Blogging’s been light around here lately because I’ve been busy with my new gig, namely being a supervisor in the music and movie departments of a local bookstore. Did I ask about how their graphic novels are selling? You bet I did. And apparently they’re selling like hotcakes. Supposedly they move a lot more than they even have room for on the floor. And who’s buying them? Kids. And which ones are they buying? I’ll give you three guesses. Ladies and gentlemen, can we please agree to retire the “kids don’t buy comics” meme once and for all?

Anyway, I haven’t had much time to surf, but I’ve noticed several big pieces that address some big issues.

First up is Steven Grant, who offers an overview of the problems faced by DC and Marvel in the current comics market and press. I think it’s clear to most of us who follow these things that the New Marvel Magic has pretty much worn off–what do they do now? DC, meanwhile, is gaining a little critical and audience traction, but are they showing any signs of being able to capitalize on this? Check out what Steven has to say about it, and who knows? You may see a little guest analysis yours truly…

Jim Henley, meanwhile, has honed his thoughts on the superhero genre into an essay, defending the spandex set as “the literature of ethics”–if it’s done right, naturally. Tim O’Neil, who much to his amusement has unwittingly become something of an archvillain to we pro-superhero types, offers an agreement-slash-rebuttal that strikes me as the most reasonable thing he’s yet said on the subject. Read ’em both.

And read the comment thread on Jim’s essay, too; I particularly like Sean Gleeson’s questions: “What’s so bad about being a male child’s fantasy? Is it because there’s something wrong with being or having been a male child?” Of course, he later commits the ultimate sin of referring to books that “transcend the genre.” Listen, folks: If a given work is of a particular genre, and it’s really good, it hasn’t transcended the genre–it epitomizes the genre. It shows you what the genre is capable of. To say it transcends the genre is to write the potential for greatness out of that genre by definition!

And read Bill Sherman‘s take on Jim’s essay, as seen through the prism of Kurt Busiek’s Superman-related minseries Secret Identity. It serves as a thoughtful exploration-slash-critique of Jim’s take on superhero politics.

(I’ll offer a critique of my own–Jim, my good man, where are these neoconservative superheroes you’ve seen? From where I’m sitting, all the big writers (except Morrison, who’s got less irritating fish to fry) have been spending the last few years tearing neocon foreign policy to shreds with their superhero yarns. President Luthor, anybody? The attack on “Qurac”? Geoff Johns’s Avengers arc? Mark Millar’s work on The Ultimates and Superman: Red Son? Brian Bendis actually destroying most of the Middle East in Powers? Point is, while I (a liberal, for the most part, in case you’d forgotten) personally may agree with Jim’s contention that acting like a neocon in the foreign-policy arena is a natural outgrowth of left-liberal politics, most left-liberals don’t agree, and if you need more evidence than the past two and a half years’ worth of actual behavior from left-liberals, you can look at the superhero comics they’ve been writing, too.)

Franklin Harris serves up something in the same vein as Jim–a defense of superheroes, this one focused on the folks saying that the genre is the reason for comics’ financial woes. I mostly agree, but I think Franklin is wrong about superhero comics squeezing out non-superhero comics from comics shops. He says they don’t, and I guess in a sense he’s right, since most shops don’t stock non-superhero comics at all. They’re not just squeezing them out–they (or more accurately the developmentally retarded fanboys who run most comic shops) are keeping them from ever getting in. Still, it’s always worth shooting down facile anti-superhero arguments, and Franklin’s a past master at it.

Finally, ADDTF reader Ben Burgess pointed me to this Gardner Linn post on Grant Morrison’s recently completed New X-Men. An in-depth summary of the entire forty-issue run, tracing each of Morrison’s themes from inception to conclusion, this post is so good it will make your hair hurt. As sad as I am that Morrison’s X-book is no longer a going concern, and that Marvel shows no sign of following it up with anything remotely resembling its genuinely revolutionary combination of sophistication and heart, the thought that we’re now able to talk about it all the way Gardner talks about it makes me glad indeed.

Okay, back to work.

Lord of the Rings fans who were disappointed that Saruman’s death scene was cut from the theatrical release of The Return of the King may appreciate the news that the spiritual leader of Hamas, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, has been killed by Israel. Yassin is the White Wizard’s spitting image, though Saruman was probably a better person overall.

This man was truly one of the worst people on Earth. May he and his goals be forever forgotten, and may the only death that results from his passing be that of his poison ideology.

