That’s Herge’s native country, in case you didn’t know

Y’know, this is slowly becoming almost as ridiculous as the Muhammad cartoon controversy, which has recently spun off onto some bizarre tangents. No one’s died over Tintin in the Congo yet, but the length of this campaign makes me think some perspective may be necessary. No one denies that the images of Africans in the book are stereotypical, and I realize that Tintin is as big in Europe as Spider-Man is here, but the specific targeting of this one particular graphic novel made decades ago in a less enlightened time (relatively speaking, of course) makes me wonder: why stop here? Why not go after more comics with images we don’t like? Hell, why stop with comics? Would an introductory essay to put the book in historical context really not be enough to appease these people? I suspect not, and that’s unfortunate, to say the least. Whether intentionally or unintentionally, art has the ability to provoke, and how we respond to these images says as much, if not more, than the images themselves.

the story

I dunno. I’m not entirely sure a live-action version could ever live up to the original. To those of us who grew up with this movie, it’s the Watchmen of anime – a sacred cow whose initial exposure to it you never forget. It’s a generational touchstone. For me, it was how I met my high school girlfriend! Sure, the technology exists now to make a live-action version possible, but do we really need to? Plus, as we’re currently seeing with The Last Airbender, there is the risk that Warner Brothers will insist on an Anglo cast. Do the Hughes Brothers have the clout to insist on keeping it real?

Related: A script review from late 2008 (SPOILERS).

The Comics Journal’s Tom Crippen discusses the potential character change, comparing it to the original incarnation of Ebony as created by the late Will Eisner:

…“attitude (sass)” is a long way off from summing up Ebony White. Yes, he’s mischievous sometimes, but he’s quixotic sometimes. He’s a lot of things: officious, greedy, tender, poetic, warm-hearted. Maybe you could put “sassy” in there, but the word isn’t his hallmark. Ebony makes noise, but the noise isn’t about himself; it’s just a byproduct of him leading his life. He isn’t staking out a place for himself, and he isn’t trying to brush people back. For a 12-year-old black kid in 1947, his position with the Spirit and Dolan, et al., is magically secure and well respected. He doesn’t have to be sassy: he can say what he thinks.

When Darwyn Cooke relaunched The Spirit a few years ago, he set it in modern times (though he kept the 40s-noir atmosphere) and made Ebony a regular kid, in both looks and dialogue. And of course, director Frank Miller did away with him altogether in his film version of The Spirit. This is different; the intent with First Wave (essentially an Elseworlds story, not unlike New Frontier) is to be faithful to the spirit of the pulp hero era. According to Azzarello in the CBR interview, he has the consent of Eisner’s estate to reinterpret the Spirit as he sees fit. Apparently this also extends to the Spirit’s supporting cast.

I’ve always had a blind spot regarding The Spirit, specifically because of Ebony. I have read Eisner Spirit strips with and without Ebony, but it’s next to impossible for me to truly enjoy them. If the purpose of First Wave is to evoke the pulp hero era, this does put Azzarello in a bind, since it’s hard to write about this time period without dealing with the prejudices inherent in that era, especially when one includes POCs in the story (First Wave will also include the Blackhawks, with a reimagined version of Asian character Chop Chop).

Granted, as Crippen says, Ebony enjoys an unusually privileged position as the Spirit’s sidekick, but it’s a fantasy, and how much one is willing to buy into this fantasy depends on how one sees the character within the context of the strip. How often does the Spirit step into Ebony’s world? How aware is he of the life Ebony would very likely live as a black male child in 1940s America? I don’t know for certain, but I suspect Eisner may not have had these questions in mind when he was creating the strip – and even if he did, it’s highly unlikely he would have been allowed to tell stories that address these issues.

Making Ebony a “brash, sassy girl,” however, may not be the best answer. The sassy black female is a greatly-overused stereotype in pop culture. It makes black women seem shrewish and unsophisticated and is almost always played for laughs. I don’t believe Azzarello would consciously feed into that stereotype, but by invoking the words “brash” and “sassy,” one cannot help but draw the correlation. And lest we forget, this would not be the first time Azzarello has written black characters with unfortunate implications, as anyone who remembers his Luke Cage mini-series will recall.

I’d rather Azzarello wrote the Ebony-Spirit relationship honestly: make them partners, make them heroes, but at the same time let each be aware of the positions each other occupies in their world as a result of their race. It’s not something that needs to be in the reader’s face every time we see them, but it needs to lurk just below the surface, ready to pop up at any time. And the same should apply to Black Canary and Chop Chop. Anything less will come across – to this reader, at least – as flawed.

