over writing ‘Blue Beetle’ — or start writing his own comics — because he feels that the medium is accessible to him.” 10-15 years?!?! Screw that, I say! I want to see that happening right now. And, no, I don’t mean me!

Rich Watson does a great job with Glyphs, monitoring black comics creators and characters, and has put me on to a number of comics I’d probably not have easily come across on my own — particularly Lance Tooks’ and Paul Sizer’s work, and to a lesser degree, Stagger Lee — but my knowledge of Latino comics creators (writers and writer/artists) is limited to Los Bros. Hernandez, Javier Hernandez, Frank Espinosa, Phil Jimenez and…um…yeah. :-(

Where’s my Latinos and Latinas at? Seriously. Hit me up with names and links.