Picture Poetry

Wait. Seriously?

Abhay is tearing apart most of the launch titles of DC’s webcomic experiment Zuda. I’m still forming my own reactions, but poking around has turned over one interesting new piece of the story:

One of the more common complaints I’ve seen so far (aside from the amount of T&A midriff exposure) has been about J. Longo’s This American Strife, a “random gag” strip that people are finding unfunny. Like most commentators, I don’t think the strip is “ready for prime time,” but I noticed in the comment section (unfortunately, Zuda’s emulation of YouTube extends to this feature as well) that Longo posted a link to his blog “to advertise, explain and promote This American Strife.” The blog contains an entry which reveals that This American Strife got chopped up a fair amount by Zuda editorial: requiring changes for inappropriate content, cutting one screen into two (and rather clumsily — the “skeleton” panel and the “car crash” panel were apparently two halves of a single screen) and completely omitting the third page of the “J & Jesus” story. The first time Longo saw his work in its final form? On the web, at the NYC release party, after the site had gone public.

THEY OMITTED THE LAST AND FINAL PAGE OF THE JESUS COMIC. In the comic, I’m being handed a towel by the Savior and then—nothing. It’s bad enough that already complaint-comments are coming in about how disjointed ‘This American Strife’ is when it’s meant to have no continuity (particularly compared to all the other competitors). That page gave finality and resolution to what can otherwise be interpreted as offensive and I really feel that I should have been informed that the final page wouldn’t make the final cut.

Feels like a lot of balls got dropped here, by several parties:

• a “random gag” just random I guess strip nestled amongst fantasy serials and insufficiently distinguished from them
• a few head-scratchingly obtuse oblique gags (see above, and below too I guess)
• the confusing decision to include both single-panel gags and multi-page gags
• and Zuda’s clumsy editorial hackjob (both cutting up one page into two, and cutting the last page out of a three-page strip — all, apparently, without consulting the artist).

Longo again: “To clarify, I did get an explanation which said the last Jesus page [of the Jesus story] was taken out upon the request of the higher-ups and god knows everyone below was scrambling to get Zuda off the ground with much bigger fish to fry.”

And what’s up with the pixels along the bottom here? Just more image noise from the Flash interface, or signs of a hastily-executed reformatting?

Greg Burgas has an interesting take on Darwyn Cooke’s new series Will Eisner’s The Spirit. The comment section includes this idea from David Wynne:

“If DC really wanted to honor Will Eisner, they’d start some sort of graphic novel imprint in his name and use it to showcase books like Fun Home. The new Spirit book strikes me as a blatant example of milking Eisner’s most famous property for a few more bucks … especially since as far as I know, the last thing Eisner himself was interested in doing was reviving the Spirit.”

I think David is right on the money here, actually. Warren Ellis, Paul O’Brien and others have been pointing out for years that because Marvel and DC cannot own creators — they can only own characters — they approach everything from the perspective of character.

From the CEO’s chair, the big money comes from movies and toys and underpants featuring the characters, and publishing comics allows them to keep those characters alive. Here’s Marvel in 2000: “The Company’s strategy is to increase the media exposure of the Marvel characters through its media and promotional licensing activities, which it believes will create revenue opportunities for the Company through sales of toys and other licensed merchandise. In particular, the Company plans to focus its future toy business on marketing and distributing toys based on the Marvel characters, which provide the Company with higher margins because no license fees are required to be paid to third parties and, because of media exposure, require less promotion and advertising support than the Company’s other toy categories. The Company intends to use comic book publishing to support consumer awareness of the Marvel characters and to develop new characters and storylines.“

A rung down on the corporate ladder, the perspective is different, but conveniently works toward the same end. At the editorial level, it’s an affection for the characters that drives every decision. Decades ago, Marvel and DC encouraged a fanbase to think about comic books in a character-based model, and the fans swallowed it. And then those fans grew up to be editors. So now the comic book company (a small subsidiary of a larger entertainment/media corporation, remember) is run by people like Quesada and DiDio who honestly believe they are undertaking a sacred trust — to do their duty to Spider-Man and Green Lantern. They owe it to these characters to ensure that they are featured in cool and popular stories.

