Ampersand Comics

Meanwhile at ThoughtBalloons - Artifacts

2011-04-01T19:35:00.000+02:00

Oh man, this has probably been the hardest week so far on Thought Balloons. Artifacts is a Top Cow mega event, and I have read very little in terms of Top Cow universe comics, so this was definitely a challenge for me. In the end, I did what I always do when in doubt: write a crossover with another property. What came out was a script called The Man Behind The Curtain. My favorite part is these couple of lines...

MAN: Ah, Sara, I was just educating all of you. Humanity is nothing without the knowledge we gather, you know? But yes, I think you have earned that much. The thirteenth artifact is what protects all of humanity against this holy war you are all fighting.

Go ahead and check it out. I was reasonably pleased with what came out in the end, considering how much I struggled to come up with something decent.

Photo: Fallas 2011

2011-03-29T23:52:00.001+02:00

Taken during Fallas 2011, here in Valencia, near Plaza del Ayuntamianto. Fallas is a weeks-long celebration that has been growing in popularity for years. The streets, as you can see, are packed with people.

Meanwhile at TWC - Free Comics Review 03/23/11

2011-03-27T12:49:00.010+02:00

Typical. The Friday where I actually decide to go out somewhere with some school friends, the comic companies decided to go all out and upload six free comics for me to review. There were some good ones, and some not so good. Click here to see the reviews, which include:

Captain America: The Chosen #1

Catwoman #1

The Flash #1

Ghost Rider #1

Pray for Death #1

Ultimate Fantastic Four #1

I'm betting that next week I'll only have one or two comics to review. Such is how these things usually work.

Meanwhile at TWC - Batman & Robin Creative Team

2011-03-22T20:05:00.001+01:00

I've mentioned it before, but these are my favorite pieces to write. Over at The Weekly Crisis, I put together a piece on the switches and changes that have affected the Batman & Robin title. I don't have any concrete answers, but I do propose several explanations and lay out the whole story as it happened (or at least how the readers saw it unfold). Here's a short excerpt:

Finally, with Batman & Robin #20, the creative team of Tomasi and Gleason started telling their tale. Surely, with months of preparation and hype behind it, it would be a long run by the two of them.

As it turns out, this isn’t the case at all. Issue #22 is going to be their last for at least three other months.

I've mentioned it before, but these are my favorite pieces to write. It's information that is all out in the open, but that must be pieced together to get the full picture.

Photo: Final Day of Class

2011-03-21T22:00:00.000+01:00

Taken on the final day of our course, after we had completely finished. We decided to go out to to eat to a restaurant to celebrate that we survived the course. From left to right: Richard, Edna, Me, Seámas (our tutor), Sandi, and Tania.

Never Lived in a War Zone (Fallas Week)

2011-03-20T01:04:00.000+01:00

...but if I had to guess, I would say that Fallas week here in Valencia is very similar to what living in a war zone is like.

For those of you that don't know, Fallas is a week-long celebration/holiday of the Valencia region. It actually goes on for longer than that, and people actually prepare for it for the whole year, but there is one key week in March where the whole city grinds to a halt and stops functioning. It culminates on March 19th, when everything ends.

During that week, stores operate under different hours, roads are closed, public transportation barely works, trash accumulates in the street, and there's people literally everywhere. And that's without even mentioning the fireworks. It gets so bad that some long-time residents just up and leave to another city during that week.

You can hear the fireworks throughout the whole day. There are organized ones every day at 2 PM for almost a whole month, and the week before, there's an extra set at 1 AM (yes, AM) every night. And the people participate too. It's nigh-impossible to go to any of the local parks without running into a group of kids throwing fire crackers, or walking down the street without hearing explosions in the distance. At night, sleeping can become a real challenge, with loud booms echoing in the distance. We are actually pretty lucky because we don't live close to a Casal Fallero, which is where people concentrate to celebrate. Around those, the parties and fireworks usually last through the whole night, and sleeping soundly would not be an option at all.

Despite how horrible I make it sound, it can be entertaining. On Friday, me and my wife went to see the monuments that people build for this celebration. They are wonderful and humonguous sculptures (photos coming soon) that are peppered throughout the city. You just have to be patient if you want to, you know, go outside at all during Fallas week.

Meanwhile at ThoughtBalloons - Blue Beetle

2011-03-19T17:00:00.001+01:00

It was my week to choose a character for Thought Balloons, and I decided to go with Jaime Reyes, the current Blue Beetle.

I was actually quite stumped in what to do with him. I normally pick a character based on a story I already have in mind (just to make things easier), but the character I wanted to choose was a Marvel one, and we had a long string of Marvel characters, so I wanted to break it up a bit. It also came at a time when it seemed like Blue Beetle had died (he got better). However, I still managed to make a short and fun story entitled "The World is Yours?", in which Paco finally gets to play with the armor. Kind of. Read on.

BLUE BEETLE: It says that it can “Provide supplemental temporary armory” for you.

PACO: What does that mean? What kind of weapon?

SCARAB: (unintelligible sounds)

Let me know what you think!

Meanwhile at TWC: Free Comics 02/16/11

2011-03-18T17:00:00.003+01:00

Another thing I am proud of is that during my course I managed to stay up to date with my Free Comics Review column, with only some minimum delays in the process. This was partly caused by the fact that companies went all out during those weeks, uploading a LOAD of free comics.

Now that I have all the time in the world to write these reviews? They go ahead and upload only two free comics for me to review. What the hell?! And on top of that, I had already reviewed one of them. Click here to see them.

Cable #1

Wolverine #50

And to make matters worse, the one comic I had to review was terrible. Let's hope next week is better.

Meanwhile at ThoughtBalloons - Venom & Moon Knight

2011-03-17T12:19:00.000+01:00

I actually managed to stay almost up to date with Thought Balloons. I say almost because I missed one of the entries, for Venom. However, I was determined to make up for it and catch up with the rest of my fellow ThoughtBallooners. I ended up coming up with a script that connected into this week's character, Moon Knight.

Read the first part of The War at Home here, which includes this neat scene...

Description: Venom is jumping out of the airplane, falling through the night sky. An uneasy full moon shines in the background.

VENOM: What’s the deal, control? I normally know who I’m going after way before I’m free-falling off a plane.

CONTROL (through comm): We know, Venom. The general has been...unusually quiet about this whole enterprise. Anyway, target location should be in sight by now.

And the second part here. Which brought it all home.

Description: Moon Knight is now standing over the badly wounded (but still alive) body of Flash Thompson. His missing legs are clearly visible and he is making an effort of staying conscious.

MOON KNIGHT: You had lost everything, your career, your love, your... legs. You accepted an entity into your body that promised to give it all back to you. And it was changing you for the worse.

I am actually quite happy with how this turned out, and I have a full story behind the revelations here.

CV Photo

2011-03-16T17:00:00.013+01:00

Now that I've finished the course, it meant that I had to update my CV. I hadn't done this in almost two years, so the photo I had there was outdated, and therefore I needed a new one. I'm not a very photogenic person, and getting a photo of me with both my eyes open is a quest harder than finding a photo Elvis and Bifgoot riding the Loch Ness monster like a surfboard on the outskirts of the city of Atlantis (I'm only slightly exaggerating). The above is as close as it gets, which had to be taken without flash because otherwise I just naturally close my eyes.

Radio Silence is Over

2011-03-15T16:41:00.000+01:00

I apologize for the lack of posts here in the past month. If you have been following me on Twitter, you might already know that I was doing an intensive course that ate up just about every bit of my free time. I still somehow managed to do some posts here and there in The Weekly Crisis and for Thoughtballoons, but not much else. With the course now over, posts here in my personal blog should resume as normal.

On related news, I am now officially a CELTA-Qualified teacher of English as a Second Language. From now on, I shall only be addressed as "Teacher Duarte", "Professor Matt", or "Mr. D". Please keep this in mind whenever you try to contact me.

Meanwhile at TWC - Free Comics 02/09/11

2011-02-11T23:59:00.000+01:00

One day, companies will stop uploading great comics for free on their app, but until then, I get to review them. This week around was another wave of good comics, including on my favorite issues ever. The comics I reviewed were...

Captain America: First Vengeance #1

Devil's Wake #1

Thor: Blood Oath #1

X-Factor #13

So head over there and check them out.

Meanwhile at ThoughtBalloons - Batgirl

2011-02-10T23:59:00.000+01:00

This was one of those weeks where I barely know the character outside of the most superficial sense. Haven't read her current series at all, I think I've read some forgettable appearances of her as Spoiler, and pretty much it. So this week was Stephanie Brown's turn, a.k.a. Batgirl. While doing some research, I came across a story point that interested me, and extrapolated it to an idea I already had (but thought was not good enough). The result? A story called "All in the Family"...

STEPHANIE: How DID you find me anyway? Even *I* didn’t know who you were.
CHARACTER: You have to thank my grandfather for that.

And to be honest, I'm actually pretty happy about. And I only used four panels, which is always a plus, I think.

Pollution

2011-02-09T23:59:00.026+01:00

For the past week or, a strange set of climatological circumstances has settled on top of Spain. High humidity with no rain, almost no wind, and clear skies with mild temperatures (and I believe low pressure, but don't quote me on that). However, this has brought about a curious side effect, one that has been on the news quite a lot the last couple of days.

You see, because of the weather conditions, the pollution caused by cars, factories and all other type of urban sources has NOT been dissipating. Quite the contrary, it has been accumulating for over a week, and in cities like Barcelona and, more importantly, Madrid, the situation has been pretty extreme. Video footage from outside the cities show a clear cover of smog all around and through them. Warnings were issued for people with health conditions, and all that.

I live in Valencia, which is a much smaller city by comparison (population around 1 and a half million), and I thought it wouldn't affect me much. However, just the other day when I went to walk my dog at night, I started to notice it. There was a very thick fog that wouldn't let you see very far, more so than normal, and a distinctive ashy smell in the air. At least here and in Barcelona, the cities are right next to the sea, which I can imagine plays a role in dissipating all this, but I can imagine it's much worse in Madrid.

In the end, though, this smog cloud has a silver lining. It seems that some of the bigger cities are going to start implementing some restrictions to curb down the pollution. Still too early for any results, but in the long run this is probably going to raise awareness and public perception towards the issue.

Crunch Time!

2011-02-08T23:59:00.000+01:00

I have less than I week until my course starts, and that means it's crunch time for me. I am finishing getting ready with my pre-courses studies, which involve reading Learning Teaching, a book on teaching techniques, as well as some self-imposed grammar work. I'm almost done with the grammar book (I predict that I will definitely be finished by Friday) and I finished the other book weeks ago, though now I'm re-reading it some parts of it to give myself a refresher.

My course starts on Monday, and I honestly don't know what to expect. I decided to prepare myself as much as possible, since I will probably have a handicap compared with everyone else (in the fact that everyone else in the class will probably be native to the United Kingdom). Even then, I will probably have to work twice as hard as everyone else to keep and catch up, but what's life without a few challenges, am I right? (the bravado is probably concealing the fact that inside, I am nervously trembling in fear and/or anticipation)

As if I didn't have enough going on, I'm probably about 80% done with my campaign on Dragon Age: Origins. I want to finish it before I start school, since I know I likely won't be able to play while I'm busy with course and homework. I've tried to limit myself to only a couple of hours per day, so I don't think I'll be finishing before Monday. Damn priorities and acting like a responsible adult...

Photo: Aboard Tour Bus

2011-02-07T17:50:00.000+01:00

My wife Janett filming videos from the second floor of a tourist bus in London.

(I bet she is going to say that she doesn't like how she came out in this photo)

Kurt Busiek is a Genius

2011-02-06T23:59:00.019+01:00

In other occasions, I had heard about Kurt Busiek's fabled encyclopedic knowledge of Marvel continuity. The other day, I got to experience it first hand. The writer of titles like Avengers, Marvels, and his own Astro City must have the memory of an elephant.

I don't remember how, but I sent Busiek a message via Twitter about Spanish in comics. Earlier that day, I had read an issue of Thor were he passed over Mexico, and there were some funny scenes with the translation being screwed up. Almost instantly, he sent a reply (which is rare in of itself on creators, most of them just ignore you) and not only he knew what I was talking about, he knew specifically what issue and what scene I was referring to! Keep in mind that this was a comic that was released in 1979!

As if that wasn't impressive enough, he even remembered a specific quote from it, and he recited it verbatim. Holy shit! Later, he said he remembered the issue pretty clearly because he had read it for his research when he was writing the Avengers title... in 1998! That is more than 12 years ago, and he still remembered it clearly. I can barely remember what I read 12 minutes ago, let alone 12 months or 12 years ago.

Therefore, the only logical conclusion is that Kurt Busiek must be some kind of genius with photographic memory. Either that, or he went and looked up the issue in question while he was chatting with me. But I am leaning more on the first one.

Photo: Camden Town

2011-02-05T17:57:00.000+01:00

Near the entrance of Camden Lock. What a wonderfully strange place!

Meanwhile at TWC - Free Comics 02/02/11

2011-02-04T23:59:00.000+01:00

These Free Comics column are going to be the death of me. I don't know where I got the bright idea to run them on Fridays, but they are a pain to write. I really need to start writing them sooner, or at least write it in parts. In any case, this week I reviewed...

Black Panther #1

Box 13 (Vol. 2) #10

Celadore #1

Thor #283

War Machine #6

Pretty good haul this week, with one exception. See if you can find which one it was! Check out the rest, and as always, I appreciate any comments!

Meanwhile at TWC - Roy Lichtenstein

2011-02-03T11:59:00.014+01:00

Over at The Weekly Crisis, I wrote a pretty long piece about Roy Lichtenstein, his contribution to pop art, and his connection with the world of comics. You would be surprised how many people don't realize how much he copied from actual comics, as opposed to just using the style. Check out what I had to say...

The modern equivalent of what Lichtenstein was doing in the 50’s and 60’s would be to run some other artist’s artwork through a Photoshop filter, hang it on a wall, and call it your own art. While there is something to be said for remixing, collages, and other forms of art that incorporate elements from other artists, I think we can all agree that such an argument is thrown out the window when 99% of the artwork is exactly like the original.

It's a personal and passionate piece, and one I'm actually pretty happy about. I wish I could write more like it, to be honest. *sigh*

Matt vs. the Stereotypes

2011-02-02T23:59:00.039+01:00

I'm originally from Argentina. Not everyone might know this, but the stereotype of Argentinians is that we are loud mouthed, vain, full of ourselves, and that we think we are smarter and above everyone else. That's without even mentioning our speaking pattern, which means we pronounce everything with a hard "SH" sound (like in "cashier").

I am probably as far from that stereotype as you can get, or at least I try to be. I try to be respectful, I try to be humble, and I even try to modulate my speaking, so people don't realize I'm from Argentina. I've got plenty of experience of this, when I was living in Miami, and half the population was from Central and South America. The moment they noticed you were from Argentina, the floodgates opened for all the jokes you can possibly imagine, to laugh at all the stereotypes of Argentinians, whether I had earned them or not (more often the case).

And you know what's the crazy thing? Even I will admit that the stereotypes are true. The majority of Argentinians I've met since I've left the country have fit comfortably into the stereotype. Not all of them, mind you, but enough for me to see why it was formed in the first place. Some of them are even part of my family, but they are not as bad as others.

There was one memorable occasion, where my wife and me went to a family dinner (it was one of my cousin's birthday, I believe). She's already used to my family, and pretty used to my extended family. One of the invited people, however, was a friend of theirs, not a family member. This man was exactly how most people imagine the Argentinian stereotype to speak and act like. Loud, thinking he was the smartest person in the room, and spoke with an incredibly heavy accent.

After the dinner was done, and we were heading home, my wife asked me what his deal was, why he was acting that way. You see, it was so incredibly over the top, that she thought he was putting on act, being incredibly ~~obnoxious~~ Argentinian on purpose. No way could someone be like that. And yet, he was.

Photo: Near Big Ben

2011-02-01T18:05:00.000+01:00

You know, I realized I never posted photos of my trip to London from way back in September. I think it's time to amend that!

Meanwhile at TWC - Hickman writing Icon Book?

2011-01-31T23:59:00.008+01:00

Through some digging from Hickman's Formspring and previous interviews, I was able to piece together a possible future book for Icon. Check out what I had to say...

Does this mean that the creator owned projects that Hickman was working in the past year will be released by Marvel through the Icon imprint? It would certainly be a smart move on their part, having all of a creator’s work under one roof. And now we also know that creators can release graphic novels through Icon, which is what Bendis is going to do with Takio.

I love doing these kind of articles. Although I have to say, I am somewhat surprised that it hasn't gotten more attention. Places like Robot 6 and Bleeding Cool usually link back to pieces like this.

Bike Patrol

2011-01-30T23:59:00.001+01:00

For all the bad stuff I say about living where I do, there's something that I am thoroughly impressed about. The city of Valencia, where I live, has a public system of bicycles.

Yes, you read that right. Public transportation bikes.

