“So much to do and so little time.”–Harry Chapin, “Sniper”
Mark Millar is going to be doing a Spider-Man book with the Dodsons. It’s going to be tough to shake that Trouble stigma, but I do like the sound of where he’s planning on going with this. I also like that Marvel is doing Marvel Knights (read: slightly more sophisticated, slightly less continuity-wonky, usually better) versions of its big characters (The Fantastic Four will also be wandering into MK territory, and of course The Incredible Hulk and New X-Men are basically MK-style books already.
John Jakala offers an admirably comprehensive defense of Watchmen, Alan Moore’s seminal revisionist-superhero saga. I’ve noticed lately that this seems to be the book winning Most Likely To Be Kicked Around By People Trying To Prove They’re Not Suckers For Everything Comics Fans Have Labelled “A Classic,” which is ridiculous, because this book really is that good. Eve Tushnet agrees, by the way, and eloquently.
Bryan Miller points out how annoying the Greg Horn-painted Emma Frost banner-ads are on comics site Comic Book Resources. As I and many others have said, they’re even more annoying in their original form as covers on the Emma Frost series. The book itself is a good one, a relatively sensitive tale of a young girl trying to make it in an asshole-male’s world, and the covers look like ads for Flashdancers. It’s so wrong for the demographic the book is intended for–manga-buying teenage girls–that it can only be the result of a decision made by comics professionals.
Franklin Harris goes Deliverance on Jeph Loeb’s Superman/Batman. Poor Jeph is rapidly becoming the comicsphere’s own personal Ned Beatty. Well, at least there’s Graeme McMillan, who in a shocking lapse of judgement appears to say that Loeb is on the same level as Grant Morrison because, like, a ton of stuff happens in their books. (Your blog is fun, so we’ll let that one slide for now, Graeme.)