As you’ll perhaps remember from this post, I

This year

Courtesy of Franklin Harris comes this article claiming that Marvel stockholders dumped their holdings after The Hulk did less business than expected. I dunno, man–the all-time record-holding June opening weekend seems pretty good to me, and I’m not sure that anyone thought this movie was as much of a sure thing as, say, Spider-Man (no challenging art-film moves in that bad boy) or even the X-Men sequel, which had a built-in audience of people who liked what they saw in the first one. It’s also conceivable that folks are experiencing some “blockbuster fatigue” at this point in the season, especially after so many moviegoers felt that they got burned by The Matrix Reloaded. Seems to me that unless these stockholders were especially squeamish, which doesn’t seem likely considering they bought stock in Marvel Comics, The House of Badly Conceived and Executed Business Ideas, they were just looking for a convenient date to dump stock, and right after Marvel’s final big release for the season was as good a time as ever. But let the gloom and doom commence, as it does after every Marvel movie that fails to make $200 million its opening weekend.

(Note: I was half-jokingly accused this weekend of colluding with Dirk Deppey, to whom this entry is dedicated, to drive up one another’s real estate. Bullroar, I say!)

Courtesy of Josh Marshall (courtesy, in turn, of Bill Sherman) comes this NYT op-ed piece by Kenneth “The Threatening Storm” Pollack, refuting the comical claim that Iraq’s WMDs and WMD program were merely a figment of Bush Administration’s war-crazed imagination even as he points out the potentially grave questions to which the administration has opened itself. Pollack, as always, argues that while the destruction of the Saddam Hussein regime was necessary, the timing (Spring 2003) wasn’t necessarily so necessary. It’s refreshing to come across someone who is able to criticize Bush (or at least his team, for stretching the WMD evidence to convince the public that we had to go in when we went in and no later) without a) resorting to hysterical Watergate-esque rhetoric about lies and scandal; b) advocating a fairly wholesale derelicition of duty when it comes to addressing the real, frightening, unconventional and therefore challenging security threats posted to us by the fascists, theocrats and terrorists of the Middle East; c) lambasting the United States as war criminals and oppressors while ignoring the several orders of magnitude more heinous behavior of Saddam Hussein and his ilk. Pollack’s piece, as well as anything else he’s written on the topic, is a must-read for any serious students of American foreign policy in the region.

(FYI: I’m never going to get too exercised about this WMD issue, as I’d happily roll into any given country tomorrow if it meant deposing another nightmarishly dictatorial regime (particularly one with which we were once complicit); this, to me, would be the liberal way to use our unprecedented military power. But it’s important to keep our politicians honest, if only because dishonesty or disingenuousness might make support for future actions more difficult to garner (the boy who cried wolf syndrome). We mustn’t be hamstrung in North Korea, Iran, Syria, Pakistan, or Saudi Arabia simply because the Bush Administration got lazy or timid about making the real case for invasion of Iraq and instead took a short cut by drumming up fears about relatively un-threatening WMD programs.)

My internet connection was down all day long today, except first thing this morning, when I fiddled with the big comicsphere post a bit. This sucked. However, I used the free time to be productive!*

*This is a lie.

On the heels of my one-two punch (more like a wussy little slap) against Radiohead–a bemoaning of their post-9/11 politics coupled with a faint-praise damning of their new album–Bill “Gadabout” Sherman writes:

“Picked up a copy of the new Radiohead disc last week, incidentally, and, you know, I kind of wish that they’d followed up on the political rantwork promised in its title and cover (which reminds me a bit of the back cover to the Mothers of Invention’s Absolutely Free – now there’s an album that knows how to be disrespectful to the president: it opens with an impersonation of LBJ doing “Louie Louie.”) If they had, it might’ve made the album more exciting.”

Seriously! Political brio isn’t necessarily a guarantee of “interesting music”–I’d imagine that NOFX’s The War on Errorism sucks, for example–but Bill’s right: the biggest problem with Hail is the lack of life. However, I’m actually starting to enjoy it more now that I’ve been flipping through Radiohead’s back catalog on my

iPod–bouncing around through various songs on Pablo Honey, The Bends, and Amnesiac has helped me contextualize Hail through their already extant body of incredible work, as opposed to through a political issue about which the band and I disagree passionately. But Bill’s still right–a little chutzpah would have made the whole enterprise more invigorating. (I still enjoy my Rage Against the Machine records, for example, probably for that very reason. Well, that, and the fact that I never took Rage’s hardcore Communism very seriously. I mean, the hammer and sickle on Tom Morello’s baseball caps is supposed to represent a viable political and economic ideology? C’mon–you’ve GOT to laugh at that!)