ZZ Top, Bob Seger, and Jackson Browne are in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Black Sabbath is not.

Seriously, people.

What. The. FUCK.

Robert Rodriguez will be “co-directing” Sin City with Frank Miller and Quentin Tarantino.

Seriously, people.

Holy. SHIT.

(BTW, this shores up my theory that Miller was a big influence on Tarantino’s Kill Bill. But mainly, HOLY SHIT.)

I couldn’t resist. (And I’m not the only one.)

Dawn, by the way, is excellent, a worthy successor to both the original and to the other recent fast-moving zombie flick of note, 28 Days Later. In many ways it’s better than 28–the apocalyptic scenario it constructs is far more logically consistent, for example. Actually, in some ways it’s better than the original Dawn, too–it’s able to draw thematic elements from all three of the original Dead movies, for starters. It’s well-acted, intelligently and gorgeously shot and directed, gory, and frightening, with the original’s commentary on consumerism supplanted not by dumb Hollywood action-flickisms but by a more universal and potentially more chilling exploration of civilization, community building, and entropy. And the opening sequence is absolutely flawless, maybe the most relentlessly harsh and frightening first ten minutes of a film since Saving Private Ryan.

This was a remake that was worth the re-making. Fence-sitters turned off by one soulless and slick horror-classic redo too many, do yourself a favor and don’t pass this one up.

PS: I’m really entertained by how so many critics who didn’t like the new version are talking about how it supposedly lacked the deft satirical touch displayed by auteur George Romero in the original, a parable about consumerism. Folks, he took zombies and put them in a shopping mall–a little un-subtle, no? Don’t get me wrong–it’s still a wonderful, intelligent, maverick film–but we’re not talking Tartuffe here. For my money the unspoken racial subtext of Night of the Living Dead, Romero’s first zombie film, make that one the gold standard for socially relevant horror filmmaking.

PPS: Also, does anyone fact-check Elvis Mitchell these days? I remember being taken aback by how he misquoted Gandalf’s key line to Pippin (“just a false hope” instead of the better-sounding and more complex “just a fool’s hope”) from The Return of the King in his review of that film; in his review of the new Dawn he mischaracterizes the relationship between Sarah Polley’s character and the zombie girl who attacks her husband (she’s the girl’s neighbor, not her mother) and erroneously claims that the original Night didn’t explain the origin of the zombie plague (it doesn’t come right out and say it, but it is strongly implied on several occasions that radiation found to have contaminated a returned Venus probe may be the cause). I’m glad he’s a Frank Miller fan and all, but someone should really pay attention to this stuff.

Reports suggest that the cast of Robert Rodriguez’s film adaptation of Frank Miller’s Sin City includes Leonardo DiCaprio, Bruce Willis, Elijah Wood, Mickey Rourke, Brittany Murphy, Kate Bosworth and Jaime King.

Huh?

Oh, man.

Long-time ADDTF readers may remember that back in the early days of this blog, I spent a lot of time talking about the importance of well-designed, uniform trade dress to the trade paperback/graphic novel/manga market. (Seriously–do a search for “trade dress” and you’ll find I spent the entire Spring and Summer of 2003 talking about it.) My thesis was that manga had a huge advantage over American comic collections not just because they were sized closer to regular prose books, but because you could actually enjoy looking at and have an easy time reading the spines when they’re lined up on a shelf.

Sadly, things have not improved much since back then. Dark Horse recently reprinted all the Hellboy collections in order to capitalize on the Hellboy movie–but they still haven’t numbered the books in the series! (Argh–this is maybe the most difficult series around in terms of figuring out which book comes when. Help us, DH!) (UPDATE: Augie de Blieck writes to say that they do, in fact, have numbers. Man, I’m glad to be wrong about that.) DC doesn’t number the collections of its big icon series; on some of those series they do number, the number is so small they may as well not have bothered. Marvel continues to shoehorn both classic old runs and pointless new miniseries into its “Legends” line, producing confusion, lousy sales, and bizarre circumstances such as the fact that the recent Spider-Man/Wolverine miniseries is in print as a trade paperback and the seminal Kraven’s Last Hunt is not. And Image’s yellow logo on the spines of each of its trade paperbacks is as ugly as sin would be if sin had botched cosmetic surgery.