On one side, here’s noted film historian Mark Harris, in a piece he wrote for Entertainment Weekly:

…a computer can’t pick up every nuance of an actor’s work, because great performances have nuances that are ineffable and unquantifiable, not to mention vulnerable to eradication with one thoughtless flick of a digital paintbrush. 100 percent? Not even close. Zoe Saldana may be a fine actress, but I don’t feel that her work in Avatar can fairly be labeled an onscreen performance. What I saw was a CG character created in very large part by an army of technicians; to me (and I know many disagree), Neytiri is a superb visual effect enhanced by an actor, not a performance enhanced by F/X.

And who better to argue the opposite side than Cameron himself? Here’s a video he screened for a bunch of actors that specifically addresses the issue, showing lots of behind-the-scenes footage.

While I was less than impressed with Avatar as a movie overall, I did enjoy the astounding special effects in general and the creation of the Na’vi in particular. I can understand why some people want Saldana nominated for Best Actress; once I got used to the sight of the Na’vi, I believed her character and I thought she did a very good job at selling it. That said, I think Harris’ argument comes from a different place than Cameron is coming from.

Harris states that performance-capture is a poor substitute for genuine human nuance, subtlety and spontaneity, citing recent films like Precious, Julie & Julia and Crazy Heart as examples. Thing is, though, Cameron has never made movies like those before and likely never will. I believe (I hope) that when he talks about performance-capture as the future of film, he’s probably thinking about films like his – big action/adventure movies with a heavy reliance on special effects (even Titanic, a three-hour drama, required massive amounts of CGI to recreate the sinking of the titular ship). Cameron, according to Harris, sites Will Smith as an example of  an actor who could benefit from the technology even when he’s old and gray, but Smith is someone who made his reputation on action movies (though, of course, that’s not all he does).

Flesh and blood characters should not be replaced with computer-generated ones. (And for that matter, “real-world” films like Up in the Air or The Hangover or An Education would not be greatly improved with the addition of 3D technology.) However, what I saw in Avatar, in terms of acting with the performance-capture tech, was convincing enough for me. Yes, it’s possible, even likely, that Cameron made changes that didn’t jibe with the actors’ actual performances 100%, but he may be the only one who knows for sure.

Given the kinds of movies Cameron makes, I doubt he had anything other than popcorn blockbuster action and high-concept sci-fi films in mind with this technology. However, given Hollywood’s tendency to copy what succeeds ad nauseum, it’s entirely possible that performance-capture could spread beyond action films someday. Avatar is indisputably a film in which the technology served the story, not the other way around. I would hate to see performance-capture turned into a gimmick used to artificially enhance mediocre stories, and I suspect that’s Harris’ fear as well. Hopefully, future filmmakers eager to use this technology will learn from Cameron and Robert Zemeckis and Peter Jackson how to be judicious with it.

A pro-diversity petition has gone up, as well as an anti-Bloomsbury Facebook page, but what I don’t understand about either of these efforts is its vagueness. Isn’t there a specific person or people at Bloomsbury that can be targeted? Who’s gonna receive this petition? This is just anger being vented without any real focus, for the moment, anyway. Hopefully that’ll change.

“To which I say: bullshit.”

I learned about the RaceFail discussion entirely by accident. I suppose I would’ve eventually read something about it somewhere, though, given the circles I run in. I’ll say this much about it: reading the different testimonials and arguments and rants reconfirmed for me that what I’ve been doing for the past four and a half years with this blog does mean something.

It’s unfortunate that this discussion hasn’t spilled over into the comics world to any similar degree. Oh, sure, there are comics bloggers and writers who discuss the racial aspects of comics, but how many have made the connection with SF/F novels? Both media draw from roughly the same audience, after all.

With Marvel and DC, it seems like for every step forward they make towards multiculturalism, they take two steps back: canceling War Machine months before Iron Man 2 opens; acquiring the Milestone characters but refusing to give its most successful character a new series; promising Dwayne McDuffie carte blanche on a flagship comic and then constricting him creatively. Meanwhile they bend over backwards to bring back Hal Jordan and Barry Allen and Steve Rogers (and now Jean Grey again, from what I’m seeing) and give them maximum exposure in their event comics, while new characters like the Blue Marvel, the Super Young Team and the Great Ten may get mini-series of their own, but good luck trying to find them anyplace else.

I’d rather write about independent and small press comics that I like rather than be bothered with the Big Two’s foolishness. If I were part of the SF/F book scene, maybe I’d blog about small press genre books with POCs. I posted a piece about a new publisher specializing in this very thing, though it looks like it may be awhile before they start putting out stuff.

Still, talking about the issues endemic to the POC audience is empowering, and to everyone who kept this discussion going – and continues to do so – I say more power to you.