And the vast majority of the remaining readers feel the same way (because everyone who does not feel this way has been DRIVEN OUT). The “shared universe” concept — the promise that all of these characters live in the same world and interact with each other — is a brilliant strategy for encouraging character-based (and company-based) thinking. According to this concept, every comic book is an artifact from another world, depicting events that actually happened in that world. Everything that has ever been depicted in a Spider-Man comic book has actually happened to Spider-Man.

Consequences:

• The remaining fanbase is extremely emotionally invested in the characters. If you put out a Batman comic book I don’t like, you are insulting my friend Batman. If you write a comic book in which Sue Dibny is raped, then you have caused my friend Sue Dibny (or worse, my reader-avatar Sue Dibny) to be raped, and I am understandably hurt and furious.
• Creators’ rights are never a priority. Who the hell cares how you treat Bill Finger? What’s important is how you treat Batman. Who created this story? Who cares? It’s a “Marvel legend.”
• Non-fans are never welcome. Sorry, kid, Green Lantern and I have been friends for twenty years, and you can’t just expect to barge in here and become a part of the relationship that we share.
• The stories must be “realistic.” I must take pains to carefully sort each story as “canonical” or “noncanonical” — and which “universe” it belongs to — and maintain an exact chronology of how all the stories interlock with each other.
• Thanks to inept emulation of Watchmen and Dark Knight, “realistic” now also means “cynical,” or possibly “miserable.” Getting a reputation as a “fun” comic book will hurt your sales. No. Seriously.
• Story ideas that contradict the established facts or tone of the Universe are rejected as impossible.
• Story ideas that do not take place within the Universe are rejected as irrelevant.
• The incredible schizophrenia which characterizes the modern superhero concept. 50 million people saw the first Spider-Man movie in US theaters, and millions more beyond that — the concept is obviously tremendously popular. Millions of kids have the toothbrushes and the T-shirts and watch the TV shows. But the Spider-Man comics, none of which sell more than 50,000 issues, are full of juvenile attempts at “sophistication” and radical changes which are inevitably reset to the status quo within 6 months. Devin Grayson complains that she can’t do anything interesting with Batman because at the end of the day Batman has to appear on Underoos, but nobody under the age of 16 is reading the fucking comics.

Oddly enough, the experience is remarkably similar when you try to read the Bible with the assumption that its separate parts cohere into a perfectly unified and consistent truth.

Anyway, I need to contextualize all this:

• DC is more than just the backwards-looking nostalgia-rape cesspool called the “DC Universe.” Thankfully, it has other branches: the theoretically-interesting but currently-lost “alt-superhero” line Wildstorm, the excellent and undercapitalized “nonsuperhero comics for grownups” line Vertigo, the very promising but not-linked-from-the-main-site teen-chick-lit line Minx, the screwed-up-once-but-came-back-better manga line CMX, and the I’m-told-they-exist-but-I’ve-never-seen-them DC Kids or possibly Johnny DC, it’s unclear. Marvel, meanwhile, maintains a kids’ line, Marvel Adventures, and the bizarre little imprint Icon, which you can only get into if Joe Quesada wants to make you happy — i.e. you are a topselling creator on Marvel’s superhero books or you have known Joe since old times.
• Superheroes, while an appealing concept, are so poorly executed these days that I generally avoid focusing attention on them. The best superhero comic coming out today is Robert Kirkman’s Invincible.
• The comic industry is much, much bigger than just these two irritating companies, and they’re probably going to be increasingly marginalized as the industry continues to evolve. I guess I’m just trying to more fully lay out what’s so irritating about them, and why they are this way.
• There are bigger concerns facing the industry, largely concerning distribution. The mechanisms aren’t in place to get comics in front of people in a location and format that suits them. The infrastructure isn’t in place to support creators while they create. There aren’t enough comic stores in place that don’t suck, and there are hardly any stores with enough cash to buck trends. There aren’t enouch publishers who understand how to deal with bookstores. And so on, ad infinitum.
• As always, Warren and Dirk have already said it.

