Man, I didn’t expect them to have that conversation!

First things first: Chris Butcher reprints the monthly Fantagraphics newsletter, which announces the impending release of a nearly 800-page hardcover collection of all of Jaime Hernandez’s “Loca” stories from Love & Rockets. Now here’s my question: If releasing an 800-page hardcover isn’t out of the question, why were stories like X and (especially) Poison River left out of the hardcover collection of Gilbert Hernandez’s “Palomar” work? I realize that they aren’t as geographically constrained to the Palomar town limits as most of the stories in the collection were, but so what? They’re both important parts of the stories of major characters in the Palomar mythos–indeed, without reading Poison River the last quarter of Palomar itself is extremely difficult even to understand.

Do any of my readers who are privvy to decisions at Fanta know why this decision regarding Palomar was made? The email link is to your left…

Speaking of Fanta, lots of great news in that newsletter Chris has up, including a new comic from Mark “Shrimpy & Paul” Bell and a revamped, reoriented Comics Journal. The Journal revamp promises “wider and more contemporaneous coverage of current comics publishing,” “[r]eviews of the most noteworthy current comics and graphic novels,” and “columns on every facet of comics from manga to European comics to mini-comics and even (gasp!) mainstream comics.” Hmm, timelier news coverage, more current reviews, and a broader range of subjects that includes the “mainstream.” Where’ve I heard those suggestions before?

Kevin Melrose reprints a terrific quote from Ed Brubaker regarding the backwards nature of the Direct Market, which requires consumers to know months in advance what comics they want to purchase lest those comics not be ordered by the stores at which the consumer is to purchase them. If you can think of a single bigger obstacle to the healthy diversity of both comics and comics consumers, I’d like to hear it.

Bill Sherman submits a massive recap of his six-month foray into manga, and it serves as a great way for newbies to figure out which titles might intrigue them. I’ve yet to go wrong with a manga recommendation from Bill, and my guess is he’ll do right by you, too.

Are you at all surprised that Mike Mignola reads Jim Woodring and Dave Cooper? There’s a very similar streak of superblack humor in the work of all three.

Franklin Harris points out that the best comic-book movies–Kill Bill and Unbreakable, for example–tend not to be derived from actual comics. I think this is because when most Hollywood types look at comic books, what they see is laundry fetishism, boring action spectacle, and deliberate camp, most of which, of course, are not present in really good comic books. A genuine comic-book influence, one that grows organically from the strengths of the medium–the “literature of ethics” in Unbreakable‘s case, the panoptic messin’ around with time and space in Kill Bill‘s–is almost always preferrable to one that comes from just cribbing the most obvious elements of the most obvious books.

I would like to point out yet another reason that Frank Quitely is so goddamn awesome: He realizes that stomach-fat wrinkles are sexy.

There’s a lot of interesting stuff in Brian Hibbs‘s latest column, which is no surprise, but to me the key tidbit is that Marvel has apparently misjudged the interest in trade paperback collections of some of its more acclaimed miniseries–Thor: Vikings, Captain America: Truth and Supreme Power Vol. 1 (it is a miniseries, right? To be honest, I kinda hope it isn’t, because it’s really awfully good) are apparently already out of print. Since miniseries are a natural magnet for the ever-growing “waiting for the trade” crowd, I’m surprised that Marvel underprinted them.

Ringwood is probably right about CrossGen’s now-cancelled anti-terrorist comic American Power. Now, I think a lot of people would eat up a good comic in which some American superhero beats the living shit out of Osama bin Laden with a goddamn spoon. The notion that there’s something “offensive” about such an event is, well, fucking cockamamie. (It’s funny, but you don’t see these folks complaining about how Joe Kavalier drawing the Escapist punching Hitler in the face in Kavalier & Clay was representative of an offensively simplistic, black-and-white, with-us-or-against-us worldview, or that by referencing current events it exploited Hitler’s victims, or that such a thing would be wrong because the superhero is big and strong but Hitler was scrawny and only had one testicle, or whatever. Cf. Rich Johnston’s reaction–“you can’t hit Osama bin Laden–he’s got kidney problems!” Boo fucking hoo.) But quite frankly, I’d prefer such a book to be written by someone who isn’t also a giant homophobe. (I’d also like the superhero involved to not look like such an obvious knock-off of Watchmen‘s Comedian, who I guess is Dixon’s heroic ideal.)

Finally, I ruined the Hellboy movie for NeilAlien. Neil, good guess, but what this was actually vengeance for was the damage you did to my waistline by introducing me to Peanut Butter & Company in the West Village…

Man, “Comix and match.” Remember those?