You pay a minimal yearly fee (18 euros), and you can use public bicycles to get around the city. There are stations peppered throughout the whole city where you can park and take them out, and when you are done, you leave them at any other station. The whole thing, aside from the yearly fee, is FREE for people to use as many times as you want. The only catch is that you have limited time of 30 minutes to make your trip. If you run over that, they charge you 50 cents, or an extra euro if you go over the hour. This is easily avoidable because 1)Valencia is pretty small and you can get halfway across with those 30 minutes and 2) You can park the bicycle and take it out again for an extra 30 minutes as many times as you want.

The system was implemented earlier last year, and it was a HUGE success. The public bikes have become another common part of the urban landscape. I have been using it almost since the beginning, and I looked like a weirdo at first (people would stop me and ask me about the service while I was riding it) because no one else was using it. As the weeks and months passed, more and more people started joining up, and they are easy to spot because the bikes have a distinctive dark purple cover. Now, it is a common sight for me, when I ride a public bike, to see every person around me is also riding one.

It's a relatively cheap, alternative transportation system. It's not without its faults (sometimes it's hard to find a bike or where to park it), but it has worked out incredibly well for this city. I know for a fact that more cities are beginning to implement it (when I visited London in September, I saw that they had them too), and I hope the idea really takes off. If you want to read more about the system here in Valencia, you can go to their website.

Meanwhile at ThoughtBalloons - Batman, Inc.

2011-01-29T23:59:00.000+01:00

This week was my turn to choose, and rather than a character, I went ahead and chose a concept: Batman, Inc. I think the writers will be able to turn in some fun concepts and it expands our pool a bit, by allowing us the possibility of creating new characters. For example, in my story Tilting at Windmills, I created a new character:

BRUCE WAYNE: Hidalgo has proven more than capable of handling his region.

BRUCE: He’s young, idealistic, and impulsive but ready and eager to fight for the greater good. Does that remind you of anyone?

ALFRED: I could think of one or two men I have known that fit that archetype, yes.

Now I can sit back and enjoy the show. I really want to see what other people come up with this week.

Meanwhile at TWC - Free Comics Review 01/26/11

2011-01-28T23:03:00.000+01:00

Another week of free comics! I normally enjoy getting to read stuff for free, and while there's usually some good stuff there, for this week's column I got re-read one of my favorite comics ever. That's right, the first issue of Nextwave is up for free on the Marvel app, along with a bunch of other ones. In my review, I wrote...

I don’t want to say it’s better than Watchmen, but Alan Moore threatened to release Glycon if Marvel continued to publish it. And that’s why it was canceled.

Which may or may not be true. You all better go ahead and read it! It's free, so you don't have any excuse!

Meanwhile at ThoughtBalloons - Doctor Strange

2011-01-27T23:59:00.001+01:00

Possibly one of the hardest characters to get right, and I can say I am completely happy with my output this week. Doctor Strange is a character that suffers from perpetual support-character syndrome, always showing up in other people's stories, but rarely in his own. I think I committed the same mistake. While he is by no means a guest character, in my script Blood Magic, he appears along a bunch of other people.Take a look...

DR. STRANGE: Magic is governed by a set of rules, as old as the universe itself. To prevent exploitation, no mortal but the Sorcerer Supreme has full knowledge of them.

DR. STRANGE: The most paramount rule to all magical beings is this: to grant something, you must get something in return.

I did like the script in general, but it feels more like a New Avengers script than a solo Doctor Strange one.

Just like the Movies

2011-01-26T23:59:00.000+01:00

Movies in Spain are sometimes released much more later than in the rest of the international markets. Sometimes it's a couple of days, weeks, and in the worst case scenario, months. Such is the case with Red, the comic book adaptation of the graphic novel of the same name by Warren Ellis and Cully Hammer.

The film is going to be released here this past week, January 18th. In the international markets, it was released back in October. What this means is that, this week, January 25th the DVD for it will be released in the UK. (Remember that the European Union has all the same coding, so that film would definitely work in my player).

Therefore, I have two choices: I could either spend twenty bucks, go to the movie theater, where I can only experience the movie once AND I have to listen to it in Spanish. Yes, with dubbed voices, I don't even get to hear the original voice acting (for some stupid reason, they won't release here with the original voice acting and subtitles, it's all dubbed). When you have people like Bruce Willis, John Malkovich, and Morgan Freeman, their voices are a key part of the movie. The other choice is to wait an extra week, order it online, have it delivered to my door, and watch it at my leisure as many times as I want it.

Which choice would you make?

Past Perfect Continuous in Passive (Aggressive) Form

2011-01-25T20:42:00.001+01:00

From my Twitter account:

Look, English Language, I like you a lot and I use you every day, but have you considered streamlining some of your useless tenses?

For example, the past perfect continuous in passive form? No on uses that! We might has well get rid of it, right?

Seriously, has anyone here used the past perfect continuous in passive form in any case outside of learning about it?

(for the record, an example of that one would be "It had been being mended". And yes, that is grammatically correct)

While preparing for my upcoming course, I've been going through the darker annals of the English language, and sometimes you find things like this that make you scratch your head. It's a tense that is never used, to the point that just looking at it feels wrong. While it technically must exist, I can't even think of a sentence where I would use this in an organic way. Bonus points to whoever comes up with a proper use for it.

Are you a Wizard?

2011-01-24T19:09:00.000+01:00

With news of Wizard magazine reportedly closing down, I figure this is a good time as any to tell this story.

When I was around 13 or 14, after I had just moved to the United States, I used to read Wizard magazine. At this point in my life, I had read some comics, but I was in no way an aficionado, just odds and ends that my dad would buy me. I knew all of the popular characters, and read plenty of mainstream stuff, but I was still very entry-level in my reading. I think I accompanied my parents to Winn Dixie (that's a supermarket), and in the magazine rack I saw a familiar figure sticking out (probably Spider-Man, this was around the time the first movie came out), and they bought it for me. Inside, I think there was a big piece on the Ultimate universe, as well as some info on upcoming movies, and some "Top 50" characters of all time.

In any case, for the next year or so, every time I would accompany my parents to the supermarket, I would look through the magazine section. I wouldn't buy any current comics (I had no idea where to find a comic book store at that time), but it was interesting to me to read about them anyway. I particularly remember a piece on the Milligan-Allred X-Force that made an impression on my mind. The prize guide in the back puzzled me to no end, though I enjoyed going through the names to see what caught my eye. After some months of reading, I actually wrote an email to the editor, answering a question that I think was about what franchises from other media I would like to see in comics. I figured some poor intern had to read through my poor English (remember, I had lived in the U.S. for about year at the time), and deleted it from their inbox.

Apparently, they actually published it in the magazine.

To this day, I have not seen the actual letter printed on it, nor do I remember what I actually wrote. I didn't even know that they had printed it, until one day, months later after I had sent it, and after I had stopped buying Wizard, some like-minded fan sent me an email (I guess they published my e-mail too), just striking up conversation about the comics he was reading at the time. I remember he told me in what issue they printed it, but to be honest, I'm afraid to go back and look at it. Like I said, my English was ~~probably~~ definitely very poor, and my knowledge of the industry in general and the comic books published at the time was laughable. Some day, someone might even find it, recognize my name and ask me about it. But until then, I'm probably better off avoiding it.

In any case, I stopped reading Wizard around that time, with my interest going in other directions like video games, music, and girls. When I went back to comics, dedicated websites like Comic Book Resources were already in full bloom, and buying the magazine was a waste of money. I was snarky about it on Twitter but I guess Wizard could still be useful if it attracted kids like me in the magazine stands of markets, stores, and so on like it did with me.

The Batman Wears Prada

2011-01-23T19:35:00.002+01:00

Sometimes I get stupid crazy (or crazy stupid) ideas, with no idea where they come from. Other times, it's much easier to pinpoint. Take for example, what I was tweeting earlier today...

The Batman Wears Prada, with Christian Bale as Bruce Wayne and Anne Hathway as Selina Kyle, a young college graduate that now works for him.She must cater to all the wild & ridiculous demands from Wayne ("why does he need so many capes?") which eventually drives her to seek revenge.

(See what I mean about stupid crazy?)

It's a confluence of things. Just earlier this week they announced that Anne Hathway would play Selina Kyle (Catwoman) in the third Nolanverse Batman film. Last night, together with my wife we re-watched The Dark Knight for the first time since we saw it in theater. And now The Devil Wears Prada is on TV (not that I'm actively watching it, since I have music and headphones on) but it's what kicked off the thought process.

But at the same time, while the idea is kind of silly, it could provide for a nice basis of the Selina/Bruce relationship. Imagine Selina Kyle does start working for him (remember that Lucius quit at the end of TDK), and slowly gains his trust, but the whole time she was just planning of robbing him blind. I could actually see something like that in the Nolan version of the Batman universe.

In Defense of Video Game Music

2011-01-22T23:59:00.023+01:00

I remember in the past laughing at the people that said they would listen to video game music. There are levels of nerdiness, I thought, that just seem far beyond my reach.

Well, that wall was shattered today, as I just listened to an album of 100% video game music. Not only video game music, but 8-bit music in the style of classic video games of yesteryear. In my defense, though, it was by Anamaguchi, which by all accounts is the best of its genre, and it was the Scott Pilgrim vs. The World: The Game Soundtrack (that's a mouthful, isn't it?). I was a bit reluctant at first, but there's several factors that convinced me...

1 - They are usually instrumental, or at least with very little in terms of lyrics, which means that it worked great as background music that doesn't distract you too much when you are doing other tasks like writing and reading.

2 - They are short. I have a short attention span for music. Songs better be entertaining, catchy, and above all, they must not overstay their welcome. Which is not to say that I dislike old songs, but if you repeat the same verse/chorus more than three times AND you are not The Ramones, you better have a damn good reason for making me listen to your song for five minutes.

3 - Unifying themes. I'm a sucker for themes and movements across different songs, as they give unity to an album (something lost on many artists), and work perfectly to transition from one song to the other. I understand this is probably a side effect from video games when they have recurring characters with their own theme song.

In any case, I'll probably sample a few other albums of this kind, see how much I enjoy it, or if this was just a fluke.

Meanwhile at TWC - Free Comics Review 01/19/11

2011-01-21T23:59:00.008+01:00

This was a monster sized week for Free Comics Review! There was a whooping total of nine comics for me to review, and I spend a good part of today finishing up that damn column (and I even folded three reviews into one, to make things simpler). This week I reviewed...

Arcana Studios Present 2004-06

Extracurricular Activities #1

Lamorte Sisters #1

New Mutants #1

Thor #26

Ultimate Spider-Man #46

Valentine #9

It's a pretty strong week, and I did spend a lot of time writing it, so go ahead and check it out.

Meanwhile at ThoughtBalloons - Ben Reilly

2011-01-20T23:59:00.016+01:00

This is one of those times where you have an idea and everything just clicks into perfection. This week I was thinking of what to do with Ben Reilly, Spider-Man's clone, when it suddenly dawned on me: make him a mentor of other clones! (Comics, I know). So the idea went into motion, and this is what came out, a story called "Most Valuable Clone"...

MAN: Clones! Aren’t they a pain in the back? You can’t even argue with them because they will think exactly like you!

MICHAEL & PATRICK (together): And who are you?

MAN: Me? Oh, just a friend of a friend of yours. I’m the one that invited you here, boys.

I think it was a pretty neat idea, if somehow very comic-y. To the point where I could actually see something very similar done with the characters.

Superman: Origin (Dragon Age: Origin version)

2011-01-19T23:45:00.024+01:00

For Christmas, my wife bought me a copy of Dragon Age: Origin Ultimate Edition. This was a bad decision on her part, because I am now clearly addicted to this game. I'm just a sucker for RPG games, and I will spend hours in front of the XBox playing it (as she surely figured out by now). The game is expansive enough that I could spend all of next month playing, and even then I would still find new ways to entertain myself. And the LOTR-inspired story is also pretty mesmerizing, the creators went a long way to create a vivid world, with colorful and inspired characters.

As it tends to be the case with most RPG's, the game is based on going around the world and fighting all kinds of creatures. As you travel the world map, you will run into random encounters, though they are not always enemies. Sometimes they are merchants, allies, quests, cut scenes, etc. I was minding my own business, when I ran into a random encounter, and this time it was a cut scene.

A meteorite landed right in the path of where I was going (though the scene shown happens immediately before you get there), and a farmer couple approaches the burning crater. As they do so, we can see that a baby is in the hole, and the male farmer notices, grabbing him, that it looks just like a normal human baby. He tells his wife, Martha, that this is a sign of the Maker they should raise him as if he were their son. Once you reach the scene, after Martha (and though not named, Jonathan) left the scene, you reach the crater. Inside of it, there is a mysterious metal (kryptonite) that you can loot and use to create a special sword.

I can't wait for the next part of this video game saga, which must inevitably be called Dragon Age: The Man of Steel.

Back To School - Studying

2011-01-18T23:47:00.003+01:00

In February, I will be resuming my formal education, taking a course to obtain a CELTA degree, teaching English to adults, though I know for a fact that it's also valid for teaching in academies, regardless of age. It's been a while since I went to school. Because of circumstances outside of my control, I was not able to continue my higher education, dropping out of college after I got my Associate in Arts Degree (which is basically just the first two years of American college, just taking general classes).

I was a pretty good student, and I truly enjoyed learning new knowledge, studying, and even doing homework. Yeah, I was a nerd, and I was good at it. My grades were crazy good, and in the first school I ever went to, I was something of a small legend (more of a big fish in a small pond, to be honest) because I got the highest math score in the FCAT (the state standarized state) of the whole school, and because I finished my first year with a 4.0 grade point average (that means I got straight A's in ALL my classes, during ALL semesters). I remember meeting a new classmate once and he said "Oh, so you are the famous Matias?".

As I moved to more challenging subjects and schools (for my last two years of high school, I went to one of the most demanding schools of the whole country), my grades obviously dropped and I knew I wasn't the smartest person in the school, but I still enjoyed school.

Flash forward to early 2010, when I was taking a short business course. I struggled quite a lot, more than probably anything else in my entire school life. It had been a couple of years since I had dropped out, and the question running through my head was "How did it get so rusty? How did I get so dumb?". Back in high school, I would have learned all that was taught in that class with incredibly ease, but here I was struggling with simple memorization. It was worrisome, to say the least.

Flash forward again, now to the present day. This time, I am preparing for this course, and I am finding it so much easier. And today, the reason dawned on me: the book I am reading now, and the class I am going to be taking, are in English. The course I had taken in 2010 was completely in Spanish.

I'm fluent in both languages, to the point that when people ask me which one is my native language, I always struggle to explain that I'm equally fluent in both. However, my thought process, after years of living in the United States, and being in a relationship with my now-wife who also speaks English, is completely in English. I had never realized how much more difficult the thought process becomes when you have to translate everything in your mind, even if it's done automatically. It makes studying that much more of a struggle.

Meanwhile at TWC - Return of Havok, Polaris, and Marvel Girl

2011-01-17T23:39:00.000+01:00

Over at The Weekly Crisis, I have pieced together some hints about the upcoming return of these three characters. They have been missing for quite some time, lost in editorial limbo, where no one knew what to do with them. Should have made a Starjammers mini series or something out of it, but the hints seem to point that the characters will return to Earth. Go read the whole article.

While not concrete evidence in of itself, paired with the other clue dropped by Mike Carey, we can start painting a clearer picture of the status of Havok, Polaris, and Marvel Girl. Between these two unrelated pieces, I think you can start forming the puzzle of the trio’s comeback. It took a while, but it looks like they will finally make a (glorious?) comeback to the X-books.

I like writing these kind of articles, hunting through different sources for news that slip under people's radar. It's the closest thing to comic journalism that one can do for free, I think.

Favorite Tracks - It's Hard to Know by Hot Water Music

2011-01-16T20:02:00.000+01:00

I absolutely love Hot Water Music. It's one of those bands that is completely unique, and no one even comes close to their level of brilliance. Sadly, I got into them way too late, after they had broken up, and I never had the chance to see them live. They did get back together a year or two back, but the fact that I'm Europe means that my chances of seeing them are pretty low. Back in Miami, they would have been considerably higher, as the band was native to Gainesville, Florida.

Choosing a favorite Hot Water Music record is an exercise in futility, as each one has a very different personality. The band as a whole grew and changed throughout their career, with a trademark sound, but continually changing. Whether they were improving or not is a personal taste, but I appreciate the fact that they never remained stagnant.

The high point of their career, in my humble opinion, is their 1999 album, No Division. That's the point where the dual vocals reach perfection, and become an entity of itself. I remember my wife once asked me what my favorite song was (although, to be honest, it changes every week), and I chose one from this album called It's Hard to Know. The most compelling part of it goes something like this...

It's hard to find your way through the darkness, it's hard to know what to believe.
But if you live by your heart and value the love that you find, when you have all you need.
To run , don't follow. Lead a life the best we know.

She listened to it and asked me if it was a love song. It's not, at least not in the conventional sense, but it's a song about loving and living life. I told her yes, but she wasn't impressed with my explanation.

Meanwhile at TWC - Free Comics Review 01/12/11

2011-01-14T23:59:00.000+01:00

Another week, another batch of free comics to review. Although this week was a particularly small one, with only two (and one of them was Box 13, which is only 8 or so pages). It's a wonder I wrote enough to fill up the column, to be honest. So this week I reviewed...