So thank you, thank you, thank you to Brian Hibbs, whose latest column is all about How to Dress Your Trade Paperbacks. He tackles the issue from a number of fascinating and important perspectives, both general and specific: from discussing how the look of a trade impacts sales to dissecting exactly what constitutes good design to pointing out flaws in different companies’ programs to raising questions about the role trade paperbacks may be playing in mid-list titles reaching their breaking point to whether indie companies are shooting themselves in the foot by completely eschewing pamphlets.

Please, go and read it. These are issues that every comics company should be thinking about very carefully.

All yesterday afternoon and evening I watched reports on all the networks and cable news stations about the horrific car bombing in Baghdad, all of which had headlines screaming “dozens dead,” most of which seemed to be drawing on the implicit “look what we’ve done!” causal through-line from the Madrid massacre.

Today, I just got finished watching a briefing from the coalition in Baghdad, announcing that the death toll has gone from being proclaimed as “dozens” to being calculated at “17.”

Do you think the difference in the death toll will become a story? Do you think if the death toll had been revised to be higher, that would be a story?

I’m just asking.

Andrew Sullivan has the goods on the shameful full-court press currently underway against even the most fundamental guarantees of equal rights for gay Americans–not just marriage, mind you, but civil unions, domestic partnership benefits, workplace discrimination protection, sodomy laws, even in one case the right to live in a given county. It’s insane, and it’s orchestrated and egged on by those compassionate, small-government conservatives we’ve heard so much about in the Bush Administration.

I sure do want John Kerry to lose the election, but if you truly do care about the liberal values we’re fighting and dying for every day overseas, it’s tough to want George Bush to win it.

Via Dave Fiore I’ve discovered the delightful blog of one Marc Singer–and what to my wondering eyes should appear but a long and in-depth post tearing yours truly’s Spain theories into tiny little pieces. And he’s really, really good at it, too! Oh, man…

It seems like Marc and I have drawn very different conclusions about terrorism and the war thereon, and I very much doubt that our considerable rhetorical skills (well, his, at least) will manage to convince the other to abandon his position. I think you know where I stand, dear readers, and I think that if you read Marc’s post it’ll be clear where he stands, too. You can draw your own conclusions from there. So I’m going to avoid getting into the meat of the issue.

But I would like to defend myself on a few, mostly technical kinda points on which I think Marc has misjudged or mischaracterized me. (Not maliciously or anything, but hey, it happens.)

* Marc says

But Collins’ posts aren

Take it easy, man! It was nothin’ personal!

In all seriousness, the above-linked pieces are Chris Butcher’s responses to the somewhat, uh, spirited defense of superheroes offered up by me and Steven Berg yesterday. Right off the bat I want to apologize to Chris for getting personal–he seems pretty upset about some of the things that I said about him, and while I didn’t intend to or even think that I did get personal, clearly that was my bad. I don’t think Chris is an idiot, or that “he’s wrong because I say so,” or that he’s a poseur trying to sound smart, or that he’s an asshole whose philosophy prevents him from ever taking a clear look at a book, or that my post was so great that all discussion about the topic must now end, or anything like that; nor was I mad at him, even a little bit. Can I see how it would seem that I do think those things, and that I was mad at him personally? Oh, absolutely. That’s my fault for being a lousy writer (couldn’t resist “‘Nuff said,” could you, Collins?–ed)–not Chris’s fault for having a position I disagree with. Again, I’m sorry.

I do disagree with a lof of what he says about superhero comics, though. Still do, actually, despite his long and impassioned explanation of how he came to his current conclusions about the relative merit of the spandex set, corporate or no.

For example, I don’t think it was clear that, when he said Powers will be remembered ten years from now and Bendis’s Marvel work will not, he was talking about things like whether or not the books will still be in print, or how many collections will be available, or whether previous creators’ runs on those characters will be remembered foremost–it seemed to me he was talking about the quality of Bendis’s actual work on the titles, pure and simple.

I also don’t think that the fact that Bendis’s Marvel character Jessica Jones swears in one book and doesn’t swear in other books affects the quality of any of those books at all–certainly not to the point where the “integrity” of Bendis’s work at Marvel is threatened by the company’s diktats as to whether and when she can say “fuck.”

I also think superhero comics are a lot more amenable to “realism” than Chris does–this is something I’ve gone on at length about before–though I certainly agree that this approach can be done badly very easily indeed, and should be handled with care. (I’ve talked about that before, too.) But the fact that corporate comics try and fail to go this route so routinely doesn’t influence me when I read books that succeed, or books that try something else entirely.