I’m extremely proud to announce that I’ve reviewed Paul Hornschemeier’s Mother, Come Home, Craig Thompson’s Blankets, and Mat Brinkman’s Teratoid Heights for the Comics Journal’s 2003 Year in Review issue, which should be coming out any day now. (That’s right–for those of you keeping score, I went from letterhack to paid writer in one issue! So much for the theory that the Journal is an uncritical self-promotional propaganda organ….) The latter two reviews are up on the Journal’s website–click here and scroll down, and while you’re at it, read reviews of other great books like Marc Bell’s Shrimpy & Paul and Friends, Jeffrey Brown’s Unlikely and Chris Onstad’s latest Achewood collection. Besides being a great buy for its year-end best-of recaps and its extensive look at some of the best young cartoonists in the business, this ish is chock full of blogospheric representation–myself, Bill Sherman, Alan David Doane, Tim O’Neil, and of course Dirk Deppey all have a hand in it. Neat!

Next, I don’t know why I didn’t link to this sooner, but the Missus has a worldwide exclusive original Jeffrey Brown comic strip up on her blog. Seriously! You’ll enjoy it, though I’m still unsure as to whether or not I should enjoy it. (And oh yeah, that black-and-white portrait of her at the top of her sidebar (scroll up) is by Craig Thompson. All the fly altcartoonists are on her jammy, I tell you.)

Back to the TCJ beat, if Mike Dean’s Manga Doomsday Theory is correct, you probably better ignore this Tokyopop job listing…

Franklin Harris wonders why I think putting de-costumed characters like the X-Men back into spandex is pandering to the fanboys, but throwing all of Marvel’s big characters onto the Avengers roster isn’t. There are a bunch of reasons, but the main one is that the latter involves the combination of a bunch of genuinely real-world-popular and (if done properly) interesting characters on a book written by one of the best writers in the industry (see also Grant Morrison’s JLA), while the former is merely the bizarre fetishization of laundry.

The indomitable NeilAlien (no blogging hiatus-taker he!) reminds me that two really interesting comics columns were recently updated: Chris Allen’s Breakdowns features reviews of a bunch of things worth reviewing (The Complete Peanuts, Mother Come Home, Wizard Edge, Be a Man, Alan Moore’s intriguing but ultimately lame Supreme books (which Chris likes)), and relays the hilarious information that Marvel used to have the Punisher use rubber bullets! Meanwhile, Steven Grant’s Permanent Damage takes an interesting look at the life of a freelance writer, and examines Marvel’s new ICON line from that perspective as well, offering up a useful corrective to the current chorus of “sellouts!” echoing through fandom these days.

Speaking of good columns, I missed this when it first appeared, but Shawn Hoke (who apparently really likes my blog! (hat tip: John Jakala)) recently reviewed Ron Rege Jr.’s astounding graphic novel Skibber-Bee-Bye. This is another one of those books that I guarantee you you’ve never read anything like. Please go find it and buy it and read it.

Is the Ninth Art message board even more of a pretentious, let’s-hear-ourselves-talk, brook-no-dissent embarrassment than the Comics Journal messageboard? Dave Fiore reports, U-Decide!

Larry Young (April 14th entry) has noticed that even as many bloggers review the comp comics he’s sent out, many bloggers are also crapping out. Larry, it’s my new day job that’s to blame for my relatively scant blogging of late, I promise. But everyone else is totally your fault. Rimshot!

A quick note on Bendis & Bagley’s The Pulse, the first two issues of which I finally picked up today: I don’t remember who it was, but I remember someone complaining about how lame it was that a book that, essentially, used to be Alias is now doing goofy stories about the Green Goblin, and you know what? This was an un-goofy story about the Green Goblin. Bendis played him (his alter ego Norman Osborn, I mean) like an older, more secure version of American Psycho‘s Patrick Bateman. I loved it, and for the first time I could understand why anyone would want to keep the character alive after his “death” during the whole Gwen Stacy situation.

Finally, everyone’s going to go see Phoebe Gloeckner at NYU’s Zine Fest on Friday evening, right?

Trying to figure out what to see at your local movie house this weekend if Kill Bill Volume 2 is sold out? Wary about plunking down your ducats to see Hellboy, but still unconvinced by my pan of the flick? Fortunately, Johnny Bacardi is on the case, giving you plenty more reasons to spend your money on the actual Hellboy comics instead. Johnny focuses on the mishandling of the Hellboy character himself, which I’m really surprised to see so little comment on from funnybook fans who’ve seen the movie.