Box 13 (Vol. 2) #9

Vision Machine #3

I was pretty excited to read the last chapter of Vision Machine. Should re-read it all, and see how it flows together. In any case, go check it out. There was also a short Marvel story featuring Captain America that was about suicide prevention. Not the kind of thing that need or should be reviewed, as it's mostly a public service announcement than an actual comic.

Meanwhile at ThoughtBalloons - Lois Lane

2011-01-13T11:59:00.001+01:00

This week on ThoughtBalloons, it was the turn for Lois Lane. This week was a tough one for me as well, because I had already written a pretty strong Lois script when it was Superman's week. Instead, I finally went for something completely different, in a story called "Beyond Metropolis":

THUG #1: Boss said you were sniffing around the offices, so we gotta send a message.

THUG #2: Yeah, that being a reporter in this city is bad for your health!

LOIS LANE: Now, gentlemen, that’s no way to talk to a lady, is it? Threats will get you nowhere, besides...

What I ended up writing borders a bit on the fan-fiction side, but I do have a pretty good idea for the story behind it. Anyway, go check it out, it has a nice twist ending.

Meanwhile at TWC - The Dark Age Contest

2011-01-12T23:59:00.001+01:00

I organized this pretty cool contest over at The Weekly Crisis.You can win a copy of The Dark Age #1 from Black Label Comics. Check out the contest.

I paid this out of my own money, and I was glad to help my friend Ian, who is living the dream of being a comic book creator under his own terms. Anyway, it's a pretty small number of entries so far, which means that if you are reading this, and haven't entered yet, you have pretty good chances to win it. What are you waiting for?

Scott Pilgrim and The Infinite Giftness

2011-01-11T23:59:00.047+01:00

I introduced my wife to Scott Pilgrim via the books, and despite reluctance at first, she ended up loving the series (as it tends to be with all the books I recommend for her, though she would never admit it). Back in September, during our trip to London, we saw the movie. It's nice to find common ground like this, as we both love everything about Scott Pilgrim.

In some level I think we see ourselves reflected in Scott and Ramona. Not because of the epic fights I had to go through to earn her love (though there were some of those), but rather in the general lesson that true love can be found, but it most always be fought for, and that it takes an effort to stay in a healthy relationship.

Then in early December, when I was thinking of Christmas gifts for my wife, I had the bright idea of buying her a set of Scott Pilgrim plushies, pictured above. More than a month later, I finally received them today. It was a long wait, but I finally got her gift.

Why did it take this long? These bastards must be incredibly popular to begin with, as everywhere I looked they seemed to be sold out completely, or they only had one of the characters. It was imperative that I was able to purchase both, or else the gift wouldn't make much sense. I hunted for it, and I was finally able to find it in a seller in the German version of Amazon. I had to pay a pretty penny for it, but it was worth it. So I waited and waited for the gift to get there. I knew it would take some time, but if everything went to plan, it would get there in time for Christmas.

Things didn't go according to the plan.

On the week prior to Christmas, I was coming to the realization that it might not get there in time after all. I enacted a back-up plan, as I went and purchased a secondary gift (a bonsai tree), and I explained to her the situation. You see, our wedding anniversary is only a few days after Christmas, so I told her that the bonsai would be the X-mas present, and the other one (that must surely arrive any day now!) would be the anniversary present. All the while, she had no clue what the gift was, and she was hunting for clues as to what I had bought.

Needless to say, our Anniversary passed and there was still no sight of the damn Scott Pilgrim plushies I had ordered more than three weeks ago. Germany is not that far, and even with the bad weather conditions in December, it should have gotten there earlier. It was at this point that I decided to contact the seller, to see what was going on. This was going to be hard, and something that I was hoping not to do, because, as I mentioned above, it was a German seller. I don't speak on word of German.

It was when I went to check the receipt that I noticed something odd. In case you don't know, when you purchase through a seller in Amazon, they send you two receipts: one from the seller and another from Amazon itself. Everything was fine on the Amazon email, but the receipt from the seller had one tiny bit of information wrong. It had my correct name, and my address, and even the correct city.

It did, however, have the wrong country on it. It said "El Salvador".

Needless to say, I do not live in El Salvador, nor even in the same continent. I was sure that I had put the correct information, and I had the Amazon email to confirm that. I could not even mistake "Spain" for "El Salvador" in the list to choose, as they are very far apart on it. At least now I knew why the package was taking so long: because it was going to another country. Meanwhile, I had to tell my wife what was going on, and I had to reveal what the gift was (or rather, she guessed it after I ran out of clues to give her while she waited).

So I contacted the seller. I wrote the email in English, hoping for the best, and as it turned out, the person spoke it as well. It appears that because of a database error on their end, when the information was transferred from Amazon, it selected the wrong country. So it wasn't my fault after all, and thankfully they still had more stock of the plushies, so they could send a brand new order without having to wait for the other one to come back from El Salvador.

Which brings us to today, when the gift finally arrived in the mail. My wife was at the academy (where she studies) when they got here, so I was able to surprise her when she got home. She really liked them, so at least there's that.

And there must also be a very confused Matias Duarte in El Salvador, wondering why he got two random dolls in the mail.

Chibi Rorschach T-Shirt

2011-01-10T18:24:00.002+01:00

Your eyes do not deceive you, that *IS* a t-shirt with a chibi version of Rorschach, with a bloody butcher's knife that says "Need Help?" underneath. Incidentally, that noise you hear is the sound of Alan Moore of rolling around in his yet un-dug grave.

I've seen it a couple of times before, but the last time I was there, I decided to snap a picture of it with my (incredibly lame) cell phone camera. The store in question is New Yorker. I tried looking around their catalog for a better photo, but they don't seem to have one. It wasn't the only one of this kind, as they seemed to have others with horror-movie characters (all of them chibi-ed), such as Freddy, Jason, and the puppet from Saw.

I have a very strong suspicion that this is not exactly legally licensed material.

Last Days of American Crime Advertisement

2011-01-09T17:13:00.002+01:00

Why am I posting a random in-house advertisement for Radical Comics' Last Days of American Crime?

Look closely, and you will see that part of my review was used for one of the advertisement. Even though they don't use my name ("Matt who?") I know it was me, because I was the only one at The Weekly Crisis reviewing the series. I do wish they would have used another line from it, as the verdict is the part that I put almost the least effort into, since it's just a normalized rating (not to mention that the third issue got a "Must Read" verdict, instead of a "Buy it").

In any case, Radical, if you still want to use some of my words to try to catch new readers, here are some from my own reviews that I would recommend instead! For example...

"It’s brutal, dirty, and overwhelming." - The Weekly Crisis

"The characters are compelling and keep you guessing just what is going to happen until the very last page." - The Weekly Crisis

"Peppered with ultra violence that a crime book like this warrants." - The Weekly Crisis

" A complex tale of despicable people, backstabbing, sex, and crime building up to [a] big heist." - The Weekly Crisis

"It's every man for himself trying to get on the last lifeboat punching anyone who gets in the way." - The Weekly Crisis

"A hit in the making." - The Weekly Crisis

In any case, it's pretty cool to see this kind of thing. It's not the first time The Weekly Crisis has been quoted like this (twice in Marvel solicits), but it's my personal first. I wonder if it's also printed in the back of the paperback, or if it's just the advertisement. If anyone's got it, do let me know.And if you haven't, you should totally buy it, it's a great book for fans of crime fiction.

Favorite Tracks - Hope by The Descendents

2011-01-08T20:08:00.000+01:00

I always joke I have terrible taste in music, in Favorite Tracks, you are going to find out exactly how horrible it is, as I highlight some of my favorite songs.

The Descendents are probably one of the most influential, yet least recognized band out there. I can understand why they are not as popular as they should be (I mean, outside of the punk circle that does know about them). Their early lyrics border on the sophomoric and teenage side of things, but as they grew older they embraced this absurdity and played to it.

Certainly, their first full length album Milo Goes To College suffers somewhat because of this, but it doesn't hide their ability to produce incredibly anthemic and thoroughly catchy lines. It's a classic from that era, and my favorite track off of it is the simply called "Hope" (that's a Spotify link, by the way. Sorry Americans, it probably won't work for you).

Even though the song is about a relationship, there's a wonderful line in there that works as part of the chorus: "I know my day will come." It's so simple, literally anyone could have written it, but there's a certain mix of desperation and honesty behind the way vocalist Milo Aukerman sings it. It's almost as if he repeats it enough times, and with enough honesty, it will come true. We know that's not how it works, but in 1982 when the band wrote this song, they were basically teenagers, and they might have really believed it. In any case, this song is one for the ages.

Meanwhile at TWC - Free Comics 01/05/11

2011-01-07T23:24:00.000+01:00

Every week, I go to the ComiXology apps, and download every free comic they have available. It's a great way to revisit old favorites and discover new gems (along with a few coals here and there).

This week, I reviewed...

Batman: The 10-Cent Adventure

Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight #1

Daredevil #100

Ultimate Fantastic Four #33

X-Factor #7

It's a pretty strong week, if I say so myself. Some of my favorite writers in there, and nothing that stuck out as bad (just maybe a bit generic). And besides, they are free.

Meanwhile at ThoughtBalloons - Reed Richards

2011-01-06T23:33:00.001+01:00

I had a tough time with this one. I had plenty of ideas for Reed Richards, but none that I could condense into one single page to my satisfaction. In the end, I went with a small tribute that I think really fits the character (not to mention another tribute in the title as well, to Hickman's first story arc on Fantastic Four).

The story is simply called Answer Everything. Here's a small excerpt...

THE THING: Whadda you mean everything, stretcho? Didja stare at your notes for so long that you forgot to blink again?

REED RICHARDS: No, Ben, this is real. It’s the answer to everything. Even in this very room, the answer is already apparent. Furthermore, I also know the question.

So far the response seems to be really positive. Let me know what you think!

Meanwhile at TWC - Solicitations for March 2011

2011-01-05T23:59:00.010+01:00

I have been neglecting this column for the past couple of months, because it just reminds me of all the cool shit I won't be buying. That doesn't mean I don't have anything to say about them! March 2011, in particular, brings two bad things to my attention.

The solicitation and cover of Justice League: Generation Lost #21 flat out say that Blue Beetle is dead.

and...

We all knew it was coming, sooner or later, but it seems that Steve Rogers will finally return to don the mantle of Captain America.

Terrible notices, if they are true, on both fronts. On the bright side, there's plenty of good stuff too, so head over to The Weekly Crisis and check it out.

Thank You For Not Smoking

2011-01-04T23:59:00.008+01:00

Two days ago, Spain finally approved a law that would ban smoking in basically all closed public spaces (and even some open ones, like children areas in parks). This is years behind the rest of Europe and United States, and as it tends to be with these kind of laws coming into effect, certain part of the populace has shown an extreme resistance in complying with it.

Smoking was already banned in a lot of places, but the last big hurdle to be jumped was bars and restaurants. Until three days ago, you could not go out to eat to a fancy restaurant without coming out smelling like an ashtray (If you even dared go to a club, you would smell like chimney for a week). The main argument being that people enjoy eating and drinking while they smoke, so they should have the right to do so. And what about the people, like myself, that decidedly don't smoke, and decidedly don't like the smell of it? Well, you should have stayed at home if you don't like it. In the final days before the law came into place, and in the past few days, every dissenting opinion has come out and said that the new no-smoking law would hurt business. The argument being that people that used to come and smoke while they enjoyed their food and their drinks, would stop coming to the bars and restaurants.

Bullshit.

Smokers will get mad for the first months, then realize life goes on, and begrudgingly accept the reality that if they want to say they live in first world country, then perhaps they should start acting like one. Meanwhile, people like me, who hate the smell of cigarette (or cigar) smoke, will finally be able to enjoy a meal without having the noxious smell of tobacco hanging around your person even after you exited the place you were in. As it was before, I only ever went to bar and restaurants when I either knew people couldn't smoke in there (as it was the case with restaurants inside shopping malls) or when there was absolutely no option.

Needless to say, and in case you haven't grabbed the subtext from my negative tone towards the subject, I hate smoking. It's a terrible habit that damages untold amount of lives, not just those of smokers. Speaking of which, remember when Joe Quesada, then editor of Marvel Comics, decided to ban smoking from being portrayed in their comics (particularly when it was heroes like Wolverine or The Thing)? I know people like to get up in arms about, but I honestly think it was good moral decision (if not a wise story telling one) and I hope it made a difference, no matter how small.

Unemployment

2011-01-03T23:31:00.001+01:00

Even though, as I noted in yesterday's entry, I am no longer employed, today I nevertheless woke up early. I had a trip to make, to the unemployment office, to apply for the benefits that it entails. I will be getting paid a rather acceptable amount of money, which makes me happy. I will be needing that money for my studies. Despite how much I want to, I won't be spending any of that money on comics, video games, etc. Survival first, luxuries later.

In the back of my mind, I was half expecting it to be empty. I went on the first working day of the year, and I luckily didn't have to wait long. But there was still a sizable number of people, which is what I should have expected.

Spain is going through a tremendous economical crisis, much like the rest of the world, but one that is accentuated by the tremendous unemployment rates. As it stands right now, it's a hair underneath 20 percent. It's double than the rest of Europe. That's one in five people currently out of job.

Any way you slice it, they are bad numbers. And it just went up, at least, by one more.

A Day in The Life

2011-01-02T23:59:00.001+01:00

To understand why I haven't been writing as much as I would like to, it is important to understand what a typical day was like for me. For those of you that don't know, I currently live in Spain, and most people's work schedule in this country is broken up in two parts. You go to work in the morning, come back home for lunch, and then head back to work for the other half of the day. This has a nasty side effect of taking up your whole day, and reducing any free time to a minimum. This is what my typical work day would look like:

7:30 AM - Wake up. Breakfast, daily grooming, and getting ready for work.

8:30 AM - Bus commute to work. Roughly half an hour, which I would use to read books and/or comics (though not floppies, as carrying them in my backpack would easily damage them), listen to podcasts, or just check Tweets.

9:00 AM - Work.

1:30 PM - Get out of work for lunch. Again, a commute back home of half an hour.

2:00 PM - Lunch. I'm pretty lucky that my wife usually cooks for me so the food would ready when I got home (She does this because she is home in the morning, not because she is the wife. Last year, when she had to go her school in the morning, I usually started cooking as soon as I got home)

Here I would have around 30 or 40 minutes of free time, give or take. I would use this time to check for important emails or messages, answer them, and check news. And cuddle with my wife. There must always be cuddle time. When I was feeling particularly tired, I also took a power nap (about 20 minutes) which would help me get through the rest of the day.

3:30 PM - Commute back to work.

4:00 PM - Work

7:30 PM - Get out of work for the day. Commute back to home.

8:00 PM - This is the time that I would get home for the day, where you can finally relax and enjoy the rest of your day... which is only 4 or so hours. And this time includes dinner, taking baths, walking the dog, etc. Any writing or comic reading that I would want to get done must either be done in this time period or not be done until the weekend.

12:00 PM - Ideally, this would be the time I'd try to get to sleep that would guarantee me the minimum amount of rest to survive the next day. I often failed spectacularly.

As you can see, the work schedule is absolutely brutal. You leave the house at 7:30 AM and only really finish your work day twelve hours later. Even though it's only eight hours of work a day, the same as (mostly) everyone else, it manages to feel like the whole day. I wasted two hours in commute every day, and while I manage to find ways to utilize them, if my work schedule had been continuous it would have been half of that.

And that's a regular day! If I needed to get something done, like say go to the bank, post office, or comic book store, I would need to take out and extra half an hour from the free time. You see, nothing here is ever open on Sundays, and banks, for example, open only from 8 AM to 2 PM. To say that it's a pain in the ass is an understatement. Back in the United States, I would work from 7 AM to 3 PM, which meant that I had the whole afternoon for myself. Even the typical 9 to 5 job would grant you more freedom. There have been talks of adopting those kind of continuous work hours, but knowing Spain, it probably won't be for years until they finally establish it. As it stands, most of the country works in what is called here "Horario Partido" (divided hours).

Of course, that is all over for me. December 31st, 2010 was my last day at work, and I am currently unemployed. That routine is forever gone (or at least until my next job).

Tomorrow: A trip to the unemployment office!

Meanwhile at TWC - Batman Digital Sales

2011-01-02T17:47:00.000+01:00

(Why yes, I *AM* totally stealing this from Ryan)

Over at The Weekly Crisis, I wrote up a post about yesterday's sale on Batman Digital Comics. A nice idea, but with terrible oversights. Check it out:

To make matters worse, the very first issue available on this sale, Batman #600, is the start of such a crossover: Bruce Wayne: Fugitive. The following available issue, Batman #601, is part 3 of this story, with part 2 nowhere to be seen or found. The pattern occurs throughout the event, with only part 1, 3, 11, and 18. Even if you are terrible at math, you can see that’s less that one quarter of the story!