This is getting to be a real problem. I’m not as closely tuned into the prose book scene as I am with comics, though I’ve been paying more attention to it lately, thanks to blogs like Carleen Brice‘s (I got this story from her Facebook feed). This almost seems like a willful, deliberate cutting off of a specific target audience on Bloomsbury’s part. I can’t believe it, but how do you account for something like this happening twice in a year from the same publisher? Either someone’s seriously asleep at the wheel over there, or they’re simply afraid to put a POC on the cover of their books.

Of course, money factors into a decision like this, as it does in many things in life. But I’ve been looking at a number of book blogs over the past few months that are rabidly supportive of multicultural literature, and though it’s never wise to evaluate an audience’s tastes based on what you see online, it’s clear that Bloomsbury – and book pubs in general – are underestimating the demand for non-white books. And until they realize that it’s in their financial interest to take the POC audience seriously, this sort of foolishness will continue.

I wanna save a longer appreciation of this comic for a future post on Great Black Comic Books, but I will say this much: there are those who say the monthly pamphlet format is dying. Well, that may or may not be true, but I know for a fact that a big part of the fun behind reading this incredible comic was the anticipation of waiting for the next issue. It’s difficult for me to truly convey the level of excitement Negation generated in me, and others like me, every month. There are comics that I’ve read on a monthly basis in the past that, good as they may have been, simply didn’t generate that same level of “I GOTTA KNOW WHAT HAPPENS NEXT!!” Strangers in Paradise did it for me (before it jumped the shark). Y: The Last Man did also. And Negation did in a big way. It was so unpredictable. You never knew what was going to happen, who was going to die or was in danger of dying, or where the book would go, and that was because so much was packed into each issue. I miss Negation so much and it’s a tragedy that it never got to properly finish. But what we did get was golden.

You can read more about it at the link, but basically, the original image is from a book about black imagery in America, taken by a professional photographer, and used by PW with her permission. It’s a striking and remarkable image on its own – but here, on the cover of a major book trade magazine, representing an otherwise excellent article about current AfAm literature, one has to question its appropriateness. PW editor Calvin Reid (a former Glyph Comics Award judge) is quoted in the article at the link above as believing the image was “ironic” and the accompanying copy as “amusing and memorable.”

I dunno. If he honestly didn’t believe that this cover would garner such a negative reaction, I’m willing to give him the benefit of the doubt, but I think he should’ve gotten a second opinion. Why choose an image that is highly evocative of the 70s to represent an article about how AfAm writers want to break free from the stereotypes of the past and reach a wider audience with their work? I would argue that this cover undermines the article it’s supposed to represent. At the very least, this amounts to an error in judgment on Reid’s part which could’ve been easily avoided had he stopped and thought about it for a minute. (And couldn’t they have put the space for the subscriber address someplace where it’s not blocking the face?)

The first mini-comic I ever made was a superhero comic. It was 1993, and Image Comics was still dominating the market with their ill-conceived NewCyberBloodDeathForceCATS books, which were making money more on the strength of the cult of personality surrounding the superstar creators than anything else. I was determined to make a book that was the antithesis of all that, one which emphasized character above all else. I was young and had dreams of glory in my head. I went to art school and some of my friends were getting work at Marvel and DC and I wanted a piece of that pie. I put everything I had into my book. It got some critical acclaim. I took it to retailers. I took it to shows. But it never sold as big as I hoped it would, not even when I graduated to a full-sized standard edition. Why should Joe Fanboy buy my no-name black-and-white bi-monthly (at best) comic with halfway decent art when he could buy Batman?

That’s the thing that most self-publishers either don’t realize, or in my case back then, don’t accept. When you make a comic and you get it out in the marketplace, you’re not just competing with your other mini-comic or webcomic buddies. You’re going up against Spider-Man and X-Men and Superman and Batman. I worked in comic retail for a year. I remember struggling to get people to read even second-tier superhero books like Dan Slott’s She-Hulk. And if a book like that had difficulty surviving, what do you suppose the chances are of your derivative and uninspired little Teen Titans knockoff getting anywhere? (Not that my comic was derivative, I don’t think, but it did mine Watchmen‘s hero-with-feet-of-clay territory.)

If doing superheroes is really what you wanna do, fine. If you wanna become the next Robert Kirkman, however, stop and think about this for a moment: What does your superhero comic have that makes it different from anything else out there now? He’s black? Big deal. So’s the Black Panther. So’s Luke Cage. So’s Mr. Terrific and Static. Joe Fanboy can get those guys every month in full color, plus they have followings that date back ten, twenty, thirty years.

You need to bring something more to the table. A book like Charlie Goubile‘s Blackbird is as straightforward a superhero book as you can get, but it’s drawn in a beautifully streamlined, kid-friendly art style, the kind that Joe Fanboy tends to sneer at these days. Plus, its back-to-basics approach flies in the face of the grim-and-gritty sensibility that has dominated the Big Two for years and continues to do so, without any immediate signs of letting up. Goubile has serious, dark moments in the book, but they do not dominate the story; they provide balance. And the hip-hop and kung fu flourishes help make it his own; they give it a distinct identity.The Davis Brothers’ Blokhedz is another good example of this.