On the other hand, Johnny posts this picture from the movie…

…which, you’ve got to admit, is pretty fucking cool-looking. If the whole movie was this creepy and gonzo–you know, like the comic itself–I’d’a gone ape for it.

Vis a vis the linkblogging processes, Tim O’Neil‘s had his lot. Bummer. Tim was really good at the Journalista routine, and provided a valuable service coupled with equally valuable opinionating. (If you’ve gotten anything at all out of the ongoing debate as to whether or not the superhero genre is intrinsically useless, you’ve got Tim to thank.) Fortunately he’s promised to continue thinkblogging, and as he points out the blogosphere is now sufficiently extensive and expansive to weather the loss of a one-stop-shopping linkblog. Still, while it may not be as greivous a blow as the loss of Deppey or Doane, Tim’s herculean small-hour efforts will be missed.

So I guess this means that within a couple-three years there’s going to be an “Avengers Reload” event involving the triumphant return of Triathlon.

Jim Henley has found that, in his case at least, the old saw is really true–it turns out he really does hate to say “I told you so.” In a long, impassioned, and obviously heartrending piece, he describes the turmoil he feels as he watches his political standpoint vindicated. Jim has argued long and hard against American interventionism, specifically in Iraq, and to him the events in Fallujah, Sadr City, and the other conflict-ridden cities in that country is the terrible, inevitable proof that he’s right.

He’s wrong.

The tragedy of Iraq does not stem from what we are doing now, but from what we failed to do for decades. Ever since the day our leaders realized it no longer behooved them to refer to Stalin as Uncle Joe, we sacrificed to combat communist totalitarianism. This of course was an enemy that needed defeating–a brutal, evil enemy whose tens of millions of victims go largely unremembered and unmourned even today–but in defeating him we embraced another class of evil men. Focused on the menace of Moscow we shook hands with the grinning torturers of the Third World, who fed the anticommunist war machine with the broken bodies of political prisoners, death squad victims, fodder for mass graves. Our religious nation so feared the godless that we joined forces with men whose religion is so pitiless and bloodthirsty as to be essentially godless itself.

We defeated the communists, yes. And the price of our victory was millions of impoverished, maimed, slaughtered innocents, pawns on the chessboard. It was not until a clear September morning three years ago that we truly saw the face of their killers.

Re-read Jim’s post. Look at the statistics he cites–how in a nation of 24 million people, 2.8 million want American soldiers dead. A sobering, horrifying statistic–but how much more horrifying is the logical consequence of the position Jim advocates? How much more horrifying would be an Iraq where these 2.8 million are lord and master over the 21.2 million? For that matter, how much more horrifying was the Iraq where all 24 million bowed to one? How much more horrifying would have been the Iraq where all 24 million bowed to his two sons?

Across the globe the tyrants slaughter with impunity, but it is only when American soldiers attempt to intervene that the doves’ pangs of conscience kick in. When Saddam slaughtered his hundreds of thousands, where were the long dark 30-graf blog posts of the soul then? Such things only appear when American soldiers, who most doves acknowledge the most decent and fastidious fighting force in human history, kill their hundreds. And these are not indiscriminate hundreds. These are not women and children gassed in their homes and fields, these are not the relatives of the tortured rising up and having their homes razed to the ground or their marshes dried up or their daughters raped and murdered. These are the torturers, the theocrats, the terrorists, the brownshirted thugs of the new fascism. And even with these, we are calling for ceasefires, truces, and negotiations. Yet this is what engenders the wailing and the gnashing of teeth. And the depredations of legitimized killers across the globe rage unstemmed.

Jim once had an exchange with blogger Tacitus in which Tacitus challenged non-interventionist libertarians on the terrible and inevitable results of such a policy. Tacitus said

One last thing: Henley objects to my description of libertarian foreign policy as operating on a Kitty Genovese principle as “overheated and….wrong.” It’s certainly wrong inasmuch as it’s not true of all libertarians: I don’t believe the Samizdata crew advocate such moral abdication. But it is, unless I grossly misunderstand him, a perfectly accurate description of the preferred foreign policy of libertarians like Henley (and Justin Raimondo, et al.), who, for all their radical concern for human liberty within the confines of their particular nation, could care less about it abroad. Arguing that courses of action may only be undertaken when and if they directly involve or affect one’s own country requires a morality exclusively predicated on the national interest. This is clearly an absurdity that leads to monstrous ends. No libertarian of this stripe would have forcibly ended American slavery absent a Southern invasion of the North; stopped the Holocaust pre-1939; taken measures against South African apartheid; supported armed intervention against Hutu Power in Rwanda; endorsed an active role opposing the Burmese SLORC; contemplated action against the Taliban before 9/11; raised a hand against impending genocide in Zimbabwe; or lifted a finger to assist the suffering masses subject to starvation, slaughter, and human experimentation in North Korea. Which is not to say that everyone else does; but at least they recognize that such actions would be good things, and this is, I think, a morally superior consciousness. If, to paraphrase Burke, all that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing, then this sort of libertarianism only serves to supply that precondition in spades. Its proponents may thank their stars they have not and probably never will achieve power: they would, in short time, have much to answer for.