I've heard from several people that decided against buying these comics because of this fact. I don't know how accurate the sampling is versus the population at large, but it does prove that the problem is there, and that it cost DC (and ComiXology, and Apple, by proxy) some sales. One step forward, and one stumble back, if you ask me.

Ampersand Comics 3.0

2011-01-01T23:59:00.000+01:00

Third time is the charm, isn't it?

I've been terrible in the past about updating this blog. I make promises I can't keep, and then it fades into the back of my mind, and I never update it. That's not going to be the case this time. I have the free time to start writing more often, and I intend to keep this thing updated daily.

To get things started, there's a new page layout. Still some kinks to be sorted out, but I generally like how it looks like. Thoughts?

Come back tomorrow for more!

Football and Entertainment

2010-07-04T19:42:00.000+02:00

With the World Cup marching on to it's conclusion, football has been on my mind quite a lot lately. It's the single biggest sporting event in the world, so no big surprises there that I would be one of the legion of fans. At surface level is a fun sport, and a simple one, but lately I've been thinking about it's inner appeal.

When you watch football, and particularly at this stage of the World Cup, you are faced with athletes of impeccable physical condition, an uncanny drive and purpose, doing feats that most of us can only dream of ever doing. How much of the entertainment that comes from watching sport is part of wish fulfillment? Certainly as we are younger, but what part of that carries on as we grow older? At this point in my life, I know pretty well that I am never going to be a professional athlete, I find myself watching more football than I ever did before, more than I did when I actually played football.

(Don't get me wrong, there are many fans that just want to watch a sport because of ties to national or local teams, I would even wager a great portion)

While it's true that I hold some teams close to my heart, I am more interested in entertainment than in the winning of championships or accolades. I would watch good football regardless of who was playing. I think part of me likes watching football because of how inspirational it can be. There's nothing quite like the happiness of a team winning a hard fought match, a primal joy that exudes from players. Just as how there's nothing quite like a team heading home in defeat, only knowing that in due time they might have to do it again.

In part, I think football players are modern day gladiators, fighting for honor and the entertainment of spectators and they act as ambassadors of their lands to the rest of the world. Sure, the battles are not quite as deadly as they used to be in Roman times, but their professional careers are probably just as long.

I think there's quite a lot of material to extract from here, story wise, about the struggle of football (or any other sport) players, though there doesn't seem to be a big interest in sport stories in fiction, is there? People would rather read/watch a true inspirational story (and understandably so, really) than something completely made up.

The All-New, All-Different Ampersand Comics

2010-07-04T19:13:00.000+02:00

Lately I've been struggling with a bout of writer's block, particularly when it comes to my comic blogging over at The Weekly Crisis. I haven't been providing much content lately, certainly not as much as I used to, and my entries pale in comparison to Ryan L's. That man is a writing machine.

Interestingly enough, it's not because of lack of ideas, but the complete opposite. Too many ideas rattling around in my head, ideas that need to be written down only to make space for new ones, or to let other ones more space to grow, so I'm going to try something new here. I guess it's kind of like a journal, but more along the lines of a virtual notebook to write down ideas, general thoughts, an anything else that's on my mind.

In the mean time, you can always read my entries at ThoughtBalloons, a fun experiment in writing one-page stories with established characters. It's helped me in forcing myself into a schedule, and like I said, it's fun.

You can also ask me anything you want on Formspring.

The Savage Sword of Gotham

2010-06-03T21:24:00.000+02:00

I had forgotten I had taken this photo, but I found it today looking through the phone...

A little bit of context: this art piece is hanging in my local comic book shop, Gotham Comics. The owner, Tony, is a big fan of the 70's Conan series. One of the customers gave this to him for his birthday. I don't remember exactly off the top of my head what it says, but I think it is "Tony The Librarian versus an army of the undead" or something along those lines.

Anyway, I thought it was pretty cool, so I took a photo of it. Do note that this is old, Wednesday comics was still coming out in singles. Also pictured, Anita Blake.

This is what they want!

2010-05-13T16:45:00.001+02:00

As you probably already saw, yesterday I did a post over at The Weekly Crisis about awesome Nerd Cakes. Honestly, they are great, and I thought people would be all over that article, that people would comment a lot about it, that it would be linked around Twitter and stuff. Sure, some friends RT the link, and there are a modest amount of comments (7 at the time of this writing), but honestly, I thought this could do be better. I was already resigning myself that maybe people weren't all that interested in it, when...

You guys use Google Reader? I do, it's incredibly useful to keep track of feeds. It also has some nice buttons like "Share" to share a particular entry with your followers, and a "Like" button for when you really like an article. I always "Like" and "Share" all the articles in The Weekly Crisis, because I honestly like all the material we present. Anyway, the most popular posts get usually around 5 ~ 10 "Likes", and usually by the same group of people, most just get one or two. I went to check the "Nerd Cakes" post, and I was greeted with this...

HOLY SHIT. At the time of this writing, 226 people have "Liked" that article. It has gotten so popular that if you go to the "Recommended" tab that Google Reader offers, it shows up as one of the first choices.

According to the info provided by Google Reader, 769 people subscribe to The Weekly Crisis feed using Google Reader. Like I said above, if the most popular posts usually get 7~10 "Likes", that means that usually what we write really appeals to 1% of the readership. ~~To get these kind of numbers, and working under the assumption that only 1% of the people reading will bother to hit "Like", that means this article has been read roughly 22000 times!~~

Update: I asked Kirk to check the Analytics for that particular post, and it's not getting any more site views than the rest of them. I guess that the people that saw it REALLY liked it though.

Of course, the other alternative is that this article was so awesome that it completely shattered that 1% statistic, but even then, this is probably the most widespread and well-liked article I have ever written. I do not if this got linked around in Tumbler or Digg, or what, but SOMETHING must have caused this many people to see this particular article.

(and in the time it took me to write this, it's already up to 229, who knows where it will be by tomorrow?)

In other words: Damn it feels good to have an audience.

Matt Ideas: Frank Miller's Footloose

2010-05-11T17:24:00.000+02:00

This is the kind of stuff I come up when I have free days from work. I clearly should be writing other stuff due at The Weekly Crisis and other places, but this idea got into my head last night, and I could not let it go. Whoever was on Twitter at the time probably saw this already. Just imagine that this is Frank Miller's Batman or Daredevil saying these words, come on, try it!

There's something strange about this town. The streets are empty. There is no joy in the dance floor.

It is holding me down. Not anymore. Not this night. Tonight i gotta cut loose. Footloose.

Time to lose my blues. I am yearning, burning for more. Time to kick off my Sunday shoes.

Everyone's playing it cool. Obeying the rules. They don't realize they could fly, if only they'd cut loose.

I have to turn it around, plant my feet in the ground. Take hold of my soul and let it loose.

And like I said, I couldn't let the idea go, so you also get a movie poster...

That's gold, Jerry! Gold!

Martian Manhunter vs. The State of Arizona

2010-05-09T19:02:00.001+02:00

(Page originally from Brightest Day #0. Click to enlarge)

I don't think Arizona thought it all the way through when they passed this law. The next time that Doomsday or whatever shows up in their state, they are not going to be able to get help from Martian Manhunter, Superman, Aquaman, Wonder Woman, etc. Well, it's only Arizona. Fuck'em!

Stuff I Have Won, Pt. 2

2010-01-23T21:33:00.001+01:00

So I haven't posted here in a while, have I? But check out what I won while I was busy posting elsewhere!

(No, I do not have jaundice, I always look like that in photos)

No, I did not join a Summer Law Intern Program, that's a novelty t-shirt that I won from current Daredevil scribe Andy Diggle on a twitter contest. Nelson, Blake & Murdock are fictional characters, but you probably know that already if you read Daredevil. I don't know if you can get more of these t-shirts of if this is a one-of-a-kind, but I was certainly lucky to have won it. It was more of a being at the right time, at the right place kind of thing, because I certainly know other people that probably deserve it more, like Christine or Alice. To them, I say: na na na na! I have this t-shirt and you don't! And to Mr. Diggle, a very big "thank you" for doing this contest, and for mailing this all the way to Spain.

I'm a winner!

2009-08-21T11:31:00.004+02:00

Recently, I won a "Caption Contest" that was organized by Christine, who runs the Daredevil centric blog The Other Murdock Papers. I received the package yesterday and here's what was inside of it...

A copy of the paperback called "Parts of a Hole", that collects the second story arc in Daredevil Vol. 2, written by David Mack and illustrated by Joe Quesada. I had read this before from the library, but I didn't own it.

And a Daredevil comic all in Swedish. It's actually part of Frank Miller's run on the title, so for Christine to have parted with this, it probably means that she has three other copies of it. I'm not sure you can see it very clearly on the photo, but Daredevil is saying "Nej! Sluta... Sluta." Typical sexist Daredevil, calling women "slutas".

*looks up the translation* Oh, that's not what it means? My bad.

Inside the package there was also some Swedish chocolate (currently in the fridge, trying to un-melt itself back together) and a letter from Christine assuring me that there was neither swine flu or anthrax in the package. Good to know!

So yeah, thank you Christine! And everyone else, make sure to check out her blog, specially if you are a Daredevil fan.

Printing Press

2009-07-13T11:36:00.014+02:00

I am staying home today from work because I am still somewhat sick. What does that mean? BLOGGING SHALL ENSUE!

As some of you know, and some of you are about to learn, I work in a office supplies and legal bookstore ...um... store. It is a family owned company that has been pretty much in the same family for over a century! The building where I work has also been around for over a century, and the company also owns a printing press that has been around for about the same amount of time.

The printing press is now moving to a smaller, and cheaper place, because nowadays most of the printing is done digitally, and the older (and bigger) machines had become obsolete and useless. I was lucky enough to visit the printing press on the last day of the move. My verdict? The place is indeed old. I took some pictures that I wanted to show, make sure to click on them if you want the full view.

Here's an outside shot of the printing press from the building right in front of it. I am not very knowledgeable about architecture, so I don't know what particular name those structures on top of the building have, but it does look a lot like something you would see in a medieval castle.

Here's another photo, but this time from higher up, where you can see those structures a bit better, and the size of the building in of itself. Again, this was taken from the building across from the printing press. How did I gain access to it? We'll get to that in a second.

Here's an photo of the inside of the printing press. The bottom floor is now almost empty, but that's where all the machinery used to be. The second floor hadn't been used for some time, but in yesteryear, it was used to store the paper that was already printed, as well as covers, paper blocks, and all other kinds of material.

And here's another angle of that same floor. This part is almost completely empty, with only trash left there. In the back, you can see some of the offices that the place had. You can infer the size of the whole place by comparing it to the man (Jose/Pepe, a coworker) who looks tiny in this photo.

Here's a close-up of those huge pieces of furniture that were in earlier photos. These were used to store the metal letters that were used for the printing press. Each drawer would have different sizes and different fonts of letters, numbers, and symbols.

The workers would sit in front of these tables and compose a page, and you can see an assembled on there on the left of the photo. On the right, there's lots of tiny little blocks of metal. Do you know what those are? They are the spaces that they would have to leave between words and to indent paragraphs. Because of the way that the printing press works, you needed to assemble a complete line, even if there was only a single word in it.

Here's some more of the typographic letters that they would use to assemble a page. We are actually selling most of the by bigger fonts at the store where I work, as a memento. People can assemble their own names, company names, or numbers. They can also work as rudimentary stamps (although regular ink won't stick to it as much as it would do to rubber)

Here's something else that's very interesting. Our company works a lot with city halls and other government institutions. These are the logos and symbols that you would see on their official paper and envelopes, that the workers at the printing press had to hand craft in order to be able to print. I have no idea how long it would take to make one of these, as they have an intricate amount of detail carved on to them, and they are made out of metal.

I don't remember exactly what all these machines did, but I know for certain that the one on the left was used to melt metal. I think the other one was to make them into metal bricks, but I am not sure. Basically, when the metal typographic letters got old or damaged, they would melt them and make new ones. This is also the place where they would craft the custom symbols as seen in the previous picture.

Most of the usable machinery was either sold or moved to the new place by the time I visited, but this antique still remained. I wish I had taken a better photo of it though, but basically the paper would be fed manually on one side to be printed and it would come out from the other one. My guide (the aforementioned Jose/Pepe) told me that he once saw a coworker get his hand stuck there. Yes, I shivered.

This is another relic that was used to cut the paper in different formats. Most paper is delivered in huge sheets that must be later be trimmed down to the common sizes. This machine still works, but they use more modern machinery now. There seemed to be no grisly stories about this one, thankfully.

Now, remember earlier I said that I was able to get into the building directly in front of the printing press? Well this is the building. It is also owned by the same people. You see, back when this place was built, people didn't really travel to work, they lived and worked in the same place. So directly in front of the warehouse that houses the printing press, there are a group of houses where the workers used to live. I was able to explore parts of that building too, although not all of it, because there's still sections which are still being used. I took photos in the abandoned sections of the building. Oh yeah, and it has an honest-to-god clock tower. That's pretty damn cool.

This room is the stable. That should give you another notion of how old this building is, as houses back then were built with stables for the livestock they had. They kept a couple of horses in here, that they used to pull the cart that they would use to deliver the material from the printing press.

This is a close-up of the the clock tower, taken from the roof of the building. It would be pretty cool to go in there, right? Well, guess who has two thumbs and went in there? THIS GUY.

Ever wonder what the behind of a huge clock looks like? Well, here's your answer. The surface of the clock is made up of marble, so it must weight a lot, but the machinery doesn't work anymore.

And here's me at the top of the clock tower. You can see the roof of the printing press in the back. There was a really nice view from up there.

So that is it for today! Hopefully you guys enjoyed this educative ride. One of these days I will take my camera to work and I will take pictures of the place where I work day-to-day.

Potato Moon

2009-05-15T20:48:00.003+02:00

As you all know by now, my comic related writing is all concentrated on The Weekly Crisis, but this is one of the few times that I wrote something that does not belong in tWC AND it's a piece of fiction (as opposed to my usual OP/ED) pieces.

What is it?

It's a chapter of POTATO MOON, which is being written by readers' over at Peter David's blog. I contributed chapter 25 to it, which you can find here. Now, you are probably asking yourself what the hell POTATO MOON is. It is a parody of an upcoming book that will use Twilight characters without the permission of the author Stephanie Meyer, just because the names are changed. You can find how this all started here or you can go read all the chapters here. Trust me, you don't need to have read Twilight to enjoy (or even join in on) the fun. I know I certainly have not read any of those books, and I contributed a chapter to it! So go read it, it's fun, there's baked potatoes and Dick Cheney involved in the whole thing.

No, seriously. It wasn't me that introduced Cheney into the whole thing though.

Keyword Search

2009-04-19T23:42:00.002+02:00

So I was just checking to see what keywords are leading people to my site, and I thought it might be an interesting read. They are in order of most to least used:

ampersand comics
bruce wayne ampersand review
"expect the unexpected" batman
"hate joe quesada"
captain america magic
download the walking dead comic
guepardo muscles
joey q hates mary-jane
marvel nextwave -wireless
peter and mary jane
peter milligan the programme
quien vigila o los vigilante translation
soviet russia comic
superheroes in comics are shown to give comfort to readers during the cold war
the simpsons lost in translation
translation debate movies
why did loeb change ultimate thor
 expect the unexpected mission

I have no idea what that last symbol actually is.

Crisis!

2009-03-08T20:59:00.002+01:00

This is basically my State of the Union address about this blog.

Last week, Kirk of the Weekly Crisis asked me to start contributing to his blog and I responded with something along the lines of "#@&% YEAH!". Kirk runs probably my favorite blog out of the many I read, and to even be asked to contribute to such a popular site is a huge honor for me. Today marks my first entry in the Weekly Crisis, A Look at Female Superheroes

This is the reason why I haven't been posting in my blog a whole lot this past week, the preparations and other things backstage have been keeping me busy. I had initially decided to try to keep updating both blogs, but later decided that it would be a little too much on my schedule. I want to contribute my very best effort into writing, and I felt that spreading it over two blogs would be detrimental to that cause. So from now on, all my comic-related entries (read: rants) will be in the Weekly Crisis.

If you enjoy my comic related writing, you should definitely head over to the Weekly Crisis, where I will be updating at least once a week. Additionally, you will also get to read the weekly comic book reviews by Kirk and the paperback reviews by Eric Rupe, who also just joined the blog.

This blog will also stay around, for all my non-comics related entries. I may also keep posting the Magic cards, haven't really decided yet. The posting schedule is basically "whenever I feel like or have time for", at least I get the handle of writing more and more on a weekly basis.

Magic - Fastball Special

2009-03-05T00:20:00.003+01:00

This marks the first card that I have posted that it is not a creature. I really like this card, and I could see people actually using it in gameplay. The downside? Colossus and Wolverine both have Green attributes (will post them some other day), so you would need a Green and Red deck, which is kind of rare and hard to use.

Rarely Asked Questions

2009-03-04T00:13:00.003+01:00

Today marks the one month anniversary of my blog. It seems only yesterday that I was ranting about Final Crisis and Secret Invasion, yet here I am one month later, having accomplished a lot in a short time (at least with the goals that I had set for myself). And hopefully, there are bright things in the future of the blog. To celebrate this anniversary, I wanted to assemble a F.A.Q. about the blog and myself, even if no one is really asking these questions out loud.