Marvel and DC flood the marketplace every week with material – a lot of it crap, yeah, but it gets international distribution, it has a built-in fanbase that will blindly buy it no matter what, and it gets spun off into ancillary merchandise which makes tons of money for the suits in charge. What does your superhero book have that can compete with that? If the answer is nothing, then I strongly recommend you either rethink your superhero comic completely…

…or work in another genre. There is no shortage of small press superhero comics in the world, all of them competing for attention and/or money. But Marvel and DC will always have the upper hand, in every category across the board. Working in other genres means you stand a better chance at recognition. Brian Michael Bendis made his reputation with crime comics like Torso, Jinx and Goldfish before coming to Marvel. Ed Brubaker started out with a semi-autobiographical comic called Lowlife, in addition to making mystery comics. Judd Winick was a TV star, true, but even he used to make comedy books like Frumpy the Clown and Barry Ween.

Think about the territory that’s unexplored or under-explored, no matter what genre you work in. Think about how you can exploit it and make it your own and nobody else’s.

And don’t make it suck!

Huh?

Oh boy, I can hear the fanboy complaints already. But you know what, this is one I have to question as well. The Gods of Asgard are part of Norse mythology. Even if there are black Norwegians out there somewhere (which I doubt, but I suppose anything’s possible), they’ve gotta be the tiniest of minorities.

This isn’t like Michael Clarke Duncan playing the Kingpin in Daredevil (which this will undoubtedly get compared to). Nothing in the Kingpin’s history as a character suggests he absolutely has to be white for the movie version, and plus, there are few good actors who have the size necessary to play the Kingpin. Heimdall, on the other hand, is a character from the mythology of a very specific culture, one known for its pale-skinned, fair-haired natives!

I’m really surprised at director Kenneth Brannagh for choosing political correctness over historical accuracy. I thought he was smarter than that. I’m sure we’ll get some BS in-story explanation about how “Heimdall” is from some obscure Moor-like tribe of Asgardians that live off in the mountains or something. And I’m sure Idris Elba’s a decent actor and will pull the role off competently, but this is nothing but a flimsy excuse to fill a quota.

(Left: “Heimdal,” by Danish artist Johan Lundbye, via Wikipedia.)

JLA is (theoretically) supposed to be the book with the big-name superstar heroes of the DC Universe. Ever since the Grant Morrison revival in the 90′s, this has more or less been what the book has aspired to be. Yet with the proliferation of crossover “event” mini-series, especially in this decade with books like Identity Crisis, Infinite Crisis, Final Crisis and Blackest Night, these books have been touted as the ones where one can see all the superstar heroes together, and regardless of what one thinks of their quality, they continue to sell big. And they’re not the only books DC have recently put out that follow this pattern. Trinity was an entire year’s worth of stories featuring Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman. Countdown to Infinite Crisis prominently involved those three as well as many other major DC heroes. And Superman/Batman continues to come out every month.

My point is that JLA can no longer be reasonably considered the place to see the superstar DC heroes together in a story that “counts.” DC wants it to be that way, but they also want it to tie into current events in the greater DCU, so you get what we had with the McDuffie run: the editorial tail wagging the creative dog. I submit that this is an untenable situation that will only get worse. But the solution is so remarkably simple: remove JLA from the shackles of continuity altogether and give the creators the freedom to tell the stories they want however they want.

Fanboys won’t read a DCU superhero book that’s not in continuity? Then why were All-Star Superman and All-Star Batman & Robin such massive hits? Again, regardless of whether or not you think they were any good (though the former did receive tremendous praise from critics and fans alike), these are concrete examples of creators allowed to do what they do best and the fans responding in droves. Given the name recognition of a book like Justice League of America, I believe if DC were to get their top talent for it – Perez, Lee, the Kuberts, Busiek, Simone, Robinson – and tell them, “Do what you want for six issues each and don’t worry about continuity,” and market it the way they marketed the All-Star books, this would lead to happier creators telling better stories that will make more money.

I suspect one reason why DC may not choose to do this is the greed factor. Why have Joe Writer write a JLA story in JLA when you can put out a second JLA book and (theoretically) make twice as much money? The problem is, though, that DC will still want both books to “count” – witness the Justice League: Cry For Justice mini as an example. As many superhero books as DC puts out every month, though, do they all have to “count”? In 2009, is this really asking so much? Besides, everyone knows that there are fans who will buy JLA simply because it is JLA and they have to have every single issue regardless of quality. Imagine if you could get those people plus new readers who know nothing about the events in Final Crisis or Blackest Night and don’t care.