Sayeth James:

“What if the mullahs fall before, say, September? The second anniversary of 9/11 would be marked by much general astonishment at what OBL et al began. Two years, three countries. Syria would have its come-to-Issa moment. Kim Il Jong would have to switch to extra-absorbent Depends, since he would probably be wetting himself anew each time he turned on CNN.”

My sentiments exactly.

(By the way, he also talks about Brian Eno & David Byrne’s My Life in the Bush of Ghosts, which is always a good idea.)

The Iranblogging continues.

First, courtesy of Instapundit, comes this bit of analysis from Austin Bay:

“Don’t underestimate the strategic effects on Iran of Saddam’s demise. Saddam presented Iran with a long-term threat, one the ayatollahs could use to legitimate a degree of internal militarization. Now, the Butcher of Baghdad’s gone. Iranians have seen Iraqis dancing in the streets. Is it time for the Theocrats of Tehran to take a hike?”

I’ve made this argument for some time, after being persuaded by books such as Michael Ledeen’s The War Against the Terror Masters and Ken Pollack’s The Threatening Storm that the various fundamentalist/fascist/terrorist regimes of the Middle East are all interconnected, and that when they start falling, the demise of any one will accelerate the downfall of the others. As in George Orwell’s 1984 (and here’s one case in which its actually appropriate to utilize the Orwellian comparison), Iran’s ayatollahs used the presence of a hostile next-door neighbor as an excuse for their own draconian militaristic policies. The fear they drummed up in the Iranian populace was not without some justification, mind you: Saddam had attacked Iran in the past, largely unprovoked, and during the course of their disastrous war proved himself willing to deliberately inflict massive suffering on the civilian Iranian population even when such actions had little or no practical or even propagandaiacal strategic results. With Saddam, his army, and his weapons out of the picture, it’s going to be a lot tougher for the ruling theocrats in Iran to convince their people that they need them in charge. (Moreover, many of the young people involved in the anti-theocrat demonstrations are probably too young to clearly remember the war with Saddam in the first place, making it an even less effective incentive for compliance.)

That Instapundit item also pointed the way to this Slate round-up of the current situation in Iran, both regarding the protests and Western efforts to force the country to curb its nuclear weapons program. If you ask me, here’s where the current “Where’s the beef?” WMD fiasco in Iraq will be the most damaging to the administration (and the world): If intelligence about Iraq’s capabilities couldn’t be believed, won’t it be even more difficult to convince the world (who, it must be said, all seem in agreement that Iran is further along the nuclear path than Iraq was, if not as far as North Korea) that Iran’s capabilities are threatening as well?

No, not the Coldplay song. Bill Sherman’s doing quite a good job at cataloguing the abuse of that particular band’s music. (With a little help from yours truly, of course….)

A bit of background for the non-fanboys (hint: If you don’t know what “fanboy” means, then this part of this entry is for you): A while back there was something of a shitstorm over the cover for Marvel’s upcoming teen romance comic, Trouble. Written by the clever (if occasionally insufferable) Mark Millar, the book’s cover features an actual photograph of two bikini-clad teenage girls. But as Dirk Deppey points out and Jim Henley backs up (they’re both long entries, so you’re welcome to take my word for it), the controversy, such as it was, stemmed solely from the fact that the comics fanboy community automatically associates “bikinis” with “Vampirella,” which is to say with “comics that give me a big boner.” Underage girls in bikinis, then and therefore, equals child pornography. But had these human caricatures ever browsed through the young adult section at their local Barnes & Noble, they’d have seen dozens of similarly themed and targeted books with precisely the same sort of covers. Marvel’s intent, believe it or not, wasn’t to titilate–it was to fit into a preexisting market, one that fanboys and the retailers/enablers didn’t recognize or understand.

But then there’s this. It’s the cover for the proposed second printing of the first issue of Trouble, in case the first print run sells out in comics shops due to unanticipated demand. It features an illustration of the book’s teenage female protagonists (by fanboy fave Frank Cho) that can only–and only too aptly–be described as “titilating.”

I don’t necessarily have much of a problem with Cho’s art: Unlike many comics cognoscenti who think he’s an uninspired rip-off-artist hack, I actually the pin-up girls that are his artistic bread and butter are kinda sexy. But personally he seems unsavory, having teamed up on several occasions with the unfunny Scott Kurtz to let their collective “we’re deliberately ignorant of art- and alt-comix!” flag fly in a series of appalling message-board flame wars and inside-joke-ridden gag strips. (We’ve all experienced the occasional snobbish excesses of alternative, indie, and underground comics, but to assert, as they did, that all altcomix are pretentious unreadable garbage is to be so self-evidently stupid as to nearly preclude a rejoinder. It’s reminscent of those conservatives who, in response to an admittedly annoying diatribe from the Left, proudly flaunt the fact that they waste a lot of gasoline in their SUVs, or that they just ate a really great piece of veal, or that they love smoking cigarettes, or that they find the Diceman funny. Folks, the Left may be annoying at times, but two wrongs don’t make a right, and all that stuff is still hella stupid.)