To this, Jim replied

[Later on, I will] probably [comment] more on the long, blustery section at the end where Tac indignantly lists a bunch of things I would not, in fact, have had the United States do for the most part, most of which were things that, in the event, the United States didn’t do.

At that point we’re getting into basic principles that are probably worth going into some detail about, one more time, and we will, but what appears to be happening is that Tacitus is basing his morality on the “wouldn’t it be nice if” level of discussion, where I’m at “yeah, but how would that work out in practice.”

Jim’s point is easy enough to figure out: As horrible as all those things are, American intervention to prevent them would have made them worse.

How? How could they possibly have been worse?

By this way of thinking, the current situation in Kosovo, admittedly a debacle, is somehow worse than what would have happened had Milosevic been allowed to continue waging his disgusting genocidal wars of aggression. The current situation in Iraq, admittedly a crisis, is somehow worse than decades of further rule by the Tikriti crime family, with their weapons programs ready to roll after the sanctions were lifted (which they would have been, because they enabled the Husseins to inflict a level of suffering on their people that no one in their right mind could stomach) and their stated aims of dominating the entire region and their young heirs who if anything were worse than the killer who sired them. The situations in Rwanda, in the Confederacy, in Nazi Germany, in all the other times and places Tacitus listed, horrendous crimes and tragedies that they were, are somehow better than they would have been had we attempted to stop them (in some cases sooner, in some cases at all). And the status quo ante in the Middle East–ruled by despots and the men of a murderous god, beset by poverty and ignorance and terror, fed by mindless conspiratorial hatreds, producing thousands of innocent dead not just in its own lands but now in our own–is somehow better off left as it is, and as it has been for decades, and as it inevitably will remain for decades more.

This is unacceptable.

Listen, I don’t think Jim is being callous or cold-hearted–no one who read his cri de coeur could think this of him. But I cannot fathom how the current American intervention in Iraq merits tortured comparisons to Stalingrad, while genocides and mass murders and war crimes innumerable–with body counts that aren’t separated from Stalingrad’s by an order of magnitude, waged by totalitarian murderers that aren’t as dissimilar from Stalingrad’s butchers as is the average G.I.–are tucked quietly away in the “unfortunate, but oh well” category.

I am no nationalist. Unlike Jim, neither am I a right-winger. Though I do not lose sleep over the death of fascist myrmidons, I also do not think that the life of one American is of more inherent value than the life of one innocent Iraqi or Rwandan or Afghan. I do not think my absurd good fortune in having been born free must be preserved without any inconvenience, to the detriment of others who were not so lucky. To me, what makes America unique–what makes America my home–is not a question of geography or nationality or race or sect, but of an idea: an idea of freedom, of equality under law, of the right of people to choose their own destiny. That is why, when Americans are called to fight for that idea in lands other than their own, I weep when they are killed, but I do not despair of the cause for which they died. Indeed, I believe that it was our refusal to fight for this cause–to defend the inherent right of all people to live free–that has put that cause, that idea, in such danger. What happened that clear September morning was that we caught a glimpse of the future, the future if we allow the status quo to continue, if we refuse to do what is right and defeat the killers and tyrants we once ignored. Yes, in the short term the risk may be heightened; for those brave men and women on the front line in Iraq the risk is heightened without a doubt, and my own risk, sitting here shouting on the sidelines, is laughably miniscule compared to it; but for all of us, Americans and Iraqis, Westerners and members of the ummah, the risk of what will happen if the killers remain unchecked is far, far greater. We know they will continue to prey on their countrymen; and I cannot feel safe trusting in their lack of resolve or ability to prey upon us as well. As long as we allow them to live and to reign, the freedom of humanity is endangered and destroyed. To deny this is to deny the moral calling of the age.

I’m as surprised to find myself doing this as I’m sure you are, but on this day of all days I can’t help but think of a particular passage that I find relevant, almost uncomfortably so.

They went to a place called Gethsemane, and Jesus said to his disciples, “Sit here while I pray.” He took Peter, James, and John along with him, and he began to be deeply distressed and troubled. “My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death,” he said to them. “Stay here and keep watch.”