Personally, I believe this policy should also apply to the Superman and Batman books also. As many titles as those franchise characters get every month, it’s not asking a lot to remove Action Comics and Detective Comics from continuity and let those books be creator showcases, the way Wednesday Comics was a creators showcase. But I’m sure that’s way too radical an idea for DC editorial to get behind, so perhaps we should stick with JLA for now.

Now do something about it, already!

I mean, they’re cancelling War Machine when Iron Man 2 is gonna hit next summer. In the same post Brevoort makes some half-assed promises about possibly using Blue Marvel again. Yeah, Brother Voodoo’s getting a series, but if you were the writer of that book and you saw Brevoort make that statement, well, how would that make you feel? Brian Michael Bendis has made Luke Cage cool again and yet I wonder if a solo series has even been discussed. Yeah, there’s still Black Panther, and Zod knows Hudlin did his best to get people to read it, but now that he’s gone, can the next guy be expected to have the same passion for the character that Hudlin did? (And regardless of what you think of him, you can’t deny that he did have a passion for that book.)

Maybe things will change now that Disney’s in charge. Pardon me if I don’t hold my breath waiting.

NRAMA: When you say that Dwayne is changing things up and bringing the cast down to a manageable size for him, you’ve probably got a few people thinking Justice League Unlimited style stories of discreet teams of heroes…are you talking about something towards that?

DD: No – we’re not going to be going that way at all – we really want to be going in a set way with a set team and tell the story from that way. Justice League Unlimited was an extension of a television show that came up after they had done everything they thought they could do with a set group of characters, and then they brought in other characters to refresh it. What we’re trying to do is play with the strengths of what the Justice League is.

NRAMA: How long are you looking at Dwayne sticking around? Is he on for a year like with Brad, or longer?

DD: Dwayne is the writer of Justice League now until he doesn’t want to write it anymore. [Emphasis mine.]

Then DC acquires the Milestone characters and DiDio says they’ve got big plans for them:

NRAMA: So let’s talk about the plan – it’s not just the return of the imprint as its own self-contained unit, correct? This is characters come back into the DC Universe, as you said…

DD: Right. They’re coming back, and are coming right into the forefront, and right into the big storylines in the DC Universe. The great thing is, we have Dwayne McDuffie who is one of the owners and creators of the Milestone characters working for us and also of course, writing Justice League of America, so he’s going to finding ways to incorporate the characters into the storylines that are going to be unfolding within Justice League.

We were also able to find a way with Dwayne to work other Milestone characters into other areas and series of the DCU.

NRAMA: Bigger picture – you speak of the hows, but why? Why bring the Milestone characters back, and specifically fold them into the DC Universe?

DD: There are so many wonderful characters in that world that really can help round out and help strengthen the entire DC Universe. [Emphasis mine.]

And he even promised a wrap-up of the old continuity:

NRAMA: You said that Dwayne is going to be starting this reintroduction in Justice League – what about the rest?

DD: You’ll be seeing other characters show up in other series. It’s going to be very organic and very natural in the way that we bring them in.

Also – we will be working on a couple of other levels with Dwayne on this. We will be collecting the old Milestone material, and reissuing that in trade paperback form over the course of next year, and also, we’ll be working with Dwayne to do a wrap-up for the original Milestone series for the way it was all presented. He had a concluding story that we want to work with him on, and that will be an out of DC continuity story, but completely within the original Milestone continuity. That way, the fans of Milestone from years back will be able to get that ending story that brings that original history and world to a close.

So a bunch of major Milestoners  – Icon, Donner & Blitzen, Hardware, etc. – are re-introduced in a story arc in McDuffie’s Justice League. Static, the crown jewel, appears in the Terror Titans mini and then the regular Teen Titans book. Plus, some individual Milestoners interact with the DCU in recent issues of The Brave and the Bold. Okay, fine. Nothing huge, but at least they’re out there.

Then McDuffie discusses on his message board the editorial problems he’s encountered while writing Justice League, including his inability to use the characters he wants because they’re being used in other stories – this after DiDio said he wanted a “set way with a set team”:

I’ve had virtually no input into the composition of JLA. It’s DC Comics’ flagship book. They tell me who to put on the team, based on their needs elsewhere in the universe, and I do it. I believe I had influence in getting rid of Red Tornado, but even there I was forced to put him back in his body about two years before I had planned to…

There are a large number of changes coming up, mostly due to members leaving in the aftermath of Final Crisis. Again, I had little to no influence on how the team is shaking out. Dan and Eddie are allowing me to frequently guest star several characters who by rights should be written out of the book because of what’s going on in their titles. They also acquiesced to my request for a member rejoining the team (as soon as another project is done with him in about eight months). That character will be my first addition to the team, roughly two years after taking over the book.