1 - Is your name really Matt Ampersand?

Negative on both accounts. I've used the nickname Matt ever since high school because some of my classmates and my professors could not properly pronounce my real name (Matias). And I stole a play from the Ramones , using a fake last name that is more memorable and interesting.

2 - What's an Ampersand?

It's the symbol that comes up when you press Shift and 7, commonly known as the "and" symbol. More importantly, it is also the name of a character (read: monkey) from Y - The Last Man, one of my favorite comics ever.

3 - What's up with the monkey on the banner up there?

See above, and stop skipping questions!

4 - Why do you write like that?/ What's up with your writing style?

You have my AP English teachers to blame for that. Both of them pushed us very hard to develop our writing, both by teaching us new words (like eddy, it's a centrifugal whirlwind force usually in bodies of water) and by forcing us to write lots of essays. Somewhere along the way, I learned to intuitively and automatically make my writing seem more grandiose: no matter how much teachers deny it, good essays tend to be the longer ones, and that means going into lots of details.

5 - Hey, can you write about *insert topic here*?

I always like to hear suggestions from readers and I always consider them. I write about what I know about, and about the comics I read. Sometimes I won't feel comfortable talking about certain topics because I feel that no matter how much research (read comics or Wiki) I do, I won't properly be able to make interesting points or good arguments. I do read more Marvel than anything else, so the bulk of posts are probably going to be Marvel-related. I always try to keep things as fair and balanced as I can, but don't expect to see a series of essays about the Legion of Superheroes.

6 - Did you design the blog?

No, it is mostly a template (the information is at the bottom) that my wife and I tweaked here and there.

7 - I want to give you a job in the comic writing industry, with lots of cash and a brand new car, where can I contact you?

You can e-mail me at cassandratic at gmail dot com. I also accept all other kinds of email, with the exception of spam and any e-mail from African princes.

Magic - The Sentry

2009-03-02T23:21:00.003+01:00

I like how this card came out, I think it properly represents the Sentry without taking into account his most recent appearances during Dark Reign (he's seriously gotten hardcore lately). I think it may be a little too expensive though, maybe 1 or 2 mana less or make his attack score higher would make this card more playable?

Lost in Translation

2009-03-02T00:33:00.004+01:00

Careful readers probably have picked up on this already, but I do not live in the United States at the moment. I currently reside in the Mediterranean country of Spain, which puts me in a rather awkward position regarding comics and other media. For the most part, I do not like to purchase or read translated material very much because even the best of translations lose something along the way, and in my mind it feels as I am reading or watching a different material altogether. I have had the chance to read some titles both in English and Spanish and there is a noticeable difference in them (at least to me). Luckily through the Internet and a local shop that carries material in English, I can keep up with my comic reading habit. I wanted to talk a little about some of the things that occur with translations, and one very special case that I have not decided what I am going to do about it.

The most obvious problem in translation is the names of superheroes, and the way they decide to translate them are rather uniform. Some characters have the same name as they do in English, such as Thor and Superman (even though this one could easily be translated into "Superhombre"). Of course, not all of them are as straightforward, for example Spider-Man is mostly called just that, but people pronounce it using a Spanish pronunciation (roughly, espeedher man) and Batman is also called by his rightful name, but his alias Bruce Wayne is instead called Bruno Diaz in some Spanish-speaking countries. There are some straightforward translations, such as "Mister Fantastico" instead of Mister Fantastic and "Linterna Verde" for Green Lantern. Some work and some don't, especially when the translation leads to multiple words like Nightwing being "Ala Nocturna" or Hawkeye being "Ojo de Halcón". Additionally, Captain America becomes Capitan America, which is also pretty straightforward, but his nickname instead of being "Cap" is "Capi" which sounds kind of diminutive to me. And finally, there are some cases where whoever translated the comic books took great liberties. Deadpool for example is known as "Masacre" in some countries, and Martian Manhunter is "Detective Marciano". To make matters worse, different countries have different translations. When I was younger I used to watch the 90's X-Men animated series in Argentina (where I'm originally from), Rogue was called "Titania" and Wolverine was "Guepardo" (the literal translation), but here in Spain, the former is known as "Picara" and the latter as "Lobezno" (which translates into Wolf Cub, I have no idea what they call Wolf Cub from New/Young X-Men). Team names also suffer from some of these same problems, like the X-Men called "Hombres X" or "Patrulla X" depending on the country and the Avengers are known as "Los Vengadores" (which makes me wonder what the catchphrase that replaces "Avengers Assemble!" is).

Another problem that I have with translations is the actual interpretation of the text. When you read titles like Spider-Man, Cable and Deadpool, or any other comic that has a big comedic portion to it, puns, jokes and one-liners are greatly lost in translation. I have not read any comics in Spanish featuring the Riddler, but a lot of his riddles are play on words, so I can't imagine those making a lot of sense either. Curses and insults are another problem altogether, where sometimes literal translations end up sounding not as threatening or just downright goofy (I can't imagine what reading a Garth Ennis comic in Spanish would be like). And I do not if it is just me on this one, but when I read a character speaking Spanish, it sounds completely different that the voice I hear in my head than I would if I was reading that comic in English instead.

Aside from also suffering from the above problems, voice translations when it comes to movies and TV series, have a whole new set of problems. First of all (and I have no idea why) apparently there isn't a whole lot of Spanish voice actors because sometimes you are watching a dubbed movie and you will notice it is the same voice actor as something else you have watched previously. Basically every little girl in any movie that is put on TV will have the same voice actor as Lisa from the Simpsons. Other times, actors are given voice overs that do not match the original voice, or a combination with the point I was making earlier, like Jim Carey and Bruce Willis getting the same person doing the voiceover in different movies. And this is where my problem comes in: I want to see the Watchmen movie, which opens next week (March 6th), and has the same name in Spanish. It's odd that it is not translated somehow, and I think the closest translation would be "Vigilantes", and in that case the tag line would be "Quien vigila a los vigilantes?". For some reason, movie theaters here do not show movies in the original languages with subtitles, I would not mind watching it like that. Instead, they opt for completely dubbed movies and as I have stated which I find to be detrimental to the movie. On one hand, I really want to see the movie (which looks absolutely gorgeous visually and appears that it will be very faithful to the original material) the week it opens, and on the other I want to wait for the DVD release, where I would be able to see the finished product as it was intended. Decisions, decisions. What do you, my faithful 15 readers, think I should do about this dilemma?

A New Way

2009-03-01T02:03:00.000+01:00

Parts of the Internet comic book community is on fire. The arsonist? Apparently, Peter David. The whole "discussion" (because at this point it has evolved into little more than an Internet fight of epic proportions) is because the Livejournal community of scans_daily, a place where pages of comic books were posted, sometimes in very large quantities, was shut down after David supposedly reported the website to Marvel. You can read his whole entry about it here. I have talked and lauded about David in my recent post about X-Factor, and while I don't personally agree with the notion that access to pirated comics hurt sales (as an aside, it would certainly be very hard to prove if hurts or helps), I certainly agree it is his right to report violations of this kind once he becomes aware of them. While I personally did not visit scans_daily, it seems that what they were doing was in a very grey legal ground, and Livejournal is just trying to avoid a potential lawsuit. Apparently the community was very big and active, so I don't understand why they did not move to their own server, where they would have had more liberties and less worries about something like this happening. Instead of talking about the issue of Internet piracy, which would take a really long time and arrive to no solid conclusion (and maybe alienating readers), I wanted to talk about some of the alternatives that the comic industry could implement in order to avoid matters like these.

One of the biggest draws of scans_daily was that it allowed people to read (partially, apparently) comic books that they would otherwise pay no attention to. The people lamenting the demise of this community are claiming that there are no other ways to check out rare and or not as popular comics. One of the probably most underused methods to check out new comic books is actually very much free: public libraries. Libraries are increasingly carrying more and more paperback, hardcovers, and original graphic novels these days (and even more so for manga). While this obviously depends on the scope and size of your library, it is definitely worth checking out to see what they have. While the local library where I reside now has a shameful collection (it is very small and I do not live in the US, so it is understandable), the one in the city I lived before had full collections of many comics such as (Birds of Prey, Exiles, all the Ultimate books, Daredevil, Sandman, Invincible, Walking Dead, etc.) some of which I had never bothered to check out before (like Fables, Runaways or Jonah Hex, and I actually read Watchmen for the first time from the library). In addition, they had pretty much all of the Essential and Showcase books (those big, black and white ones) so you could easily read up on old stories of classic comic books. While it may take time, libraries will start carrying more and more collection of comic books. Companies (Marvel especially) are getting better at releasing the collection of both new and old comics, which is going to lead to a bigger amount of comic book in libraries, free for everyone to read and discover them. I do not know what kind of deal comic book companies have (if any) with public libraries, and it is not in their (from a marketing perspective) interest to promote readers to check out their books for free.

Then there's the option of online comic books. As it stands now, only Marvel is offering a digital service (more of that in a second), but for all other companies you are mostly out of luck (I read about some applications for the iPhone where you could download comic books to it, but the catalogue was rather small). There is always the option of downloading pirated comics, which is not that hard to do or to find a place where you could do so if one were intent on it. While the legality of it all is questionable, there's no denying that it is a very easy way to discover comic books that readers may not deem worthy of a second glance while they are in their local comic book shop. Marvel's digital service sounded like a good idea at first, but sadly the execution of it fell short. The service offers the chance to read an unlimited amount of comic books for a low monthly subscription. The problem stems from the flash-based reader that Marvel decided to use, which was incredibly slow and hard to scroll through (and my connection speed was pretty good when I had the free trial), low resolution image of the comics and the fact that you could not download the comics to your computer. Additionally, the service (while still growing) did not feature the possibility to read newly released comic books, which were only released weeks after the issue hit the stands (probably until it was off the shelves). I understand Marvel's point of view in this, if the readers get to see the new comic books online, they are not going to buy the actual comic books. But if you are trying to provide this service as an alternative to buying the single issues, it is imperative that subscribers have access to the newest comic books.

And finally, my crazy idea for a new way to check out comic books: renting them. Alright, so it probably is not *my* original idea, surely someone has thought about this before? But the notion is practically unheard of in comic book circles, even though movies (and games) have been doing it for decades now. It is the same concept, and I have no idea why it has not been done for the comic book industry: a movie originally comes out in theaters (analog to singles issues), and is later collected in a format that is easier for people to digest such as VHS, DVD, or Blu-Ray (hardcovers or paperbacks). If it works for one form of entertainment, why couldn't it work for another? So here's my (very rough) plan: first of all, no reading in stores, a rule that some comic book shops already have in place, but others do not. The change may upset readers, which are used to flipping through some books while at the shop, but you can't see the movie that you are renting on Blockbuster either. The renting could be done in two ways: in-store and regular renting. For in-store you would need a place where people could read (a lounge area if you will) with seats and charge a small price (I am thinking fifty cents) for an allotted amount of time (thirty minutes should be plenty of time for most comic books, but not a long enough time to get more than a second reading) to read the comic book. Of course, this system has its flaws, such as comic book stores needing the appropriate space to handle customers sitting down to read and most people like to read in the comfort of their own home, which is where the second way of renting comes in. Just like you would rent at your local video store or blockbuster, you could pay a fraction of the price of the comic book (one dollar per rental has a nice ring to it) and you could take it home for one or two days to read at your convenience. This brings another set of problems, such as needing information (maybe a credit card number, like video stores do) from customers, so they don't run off with your rental, and the danger of customer damaging the comics (which could later be sold at a discount price if needed). In both cases, a customer could decide to purchase the rental by just paying the difference between the cover price and what has already been paid, or just directly buy the item without renting it first (which is what most of us do anyway). At the prices I have mentioned, you could read 6 comics in-store for the same amount you pay for a regular-priced single issue ($2.99), or take three issues home to read at your own leisure.

I think it would be a good business model, and it could also possible be applied to collections ($5 for a week rental), but sadly I have no idea if there is any market for it. Comic book fans take pride in also being collectors of said items, so I do not know if they would even use this system. What do you guys think? Could it possibly work, or am I just delusional?

(P.S. I apologize for such a long entry with absolutely no images, it is probably an eyesore to read, but I do not think there are appropriate images to go along with this entry)

Magic - Captain America

2009-02-26T00:38:00.002+01:00

As I mentioned the other day, I will run something different on the days that I do not get to write an entire blog entry. This is one of my other geeky aspects, Magic: The Gathering! I used to play a lot when I was in high school, and although I never really joined a tournament or anything, playing it with my friends was always fun. I hope at least some people enjoy this, as I tie Magic with comics. Today I bring you:

Captain America

This one was fairly easy color wise, as Cap has a lot of white attributes. The tap ability is supposed to represent the use of his shield.

The Rise and Fall of Elseworlds

2009-02-25T00:33:00.005+01:00

One of the first comics that my father ever bought me was called "Batman - Brotherhood of the Bat", back in the mid-90's. At the time, I did not know it, but this was my first exposure to the DC imprint Elseworlds, where "heroes are taken from their usual setting and put into strange times and places - some that have existed, others that can't, couldn't or shouldn't exist." In hindsight, I should have realized this wasn't a regular story (the fact that Batman is dead was a sure giveaway), but back then I was just getting started to read comics and I did not know about ongoing comics, or mini series, or elseworlds and it was all the same to me. This particular story stuck with me for a long time, because it is a cool concept (or at least it was to my pre-teen mind), Ra's Al Ghul comes back to Gotham 50 years after Batman died and uses a gang of people dressed in different bat-costumes, including some never seen before. In repeated readings, it has not stood to the test of time, with some of the dialogue being particularly cheesy, but back then I remember me and my friends discussing which Batman costume we wold wear if given the chance. Today I wanted to talk about the Elseworlds imprint, which is sadly no longer among us, and why I would like it to come back.

First of all, a little bit of history: "imaginary tales" have been around for a long time in comics ("Not a dream! Not a hoax!"), where writers could come up with the weirdest stories they wanted to and run with it without fear of repercussion from fans. It wasn't until 1989 that DC published the successful Gotham By Gaslight (by Brian Augustyn and Mike "Hellboy" Mignola) which led to the creation of the Elseworlds imprint and retroactively named that title the first official Elseworlds comic. Over the years, DC has published many Elseworlds of many different natures, while not all of them have been critical or commercial successes, some of them rank among the most favorite stories among fans. Superman - Speeding Bullets, JLA - The Nail, and Batman - In Darkest Night are all very popular among comic book fandom, but there's two Elseworlds that rank higher than all the others: Superman - Red Son and Kingdom Come. Red Son is the tale of what would have happened to the world if Superman's spaceship had crashed in Soviet Russia. Kingdom Come, on the other hand, is a tale of the latter days of DC superheroes, which must fight a new and more violent generation of superhumans. Both of these stories usually appear in "Best-Of" lists, or recommendations for new readers to the DC Universe, and both of them were popular enough to warrant their own set of action figures. Additionally, in the current JSA title, by Geoff Johns, a lot of events are inspired by what happens in Kingdom Come, to highly positive fan reaction.

According to Wikipedia DC stopped publishing Elseworlds title around 2005 because of low sales and lack of critical acclaim. The mini-series Batman - Year 100 is the last official Elseworlds published. That same year Infinite Crisis hit the stands and re-established the multiverse which was previously eliminated during Crisis on Infinite Earths, and many of the popular Elseworlds officially became one of the alternate 52 Earths that existed in the DC multiverse. Apparently, some of them were featured during Countdown, but I do not know to what extent as I did not read that title (a wise decision, I am told by many). Coincidentally, 2005 was also the year that saw the birth of the All-Star line of DC comics, where acclaimed writers and artists are allowed to work on more iconic versions of beloved characters without any restraints from regular continuity. Sadly, not much has been done with the All-Star imprint, only two titles: the critical darling All-Star Superman by Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely, and the commercial juggernaut All-Star Batman and Robin the Boy Wonder by Frank Miller and Jim Lee(as a side note, both titles are/were plagued by delays). Both titles could have easily worked as Elseworlds series, with the exception of the fact that they were ongoing series. To the best of my knowledge, however, all other planned All-Star titles will not be seeing the light of day anytime soon (I vaguely remember some announcement from NYCC, but I could not find it).

DC had a good idea with the All-Star line, in narrowing down the ideas and using the most popular stars of the comic book industry they achieved what they were aiming for. But since it is apparently no longer used, maybe it is time to bring back the Elseworlds imprint. What they could do is combine the best of both imprints, using popular creators to create these new worlds like All-Star did, and stick to mini series or one-shots like Elseworlds did. Furthermore, there is a lot of unpaved ground if DC decided to publish "What-If" titles, like Marvel does. While a lot of Elseworlds work in the same concept of disconvergent time lines like "What Ifs" do, most of them concentrate on the origin of the heroes, but rarely to past important storylines. I think there's room in the market for comics like "What if the Green Lanterns had lost the Sinestro Corps War?" or "What if Batman had not shot Darkseid?". Of course, the most difficult thing to do would probably be to come up with a new title, I think Marvel has the "What If" title copyrighted.