Going a little farther, he fell to the ground and prayed that if possible the hour might pass from him. “Abba, Father,” he said, “everything is possible for you. Take this cup from me. Yet not what I will, but what you will.”

For too long we refused the cup, and who cannot understand why? But we cannot refuse it any longer. We must drink deep, and be strong.

In a quite interesting All the Rage column today, Markisan Naso reports that Brian Bendis’s upcoming Avengers arc will see the “JLAification” of the team–that is, like the DC superteam, the Avengers roster will come to include all of Marvel’s most popular heroes, rather than second-stringers like Jack of Hearts and stuff. Since I’m not quite so far gone as a lot of comics fans, I really don’t give a good goddamn about the lame old Avengers roster, and I’m looking forward to seeing all the big guns gathered on one team, because that would actually make sense and be popular. Now let’s see if DC reJLAifies the actual JLA.

In other, lamer news, Markisan posts a quote by Mark Millar to the effect that he will be putting Wolverine back in his beige costume on his upcoming run on the character’s solo book. (He calls the costume “tan,” but let’s stop bullshitting ourselves, people.) It’s kind of sad to see that even some of the people responsible for helping Marvel take a bold leap out of 1992 over the last few years are itching to hit the rewind button to feed the industry’s inner fanboy.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how good the new Dawn of the Dead was, particularly in light of how mediocre Hellboy was, and in anticipation-slash-worry about how Kill Bill Volume 2 will be. (I’m afraid I won’t be satisfied unless, pace Tenacious D, it rocks my fucking socks off.) So I was tickled to read the following from Chris Puzak, from his positive review of the new Dawn:

This movie’s garnered a lot of positive reviews, although I think if I read another one which talks about what a biting critique of consumerism, the original movie was, I’m going to scream. Yes, George Romero made some jokes about shopping malls in the original, but the movie was basically about zombies eating people. The way people are going on about it, you’d think Michael Moore directed the movie from a script by Howard Zinn. I wish critics would just admit they like watching gory movies instead of pretending they watch them for the alleged social commentary.

My sentiments exactly!

Meanwhile, in the interest of equal time, Chris (and Franklin Harris) liked the Hellboy movie, and Dave Intermittent didn’t like Kill Bill Vol. 1. (Which I guess I can understand, but man, if Quentin Tarantino really is embarrassed about liking female ninjas, making two epic potentially career-killing movies about them sure is a funny way of showing it!) Meanwhile, John Jakala didn’t like the Hellboy movie, and commenter Mason accurately pointed out that this was that rarest of occasion where the grafted-in Hollywood-standard romantic subplot was the best part of the film.

Also on the great minds think alike front, my criticism of Elvis Mitchell from that Dawn of the Dead review I linked to above generated a surprising amount of “hear, hear”s. One of my favorites was from cartoonist Matt Wiegle:

…I also keyed in on Elvis Mitchell’s review as lazy [and] annoying. I may be reading too much into it, but it seemed as if he had some weird class issues going on with the remake, by both slamming it as an “expensive Troma Production” and by saying it was “clearly made in Toronto;” I feel critics often beat a film with the Toronto Hammer when they want to make it seem cheap or lazy. It was as if he was saying “This movie would like to think it’s high-class, but it’s not! See? Toronto!”

Amen. And it’s even dopier than usual to say that sort of thing about a remake you’re unfavorably comparing to an original that was shot in Pittsburgh.

The big news today, obviously, is that Marvel has finally created a seemingly viable creator-ownership option by importing David Mack’s Kabuki and Brian Bendis & Michael Oeming’s Powers to kick off its new creator-owned line, Icon. Near as I can tell there are two largely unexplored angles to this story:

1) The clusterfuck that was the transition between the last days of Bill Jemas’s reign to the first days of Dan Buckley’s must have been even worse than anyone thought. Huge creators like John Romita Jr., Mark Millar, and (especially) Grant Morrison took their respective creator-owned balls and went home because Jemas’s Marvel, despite initial promises, proved unwilling or unable to accomodate them. Indeed, Morrison decamped from Marvel entirely, forcing the company’s number-one franchise into the joint stewardship of Chuck Austen and Chris Claremont, a public-relations disaster from which it will likely take them some time to recover. In essence, Jemas’s mismanagement of the nascent Epic line and the imprint’s subsequent euthanasia at the hands of Dan Buckley and Gui Karyo screwed over not just up-and-comers, but some of the biggest names in the business. It’s simply astounding that it took the company this long to develop some sort of creator-ownership venue, considering the palpable losses the company incurred through its inability to do so sooner. (This is to say nothing of the fashion in which DC has begun stealing some of Marvel’s critical-acclaim thunder, in large part through a recent crop of successful creator-owned Vertigo titles…)