If it were up to me, JLA would be made up of roughly the six most popular DC characters plus a rotating seventh spot that would be used to balance the personalities, create new story opportunities and/or pump up an interesting, but so far less commercially successful character. [Emphasis mine.]

And the next thing you know McDuffie is fired from Justice League, although he does confirm that he’s still doing the Milestone wrap-up mini-series called Milestone Forever.

But now DiDio says it’s just gonna be Static for the time being:

5. kryptofan1 asked:
Do  you have plans for the Milestone characters (other than Static in the Teen Titans) after the Brave and Bold stories?

DiDio: At this particular time, we have Static in the Teen Titans, and we’re looking at a storyline that might be built around Static later in the run. But right now, no other plans. [Emphasis mine.]

Dan DiDio, the same guy who said, “To be able to explore these characters and tell new stories with these characters is something that I’ve wanted to do since I walked in the doors of DC Comics,” has suddenly made an about-face. The same guy who said Milestone had all these wonderful characters that can “strengthen the entire DC universe,” is content to only play with Static. I’ll concede the possibility that he may not have had Milestone Forever in mind when he said “no other plans,” but still..

And McDuffie reveals even more bad news on his boards:

Plans for a Static monthly were scrapped by DC last spring. Based on their actions, they never really wanted to publish the Milestone stuff, they wasted my time. We could have done a little deal for them to use Static without me having to spend so much money on lawyers. [Emphasis mine.]

I hate to say I told you so but I did tell you so. DC is content to have its black superheroes appear in team books and the occasional mini-series, but an ongoing series is – what? Beneath them? And Static, a character that has proved itself not just in comics, but on television as well, can’t get a series either? What does this say about DC’s level of commitment to its black audience? Maybe McDuffie shouldn’t have been as open as he was about his editorial hassles on Justice League, but to back down from using these characters that DiDio was salivating over for years makes one wonder why he coveted them to begin with.

Army of Darkness: Ash Saves Obama

6-page preview (plus variant cover)

Amazon link to buy Army of Darkness director’s cut DVD

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Also this week:

Final Crisis Aftermath: Dance #4 (of 6). Art by Chriscross.

Supergirl #44. Pencils by Igle.

Squadron Supreme: Bright Shining Lies TP

Beyond Wonderland HC. Written by Gregory.

Gold Digger #110. By Perry.

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Also notable:

Daredevil #500

Archie #600. Archie pops the question!

Astro Boy Movie Adaptation #1

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In case you missed it, I’ve started a new comics blog called Great Black Comic Books. I think the title explains what it’s about. I started with Stagger Lee; I’ve since added entries for The Complete K Chronicles and Moped Army. Expect updates about twice a week or so.

Here are some images from the set of the film adaptation of The Losers.

Is a fourth Blade movie a possibility?

Slightly off-topic, but somewhat notable, I think: Armond White is a prominent black film critic notorious for his history of going against the grain on many critically acclaimed films. When he did  it again last week by giving the well-received sci-fi film District 9 a negative review, Fandom Assembled rose against him with a quickness. I’ve read his reviews in the past, thought him pretentious and contrary for the sake of being contrary, and stoppped reading him. I don’t think I gave him any thought at all until the past few weeks. Why can’t people just ignore him if they don’t like him? So he ruined the film’s perfect score at Rotten Tomatoes. So what? It’s still a legitimate hit. Nothing he writes will change that.

So says MTV’s Splash Page blog

I give Kevin Feige credit for lining up quality talent in front of and behind the camera for the films Marvel Studios has put together so far, and I agree with him when he says that a Captain America film will need a big star to sell it overseas. But is he really willing to go against 70 years of comics history – not to mention risking the wrath of Fandom Assembled – by pulling the trigger on a black Cap? Even if he does, this is not a character that you can change the race on without ignoring the implications of that change. Feige says in that article that he has no interest in adapting Truth into a film, and yet, a film about a black superhero in the 1940s practically demands that race be addressed on some level – especially when that character is supposed to represent America.

If Captain America had the backing of a maverick filmmaker or superstar actor, one who would fight for his vision and have the clout to back it up, then I’d be willing to seriously entertain the notion. But it doesn’t (yet), and as we saw with The Incredible Hulk, Marvel Studios seems to be the controlling type. I don’t see Will Smith slinging the star-spangled shield unless Marvel Studios is truly willing to make a film that addresses what it meant to be a black man in the America of the 1930s and 40s. I’m not convinced they’re willing to make that kind of commitment, and if they’re not gonna take that approach with Smith as Cap, then it’s not worth doing at all. I’d rather see Leonardo DiCaprio as Cap.