On a specific note, I don’t know whether or not New X-Men is, in fact, just “a book for smart 14-year-olds,” but this particular 25-year-old of what I guess I can say is reasonable intelligence thinks it’s one of the best comics he’s ever read, for whatever that’s worth.

I understand that Bendis has complete control over Powers and varying degrees of “much less so” over his Marvel books, but my reading of them doesn’t see this as being responsible for a drop-off in quality or integrity of the work. Long story short, if a particular comic is good, I don’t think much about where it comes from, certainly not to the point where I talk a lot about how corporate comics are “the most egregious offenders” about this or that, as Chris does. It’s a very different outlook than the one I have. I’ve seen Chris employ this outlook in talking about corporate superhero comics–that’s where I (and I’m assuming Steve Berg and others) were coming from when we said that Chris draws a qualitative distinction between corporate superheroes and creator-owned superheroes that I/we feel is an arbitrary one that isn’t related to the text itself.

And while I fully agree that the odds are stacked against a creator when he toils in the trademark mines in terms of digging up something worthwhile and meaningful, it does happen, quite often, regardless of whether or not characters can curse or disemobwel each other or rape monkeys or murder the Pope in the process. When a book is good, it doesn’t make sense to me to hold its origin against it; nor, when I initially evaluate a book, is its origin something I give much consideration to (unless, of course, something’s in there that just screams “corporate watering-down!”. A book like Daredevil is so compelling that the fact that the characters can

I’ve gone on and on about what I think of Spain’s response to the 200-odd murders that occurred on its trains the other day. So why don’t I point you to what I feel is a more appropriate response:

In the face of this kind of subhuman nihilism, people know without having to be told that the only response is a quiet, steady hatred and contempt, and a cold determination to outlast the perpetrators while remorselessly tracking them down.

That’s Hitchens, though as you can tell by parsing his syntax he’s talking about how Spain, and the world, have reacted to ETA and their ilk. He’d like to extend this sensibility to Islamist terrorism.

Of course, other people feel quite strongly that though their methods are abhorrent, their goals are basically sensible, and it’s best for us just to do what they want, since if do that they’ll just give up and leave us alone.

Take your pick, ladies and gentlemen.

Larry Young is the co-founder and head honcho of AiT/PlanetLar, the independent comics publisher that is currently celebrating its five-year anniversary. Known for publishing the comics of such creators as Brian Wood & Tom Beland, as well as the prose writings of Warren Ellis, Young has parlayed a strong Internet presence and innate marketing savvy into a growing spot in the public eye for his company. He got behind the trade paperback/graphic novel format early, putting his creators in a prime position to take advantage of the rise in sales of those formats both within the direct market and in the larger bookstore world.

Never one to shy away from making his opinion known, Young has made statements in Brian Wood’s Delphi Forum and on his own blog that have made him something of a bete noire among comics bloggers of late. So I was both surprised and pleased when, in response to my post on this topic, Larry offered to answer any ten questions I cared to ask him, for publication on this very blog. I happily took up this generous offer, and as you’ll see, the results were both informative and candid. You’ll also see that I probably cheated a little bit on the whole “ten questions” thing.

—–

Larry Young

Sean T. Collins: So, how did you “develop such a hard-on for bloggers?” Were there specific comics bloggers who said something you found upsetting or misleading? If so, who were they? Or do you think that, your own blog aside, the publishing mechanism itself is inherently problematic?

Larry Young: Well, I just don’t see myself as “having a hard-on” for bloggers, in the first place. I just think the comics blogs I have seen are pretty self-indulgent affairs, is all. Someone will send me a link with a note pointing out something they think I’ll be interested in, and I have to wade through laments about the cancellation of Angel and political screeds about terrorism and lamb stew recipes and whatnot to find a two-line mention of Demo #3.

I mean, I get enough of that sort of thing from my pals in the real world; I don’t need to read about it online, too. 🙂

Your blog is mostly an AiT/PL news and update source. Could you ever see yourself offering comics commentary and criticism as well?