Sorry for the digression–the point is that Cho’s art is all about the tease, and using it as the cover for a teenage-girl romance in an effort to appeal to precisely the same fanboy and retailer demographic that’s the target for his wank-fodder cheesecake is all kinds of inappropriate. Marvel has to prove that it knows the difference between using mature themes appropriately to tell good stories and using them inappropriately to sell good stories (or worse, bad ones).

It’s official: Dirk Deppey (currently in contention for the title of The Person Seanblog Talks Most About Next To The Missus) has declared the comics blogosphere mature!

QUOTE: “There have been comics-related weblogs for some time now, of course, but the collected group seems to be finally getting big enough, and complex enough, to take seriously as a sort of ecosystem of ideas. We’re starting to see more and more real writing on the subject, from a wider variety of viewpoints — an environment that political weblogs take for granted, but into which comics weblogs are still growing. What started out as a set of isolated rants seems to be turning into a genuine, multi-tiered set of conversations, a state of affairs I’ve long wanted to see.”

Naturally, what the Comics Journal’s online presence praises, Dr. Strange’s online presence malaises. (Was that too much of a stretch?) In a characteristically grumpy post (that’s since been largely deleted) NeilAlien begs to differ:

QUOTE: “Slapping ourselves on the back? Sounds like a peak. Watch out. Years yearning for ecosystem, and then everywhere it looks like echo-system….Another website doing reviews? Another fanboy riot over something Marvel’s done? Another Journalista Supplement peeing on our leg and insisting that it’s raining?…Isn’t there something more important to do?”

Much as I (preparing obscure Bowie reference–ed.) love the Alien (obscure Bowie reference away!–ed), I’ve got to side with Dirk on this one. First of all, only at the Comics Journal website could a half-graf arguing nothing more than “you can have a decent exchange of ideas about comics online at this point” be considered “slapping ourselves on the back.”

Second, Dirk’s right on about the “genuine, mult-tiered set of conversations.” Witness his epic blogstrosity “The Trouble with Marvel,” which spawned long, thoughtful responses and rejoinders from NeilAlien, Bill Sherman, Franklin Harris, Jim Henley, and myself (more than once!). The debate’s been entertaining, illuminating, and (dare I say it) has the potential to be helpful to Marvel should a company man take the time to wade through it. Similar “blogversations” took place over Nick Barrucci’s “call to arms” and Mark Waid’s firing from the writing chores of Fantastic Four. (I’m tired of hyperlinking, but sniff around any of the aforementioned folks’ sites and you’re bound to see stuff about those stories.)

In fact, I’ll see Dirk and raise him some back-slaps: I submit that without his excellent comics weblog Journalista, the maturation he spoke of would not have come to pass.

Over in the political blogosphere, debates and discussions had gone on for years, but it took a) the explosion of interest in political discourse and theory after 9/11; b) the entrenchment of blogosphere superstars like Sullivan, Reynolds, Marshall, and Kaus–each of whom almost everybody on every side of a given issue visits at least semi-regularly–to establish the blogosphere as a viable method of both holding a discussion and influencing that discussion’s direction.

It’s unclear what, if anything, has been the comics industry’s 9/11 (not in terms of tragedy, but in terms of ushering in a new era). It seems to me that it’s been a combination of factors: a wave of hugely successful comics-inspired films; the manga explosion; the infiltration of bookstores; the mainstream success of alternative books like Jimmy Corrigan, Palestine, From Hell and Ghost World; the “New Marvel,” as chacterized by the business and editorial decisions of Bill Jemas and Joe Quesada and the sales and critical success of creators like Kevin Smith, Grant Morrison, Brian Bendis and Mark Millar; the wave of edgy-mainstream writers and artists at companies like Oni, Image, and DC’s Vertigo and Wildstorm imprints (all of which have been used as ersatz farm teams by Marvel); an increase in the amount, quality, popularity, and economic feasibility of webcomics; a post 9/11 jump in interest in non-fiction and political comics, from Joe Sacco to Marjane Satrapi to Aaron McGruder to Tom Tomorrow; increasing cross-pollination between the underground/alternative and mainstream/genre comics scenes; a generalized feeling that a new boom (of whatever kind) is just over the horizon. All in all, a lot of people feel that it’s an exciting time to be involved in comics, and they want to talk about it.