It was okay, though, because my sister Lynne had all his records. Lynne was always super-protective of her record collection – how could she not be, with a little brother around? I remember she had a boxful of 45s she kept in her wardrobe, in addition to her 12-inches, and when she wasn’t around I’d sift through them and play the ones I liked on her stereo. She was first to get Thriller when it came out, of course, and I believe I eventually bought a copy on cassette a few years later, when I started to get an allowance and began building a music collection of my own.

I remember watching the Motown 25th Anniversary Special with the family, and seeing him moonwalk made me want to do it too. In fact, I’ve always had a secret desire to want to dance like him. In my sixth grade language arts class (do they still call it that these days?), I had a remarkable teacher named Stacey Brooks; I still miss her dearly. Anyway, she loved to do unusual, outside-the-box type projects that encouraged us to not only read, but to enjoy reading and to comprehend the things we read. One such project was to write a new set of lyrics to “Beat It” and make a new song called “Read It.” This would be accompanied by a “video,” of course (although I’m fairly sure she didn’t film anything). The class was divided into three groups, so we’d get three different versions of the song. In my group this one girl tried to teach me how to moonwalk, and I tried so hard to get it right. I practiced constantly! I wanted so bad to do it because MJ was the biggest thing on earth and if you were a kid in the early 80s, you knew all his songs, you saw all his videos, and you wanted to dance like him (or at least attempt to).

Oh, did someone say videos? I remember watching the world premiere of “Thriller” on Friday Night Videos (please tell me someone else remembers this show) and just marveling at it. Videos were still such a new thing back then; kids today don’t realize how popular the idea of music videos was back then – and to think that someone could turn a three-minute video into a fifteen-minute mini-film was a radical idea. And what a video! I don’t think I had seen John Landis’ An American Werewolf in London at that point; if I had, I probably would’ve made comparisons between the two. “Thriller” is more than a little dated in places now, but it still holds up. Indeed, the imagery in most of his videos has done much to solidify his iconic status. I remember not liking the song “Smooth Criminal” (at first; I like it now) but liking the video. Anyone remember the MJ arcade game which was directly inspired by that video? I played it, but in my mind it wasn’t quite the same.

As I got older, my musical tastes changed pretty drastically. I discovered classic rock and heavy metal, and moved away from Top 40 music (including hip hop, which was just beginning to take off), but I kept my MJ records and cassettes. Why wouldn’t I? That music was part of my childhood, and always would be.

Me being a kid, I never completely understood why MJ changed his looks so drastically from Off The Wall to Thriller. I’d hear disc jockeys make fun of him for his plastic surgery, but I suppose I must’ve chalked it up at the time to weird celebrity antics. It never mattered; the music was what always mattered. Of course, later on, it grew impossible to ignore, but I could still brush it off, especially since I had new music to listen to. The peculiar reports of his lifestyle habits became, like those of many celebrities, something to laugh at, but little more.

I’m not gonna go into the stuff about whether he molested kids or not. That’s all been bashed about to death in the media. I will say that if the kids in question had their say in public, it is entirely possible we’d get a very different side of the story.

No matter what you thought of him – and there’s no doubt that he was an immensely controversial figure; I wonder if anyone really understood the “real” him – the man was a legend.

And we will never see his like again.

(Let the record show that I was in the Cup O’ Joe cafe at the Lennox Mall in Columbus, Ohio, when I heard the news.)

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Read it? Good.

Blackface obviously has a long, long history in the world of entertainment, as anyone who saw the Spike Lee movie Bamboozled knows. But here, creators Rachel Bormann and Nate Powell recontextualize it in the person of an innocent, yet clearly ignorant, pre-teen white girl in a tiny Midwestern town. What I found fascinating about this story is all the things that go unsaid, most importantly: why does Sara identify so strongly with a semi-fictitious, middle-aged black character like Aunt Jemima?

This was more than just a chance to play dress-up on Halloween for Sara; the final two pages make it plain that she really wants to be a black person, if only for a day – but precious little in the rest of the story offers anything in the way of a motive. That she is surrounded by people with racist attitudes (including her parents) doesn’t appear to offend her sense of morals; indeed, she comes across as fairly amoral throughtout the story. Dressing in blackface is something she does because she feels she can, and should do, in order to look like Aunt Jemima, so she does. Morality never enters into the picture for her.

I think it comes down to a common theme throughout American cultural history: white people like appropriating the characteristics of blacks and other minorities, and may even emulate those that appear in pop culture, from Bruce Lee to Michael Jordan to Jennifer Lopez to Beyonce – but actual, non-celebrity black people are for the most part kept out of arms reach, deliberately so in many cases (such as when Sara talks about her parents making her lock her car door when they drive through a black neighborhood).