No, because that’s not what it’s for. It’s just a way for me to update the home page with company-related news without having to learn html. I’m not sure I could get away with it, now, anyway. When I did my 52 issue fanzine, Planet Lar, I did four or five short reviews a week for a year. People liked ’em, for the most part, because I was a guy riding mass transit on his way to work and writing about the comics he’d just read. If I reviewed something now, people wouldn’t look at it like a guy just telling you his likes and dislikes; they’d think The King Of Independent Comics was being “combative” and taking a dump on their hard work.

Conventional wisdom has it that your online persona is combative; some have said unnecessarily or even detrimentally so.

People see what they want to see.

Is this persona deliberate on your part, or do you think this assessment of your Internet presence is inaccurate? If you have adopted this persona consciously, how does it differ from the way you are in real life?

Here’s the thing about that; I don’t have a “persona,” I have a certain amount of skill in writing. Those reading my writing have a certain level of skill in comprehension. It’s possible there might not be a lot of overlap, there. While I may feel I’m writing clearly and without room for interpretation, a reader might not understand whatever point I’m making, or, even, may not agree with it. If I respond, I’m just being “combative”? Not from my point of view.

Neal Stephenson has a great line about this in Cryptonomicon: “Arguing with anonymous strangers on the Internet is a sucker’s game because they almost always turn out to be — or to be indistinguishable from — self-righteous sixteen year olds possessing infinite amounts of free time.”

I haven’t been following the debate as closely as some, but perhaps this is a good time to set the record straight on Wood & Cloonan’s Demo. Are there now or have there ever been plans to release this series as a collected-edition trade paperback upon its conclusion?

Man, this is like a Perry Mason question. No, counsellor, there are not now or have ever been plans to release this series as a collected-edition trade paperback upon its conclusion.

You’ve said in the past that the book will not be collected–how unequivocal is that?

I don’t believe I’ve said we WILL NOT collect it; I may have been exasperated with a loon or two and written that we may as well come out and say that. But that’s a business reality, and business realities change all the time, and successful companies adapt to those changes.

AiT/PL is a company known for its belief in and success with the trade paperback/graphic novel format; why was this particular title selected to be given the “hard sell” on behalf of its individual, pamphlet-sized installments?

I don’t think it’s been given a “hard sell.” People have written they’re waiting for the trade, I tell them if they don’t buy it now, there might not be a trade. That’s just an economic reality imposed on us by the nature of how this project is set up. The poster-stock covers, the cover-weight interiors, the self-contained stories; everything about Demo screams “$2.95 mini graphic novel.” If some observers of the scene think we’re violating what they think our company is known for, good! That’s how businesses grow, but stepping outside of expectations.

How has this mini-brouhaha affected sales, and for that matter critical & audience reception of the work itself?

There’s no effect that I can see. The work is the work. Critical and audience reception of a project doesn’t (or shouldn’t, at least) be impacted by what a few vocal cats without all the info say on a message board.

AiT/PL has now hit the five-year mark, and the company has an increasingly high profile. To what do you attribute your success thus far? How do you plan to maintain or increase your appeal to comics buyers?

Slow and steady wins the race. We keep putting out the good comics, and people will keep buying ’em.

What book/s are you most proud of having published? On the flip side, what book/s do you see as having been a misfire, or something that you and/or the creators could have handled better?

This is like asking a parent which offspring they love more. I love all our books, for different reasons.

From fans to retailers to creators to publishers to critics, ours is an industry that seems intently focus on spreading the word about comics to the outside world. What brand of “comics activism,” for want of a better term, have you found most successful? How do you think the industry in general, or your own company in particular, can improve upon its existing outreach efforts?

Nothing beats hand-selling. In a well-stocked shop, I could sell anyone a book that they would enjoy, just by talking to them for a couple minutes. If somebody told me one of their favorite movies, the last place they went on vacation and what they had for breakfast, I could put a comic in their hand that they liked, just because I’m enthusiastic about the form and I can extrapolate all sorts of stuff about folks from those three questions and their body language. It’s kind of a monkey trick I learned from my orthodontist when I was a kid, actually.

How do you see AiT/PL functioning in relation to the other indie comics companies–what role does it play, what niche does it fill, what reader needs does it service? Are you satisfied with where you stand in the industry?

I’ll tell you what I tell everyone who asks me this question: we’re publishers, just like Marvel and DC and whoever. The $12.95 it takes to buy The Invisibles: Bloody Hell in America from your local comics retailer is the same $12.95 it’ll cost to buy yourself a copy of Last of the Independents.

What one thing does comics need more of? And what one thing does comics need less of?