Also, here are some Grant Morrison quotes, because it pleases me to quote them. I don’t actually like many of his comics, but he sure as hell knows how to work a sound byte:

“My ideal comic is the one which perfectly expresses its moment and makes you want to dance like your favourite records do. The ideal comic is a holographic condensation out of pure zeitgeist. Pop is my god and goddess, Warren, and I believe comics should strive to be popper yet than Pop itself. I particularly despise the cynically perfect, utterly barren, ultimately charmless retro-pastiche of OTHER PEOPLE’S IDEAS which has come to characterize so much of the output of tired creators who should have had the dignity to move on when they ran out of words of their own.”

“I’m doing MARVEL BOY and whatever else in a Utopian 21st century spirit - I’ll aim the comics at a wide, media-literate mainstream audience and slowly but surely help generate that audience, just like you. I’ll continue to act as if being a comic book writer is the same as being a pop star. I’ll continue to learn from stuff I think breaks new ground. If at the moment I think comics aren’t being sexy enough or FuturePop enough or incendiary enough, I’ll attempt to fill the gap with the sort of thing I want to read. Whatever happens, I know I’ll sell more comics than the crawling half-men who believe we’re all doomed in a ’shrinking market’. Look out of the window at the planet you live on, morons! There are billions of those bipeds and they keep making more of them! How much bigger does the market have to get before we’re eating Soylent fucking Green? Get out and sell comics to these people!”

by Louise Simonson. From the trailblazing Wonder Woman of the 1940s to edgy, girl-power-driven comics series like Birds of Prey, DC Comics Covergirls takes a look at the female characters of DC Comics throughout the company’s history, and features many of DC Comics’ iconic comic book covers. Written by renowned comic book writer Louise Simonson, the book examines the evolution of the comic book women of DC Comics: the 1942 introduction of the most famous DC heroine, Wonder Woman, and her various incarnations up to the present; the creation of comic book spin-offs based on characters such as Lois Lane; and the recent wealth of fierce, female character-driven comics such as Supergirl, Birds of Prey, Batgirl, and Catwoman.

Somehow I feel this book would be more convincing if the cover weren’t so… terrible. Conceptual issues aside (which are pretty obviously distasteful), what is going on with the execution? The bottom half is obviously Adam Hughes, which makes it more frustrating - he can do so much better than this!

Hang on, can we get a close-up?

Greaaaat. Thanks. So… what’s up with the boob sock? What happened to the rest of the abdomen? And why opt for the empty-headed cum-catcher bimbo expression instead of, say, a satisfied grin reflecting the knowledge of how far we’ve supposedly come (, baby)? She’s either a blow-up doll or horrified of her own history — presumably not the message DC would like to send.

ETA: Johnny Bacardi clears up the source in the comments.

Oh hell yes.

Found via Dirk, this outsider’s perspective on the superhero market by film critic Grady Hendrix is pretty dead-on accurate. Reedies, I like to think that this is what I’m protecting you from:

How do two companies control such an enormous slice of the pie? By bumming everyone out. In recent years, Spider-Man has killed Mary Jane with his carcinogenic spidersperm. Batman has become a single parent. Captain America and Iron Man are hashing out national security issues by hitting each other in the face while rounding up unregistered superheroes and sending them to a Gitmo-style prison camp after a superpowered September 11, 2001. The once cheerful Elongated Man saw his wife raped, then burned to death. And the new Batgirl [sic] is an evil, lesbian junkie. No wonder Superman has spent the past year with his forehead buried in his hands, weeping softly.

…With names like “Infinite Crisis,” “Identity Crisis,” “Secret Wars,” “Civil Wars,” “World War Hulk,” and “World War III” their comic series have become an inaccessible haze of wars and crises only a true believer can follow.

In order to shoehorn 70 years of comics into one universe, DC Comics has had to invent over 30 different Earths, causing so much confusion that they eventually destroyed them all in the 1980s (”Crisis on Infinite Earths“) and then recreated them all in 2005’s “Infinite Crisis,” which ended with Superboy punching reality so hard it broke. Fans love this kind of insular, self-referential story partly because familiarity with these details is what separates insiders from outsiders and insiders have their privileges.

Pretty trenchant analysis, for a short piece written for a general audience.

Luckily, “comics” as a field has completely outgrown such bullshit. We can quite easily spend thousands of dollars every semester on great comics that feature neither super-rape nor esoteric “continuity” handshakes.