2) New Image publisher Erik Larsen had heretofore been seen as the guy who could turn Image Central’s fortunes around after years of lackadaisacal brand management by ousted publisher Jim Valentino. Several pundits theorized that Larsen’s mandate would include structuring the company’s publishing plans around Image’s existing popular series, two of the most notable being Powers and Kabuki. But Larsen has a long history of bad blood with Bendis, whose work for Marvel Larsen has mocked almost compulsively not just online and in letter columns but within the fictional world of Larsen’s Savage Dragon title itself. Bendis, for his part, has occasionally let on in his own letter columns that he sees Larsen as a habitual whiner. Could this long-running exchange of potshots explain why, at this critical juncture for Image, Bendis and his close friend Mack have defected to the House of Ideas? Larsen’s comments today are far from the usual “we wish them all the best in their future endeavors” boilerplate traditonally deployed in such circumstances, so I’d wager the creators’ mutual hostility did indeed play a role…

Another quick thought on the recent battles in Iraq: It could well be that the news establishment’s relentless focus on reporting only negative developments out of that country since the invasion began is actually mitigating the potentially devastating impact the current Tet Offensive-esque hostilities might otherwise have on public opinion and support for the war. People who are following events in Iraq only casually have subsisted on a steady diet of “another deadly day in Iraq” and “angry Iraqis took to the streets today” served up by our nation’s anchorpersons for over a year now. What’s another few days of this to them, one way or the other?

AiT/PlanetLar publisher Larry Young has pointed me in the direction of this MillarWorld thread, where he talks up some of his favorite comics blogs. Happy as I was to see yours truly’s on the list, I was happier to see that, as Larry tells it, I played a big part in getting him to take a closer look at the comics blogosphere in the first place. And I think the interaction’s been beneficial to both sides: I got a good interview, lots of bloggers have gotten free AiT/PL comics, and AiT/PL has gotten a lot of free publicity. It’s nice when the internet coughs up a win-win like that, isn’t it?

My goodness, if I ever write something successful, and forty years afterwards people were to go around insisting that writers of that time must treat that successful something with “respect”, I’d just die. Please, artists of the future, disrespect the bejesus out of me!

The work and comments of Darwyn Cooke have raised an interesting question: Must art be respectful to what has gone before, or should the words “respect” and “art” even be used anywhere near each other? Contra Chris Butcher, I’ve got to agree with Dave Fiore and say heck no, at least not when the “respect” in question entails a slavish devotion to the perceived “aims of the original creations” or to the “artistic intentions” of the original creators.

Whenever any artist is fired up or inspired enough by someone else’s work to do something that comments upon it in any way–that’s real respect. It’s the only kind of respect that matters, and certainly the only kind of respect that will engender more good art. Pure conservative homage-paying is about as far from the art impulse as you can get.

And good golly, “ethics” don’t enter into it! This isn’t a company refusing to hand over an artist’s property, or dicking him out of royalties–this is an artist putting a new spin on an old idea. Nobody has the ethical or moral right to have their creations remain unchallenged or unsullied forever and ever, world without end amen. I’d submit to you that most artists wouldn’t want that right even if it were available to them. A revamp or reexamination alters the original work not one iota. It certainly doesn’t violate the rights of the creator of that original work. Go ahead and paint that moustache on the Mona Lisa–so long as you’re not doing it on the original painting and/or destroying all copies of the original in circulation, you haven’t done a damn thing wrong.

This is not to say that all would-be iconoclasts are geniuses, or that all reverential nostalgia-mongers stink on ice–give me Astro City over Rawhide Kid any day. Pisstakes and cheap cash-in revamps can only get you so far (even aside from the “let’s make them all thugs and perverts!” school of kill-your-idols reactionism, I think we’ve all seen enough slick and soulless Hollywood remakes to know that sometimes the original creator’s intent is, in fact, vastly superior to that of his would-be reinterpreters), while sometimes an original work is rich enough to merit all kinds of fairly straightforward re-exploration. But if we decide that the only appropriate way to build upon or comment on the work of artists past is to mimic what we think were their goals and beliefs, how will we ever get anywhere?