Magic - Spider-Man

2009-02-23T23:31:00.004+01:00

As I mentioned the other day, I will run something different on the days that I do not get to write an entire blog entry. This is one of my other geeky aspects, Magic: The Gathering! I used to play a lot when I was in high school, and although I never really joined a tournament or anything, playing it with my friends was always fun. I hope at least some people enjoy this, as I tie Magic with comics. Today I bring you:

Spider-Man

Spider-Man was actually very hard to properly portray. The white obviously represents his penchant for law and order, while the green is his ties to nature (and Spiders are usually green creatures, with reach), and finally the blue for his "trickster" and intellectual side (the ability is supposed to represent his web shooters).

In Soviet Russia

2009-02-23T00:58:00.003+01:00

Writers, specially in comic books, tend to have fixations with two groups that are normally used as enemies: Nazis and Communists. I don't know where this fixation comes from, if it is part of the propaganda efforts of yesteryear or just from cultural differences, but there's a big difference in how they are portrayed sometimes. Nazis are always indubitably evil (not saying they were not), while Communists are sometimes portrayed as being caught in the bigger machinations of the political powerhouse that was Soviet Russia. While it would be almost impossible to depict a Nazi character in a wholesome light (and would probably lead to some kind of public outrage), Communist characters can sometimes be portrayed as tragic heroes whose misguided love of their country, led by corrupt individuals, turned them into something they were not originally. Today I wanted to look at two specific books about the fallout of the Cold War and the implosion of the Soviet Union, coincidentally both put out by the Wildstorm imprint, The Programme and The Winter Men. Both titles are about Soviet super powered soldiers, although very different in nature.

The Winter Men was a neat little mini-series that wrapped up last year, which suffered from tremendous delays (three years for six issues), created by Brett Lewis and John Paul Leon. The protagonist of the series is Kris, a former soviet super soldier of some kind (his powers are never really clearly defined) who finds himself useless and drowning his mind with vodka and doing some odd jobs for the local government. There is a couple other remaining super soldiers that were part of the same program, all working different jobs in the new Russia, a very different country from the one that originally produced them. This is the greatest strength of the series, showcasing a post-communism Russia and how citizens must work in the new world order. Our protagonist, much like every other person that inhabits this world (with the exception of those in power) are just doing everything in their power to survive. The series also introduces the concept of how Russians setup, both in government and in mafias, their organizations: always arranging countermeasures and competing parts inside a system, a knowledge that Kris uses to his advantage later in the series. The plot centers around how a little girl is given a transplanted liver from a former super-powered individual, only to be kidnapped because of this. The protagonist attempts to recover her from her captors, a trip that takes him through the underbelly of society and leads to many discoveries about the super soldier program. Despite his many flaws, the main character of Winter Men is shown to be inherently good person, willing to put himself in the way of danger in order to protect this girl, even if he commits plenty of criminal acts along the way much like other anti-hero archetypes (such as The Punisher).

The Programme was a twelve issue mini-series released in 2007 through 2008, created by Peter Milligan and C.P. Smith. The Programme features some very different Russian super soldiers, they are insanely loyal to the government and system that created them and will do anything that is asked of them and are (apparently) completely amoral. Originally created during the Cold War, they are revived in modern times and wage a war against the "imperialistic empire" that is the United States. Of course, the United States government is not very happy about this and decides to unleash their previously-failed super powered individuals against the Communist ones. In this series, their powers are never exactly defined either, almost to describe how inexact the process of creating them was, but we see them using some kind of eye beams, super strength, force fields, and some strange method of offensive teleportation where the subject of the teleportation disappears for some time only to reappear days later. The battle that follows is one of the most brutal and realistic ones, very reminiscent of the London battle in the pages of Miracleman where civilian passersby suffer the consequences. The ironic twist that the book delivers is that, in trying to battle it's enemies, the United States goes to the same lengths that their enemies have, essentially becoming like them. The same thing happens to America's super weapon, Max, initially a person just trying to survive in the world, and quite a "spineless liberal", turns into a ruthless killing machine that does whatever his government asks of him. The end of the series is quite shocking and it definitely tries to make a political statement about the nature of empires and how events can unite them, with hints of themes familiar to readers of Watchmen.

Both series are great reads, about the nature of the beast that was Soviet Russian and how it would have been if our world had been in fact populated by super beings during the Cold War. But at the same time, I think that both series make a point of saying "we are not so different after all", we are all either trying to survive in this world to the best of our abilities and trying to help our country during hard times.

Expect the Unexpected

2009-02-22T00:31:00.010+01:00

X-Factor has been the name of three different groups or organizations, but currently it is the name of a detective agency that deals with issues and cases regarding mutants. The current X-Factor, which spun out of the events that happened House of M and the previous success of a mini-series called "Madrox", is one of the best titles out there on the market and most definitely the best "X" title on stands right now (and there's plenty of competition from Carey's X-Men, Kyle and Yost's X-Force, First Class by Jeff Parker, etc.). While it is not a huge commercial success, it is very different from other team books. One of the tag lines of the series when it began was "X-pect the unX-pected " and Peter David, after forty issues as the sole writer of X-Factor, continues to deliver the unexpected. The series has struggled during it's run for various different reasons, which I is what I want to talk about and explore in this entry.

First of all, the most obvious shortcoming the series had is the protagonists: none of them are A-listers and probably (at least before the series started) no one's favorites characters. The leading role belongs to James Madrox, also known as Multiple Man, a character that Peter David has written before in the old X-Factor team (from the late 80's) and the aforementioned mini-series. Rounding up the team are two former teammates of Jamie, Strong Guy and Wolfsbane, a former Generation X character, Monet, two former members of X-Force, Syrin and Rictor , and an almost-original character, Layla Miller. Like I said, not exactly popular or well known characters, but Mr. David has fleshed out the personalities so much on the course of his run that it would not be weird to hear comic book readers proclaim James Madrox or Layla Miller as one of their favorite characters. Even though Multiple Man is the clear leading man of the drama that is X-Factor, every character gets the spotlight at one point or the other, where they get to shine or at least deliver some great lines. A great example of this is issue thirteen of the series, called "Re-X-amination" (they just love to use those X puns), where the whole team is psychoanalyzed by Doc Samson, and all the personalities are wonderfully showcased by Peter David, with each character having his or her own voice and personal psychosis. The fantastic character work done is complimentary to the noir aspect that title often dwells in, something not very common in mainstream comic books, and it probable lead to the title struggling to find the right audience during it's beginnings.

Another aspect where X-Factor has struggled is in the art department: if comic books were bands, X-Factor would be Spinal Tap. All jokes aside, it is incredible just how many artists this series has gone through: Ryan Sook, Dennis Calero, Ariel Olivetti, Renato Arlem, Roy Allen Martinez, Pablo Raimondi, Khoi Pham, Valentine De Landro, Scot Eaton, Larry Stroman and Nelson (no last name, apparently) have all contributed to the series. This is especially troubling when you consider that the series is only forty issues long, an average of less than 4 issues per artist (although some have repeated their art duties, and some others only contributed for only one issue). In my humble personal opinion, and not to undermine some of the great artists that have contributed to the series, Pablo Raimondi is the X-Factor artist (he also provided the art for the original Madrox mini) as he seems to have the best handle on all of the characters. I wish he could be (and I have no idea why he is not) the regular artist for the series month in-and-out, that way X-Factor could have a look as consistent as the writing. Sadly, X-Factor suffered from having what I consider to be the worst art I have ever seen in a Marvel series from the last couple of years, at the hands of Larry Stroman . I have mentioned before that I do not like to complain about art, because I have zero talent when it comes to drawing, unless it is completely detrimental to the story. Stroman's art definitely falls under that category, and I was not the only one to think so. I heard plenty of people stopped following the title when he came on board and sales numbers seem to confirm that, with issue 33, the first one he was in selling around fifty thousand copies, while subsequent issues selling around thirty-four thousand or so units.

And the final hardship that the current X-Factor series has had to suffer is something that many fans complain about, and something I have mentioned before, event fatigue. Since X-Factor is not a straight out superhero title like all others, the events tend to hinder the normal plot and character development of the series which is normally more down-to-Earth, at least in the "missions" that the team goes through. X-Factor has been affected by almost every major event in the last couple of years (with the exception of World War Hulk), and the title hits some of it's lowest points during said events. During Civil War, the team made a stand against the registration act, which put it in an awkward position, as the rest of mutants stayed outside of the events (well, for the most part). Endangered Species did not effect the title very much, as it was more of a status quo than an actual event. The real damage came from the event that affected all X-Men teams called "Messiah CompleX", which lead to X-Factor losing not one but two of it's members (and Multiple Man got a tattoo). Wolfsbane ended up joining X-Force, a good book, but one where she is extremely redundant and almost not her former self from X-Factor. Additionally, Layla Miller got stuck in an alternate dystopian future (that's comic books for you) with apparently no means back. Trying to read the title during this event without additionally reading the other titles involved in the event is almost futile, as most of the current plots take a back seat to the events involving the rest of the X-teams. I hardly doubt that this was part of Peter David's original vision for the book, and during Secret Invasion, he filled those empty roles in the form of Longshot and Darwin. Sadly, during Secret Invasion, the book also fell to the standard "Who's a skrull?" game that every other book was doing at the time.

Despite some of the misgivings and missteps that X-Factor has gone through, it is still an excellent read. The last two issues (thirty-nine and forty) have driven the title back to the original "expect the unexpected" form of storytelling, where the reader is not sure what is going to happen next. I wish I could say more about it, but Mr. David has urged readers and reviewers alike not to spoil it for anyone, and I intend to listen to him. After all, he has provided me with plenty of entertainment and I owe at least that to him. But if you are not reading X-Factor, because you stopped during the events or because of the art or you just never bothered to check it out, you are seriously missing out on one of the best titles in stands today.

Blogily Planning

2009-02-21T00:37:00.002+01:00

You may have perhaps noticed that I have been slacking in updating the blog. This is not without a reason, for I have started a new job that consumes a good chunk of my day and because of the circumstances surrounding it, I don't have as much free time as I used to have. Does this mean the end of the blog? Most definitely not! I just have to start managing my time better, and for that, I have started doing this...

The mix of the bad quality of the picture and my "chicken scratch" (as my old boss used to call it) handwriting may hinder your ability to make out what it says, but the headline is "Ideas for Blog" and a bunch of things underneath it. Basically, during the public transportation ride to the place of my employment, I'm going to be writing down ideas and rough drafts for my writing pieces. This way, when I get home I already have a good idea of what I want to write about and how my post is going to look like. I have also something planned for the days that I do not get a chance to update with a full piece, which I hope some people will enjoy (not sure how many, as it deals with one of my other geeky habits).

Also, on the pictured, you may notice there's some entries with check marks (the ones I have already written) and some are marked as NMR, which stands for "Needs More Research". This means that I need to go back and re-read something before I write about, that way I avoid making a fool of myself like I did the other day with the Sandman/Batman entry. These entries are the ones that take longer to produce, so they are on the backburner until I get more free time (such as on the weekend) to read said comis. Some of the ideas I have written down are tied to specific events, releases and dates, so it may be a while until I actually get around to writing them (akin to the Valentine's day post). And finally, that is me behind the notebook, and I must say that I do not have big bags around my eyes as the picture would lead you to believe.

Marvel's New Noise

2009-02-19T00:34:00.006+01:00

First of all, I would like to say that I am a bigger Marvel fan than a DC fan, both in the comics I prefer to read and in the quantity that I consume them. The whys and wherefores of this are a matter of discussion for another day, but I wanted to point out before I go about today's blog. It feels to me than Marvel is better at attracting and helping new writers develop a fan base than DC. I am obviously not saying that Marvel has better talent (not to mention that such a claim comes to down to a reader's preference), as DC has some great writers such as Geoff Johns, Grant Morrison, Greg Rucka, Gail Simone, Kurt Busiek, etc. These writers are all great professionals that have been in the industry for a long time, and that's where the "problem" comes about. It is important for a company to foster new or rarely heard voices in the industry in order to create new ideas and stay relevant. I believe that Marvel does a better job in this aspect of their company, "grabbing" and fostering new writers and giving them high profile jobs.

One of my favorite writers currently working at Marvel is the wonderful Jason Aaron. According to Wikipedia, Aaron's first work was for DC's Vertigo imprint with the The Other Side mini-series and the still ongoing Scalped series (which I highly recommend). Even though he is still working on Scalped, Aaron has moved on to writing for Marvel, getting exponentially bigger assignments over time: first a back-up Wolverine story, then a critically acclaimed four issue story on the same title (Get Mystique), the main writing duties of Ghost Rider and a fill-in for Black Panther's Secret Invasion tie-in which I have already mentioned. Finally, Marvel has given him a new title, featuring our favorite short Canadian superhero with metal claws, called Wolverine: Weapon X. In just a couple of years, Jason Aaron has gone from his Vertigo critical-darling creator owned work to writing one of Marvel's most profitable characters, earning plenty of praise from fans and critics along the way.

Five years ago, Matt Fraction was writing comics and graphic novels in indie presses. Much like Aaron, Fraction was given increasingly important writing jobs, first working alongside Ed Brubaker in the popular revival of the Immortal Iron Fist. A couple of years later, and he has under his belt a two year run on Punisher, a ten issue almost-creator-owned series in the form of The Order, and a group of very critically acclaimed Thor one-shots collectively known as the Ages of Thunder series. Fraction is currently writing two of Marvel's flagship titles, Invincible Iron Man and Uncanny X-Men. Even if Fraction is somewhat hit or miss for me, to the point where I either hate or love his work (and I will abstain from going into a full list of which titles fall under each category), I have to admire the man for getting so many promotions in such a short period of time so he must be doing something right.

I could go on for a very long time, but it's usually the same story over and over. Marvel has writers like Greg Pak (who in a few years single-handledly reinvigorated the Hulk franchise among other works), Fred Van Lente (writing one of the best ongoing series, Incredible Hercules, and other fun mini series), Jonathan Hickman (co-writer of Secret Warriors and who is set to take over Fantastic Four), Christos Gage (having written more awesome fill-ins and mini-series that I can count) and Duane Swierczynski (currently writing Cable, Immortal Iron Fist and Punisher: Frank Castle) to compliment their older veterans like DnA, Warren Ellis, Mike Carey and Peter David. Of course, DC also has some new or young writers, like John Rogers (Blue Beetle), Marc Andreyko (Manhunter), G. Willow Wilson (Vixen), Sterling Gates (Supergirl) and Peter Tomasi (who has been working in the industry for long time as an editor but only recently started writing comics), but it seems to me that other than Tomasi the new writers get stuck in the back alleys of the DC universe and it is a lot harder to get a spot in the flagship titles. DC has a lot of up and coming writers, but they are mostly under the Vertigo and Wildstorm imprints and only some of of them also write super hero comics for the main universe.

In conclusion, it seems that either by design or by practice, Marvel has a younger set of writers than DC. I personally believe it is good that the company foments new talent, even if it is not always a commercial hit or critically acclaimed. I personally have been enjoying the current direction in the Marvel universe, and so have a lot more readers if the sale numbers are to be believed. Should DC start tapping into younger writers to help shape their universe? Or is it fine as it is, being handled by professionals that know what to do with the characters?

Putting My Bias Aside (The Umbrella Academy)

2009-02-17T23:41:00.007+01:00

My Chemical Romance is a popular pop-punk/emo band (although I don't think they can really be considered either) known for it's popularity among what is commonly known as the "Hot Topic" crowd. I will openly admit that I did like a couple of songs from their first and second album (Give'em Hell, Kid was one of them) but found them for the most part not interesting enough to consider myself a fan of any kind. Eventually, the band got really popular and relied way too much on theatrics rather than music, which led to me disliking them. This is the same reason for which I do not like a lot of other bands that rely on an appearance or theatrics to gain popularity only to change the style once the fad is over. Anyway, this blog is mostly about comics and there is a reason why I am writing about My Chemical Romance. Front-man and lead singer, Gerard Way, wrote a comic series for Dark Horse called Umbrella Academy.

When they first announced it, I found myself groaning (a big part of the music community was groaning too), thinking that this was just another blatant attempt to cash in on the popularity and image of the band, and that the storyline was probably going to pander to lower common denominator of their teenage-girl fan base. The comic, written by Way and illustrated by Gabriel Bá (from Casanova), eventually came out and started getting very good reviews. At first I just dismissed it, maybe out of the dislike for the band or maybe out of lack of interest. But I kept coming across people mentioning how good it was, so I finally decided to check out what all the buzz was about. I have to admit that I thoroughly enjoyed reading The Umbrella Academy - Apocalypse Suit.