Paul Levitz, publisher of DC Comics, has a perspective remarkably similar to mine:

[hyperlinks inserted by me]

Paul Levitz: If we’re lucky, we’re going to be dealing with the issue of this tremendous open page of creative opportunity. What is the graphic novel? What is the graphic novel capable of, and how do we connect people to that in a world where you can get as unlikely a project as The 9-11 Commission Report in graphic novel form on the bestseller list? I think the biggest challenge facing the industry is that - what can we do in comics next?

We have a medium where a lot of the creative talent for many years was looking to figure out what their next assignment was. Then we finally evolved out of that to what the next project was - along with the sense of wanting to bring more of yourself to it.

But now, we’re almost at the situation where the question has turned into “what is the next opportunity out there?” You have this tremendous freedom of moment for creative people from other media to ours. You have people showing a willingness to sample comics about subject matter that would have been laughed out of the room a few years before. There’s an ability to promote and publicize those projects in ways that were unimaginable a couple of years ago, and giving you a chance to reach your audience. But still, I feel that the largest challenge is the challenge to the creative community - what do you do with this opportunity? What can you create? Is there the American humor strip that can have the power of an Asterix and simultaneously reflect the nature of popular culture, politics, and yet do it in a way that appeals to both adults and children and sells millions and millions of copies with each edition?

Or is there an equivalent that captures the wonderful, fun silliness of the manga humor work that works in Japan and is on volume 82 of, say, three guys running around chasing each other in a Keystone Cops situation? And then, how do you deliver all of these through the new and emerging technologies so that they reach different sets of people?

There’s so much enormous opportunity. That, I think, is the overwhelming challenge. As a creative individual, as a publisher - and God knows we won’t confuse those two things - or even as a consumer who enjoys this material - you find yourself moving toward this buffet that is set with far more opportunities than any one person can choose from intelligently, and what do you do with that?

NEWSARAMA: So the biggest challenge to the future is, to quote Lawrence, is that nothing is written?

PL: It’s always that nothing has been written about the future, but for most of the time that I have been active in comics, there was either a pervasive fear that there wouldn’t be a future, or most of your energy, if you wanted to do something different than what had been done before had to be put into convincing people to allow you to do something that had never been done before. Now, there’s an enormous range of people willing to do what has not been done before. Now, we’re at the point where no one’s sure which thing that hasn’t been done before they should do. It’s a much, much better problem to have.

DC Comics solicitations for March 2007. Commentary go!

what

The first interesting image of Aquaman I have seen in twenty-one years

Is there something wrong with me, or with the comic, that I’m not excited about a man aiming a bow&arrow at a giant dragon rampaging through downtown?

Van Sciver’s work is actually getting less attractive over time. Is he inking himself now? Too bad Norm Rapmund’s dead. It appears that he is not in fact dead.

WOOOOOOOOOOO finally! We have the originals of these but we’ll probably buy this too.

nice.

holy shit, that’s amazing. Looks like the pressure of following Eisner has kicked Darwyn Cooke in the ass and made him up his game. Look at the spare linework — the way he left off inking the tops of things completely and let the color do the work. Not to mention that the woman is already more attractive and dynamic than any Eisner ever drew (bless his heart, Will’s characters were all a little lumpy and vulnerable, which didn’t help him when he wanted to do rip-roaring adventure stories). Hot damn, now I’m excited for this launch.

New Wonder Woman writer sounds interesting. When was the last time this character was written by a woman?

sexy! [edited to add: this is sarcasm]

funny, it looks like Runaways has set the standard for teen superhero team covers. But I’m not complaining.

nice

I know this will make more sense after reading the issue — JJ’s covers always do — but seriously, wtf?

aaaand this one more than makes up for it. Whatever they’re paying Jean, it can’t be enough.

Whoa, that’s a change of pace. I love it, but actually I wonder why Carnevale didn’t play with this style before now.

Er, is he supposed to have that many ribs?

Oh dear god. That’s not a six-pack, that’s a fridge to keep the six-pack in.

She’s positively mammalicious!

Might actually have to get this one. I know a lot of people who like Catwoman, as a concept anyway. ‘ve also gotta pick up the Brubaker/Cooke stories, so I can have some decent Catwoman comics to direct people to.