PS: Why is it superhero writers who always get called out for this sort of thing? I haven’t heard anyone condemn, say, the Air Pirates for disrespecting the artistic intentions of Walt Disney (aside from Disney’s legal team, that is). For that matter, I’ve yet to see any bloggers wax outraged about how Alan Moore unethically abused poor Bram Stoker by having old opium-addicted Allan Quartermain slip the high hard one to Mina Harker, or how he disregarded the artistic intentions of Robert Louis Stevenson and H.G. Wells by having Mr. Hyde anally rape the Invisible Man.

PPS: On tangentially related notes, Marc Singer summarizes the denouement of Grant Morrison’s emotionally expansive and intellectually brilliant New X-Men run (you know, that dopey corporate spandex book he slummed on to make a quick buck without saying anything worthwhile), Dave Intermittent has some questions for fans of the non-fantastic, and John Jakala writes, like, the best JLA/Avengers review ever.

(Light blogging, schmight blogging.)

My military education is limited to one semester of Society and War back in college, so I’m not prepared to make a big announcement about the ongoing battles in Iraq. Well, actually, I am, and it’s that here at home the pro- and anti-war arguments appear to have become completely unfalsifiable. The usual suspects on either side have taken the events of the last couple of days to signal that we’ve now completely blown it, the Inevitable Revolution has begun, and we might as well pack our overweening nanny-state imperialist bags and go home; or that our desperate and savage enemies are acting like complete idiots and we have a golden opportunity to mop the floor with them and pave the way for Iraqi democracy in one fell swoop. “Failed war” and “we’re winning”–it appears that whatever happens, adherents to one or the other of these narratives will find that said happening fits neatly into their storyline.

Me, I’m not so sure. The closest comparison to the current goings on seems to be the Tet Offensive (about which I did learn in that Society and War class, thanks). Of course it’s not exactly the same–Tet was more or less coordinated throughout NVA and VC ranks, whereas it’s unclear how much collusion there is between disparate groups like Sadr’s militia, the Fallujah insurgents, Syrian infiltrators and so forth; much of the current hostilities seems to have stemmed from an extremely unlucky confluence of circumstances, such as the Fallujahn lynching and the shuttering of Sadr’s newspaper. But it’s similar in that it’s difficult to see an outcome to the battles that, in military terms, isn’t a complete disaster for the insurgent groups. Fallujah and Sadr City could have remained relatively untrammelled hotbeds of rebellion and murder for months, but now the insurgents in both places have handed the Coalition an excuse to squash them, an eventuality that the poorly disciplined and outmatched insurgent groups will not long prevent. Like Tet, the outbreak of fighting is surprising, but in the end it will likely be a nightmare for the enemy.

However, like Tet, what matters is not the reality on the ground but the perception both here at home and abroad. Do these battles represent some sort of massive intelligence failure? Can they be seen to represent popular sentiment about the Coalition, even though the people doing the fighting command little general support? Will they produce more casualties than the public can bear, either on our side (doubtful–Americans seem to have learned the lesson of Mogadishu) or among civilians (possible, despite the care being exercised by our forces; these groups are renowned for their use of human shields, residences, and mosques as both safe havens and propaganda generators for the credulous media)?

Which leads us back to our two rival, unfalsifiable narratives. In a situation where the outcome is more or less a given, the spin is everything. Will Fallujah, Ramadi, Sadr City et al mark the beginning of the end, or the end of the beginning? It may come down to which of those narratives is shouted the loudest.

I’m vacationing in Colorado till next Tuesday. Blogging will probably be on the light side. Please try to contain your disappointment.

At the place where I now work, someone stole our only copy of Palomar.

This sucks, because that’s less money for Fanta and Beto, but hey, at least someone’s reading it, presumably.

New Frontier auteur Darwyn Cooke appears to have taken up the mantle of unabashed pseudoicon-worshipping nostalgia of the sort occasionally visible in the work of Alex Ross and Mark Waid with a zeal unrivalled this side of John Byrne. The latest target of Cooke’s ire is Mark Millar, who has violated Cooke’s delicate sensiblities by making the Hulk into, essentially, a giant cannibalistic prison rapist. (Link courtesy of Franklin Harris, who’s got a bunch of cool links up there.)

Your mileage may vary when it comes to Millar’s brand of vulgar deconstructionism–like Jim Henley, I can’t quite decide if Millar’s making some sort of point about how we glibly condone bastardry when it’s done by “our bastards,” or if he simply likes blowing shit up; at any rate I like his Captain America–but it’s clear at this point that Cooke has bought into the big corporate superhero companies’ attempts to transform their cheaply churned-out pulp heroes into worship-worthy Olympians. I detected this back when Cooke was going after Frank Miller for mistreating fictional characters in The Dark Knight Strikes Again, and with this new revelation I’m increasingly glad I jumped off the New Frontier-buying bandwagon. I don’t need to spend all that money on some long hagiography of Green Arrow and the Blue Beetle.