The story, in it's core, is about a very dysfunctional family of superpowered individuals that do not get along. Pretty straightforward basic set-up, something that the Fantastic Four did more than 40 years ago. Using this formula, Way delivers a very fresh of breath air, even if the characters are a bit of cliches (the rebel, the good guy, the loner, etc) their strange superpowers and personalities help make this family stand out from the comic book racks. When you see the way the siblings argue, you know exactly how they feel because we have all been there in one point or the other in our lives (unless you are an only child). The world of Umbrella Academy is very fantastical and left (purposely) open to interpretation so either the reader can guess how the world got there, or leaving options open to explore further in other series (another series, The Umbrella Academy - Dallas is being published now, although I have not read it). There's a few missteps here and there like some disjointed storytelling or some lines that were just a little too cheesy, but overall, I have to say that it was a very fun read. Bá's art was also very fitting to the story and delivered a really memorable team. There's all kinds of insane and surreal things that inhabit this world, and Bá delivers plenty of material to entertain the art and compliment the plot of the series. I do not want to go into a full summary, because there is a lot going on and you will probably enjoy it more from reading it yourself.

As research for this story, I checked the sale numbers that this series had and they were surprisingly low. The first issue sold about 37,000 units, not exactly a hit but not a complete bomb either, and the collection of the series sold around 7000 books, the fifth highest selling on that month, but numbers quickly and abruptly dropped the month after that. I have to say that this comes as a surprise for me, because My Chemical Romance (and Gerard Way by default) has some very rabid fans that would probably buy anything related to the band. While I did not expect the book to be the highest selling comic that month, I sure expected some bigger numbers on the collection. But then I realized, the numbers posted on the website I use for research are for "comic specialty stores", which I am guessing does not include Borders or big bookstores like that. As I mentioned before, My Chemical Romance is very big among the "Hot Topic" or sometimes called "Mall" crowd, so I would not be very surprised if a good majority of the sales (and I particularly remember both Borders AND Hot Topic carrying single issues of Umbrella Academy) came from stores in malls, that to my knowledge do not count as specialty stores and therefore do not post their sales on Diamond.

Addendum - Part I

2009-02-16T23:15:00.001+01:00

Addendum - Part I

One of the best parts of the blogging and Internet journalism as opposed to written, old-fashioned journalism, is that nothing is ever static. Sources are always updated, details are always added, and corrections are always made. Of course, one of the downfalls of this, much like when newspaper print corrections, is that not all of the readers will see the corrections or updates. Because of this, I feel that the best way to go about this is to dedicate a whole entry entirely dedicated to such matters. And that is what "Addendum" is for, to catch everything that fell through the cracks. I will be running these as needed, if there is nothing of importance to be added, then you won't see them pop up. So here is the first part!

During the first round of the Eternal Debate, where I discussed Martian Manhunter's death in Final Crisis, reader bottleHED pointed out that we do not yet know the nature of the Black Lanterns, and they could possibly be like "cosmic undead", which would mean that they could go back to being dead after the event is over. This is a good point, we are still in the dark (no pun intended) about the Black Lanterns. I still feel they could have left Martian Manhunter rest, but I thought it was worth mentioning.

I also mentioned my surprise at the lack of spin offs from Final Crisis, which despite some polarizing reactions, sold well. Not too long after my original post, DC announced during New York ComicCon that there would be four mini series dealing with the aftermath, including one with the Super Young Team. Sadly, I feel that these mini series should have started coming out the moment Final Crisis was over, instead of May, where the DC Universe will be right in the middle of the next big event, The Blackest Night. That is some pretty bad timing, if you ask me, unless they plan to tie in the Aftermath issues with Blackest Night.

When I made my post about Loeb on the Ultimate titles, two readers (amd098 and Kozmic) mentioned the well-known rumours of Mark Millar eventual return to the Ultimate universe he co-created. As above, during New York ComiCon, Mark Millar announced/confirmed that he would be working on a title called Ultimate Avengers, one of the couple of Ultimate Comics that will launch after the events of Ultimatum, which will end with the cancellation of all current Ultimate comics and some special "Requiem" issues.

In my analysis of Neil Gaiman's latest comic book, Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader, I compared it to one of his previous story arcs on Sandman and concluded that maybe this is Batman's dreams or at least an exploration of said dreams. I am surprised none of my readers mentioned it, but in the very first page the mysterious co-narrator explicitly states that Batman is not dreaming. Woops, my bad. I got so lost in all the excitement of the issue, that I probably forgot that line completely. Can you blame me? Additionally, Kevin over at Comic Book Legacy made an excellent point/conclusion about the kid that is watching cars in crime alley: he is probably the pre-Crisis Jason Todd, known for trying to steal the Batmobile's wheels.

And finally, during the my latest post about NextWave , I mentioned that even if no other NextWave series was ever published the characters would still live on in the Marvel Universe. In Warren Ellis' (very very active) Twitter account had this to say: "Also, I seem to have accidentally had an idea for a new NEXTWAVE comic. Hmm." Additional twitters also had the following messages "NEXTWAVE: STRONTIUM WHORES OF THE ATOMIC LIGHTHOUSE BRIGADE is a title I just thought of that will not be used on a new NEXTWAVE comic." Confusing messages, but then again, this is what Warren Ellis is all about.

NextWave is Love

2009-02-15T03:55:00.008+01:00

To continue with the theme in yesterday's post, where I discussed love in comics, today I will discuss one of the more primal reasons why I love comics. Sure, characterization is important, and a compelling storyline is almost essential for most readers. Most people first fell in love with comics when they were young children, and what caught our eyes the most at that age were huge explosions and mindless violence. NextWave - Agents of H.A.T.E., a 12 issue series from 2006, is basically explosions, mindless violence, taped together by an insanely thin plot. Warren Ellis, the writer of the series, admittedly came up with the idea when drunk, and basks into the decadence of the super-hero genre. Instead of trying to give the readers something deep and thought provoking, it completely embraces the insanity of comic books and created (what I think) is a modern masterpiece of comic books.

The series only lasted a bit more than a year and was never a huge commercial success, with sales number usually in between twenty and thirty thousand units (even with a Civil War tie-in cover). The real success, fueled by Warren Ellis' absurdity and Stuart Immonen's sometimes surreal drawings, was the lasting impact it had on the characters. The team was made up of four rather unpopular heroes (Photon/Monica Rambeau, Machine Man/Aaron Stack, Elsa Bloodstone, and Boom Boom/Tabitha Smith) and one original creation (The Captain) and put them together. The members of NextWave were crude, mean, petty and sometimes downright stupid, constantly bickering and insulting each other, a great departure from their previously heroic personalities. Besides, the out-of-character persona of the protagonists, the story in NextWave also feature flashbacks into other Marvel characters acting oddly, such as Captain America telling Photon to get him dinner and the Celestials calling Machine Man a "total $#!&". From the beginning, it seemed like NextWave would be set outside of regular Marvel continuity (Ellis and Quesada both stated so), but once the series ended and the dust settled, a lot of other creators picked up on the events in NextWave and slowly did their best to make the 616 universe mirror the series.

For example, during Civil War (by Mark Millar and Steve McNiven) we see Monica Rambeau wearing the same trench-coat that she wore during NextWave (and according to the script by Ellis, the coat was part of the uniform of the team)

The whole team appeared in a promotional art/cover for Avengers - The Initiative (right under the "THE"). And in the pages of Civil War - Battle Damage Report, it says that they all have registered with the Super Hero Registration Act.

In a story from X-Men - Manifest Destiny (by James Asmus and Chris Burnham), Tabitha Smith has the airhead and materialistic personality that she had in NextWave and she even claims to have been part of the team (and Beast doesn't know what that is).

Additionally, after the marriage of Black Panther and Storm (by Reginald Hudlin and Scot Eaton), the newlyweds receive a gift from a certain "Kirk" of the Beyond Corp. (one of the antagonists of the NextWave team).

The big winner of the whole series was Aaron Stack, after NextWave his popularity skyrocketed. He appeared in the pages of Marvel Comics Presents (by Ivan Brandon and Niko Henrichon), where it is revealed that he was currently living in the floating city that NextWave stole at the end of the series and he also mentions the part with the Celestials.

Machine Man also appeared in the pages of Ms. Marvel (by Brian Reed and company) where she joined the regular cast of Ms. Marvel's team. In this series, Machine Man solicited, as part of his deal with SHIELD, a Life Model Decoy of the aforementioned Monica Rambeau which he ends up using as his back-up body.

And finally, he was given the main role in the third series of the popular Marvel Zombies franchise (by Fred Van Lente and Kev Walker) where we see more of his now trademarked dislike for the "fleshy ones", especially of the undead kind.

So as you can see, I was not the only one that loved NextWave - Agents of H.A.T.E. Hopefully the higher ups at Marvel will decide to grant us another series, Warren Ellis himself stated that he would like to continue working on the team. And even if that never happens, at least I know that the characters will continue to receive love from all the other writers that also seemed to enjoy the explosions, insults and mindless violence.

Peter and Mary Jane (Or How I Came To Hate Joe Quesada)

2009-02-13T23:43:00.007+01:00

Perhaps hate is a strong word, more along the lines of dislike. Tell the truth, I respect the man for helping Marvel out of bankruptcy, but I find that every time he gets involved in trying to tell the stories for the writers, the outcomes is horrendous. The biggest screw-up in his career, in my humble opinion, was the debacle of One More Day, where Peter Parker sold his marriage with Mary Jane Watson to save his octogenarian aunt from death. It has been more than a year since that happen and I have not bought any single issue or collection of Amazing Spider-Man since then in boycott to what I consider to be incredible lazy and uncreative writing. Am I bitter? Maybe, but I think I have a good reason to do so.

I have always been a fan of Spider-Man ever since I was a kid, but I never really started reading the ongoing comics until the J. Michael Straczynski years. Despite what people think about him and his run on ASM (I think Sins Past was a stupid idea as much as the next guy) one of the best things that JMS did was making Peter Parker grow as a person. While responsibility has always been a tenet of the Spider-Man mythos, during his tenure on the title, he gave Peter Parker something else, stability and maturity: Peter was no longer a freelance photographer, he got a job as an elementary school teacher, he had to finally face Aunt May about his alter-ego, and he worked out the problems and issues him and Mary Jane were having (another writer had previously separated them). During the writer's run, Peter and MJ's relationship went through trials and tribulations, but at the end their love was strong enough to mend all injuries. One More Day's greatest crime was not the fact that it undid the marriage (I'm hardly a "sanctity of marriage" kind of guy), but the fact that it destroyed the long-time relationship that these two characters had over time. They weren't always the perfect happy couple, they argued and sometimes they became jealous of each other, but those are things that all real couples must face at one point or the other. Their interests aren't exactly the same, Peter is probably not the kind to be interested in the modeling world and MJ is probably not going to be cracking open a biochemistry book, but that's how people are in real life too.

One of JMS' points about their relationship was that these characters loved each other so much, that without each other they could not function, and that is something that reverberates with me. I have a lovely wife, Janett, and together we have gone through so much that we both have grown as human beings, because our love has kept us together. When we first started going out, her hair was long and red and I have always been the perpetual nerd, so I would jokingly call her (in what is either really cute or really geeky, depends how you view it) "The MJ to my Peter Parker". In an almost petty way, it feels like Quesada and Marvel took that away (even if we still have the older stories), in order to reverse the character to what it was 30 years ago. What is the message that I am supposed to get from this? Married people are not interesting? That if the devil offered me a really good deal, I should give up my wife for it? Or maybe that I am just not the target audience for Amazing Spider-Man anymore (even though I am not that old)? In that case, I guess then it is not incredible petty of me to decide not to buy the comics anymore.

And to end this post of a happier note, I would also like to wish a very happy Valentine's Day (it already is the fourteenth here, but the blog seems to be on U.S. time) to my wife, who I love very much and who also likes to read my blog. I really did hit the jackpot when I met her, and no editorial mandate is going to take her away from me.

Whatever Happened to the Dream Weaver?

2009-02-13T00:43:00.003+01:00

Out this week is the first part of Neil Gaiman's highly anticipated Batman storyline called "Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader?", which many expected to be a recap of the Dark Knight's whole story. What we got instead is something altogether different, but it's already earning comparisons to Gaiman's previous work in Sandman, specifically "The Wake" (it is a funeral too, after all) and "World's End" (both stories are a gathering of people that tell stories). To me, however, this story reminds and evokes some of the themes that Gaiman presented during "A Game of You", probably one of the least liked (although not exactly disliked) Sandman stories.

It is easy to see why some readers do not like "A Game of You", as I was one of them when I first read the story: on the surface, the plot is basically a fairy tale about a Princess coming back to her land after being gone for a long time, and much has changed. The dream land is filled with magical creatures and fantastical places, but Morpheus and the overreaching plot-line of Sandman plays a very small role for this story (other than the introduction of Thessaly). It feels that Gaiman was more interested in exploring the nature of dreams, how they are affected by our worldview and personality and vice versa, which is a theme that is touched upon many times during the entirety of Sandman. The main character in "A Game of You" is a woman called Barbie that was briefly introduced during the previous storyline as having very vivid and colorful dreams of a fantasy land, and a real life personality to match. After going through a separation with her husband (Ken), Barbie's life becomes exponentially weirder and her attitude and personality go through a drastic change. As a result of this, she no longer dreams and the land she used to visit on a nightly basis goes through unbelievable trials and tribulations. Once Barbie comes back to the dream world, she tries to fix matters with the aid of a handful of anthropomorphic animals, finally facing the adversary that had taken over the land. As the story reaches the end, we learn that while Barbie did not create this dream world (it was Orpheus who did) she did populate it with a mixture of her imagination and memories: the animals, for example, were all childhood toys and the enemy's base was her grandparents summer house.

As I mentioned above, I originally did not like this storyline, but upon a second reading I found it surprisingly more interesting. Some of the stuff that Gaiman describes, such as dreams being a mixture of our memories and completely original notions, rings very close to home for me. I happen to have very vivid (and at times fantastical or weird) dreams, sometimes with recurring themes and places, and I usually remember what happens in them. For example there is a mall or group of shops that I remember being more than once in my dreams but not really an actual memory, even though it has aspects of places I really have been in. Another time, although I do not recall specifics, I remembered in a dream something else that had happened in another dream but had never occurred to me in real life. A couple of years ago I visited Key West and saw a huge fossil jaw of a prehistoric shark, and days later in one of my dreams I was swallowed whole by a shark just like that (I was rescued and survived to tell the tale too). And there's a couple of dreams where I have super powers, I admit it is kind of embarrassing that a grown man has dreams where he finds himself web-slinging like Spider-Man through a city (one of my favorite dreams I've had). What I am trying to say is that Gaiman understands very well how dreams work, and because of that I find "A Game of You" to be very appealing. I understand, as well, that not everyone dreams in the same way and I probably expect that those people did not enjoy this particular story as much as I did.

How does this all relate to Batman again? Maybe this is Gaiman portraying Batman's dreams, which are at points based on reality but quickly evolve into something that we know is not true, to explore the character and all of his history. Dreams do not need to make sense, or abide by the laws of reality, which would explain the conflicting reports of Batman's demise. It is not a very explored aspect of Bruce Wayne's life, and one imagines his dreams to be dreary and painful, while at the same time he lives in a world full of colorful characters, maybe his dreams are equally vivid. I guess I will have to wait to see if this is a dream, but all signs point to "not bloody likely": Batman is talking to a woman, which means it is not Dream of the Endless. The woman, if she is one of Gaiman's Endless, could be either Death, Desire, or Delirium. My money, if it is not Dream somehow having gone through a sex change, is on Delirium. Hopefully we will find out next month when the second part of this story is slated to be released.

An Apology, a Mission and a Plea

2009-02-12T17:10:00.003+01:00

First of all, I would like to apologize because of the lateness of the last two posts. I had to make a last minute interstate trip that threw a monkey wrench into my schedule. I had planned to update from the hotel I was staying at, but I could not get my laptop to connect to the hotel's WiFi. My iPod seemed able to connect, but no way I am writing one of my posts (someone lovingly called my blog a wall of text, and they are mostly right) from that touch screen keyboard. I did finish the entries as soon as I got home, but it was already two days late.

Second, I want to make it my mission to be better prepared for situations like this. I want to have some back-up posts and entries that I could use to post if on a particular day I do not get to finish writing. I do not know what I will do or how, but I will see. Additionally, I want to start promoting this blog on more places. I posted the links on certain forums and whatnot, and I got huge spike in my hits but it seems that those people did not come back for the days after.

And finally, a plea to my apparently loyal readers (yes, all 20 of you). Please keep checking back daily and I would love to get some more comments. I realize that this is kind of faux pas, like when a band you are seeing is asking the crowd to "move around", but I am doing it anyway. I would love to hear more feedback, even if it is to tell me what you would like to see or what you would like me to stop doing ("Stop making your sentences so long!") or just to let me know that you are enjoying what I am doing. Feedback has been all positive so far (and boosts my ego), but I do not believe I could be doing everything right from the get-go. I am also aware that for any given site, only a small fraction of the readers take their time to post a comment.

Oh, and just a little easter egg from this post

Apology
Mission
Plea

AMP! I am so freaking clever!