But, and keep in mind I’m speaking as a relative newcomer to the scene, legions of potential comicsphere centers-of-gravity were/are doomed to failure for a number of reasons. The outspoken Warren Ellis‘s legendary but now-defunct forum seems (to one who wasn’t there for it) to have been popular and important, but also to have too easily devolved into a cult of personality. The same could be said of other big niche-oriented sites, from Sequential Tart (its female-centric approach is refreshing, but perhaps lends itself too readily to simple-minded and unnecessary sparring matches with the kind of people who think “Sequential Sluts” is the height of wit) to Alan David Doane’s sites (earnest and articulate but often overbearing, his niche, basically, is “people who agree with me”–didn’t I hear he once kicked people out who refused to pledge allegiance to James Kochalka’s Sketchbook Diaries?). Sites and messboards devoted to particular creators or companies are, needless to say, either focused too directly on their individual output or dominated too strongly by their administrative and syntactic idiosyncracies. The vaugely Kevin Smith-related Movie Poop Shoot is thoroughgoing but incorrigably silly (along the lines of its spiritual forebear, Harry Knowles’s Ain’t It Cool News; the assorted sites associated with Rich “Tommy/Gutter” Johnston rise and fall with the strength of his latest gossipy piss-take. News sites like The Pulse and Newsarama are useful, but their message boards are pretty much useless as a medium of idea exchange, dominated as they are by people with Wolverine-derived screen names shouting about their most recent plans to lead a boycott of Marvel until they revive Psylocke. More enlightening but equally frustrating is the Comics Journal’s message board, whose constituency, some of the smartest and most well-read–as well as the most opinionated–comics fans on the Internet, is (as is readily apparent to anyone who spends five minutes there) as much a curse as a blessing.

Enter Journalista. Though I’m a tyro with the Internet in general and the comicsphere in particular, it seems to me that Journalista fills a substantial void in that online community: It’s an intelligent but comprehensible, opinionated but non-partisan, personality-driven but not personality-dominated, authoritative but not minutiae-obsessed clearinghouse for comics news and thought. It’s the Instapundit of the comicsphere, if you will. And like it (as I do) or not (as NeilAlien might), if the rewarding discussion surrounding “The Trouble with Marvel” is any indication, it’s going to be the comic-biz blogosphere’s agenda-setter for the forseeable future.

Most folks who read this blog probably read a lot of other blogs, and therefore know that some genuinely important things are happening in Iran right now (despite, naturally, European claims that everything would probably be better if everyone would just shut up about it). Bloglord Andrew Sullivan has declared July 9th a sort of “Blog About Iran” day, in which the blogosphere will flex its collective muscles in an attempt to publicize the increasingly powerful demonstrations against the ayatollahs and for democracy in that country. It’s unbelievable to me that this story isn’t getting any attention in the major news media; the hope is that after July 9th said media (consisting in large part of people who read blogs) won’t be able to ignore the issue anymore.

So come the 9th I’ll talk a lot about Iran and the brave students and professors who are fighting one of the most odious governments in modern history. But till then, try and picture what the world, with any luck, might be like this time next year. It’s well within the realm of possibility that in the space of about two years, the Taliban, an al Qaeda with genuine international reach, Saddam Hussein’s Baathist-fascist regime, and the ayatollahs’ Islamic fundamentalist theocracy will all be in the dustbin of history. How freaking bitchin’ is that?

Right on, Canada!

Wow, extending a basic human right to gay humans! What will they think of next?

Here amongst the All Too Flat Family, there’s a new installment of ADDTF’s sister blog, Autobiographically Too Flat. Kennyb talks about art galleries, AC adapters, and Scrabble, but you should read it anyway.

Thanks to someone I can’t remember, I discovered this site, dedicated to counting down the days (the endless, endless days) between now and the release of The Return of the King. Each day there’s a new Tolkien quote. Can’t go wrong there.

Kevin Parrott offers a two-part (here and here; part three coming soon), um, analysis of comic-book convention culture. I think a quick read will reveal that there is nothing not to love about comic-book conventions. If you can’t enjoy the literally incredible cross-section of humanity present at these things, I don’t know what to tell you.

Finally, I read the following blind item in today’s Page Six:

Which talent agent who enjoys coke-fueled all-male orgies in his basement dungeon fired his longtime caterer when he learned one of her waiters was HIV-positive?”

…and I just thought it bears repeating that in this business, the description “enjoys coke-fueled all-male orgies in his basement dungeon” couldn’t even begin to narrow down the possibilities of who this guy is.