Sara’s not around black people much, and when she is, it’s at a distance and detached from normal social interaction. When she passes Angela in the hallway (I’m assuming Angela is supposed to be black; the way Powell renders her doesn’t make it as clear as it should be), she feels something she cannot put a name to which might well be shame, but the feeling quickly passes. Clearly Angela is not part of Sara’s circle of friends; one wonders how different this tale would be if she were. Unfortunately, we don’t linger long enough on Angela to see how she feels about Sara’s costume, so we can only speculate. I would imagne that a black family in a predominantly white neighborhood would be conscious of race daily. One wonders if Angela tells her parents what she saw in school that day. One wonders what, if anything, her parents would do if she does.

And the one person who objects enough to Sara’s costume to take action, Mrs. Trankstill, doesn’t take the time to explain to her why what she’s done is wrong. It’s more important to squelch the embarrassing situation before it gets out of hand than it is to point out the error of the child’s ways – and sadly, that too, is far too often the case in many adult-child situations where the child does something out of ignorance.

Bormann writes this in a way that engages the reader’s imagination. Not everything is spelled out; she trusts the reader to fill in the blanks and allows for speculation, and it’s very much “show-don’t-tell,” which is quite satisfying. Powell, an Ignatz winner and Eisner nominee this year for his graphic novel Swallow Me Whole, gets the job done art-wise (except for the part about Angela). I like his use of hatching and cross-hatching.

Cakewalk is a gutsy attempt to depict the insidiousness of institutionalized racism in everday modern society, and it leaves me wondering what kind of person Sara will eventually grow up to be.

Jan-Michael Franklin’s Deadly Artisans is for the 90′s Image/Wildstorm crowd. It’s about a husband and wife team of cybernetic black-ops government agents – and yeah, that is as cliche as it sounds, I’m afraid. The art makes the book appeasable – nice clean ink lines, never over-rendered, and terrific fight scenes. Franklin does his best in trying to humanize his characters in the writing, but it tends to come across as shallow and superficial – the women in particular suffer badly in this regard. If this problem can be corrected, it’ll make for a more satisfying book, but if the action is what appeals to you more, then by all means give this a look.

Stacey “Blackstar” Robinson’s Abraham the Young Lion is for the mainline Marvel/DC fans. It’s about the ordinary son of a Superman-type hero trying to uncover the legacy his father left behind. Visually, this book is remarkable – almost to a fault. The rippling, bulging muscles of the title character, coupled with the meticulous attention to backgrounds, make Ethan van Sciver and Bryan Hitch look like Jeffrey Brown. And did I mention this book is in color as well (as are all the Trimekka books)? It’s all a little off-putting to me at times, I must admit – I tend to gravitate more towards art that’s looser and more stylized – but I can’t deny how dazzling and professional this book looks. The characters, while well-written, tend to come across a bit too idealized and “perfect” at times, and while it’s not a great detriment, it can set them a bit further apart from the reader. Plus, Robinson has a tendency to over-indulge in “product placement,” for lack of a better term: adorning the backgrounds with homages to his favorite comics, books, films and artists, and this becomes a great distraction after awhile. Robinson compares very favorably with former GCA winner Robert Roach, and I suspect he’s on a similar trajectory.

And then there’s Charlie “Fab” Goubile’s Blackbird, for my money the best of the bunch. Nominated in this year’s GCAs in the Rising Star category, this will probably appeal to those who enjoy teen heroes like Static, Invincible, and Blue Beetle. It’s basically The Karate Kid if Daniel was black and decided to become a superhero. This one is the complete package: while it’s a familiar and well-worn premise, Goubile’s approach is engaging and accessible. Believable characters that interact with each other in a way that makes you want to know more about them and their world, coupled with a dynamic animation-like art style reminiscent of the Davis Brothers’ Blokhedz, make for a delightful read, one you can share with your kids.

Like I said, these guys aren’t doing anything new or dramatically different, but there’s a considerable amount of talent gathered here and I’m convinced they’re all gonna get better with time.

For basically saying too much about editorial interference

What I’m wondering now is what this will mean for the Milestone characters. As long as McDuffie was at DC, one had the sense that he would, at the very least, keep an eye on them and offer information about them when necessary. Now he’s gone and they’re part of the DCU now, so who knows what direction they’ll take? I’m not worried for McDuffie – he certainly doesn’t need DC and he’s got other things to keep him busy. Still, we all knew the day would come when he would leave DC, whether by his choice or not, and the Milestone characters would be completely on their own. Who at DC will care about them as much as McDuffie? I’m sure some creators will tell great stories with them, but as I made clear when the deal was first announced, history has proven again and again that in a situation like this – the properties of a smaller publisher being integrated into the line of a bigger publisher – the odds are that they’ll end up either marginalized or made bland. And they deserve better than that.