Okay, enough out of me.

Apparently this is the sort of thing that comic bloggers do. I haven’t posted in this journal in quite a while, and I keep putting it off because I want my entries to be good and worthwhile, but I think I need to get over the hump and just do something. So here goes.

DC SOLICITS - AUGUST FOR OCTOBER 2006

DETECTIVE COMICS #824
Written by Paul Dini
Art by Don Kramer & Wayne Faucher
I like how JH Williams quit DESOLATION JONES in order to…. NOT draw DETECTIVE COMICS. Oh well…

DESOLATION JONES #7
Written by Warren Ellis
Art and cover by Danijel Zezelj
Bring on the Zezelj!

Marv Wolfman, Dan Jurgens, & Norm Rapmund on NIGHTWING? Interesting combination…

Cute. Totally makes up for the lame first issue cover.

I have never read an Adam Strange story in my life but for some reason I love the concept so much. Must be the costume. There’s something about a man with a fin on his head. Blame THE ROCKETEER.

Dave Gibbons draws comics again! I’m not going to get this or anything, I’m just glad he’s drawing. If only he’d draw something interesting… There’s gotta be a Vertigo or Wildstorm book they could put him on (that’s not a puzzling resurrection of obscure British heroes). Make him a part of the “Wildstorm Revolution” or whatever they’re calling this superstar new wave.

JUSTICE #8
Written by Jim Krueger & Alex Ross
Art by Doug Braithwaite & Ross
Cover by Ross
The worst fears of the Justice League are realized, as the villains strike through those closest to the heroes!
I hope this series makes sense when it’s finished, but I’m not holding my breath. Also: Alex Ross! Just make a SUPER FRIENDS comic and be done with it! You can even use the scripts to old episodes, and just replace all the Toth-designed animation with scowling paintings of your neighbors dressed as Marvin and Wendy.

This is a fantastic cover, even if it is by Michael Turner.

No hatching in space! There is no hatching in space! James Owen possibly excluded. And Tony Moore. But this is trying to be WILDC.A.T.S In Space, which is crap. FEAR AGENT, on the other hand, is fantastic. Go out and buy it everybody.

THE OMEGA MEN #1
Written by Andersen Gabrych
Art and cover by Henry Flint
A classic team makes an unexpected return to comics in a 6-issue miniseries written by Andersen Gabrych (DETECTIVE COMICS) with art by Henry Flint (2000 A.D.)! Convinced that all of creation is on the brink of cosmic apocalypse, the last remaining Omega Men begin a universe-spanning rampage of murder and destruction. Pursued by every known league of interstellar justice, they are on the run and taking no prisoners! What is the mystery in space that One Year Later transforms these former freedom fighters into brutal terrorists? Climb on board for the controversial and head-spinning science-fiction odyssey that synthesizes intolerant zealotry, quantum mechanics, and all-out action!
On sale October 18 • 1 of 6 • 32 pg, FC, $2.99 US
Disclaimer: I know nothing about the “Omega Men.” But why does the solicitation copy sound like a crappy Sci-Fi Channel Thursday-afternoon thriller? The cover features a guy on fire (okay), a dude throwing an asteroid (nice), a guy with a pair of Pontiac headlights instead of a head (!) and an orange catfish-headed dude smoking a cigar(!!!!)! If you cannot sell me on a comic featuring a CIGAR-SMOKING ORANGE CATFISH MAN IN SPACE, you have utterly failed in your job as a marketer and you must be fired. Yet another casualty of the Taking Oneself Too Seriously Syndrome plaguing corporate comics today.

Oh, so that’s what Williams has been up to. Well, that’s okay then.

SHADOWPACT #6
Written by Bill Willingham
Art and cover by Cory Walker
Bill Willingham and Cory Walker!? I’m almost persuaded to BUY this comic! I can’t imagine how they thought BW would be able to keep drawing this book every month, but if this is the kind of replacement they’ve got then hallelujah. Nice Dave-Stewart-Mike-Mignola touch with the coloring, too. It’s only appropriate if they’re going to Hell, I guess.