The one thing comics needs more of: TREES. The one thing comics needs less of: average comics.

Finally, if there are any current or upcoming projects you’d like to plug, please plug away!

Well, I’m personally excited about the upcoming Planet of the Capes, just because it’s been a long gestation period for the project. I’m looking forward to Ursula, our first translated-from-the-Brazillian-Portugese graphic novel, and of course Hench and Bad Mojo. I can’t wait for WonderCon in San Francisco, too. Nothing better than going to a major comic book convention and being able to sleep in your own bed at night, too.

—–

For more on Larry and his company on their fifth anniversary, check out Newsarama‘s big piece on the subject. Thank you once again to Larry Young for suggesting the interview, and congratulations to him on five years of AiT/PlanetLar!

Another month, another tedious kerfuffle about whether or not superhero stories are inherently bad/childish/stupid. I gotta tell you, for all that superhero-bashers decry the genre’s tendency to lapse into rote, repetitive predictability–well, I guess you can see where I’m going with this.

The lastest debate centers around Christopher Butcher, who (as I discussed the other day) is really pissed off that writers like Brian Bendis have eschewed ostensibly more personal work to play in the big spandex sandbox. As backup, he links to a Millarworld messboard post approvingly cited by Graeme McMillan. The post argues that superheroes are inherently non-adult, that any attempts to create some sort of “adult take on superheroes” are doomed to failure, that the books heralded as the “adult takes on superheroes” (The Dark Knight Returns and Watchmen) are in fact about “about the impossibility of treating these iconic characters as “adult” and having them continue to behave in the way we have come to expect,” etc. The poster seems to find the the Big Two’s big guns the most offensive in this regard:

the mainstream characters – the archetypes and the bit-part players that surround them – simply cannot be written as adult characters with out appearing utterly ridiculous to all concerned.

In this way his prejudices dovetail neatly with Chris Butcher’s, who’s drawn that same distinction between corporate superheroes and creator-owned ones.

Can anyone tell me why? Seriously, I want to know. Of course the odds are against you if you want to do some serious life-changing work in a flagship title–it takes someone with the talent and clout of Frank Miller or Brian Bendis or Grant Morrison to convince the suits that allowing them to really fuck around with some of the company’s toys might make the remaining toys work better. But it can be done, and it is done, all the time. Again, what is this mystery difference in quality between Powers and Bendis’s Marvel work, or The Filth and New X-Men, that folks like Chris & Tim O’Neil treat like an article of faith? Creator-owned superpeople are better because they’re creator owned. QED. If there’s more to it than that, I’d love to have it explained to me.

Steven Berg is all over this particular beat, offering a hilarious takedown of Chris’s assertions. How, he asks, is what Bendis is doing with Daredevil or Morrison doing with Cyclops any different than what Moore is doing with Mina freaking Harker? Taking it a bit further, how is it different from Street Angel or Powers or Hellboy or The Filth or any of the other creator-owned superhero concepts that Chris, Tim and others fawn all over? The answer: It isn’t, and moreover I would submit that only people immersed in fanboy culture, who subsequently want to differentiate themselves from fanboy culture, would suggest that there’s any difference at all. I think we’ll all admit that people working in the corporate-trademark field have an uphill battle ahead of them, in terms of dealing with a bureaucracy that wants to preserve the illusion of change without dealing with the actual ramifications of change, that people working on their own characters don’t face–but good work is good work, plain and simple. Your individual mileage may vary, but it seems safe to say that people like Brian Bendis have successfully waged that battle. Why in God’s name would the fact that someone else owns the trademark make the story any less good?

What makes this particular iteration of the superhero debate so weird is the inconsistency of the opposing position. In one breath (in many, actually), Chris will go out of his way to lambaste corporate superheroes and superheroes generally; in the next he’ll go apeshit for a superhero comic, and even a corporate superhero comic, Darwyn Cooke’s New Frontier! The flip-flopping is egregious, and in my opinion can only be explained by the desire to gratuitously differentiate oneself from fanboys, and, perhaps, a fairly straightforward hard-on for Marvel.