(Which is not to say I’ll never jump back on–I like his art and his storytelling style so much on their own merits that I’ll be sorely tempted by the eventual collection. Moreover, Cooke comes across as far less fundamentalist about these issues in his exchange with Millar than he did during his assault on Miller. But if the future of superhero writing is to be with either Cooke on one side or Miller and Millar on the other, I’m pretty comfortable with the side I’m on.)

Man, what a mess they made of Hellboy.

I went to see this movie despite my better instincts. The commercials I’d seen weren’t the least bit appealing. The same, alas, can be said for the movie itself. The grandeur, charm, and eeriness of the comic were nowhere to be found. In its place were a bunch of action sequences that weren’t particularly thrilling, a bunch of slimy monsters that weren’t particularly scary, a bunch of events that weren’t particularly connected, and a bunch of characters that weren’t particularly interesting.

Hellboy himself was played with all the aplomb you’d expect from Ron Perlman, but he was written painfully generically–just the umpteenth brash, wisecracking anti-hero down the pike, with none of the quiet deadpan resignation that makes him such an interesting character in the funnybooks. They took Abe Sapien down a new road, endowing him with extensive psychic powers I don’t remember him having in the comics and giving him the effete accent and demeanor of David Hyde Pierce, but the poor guy disappears halfway through the film and plays no role in the climax (which is probably just as well, seeing as how he was pretty much useless the rest of the time except as a convenient way to insert flashbacks into the flick). There’s a fundamentally pointless everyman character, who besides being boring throws off the balance of the film, which should have been centered solely on Hellboy. There’s Professor Broom (Bruttenholm, though you only see that name in the end credits), who’s dying, but the film completely negates the significance of that revelation by–well, let’s just say cancer’s the least of his worries. Liz Sherman was probably my favorite character; as played by Selma Blair she was believably aching. But even she is weighed down by the needlessly tortuous plot in which characters do this or that thing (start off in semi-retirement, say, then come back due to an event that probably killed hundreds of people but which fact goes unremarked upon; or start off in trouble, then continue to do the thing that got them in trouble, but not get in any more trouble) with no rhyme, reason, meaning, or consequence.

That’s the real problem with the film: Nothing has any weight. Why do we start with Hellboy on the outs with his “father,” Professor Broom, but never show a real reconciliation between them, nor comment on their failure to reach one? Why do we start with Liz Sherman institutionalized when she seems to be just fine, then suddenly bring her back into the fold when she’s a disaster waiting to happen? Why do the bad guys unleash the slimy Samael monsters? Why make destroying them such a central part of the plot if they do nothing to further the story, and if we’re just going to have a character toss in a throwaway line explaining that, after all the main characters have had their asses kicked by them, “we’ve destroyed thousands of their eggs” anyway? And if that’s true, how the hell do so many of them wind up in Moscow? And are slimy tentacled monsters really the *only* monsters worth showing? Seriously, variety is the spice of life, people, especially when you’ve got the entire Mike Mignola bestiary from which to select the damn things! And how is it that getting shot full of holes doesn’t kill the zombie Nazi guy at one point, but getting stabbed full of holes does? And what’s the point of the immortal she-Nazi, anyway? Does she do *anything*? And what’s up with Rasputin? He can apparently materialize anywhere at will and just as easily disappear, so why does he bring himself into contact with his enemies so often in order to use them to further his plans, when he could clearly accomplish quite a bit on his own? And why use Hellboy at all when you contain an apocalypse-causing god within your own body?

Folks, I could sit here writing more of these unanswered questions about dopey plot points all afternoon. That’s what a mess this movie is. And it’s not fun enough or good-looking enough to make up for it, nor are the characters compelling enough or the ideas unique enough. It’s a big, big let-down, even more so when you consider what a genuine marvel the comics themselves are. Do yourself a favor: Take your money and spend them on those comics instead.

April Fools is over. Phew. Now do yourself a favor and go here and breathe in the sweet, sweet perfume of really good comics.

(Link courtesy of Tim O’Neil, as part of a truly epic post including an ungodly long round-up of Secret Wars II and a worthwhile corrective to my Old New Marvel lament. Marvel was always just throwing stuff at the wall to see what stuck. The problem is that now, they’re throwing it at an entirely different wall. (My guess is it’s the one with all the X-Men wanted posters that Wolverine and Kitty Pride are standing in front of on the cover of “Days of Future Past” Part One. That seems to be a wall they’re fond of revisiting.))