TALES OF THE UNEXPECTED #1
Written by David Lapham and Brian Azzarello
Art by Eric Battle & Prentis Rollins and Cliff Chiang
Cover by Mike Mignola Variant cover by Neal Adams
Speak of the devil… Great cover, and I welcome DC’s attempt to get back to its pulpy roots, but I bet their accountants are giving them hell for not putting THE SPECTRE in the title of the book. I’d love to see a monthly DC book that could be a prestigious showcase for tales of the weird. Unfortunately, this book seems to signal the same thing holding Marvel down: a corporate conviction that their characters are the most important asset the company has. Who gives a damn about “the very fabric of the DCU’s past, present, and future”? Give me creepy motherfuckers doing weird shit, lavishly illustrated. End of story. Also, I’m not sure how well David Lapham will handle cosmic horror, though I confess I’m kind of interested to find out.

..actually, forget all that. Guys, if Mignola needs money, just pay him to do HELLBOY BEATS THE SH*T OUT OF THE DC UNIVERSE. I’d buy ten.

THE EMPTY EMPIRE Vol. 2
Written and illustrated by Naoe Kita
CMX. Rose — a clone of the great Emperor Idea — is reluctant to assume his position as the emperor’s replacement. But when Idea’s body is stolen and all hell is about to break loose, the Imperial Authorities have no choice but to force Rose to become the inspiring figurehead he was bred to be. A challenge from Migime, the man in possession of Idea’s body, motivates Rose to rise to the occasion, though it means putting himself at great risk. Also, more is revealed about Ririka — the imperial guard who has befriended Rose — and her relationship with the departed Emperor.
For a moment I read that as “the emperor Great Idea,” and was almost interested. It’d be some kind of Miyazaki/McCay/Gaiman allegorical fantasy. But no.

HOMG GENE HA
THE AUTHORITY #1
Written by Grant Morrison
Art and cover by Gene Ha
The WorldStorm rollout continues with the return of the most dangerous super-group on the planet! Grant Morrison, the universally acclaimed writer of All Star Superman, Seven Soldiers and Wildcats brings his talents to the new bimonthly series THE AUTHORITY, featuring art by Eisner Award-winner Gene Ha (TOP 10)! Morrison & Ha deliver an unparalleled sense of drama and dynamic storytelling to The Authority that will leave readers gasping for breath. The first issue starts with a bang and goes up from there, reintroducing the team with intriguing new twists and revelations!
The Engineer looks a little static on that cover - the whole design wouldn’t be my first choice for the debut issue of this book - but you don’t really go to Gene Ha for motion. Give him huge expansive drama to architect, as it seems Morrison is planning to do (and hearkening back to the roots of THE AUTHORITY), and he’ll build you a bloody Taj Majal. Here’s hoping that complete creative freedom will keep this one from becoming as incomprehensible as NEW X-MEN.

Nice image, I guess (intended to recall Abu Ghraib, presumably, though not too obviously), but it doesn’t tell me anything or make me want to buy the book. “This comic is about people getting beat up.” Well, that’s a breath of fresh air. The solicit text isn’t much better. I’ve yet to read an Azzarello book I liked.

Gen13 could be fun (I haven’t read any of Simone’s recent work but I still love her for DEADPOOL), but the cover makes me think the last ten years never happened, and the solicit (”what’s the secret to these wonderful and scary powers, and what role do the nefarious Tabula Rasa and International Operations play?”) fails to inspire confidence.

I wish he’d clean it up a little, but in any case this is by far the most interesting thing I’ve seen from Alex Ross in ages. Bravo!

THE BOYS #4
Written by Garth Ennis
Art and cover by Darick Robertson
Man, am I looking forward to this series. Ennis seems to emit scripts the way some of us shed dead skin cells, but I read some interviews and he really seems fired up about this one. Plus with Robertson, how can you lose?

Tony Harris should draw every cover to every comic ever. I love EX MACHINA, but he’s wasted drawing talking heads. The way he combines a killer layout (I’m a sucker for symmetry) with innovative representation of all the major thematic elements of the story… I’d shell out major cash for a TONY HARRIS DRAWS POSTERS OF YOUR FAVORITE MOVIES oversize art book.