(And what is it about The New Frontier that drives otherwise sensible reviewers into flights of rhetorical ecstasy? Listen, the art is obviously gorgeous, and two issues in may be too early to draw a conclusion, but so far this just seems like unreconstructed Marvels-style icon worship at its most cloyingly nostalgic, with the added “bonus” of incorporating the impenetrable continuity wonking of (the otherwise superior Alex Ross book of note) Kingdom Come. Honestly, folks, I am a huge freaking geek, and I don’t know who half these goddamn characters are. The fact that the book is drawn by the inheritor of the Bruce Timm mantle can really only get you so far.)

David Fiore, as you might expect, has more reasons why this latest anti-superhero argument is missing the formally inventive, narratively compelling, philosophically fascinating superhero forest for the “people don’t wear funny costumes” trees. Read his piece, read Steven’s, mentally tag on a “‘Nuff said,” and I think this round is over.

* That Britney Spears song “Toxic” that everybody likes really isn’t very good. I feel vindicated. (Folks, if you want to hear good James Bond-style music that isn’t actually from a James Bond movie, buy Portishead’s records.)

* I also feel vindicated that the Strokes have released “Reptilia” as a single, seeing as how it’s easily the best song from Room on Fire. And the video’s actually quite good and interesting-looking.

* So is the video for Blink 182’s “I Miss You,” believe it or not. And the song is good, too! You half expect the bass player to appear with a shaven head and a long-sleeved black t-shirt reading “ZERO” on. And if they keep making this kind of music, the guy with the lousy voice could actually make his lousy voice work in the context of what they’re doing, which is impressive. Even the de rigeur lesbians are creepy hairy French 1930s surrealist lesbians rather than porn stars with enema bottles or whatever. Well done, Blink 182–a worthy follow-up to that side-project song from a year or so back, which was also good.

* However, the fact that every single other band has a lead singer who sounds just like the lousy singer from Blink 182 is not good at all.

* What the hell is this Maroon 7 situation?

* Jim Shearer?

* Oh, hooray, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs have the video for “Maps” in heavy rotation. Best song of last year, I think. And the video’s pretty good too, if a little staid. It reminds me a little of the Doves’ video for “Caught by the River,” a song that should have been an enormous fucking hit in the States but wasn’t, possibly because they looked bored while performing it. It’s tough for Karen O to look bored, though, so there’s hope.

* That blue-eyed soul remake of “Fell in Love with a Girl [Boy]” is way too easy.

* It’s nice to see that after a year away, hip-hop videos still look and sound exactly the same. Good on you, hip hop!

Oh, cable. The Sopranos, Curb Your Enthusiasm, History Channel specials about barbarians, non-stop Law & Order reruns, and VH1 Classic. Delightful.

Yesterday we discussed the notion, insisted upon by various and sundry antiwar pundits, that the Spanish election didn’t really have anything to do with a cowed electorate repudiating the fight against terrorism and turning toward appeasement. But dammit, if it keeps turning out that the Spaniards themselves failed to get that memo, as this Washington Post article suggests, we may have to revise that particular theory.

UPDATE: Oh, dear–did anyone get the memo? The bien pensants at the Guardian sure didn’t. I mean, take a look at this editorial–saying that hunting down the Madrid terrorists probably wouldn’t solve anything, repeating already-debunked claims of the fake-turkey variety about Bush’s ad campaign, declaring that we must move past the simplistic notion that terrorists are bad guys, calling a national allegiance to its own constitution a partisan political ploy, calling for a dialogue in which the democracies of the West and the thugocracies of Islam are equal partners, and throwing in some truly gratuitous and breathtaking Jew-baiting moral equivalency to boot. (Link courtesy of Steven Den Beste.) People, people–you’re off message!

No, you know what? The glib act can only get me so far. Disgusting fifth-column appeasement of the type the Guardian and its fellow travelers are now embracing–encouraged, wouldn’t you know it, by those Spanish election results that are supposed not to mean what we hawks think they mean–needs to be called out directly. Appeasers, Jew-baiters, America-bashers, liars, fascism apologists, moral equivocators, quislings, I’m calling you out. I will not stand for Paz In Our Time.

Question: How will you be able to find Sean T. Collins at this year’s San Diego Comic-Con?

Answer: He’ll be the gentleman with a lovely lady wearing this on his arm.

First off, you may have missed it amid all the poliblogging, but I did a Comix and Match yesterday, too–you can find it here. The juicy part is a defense of Brian Bendis’s franchise-character work against criticism I find arbitrary at best. Take a look.