I hope Warren continues to pour himself into DESOLATION JONES. Maybe I’ve just been (electronically) hanging around him too much, but this really does seem like an important book and it kills me that there hasn’t been more critical attention. Come on, Warren. Make this your LUTHER ARKWRIGHT.

John Cassaday is astonishingly hit-or-miss with me. This one, sadly, is a bit of a miss. Here’s hoping he pulls out the stops for the final issue.

Manifest Eternity is a gorgeous book that I’m afraid to try — it would be all too easy to turn this into standard back-of-the-catalog fantasy schlock, and I haven’t read anything by Scott Lobdell since the 90s. I want so badly to like this book…

THE ABSOLUTE SANDMAN VOL. 1 HARDCOVER
Nuff said.
Actually, with this being by far the most important book Vertigo ever published and one of the most important DC books of all time, i was surprised to hear from Danny Vozzo that they kept shortening his deadlines on this project. I guess they’re rushing it out for Xmas (shipping November 1)?
Also: $62.37 (37% off) at Amazon. I love comic shops too, but I’m only human. Who’s going to pay full price on this? What can be done?

THE SANDMAN #1 SPECIAL EDITION
Written by Neil Gaiman
Art by Sam Kieth & Mike Dringenberg
Cover by Dave McKean
In celebration of THE ABSOLUTE SANDMAN VOL. 1 HC, Vertigo proudly re-presents the classic debut issue of THE SANDMAN, completely recolored and priced at just $.50 U.S. This Special Edition presents the brilliantly recolored version of the issue, as seen in THE ABSOLUTE SANDMAN VOL. 1, along with ads spotlighting THE ABSOLUTE SANDMAN and more. This promotionally priced issue is an ideal way for retailers to show off the new look of these groundbreaking stories and promote sales for the slipcased hardcovers.
YAAAY for smart marketing. Why didn’t they do this for ABSOLUTE WATCHMEN, or for that matter every large hardcover release? Hopefully they will in the future.

AMERICAN VIRGIN: Great work from Joshua Middleton, and Becky Cloonan is a pleasure as always. Seagle, I’m looking at you. I want to like this book so badly, but reading it every month is like being kicked in the nuts. Does everyone else find this as painfully nonsensical as I do, or am I just extremely disappointed because the story is so vastly different from what I was expecting?

THE OTHER SIDE #1
Written by Jason Aaron
Art and cover by Cameron Stewart
1968. The height of the Vietnam War. Two young men from opposite ends of the earth must drag themselves through Hell for the opportunity to kill one another. Written by rookie sensation Jason Aaron with astoundingly visceral art by Cameron Stewart (SEAGUY, SEVEN SOLDIERS: GUARDIAN), THE OTHER SIDE is a 5-issue miniseries following Bill Everette, a 19-year-old Alabama farm boy drafted into the Marine Corps whose only goal is to come home alive, and Vo Binh Dai, a 19-year-old Vietnamese farm boy who enlists in the People’s Army of Vietnam, terrified only of failing in his duty to die bravely for his country. Along the way, Private Everette encounters demonically vicious Parris Island drill instructors, talking maggots, voiceless ghosts, jaded grunts, man-eating pigs, maniacal rats, leeches that quote William Blake, a rifle that begs him to shoot himself and occasionally even the enemy. Vo Dai must undertake the long march south down the Strategic Trail, through black forests and bloody swamps, over pockmarked earth and fields of fire, past tigers and dragons and mounds of the dead, past exhaustion, beyond endurance. At turns, wholly fantastic yet always heartbreakingly realistic. THE OTHER SIDE is an epic tragedy about America’s most haunting war. A surreal exploration of the Vietnam war from opposing viewpoints. A horror story about the horrors of war.
I’m in.

TESTAMENT #11
See above, re: AMERICAN VIRGIN, but only about half as much because this one almost makes sense, and I was expecting it to be weird anyway.

Is there really demand for post-Moore SWAMP THING? Hey, why not…

Nice. I think this book (like SiP) is going to end almost exactly when I’m scheduled to graduate. I’ve recently swallowed much of my qualms about Brian K. Vaughan, and now I love the guy again. Show me a better-paced comic. I dare you.

Meanwhile, in mainstream comics:

shit! shit for sale! come and get your shit!

a very interesting comment thread.