Franklin Harris reports that manga publisher Gutsoon is placing all its titles on hiatus, while they try to figure out how to get a wider audience to purchase them. Well, that certainly seems to be a better strategy than, say, simultaneously launching six or eight series featuring second- and third-string characters and hoping that maybe like one or two of them are ordered in sufficient numbers to avoid being cancelled inside a year. But is this a sign that the manga skeptics were right, at least insofar as their claims that the sheer volume of titles coming out from Tokyopop and Viz were going to keep other manga books from finding a viable foothold? In other words, will those two companies be to the bookstores/Japanese comics what Marvel & DC are to the Direct Market/American comics? Stay tuned…

…or look to Newsarama, where there’s an article on this very topic (link courtesy of Kevin Melrose). Reporter Matt Brady predicts “a manga bloodbath” in the coming year, wherein

lower sellers will drop out of stores entirely, as they won

Scenes from the theoretical victims of what Franklin Harris insists on referring to as “Bush’s failed war” and what Spanish Prime Minister-elect Zapatero refers to as “a disaster” (courtesy of ABC News):

A year after the bombs began to fall, Iraqis express ambivalence about the U.S.-led invasion of their country, but not about its effect: Most say their lives are going well and have improved since before the war, and expectations for the future are very high.

Worries exist

Slow news weekend for funnybook fans!

In his daily link roundup, Tim O’Neil gives gossipmongers Markisan Naso and Rich Johnston the business. I read their columns religiously, but a little criticism never hurt anybody.

Kevin Melrose links to a New York Times report from some sort of Bizarro World where purveyors of prose fiction are attempting to siphon respectability-through-osmosis from comic books! And this Bizarro World is America, where manga publisher Vertical Inc. is looking to capitalize on the success of Japanese comics by importing Japanese novels. Well, now I’ve seen everything.

Chris Butcher & Scott Robins point out something I’d missed: Fantagraphics is releasing Tell Me Something, the new graphic novel from Norwegian master of melancholy (and slapstick, believe it or not) Jason, this week. Hey, alright.

Franklin Harris links to the news that Brian Bendis will be taking the reigns of The Avengers, believe it or not. Bendis has an almost supernatural knack for taking the geekiest, wonkiest, fanboy-est ideas around and actually producing something adult and compelling with them–the Sinister Six, Venom, the umpteenth Daredevil/Bullseye faceoff, Secret Wars, etc.–and he’s really gonna have his work cut out for him with this, the goofiest remaining mainline-Marvel “flagship” book.

Speaking of Bendis, how’s this for a false dichotomy:

Oh, and for those of you who would argue that we don

I tend to find Jeff Jarvis’s posts on the Howard Stern/ClearChannel situation more than a bit hyperbolic. Of course I’m outraged at the way the federal government (Democrats and Republicans, by the way) are using thinly veiled anti-First Amendment blackmail to influence the broadcasters, and at how ClearChannel used Howard as a sacrificial lamb to placate the FCC and Congress (and, perhaps, the White House). But Stern is an unfunny idiot, and had no problem at all infringing on free speech when rival jocks (and fellow Infinity Broadcasting employees) Opie & Anthony were the ones doing the speaking. (Stern used all his clout to get Infinity to crack down on O&A’s anti-Stern jokes, to the point where the company forbade the duo to mention Stern’s name, or even elliptically refer to “a certain morning DJ.”) Stern is an obnoxious hypocrite, and if he’s a poster child for belief in the Bill of Rights, then I am Mickey Mouse.

That said, I couldn’t help but chuckle in disbelief at Jeff’s latest Stern-news installment. Jarvis posted a report from a reader who heard some anti-satellite-radio commercials on his local broadcast stations, ostensibly created in anticipation of Stern’s threatened defection to Sirius satellite radio. What did the broadcasters come up with as one of their big selling points? Yes! We have more censorship!

The second ad is amusing in an odd way because it spend more than half the time having people complain about foul language. Someone complains about hearing swearing in songs when normally it’s bleeped out on regular radio (yeah, people love it when radio edits the song of their favorite bands); another person talks about how he often forgot to change the dial when his kid gets in the car so the kid hears all the swearing (forego satellite radio–for the children!).

Amazing. The broadcasters and their big-government friends are touting their ability to parent you and your children, so you won’t have to. Well, at least they know their culturally conservative audience: “Janet Jackson’s nipple, Howard Stern’s cursing, and committed gay relationships bad! Taking the kids to watch Jesus get flayed alive for two hours good!”