The Eternal Debate - Conclusion

2009-02-12T00:01:00.001+01:00

The Eternal Debate - Part VI : Final Crisis vs. Secret Invasion (The Story)

2009-02-11T23:16:00.005+01:00

And by eternal, I mean for the past 12 or so months. You could not go anywhere in the Internet (well, at least the sites I frequent) without finding a conversation about either Final Crisis or Secret Invasion. Or both. This year's events from the Big Two felt incredibly long, by design or by circumstances, but they are now officially over (Legion of 3 Worlds notwithstanding), which allows us to look at both events objectively, or at least as objectively as comic book readers can get.

That is where I come in. I want to look at the different aspects of both events, measure them up against each other and see who comes up on top. To do so, I have chosen several categories (or rounds) which will allow me to compare both sides of the 2008 Special Edition Event Coin. If you have not yet read both series in their entirety, there will be spoilers ahead. Oh, yeah, and the point system may or may not be arbitrary or what most people consider fair. You have been warned.

Secret Invasion is leading against Final Crisis 4 - 2 as we reach the final lap of the Eternal Debate.

The Story

Not to undermine the very talented people that contribute the art to the stories, but for many readers, the story is the deal breaker when it comes to purchasing a comic or not. I have heard from many people that they will put up with insulting art as long as the story is good enough. In this post, I will not be re-telling, summarizing or annotating the totality of what happens in either Secret Invasion or Final Crisis, and I will talk about spoilers freely, so I urge you to go read the stories first (and form your own opinion, hopefully). For the purpose of this review, I will only be talking mostly about the events and writing of the main mini series and none of the tie-ins. I understand that both events benefit from reading the tie-ins (more so for Final Crisis, something that I have mentioned in one of my previous posts), but I feel that to be more objective with my review I must judge this from the eye of a casual reader who will only pick up the main event and not shell out the extra money for the tie-ins that Marvel and DC put out.

Secret Invasion, a story apparently long in the making inside the mind of Brian Michael Bendis, was a very good idea but not properly thought or fleshed out. The main idea behind it is that the Skrulls, a shape-shifting race of aliens, want to take over the Earth because one of their religious books claims that it rightfully belongs to them. To do so, they came up with a new technology that allows them to clone the superpowers and appearances (that no earthly means could apparently reveal) of any superheroes that they could get their hands on, and used it to infiltrate various super-teams and organizations of Earth. The Skrulls' plan, which was planned for years, seemingly fails with ease once Reed Richards is freed and their Invasion only lasts one miserable day. The events of Secret Invasion effectively portray how worldwide the invasion is, we see plenty of places around the world face the alien invasion (albeit briefly), even if the majority of the forces and events happen in New York (the home of most super heroes in the Marvel Universe). The problem arises from the fact that this invasion force declared victory (and announced it to the whole world) way too early, before all the heroes were defeated or accounted for. Bendis did not properly evoke the feeling that the Skrull army was victorious, and the lack of the passage of time only made matters worse (as I said, the mini series took 8 months to come out, but only one or two days passed in the story). There were also problems with the power set of the skrulls: the camouflaging effect wasn't explained in the series (you had to read the tie-ins for that) and just how powerful they were (some supposedly had the power of Black Bolt, which even at a fraction of the original, is pretty damn powerful but they could be taken down by Wolverine or Hawkeye). Additionally, the whole skrull armada fell apart the moment the Queen died, which leads me to believe that every one of the skrulls was a foot soldier and there were no commanding officers (even though some were shown in the series). Finally, the series ends with the President of the United States disbanding SHIELD, a United Nations-sponsored organization that is not controlled by one single nation. The plot holes and mistakes range from rather subtle to obvious, but they are still there and they affect the story that Bendis wanted to tell.

Grant Morrison was at helm of writing Final Crisis and it is very easy to tell. The story picks up on a lot of themes that Morrison has written about in the past, such as the nature of stories and the fourth wall in comics (Animal Man), international heroes (New X-Men) and Superman as a symbol of hope (All-Star Superman). The story is dense and full of details to go over and over, as proved by all the sites that provide annotations for the whole event. To provide a summary of the events of Final Crisis would be beyond the scope of this blog and would take me way too long, so I would recommend reading it yourself at least twice. I originally read Final Crisis in the monthly format it came out in and found it extremely disappointing, but as preparations for this blog, I re-read it and found myself liking it more with each additional reading. To say that Final Crisis is without flaw, however, would be an outright lie. First of all, Final Crisis is as not-new-reader-friendly as events can be: to get a full understanding of all the events, characters, and themes you would need a very good knowledge of the DC universe and a good portion of Morrison's previous work (such as Seven Soldiers, which I have not read and lead to me not knowing what Frankestein was doing in the DC universe). Even long time readers claimed to have trouble following the story, even though events are usually used by the Big Two to attract new readers. The writing style, I've seen it referred as "channel-zapping", is supposed to portray how chaotic the events of this crisis are, but I found to it to be detrimental to the story because of how much information the reader is being bombarded. It just feels that there is too much information and too little space to show it all or expand on what we see (for example, Aquaman shows up for one panel and then we know nothing else about it). As previously discussed, the Morrison-penned tie-ins for Final Crisis are very important, so the events shown on the main mini-series seem disjointed or just missing information (like Superman stepping out on Lois and then showing back 3 issues later).

The obvious allegory between Secret Invasion and Final Crisis is that between a good action movie and an ambitious art film. One is aimed to entertain, especially if you turn the suspension of disbelief all the way to eleven, while the other one is a study of certain topics, characters, or situations by the author, and your enjoyment of it is relatively tied to your interest of the topic. One will have you repeating awesome one-liners ("My God has a hammer" or "Nick Fury was right") with your friends and the other one makes you question the real meaning behind certain scenes (like Batman being hit by the Omega sanction or what Superman's wish for a happy ending really meant). Secret Invasion had a wider appeal and was entertaining for what it was, but Final Crisis is something completely different: Morrison told the story he wanted to tell, and it is not meant for everyone. Like I mentioned above, I disliked it at first but the story grew on me after repeated readings while Secret Invasion's repeated readings led to its misgivings becoming more apparent. Because of this, I feel that DC's Final Crisis, and Grant Morrison, wins this final round.

The Eternal Debate - Part V : Final Crisis vs. Secret Invasion (The Art)

2009-02-09T00:14:00.006+01:00

And by eternal, I mean for the past 12 or so months. You could not go anywhere in the Internet (well, at least the sites I frequent) without finding a conversation about either Final Crisis or Secret Invasion. Or both. This year's events from the Big Two felt incredibly long, by design or by circumstances, but they are now officially over (Legion of 3 Worlds notwithstanding), which allows us to look at both events objectively, or at least as objectively as comic book readers can get.

That is where I come in. I want to look at the different aspects of both events, measure them up against each other and see who comes up on top. To do so, I have chosen several categories (or rounds) which will allow me to compare both sides of the 2008 Special Edition Event Coin. If you have not yet read both series in their entirety, there will be spoilers ahead. Oh, yeah, and the point system may or may not be arbitrary or what most people consider fair. You have been warned.

After yesterday's interlude, we now resume the Eternal Debate with the last round being a tie and Secret Invasion leading 3 - 2 against Final Crisis.

The Art

If I am completely honest, I have to admit that I am probably the farthest thing from an artist. Ask me to draw a person and you would probably get a stick figure out of it, I would have no idea how to ink the finished result, and I would also probably struggle to color inside the lines. I remember my wife once saw an old drawing I had to do for school and she pointed out how I have a good understanding of perspective but sadly, I do not have much of anything else in terms of artistic skill. Therefore I feel a bit hypocritical to point out flaws and misgivings in any art, and especially so for comic book artists who work under stressful deadlines and illustrating the ideas of someone else, which is no easy feat. Unless the art is completely distracting or harming the story, I do not feel the need to make a huge deal out of errors or mistakes in it. Luckily, the Big Two always save up the best artists for events like Secret Invasion and Final Crisis.

The art duties for Secret Invasion were handled by the team of Leinil Francis Yu (penciller), Mark Morales (inker), and Laura Martin (colorist). Additionally, Gabriele Dell’Otto provided gorgeous painted covers for the whole mini series. Yu's artwork is full of kinetic energy, the panels are very clear and easy to read, and his work on facial expressions conveys the right emotions (most of the time). The script by Bendis gives Yu plenty of exotic locales to draw, such as the Savage Land and outer space, and a great load of heroes to fill the pages with. There's plenty of huge group shots and double page spreads that Yu uses effectively, channeling the detailed work of George Perez at times. The only complain I have about Yu's artwork is that he has a tendency to make the chin of his male figures very protruding. For characters like Thor and Luke Cage, who have a bigger body type, it is not as noticeable but when he draws it the same way on Spider-Man and Iron Fist, who have a smaller frame, I can't help but notice it. The work of Morales and Martin is incredibly well done, complementing Yu's work greatly. The colors are sometimes a little too bright to the eye, giving a very shiny aspect to materials that shouldn't be so reflective. The ink lines and shadows are rather thick and noticeable, which I like, but might not be to every reader's liking or preference. Overall, the art of Secret Invasion is quite pleasing to the eye and only suffers from minor missteps.

Final Crisis' art was handled by what can only be described as an ensemble of creators (according to Wikipedia): J.G. Jones, Carlos Pacheco, Doug Mahnke (pencillers), Jesus Merino, Christian Alamy, Tom Nguyen, Drew Gerasi, Norm Rapmund, Rodney Ramos, Walden Wong, Dough Mahnke (inkers), Alex Sinclair, Pete Pantazis, Tony Aviña (colorists) and Marco Rudy (the Wikipedia page files him under "Artists" with J.G. Jones, but I am not sure what he did exactly). There is a reason behind this extraordinarily long list of artists: J.G. Jones was originally set to be the main and only penciller of the series, but circumstances caused him to be late and DC decided to bring Pacheco and Mahnke to help him and eventually take over him. By the final issue of the series, Doug Mahnke took over all of the penciller duties (even doing some of his own inks), but because the book was already late, DC did all within its powers (in this case, bringing a number of colorists and inkers) to get the book out on time. J.G. Jones, however, did provide some beautiful covers for the entirety of the series. As for the interior, Morrison's script gave the artists plenty to work with, filling the pages with strange characters and some very particular panel work (somewhat reminiscent of We3). In turn the artists delivered some very memorable scenes such as Superman holding Batman's corpse and Barry Allen making his return. Alex Sinclair, the colorist that worked on the greatest portion of the series, conveyed a world that is at times filled with bleakness and destruction and at times filled with hope and the incredible. There was, however, one very noticeable mishap on the pages of Final Crisis 06, Shilo Norman who was previously shown as being black skinned was colored in a way that made him look Asian. In the end, the biggest feat by the huge art team was to emulate the original artists properly and finish thsis series in a timely fashion.

Both Final Crisis and Secret Invasion featured top notch art by some of the best artists in the medium. There is no denying the fact that Jones, Pacheco, Mahnke and the rest ofthe team delivered some great pages for Final Crisis, but for me the deciding factor for me is the uniformity of the artwork in Secret Invasion. I understand that DC is not at fault here, J.G. Jones himself admitted that it was his fault, and I understand that you can't plan for the unexpected (unless you are Batman). The end result of this was that Final Crisis' ending pages look different than the ones at the begining and I think that harms the flow of the story, especially when you consider this is a mini-series. I feel that at the end of the day, I must reward this round to Marvel and Secret Invasion for the consistent look that was provided by their art team, even if both events had great artists.

Interlude: Loeb On The Ultimate Line

2009-02-07T23:29:00.006+01:00

We interrupt the special programming of "The Eternal Debate" to bring you this news report. Sadly, it has to do with much maligned Jeph Loeb. Rokk , when I started this blog, gave me some friendly and good advice: "Be careful not to become an Internet echo chamber". He is right, it is very easy to be just another snarky jester in the ocean of snarky jesters that is the Internet, but I just read an interview with Jeph Loeb from the New York ComicCon and I face-palmed from the stupidity of this man. Allow me to elaborate, and for that we have to travel all the way back to early 2001...

In 2001, Marvel decided to create a new line of comics: The Ultimate Universe. The whole point of the Ultimate Universe was to re-imagine classic Marvel characters such as Spider-Man, X-Men, Fantastic Four, and the Avengers without any of the continuity baggage that they have been lugging around for the past 40 years. The experiment, at least in the early years, was considered a wild success, it became a popular, commercial, and critical success. The two biggest masterminds behind the new Ultimate Universe were Mark Millar, writing Ultimate X-Men, and Brian Michael Bendis, writing Ultimate Spider-Man. Following the down-to-basics success of these two titles, Marvel expanded the line and created The Ultimates: a re-imagining of Marvel's beloved Avengers. The Ultimates received two mini-series written by Mark Millar where characters like Captain America, Thor, Iron Man, Giant Man, Wasp and Hulk operated as government agents (working for SHIELD) and every one of them had very distinct personalities (especially when compared to their mainstream counterparts). The series was very politically-minded without coming across as downright preachy, entertaining without coming across as just eye-candy, and interesting but very new-reader friendly. I personally loved both mini-series and would recommend them to almost everyone (the only exception being old-school Avengers fans who might not like the new interpretations and their personalities). But then, tragedy struck...

Alright, so maybe I am exaggerating a bit, but Jeph Loeb was giving the helms of a new mini-series concerning the Ultimates. The new series was very, very, very bad. The characters just became cardboard cutouts of their former selves, moving through the motions without any of their previous personalities. Questionable writing is nothing new and something that all comics readers are in someway used to in one way or the other. Jeph Loeb almost completely ignored everything that happened during Millar's run, turning the Ultimates more and more into their original versions in the 616 Marvel Universe:

Ultimate Thor started speaking in "ye olde" speak and carrying a stone hammer instead of the usual battle metal axe/hammer combination he had before.
Ultimate Wolverine and Ultimate Spider-Man make an appearance. At the time, Wolverine and Spider-Man were also part of the New Avengers.
Ultimate Pyro went from being a hero to being a villain.
Ultimate Scarlet Witch lost control of her powers, just like in House of M. Her outfit also resembled her mainstream version.
Ultimate Wasp stopped being Asian (without explanation) and became the de facto leader.
Hank Pym went from using the codename Giant Man to using Yellowjacket instead.

That is just off the top of my head, I am sure there were more disregards for the stories that came before. Of course, this isn't always inherently a bad thing: Alan Moore on his first (or was it second?) issue in his legendary run of Swamp Thing completely changed the character to great results. The problem raises from the fact that Jeph Loeb is no Alan Moore. The writing in Ultimates 3 was as subtle as a bull in a china shop, full of cheap "shocking" moments, and with atrocious dialogue. For some mysterious reason Ultimates 3 sold well (I'm blaming Joe Madueira, the artist), but the series was almost universally panned by critics. Marvel additionally gave Loeb another mini-series called Ultimatum, a continuation of the events in Ultimates, in which many of the original characters are dying left and right and the writing continues to be equally underwhelming. During an interview with CBR, Loeb had this to say:

"The problem became that – specifically pointing to what Bendis was doing on the Avengers – he took some of what Mark [Millar] had done and made them much more dark and unpredictable than they'd ever been before, and that book took off...justifiably. But pretty soon, the line between what went on in the Marvel Universe and what went on in the Ultimate Universe became very blurred, and you didn't have that same unique quality that the Ultimate Universe had when it was first born. So that needed to be addressed. That was what we first set out to do, and I had an idea as to how to do that...called "Ultimatum." "

A fair idea. If the two universes are too similar, they become somewhat redundant and something needs to be changed. The problem rises from something else he said:

"Well, "Ultimates 3" took it out of the political arena and made it closer to what the Avengers originally were. It took place in Tony Stark's world. It was run by Tony Stark, and it was put in a place where the conflicts were internal. The Scarlet Witch was murdered, and everyone reacted to that. The villains they were up against were superhero villains. They were not characters that were recreations or rethinkings of characters that had been in the Marvel Universe."

In case you are not following, Loeb did not like that the Ultimate Universe and the 616 Universe were too similar, so his solution was to make Ultimates 3 as close possibly to the 616 Universe as he could. Flawless logic! To make matters worse, instead of making the Ultimate characters grow to be different, his solution is to kill as many characters as possible and have the survivors deal with that. This is not an incredibly original idea and when you couple it with the fact that his writing is horrendous, I fear for the future of the Ultimate line. If anything, at least I know that I am not the only one that feels this way. In an unrelated interview , Mark Millar was talking about the possibility of other writers exploring the world he created (much like he co-created the Ultimate Universe) in the pages of Old Man Logan:

"One thing I have noticed sometimes is that whenever something is successful – and this is at DC and at Marvel – then there's always a cheap, shoddy follow up by the wrong creative team usually. And then there's an even worse creative team to come and follow them. And then the thing just dies on its arse."

Well, there you have it, my personal rant is over. We now return you to your scheduled program.

The Eternal Debate - Part IV : Final Crisis vs. Secret Invasion (The Tie-Ins)

2009-02-07T00:46:00.005+01:00

And by eternal, I mean for the past 12 or so months. You could not go anywhere in the Internet (well, at least the sites I frequent) without finding a conversation about either Final Crisis or Secret Invasion. Or both. This year's events from the Big Two felt incredibly long, by design or by circumstances, but they are now officially over (Legion of 3 Worlds notwithstanding), which allows us to look at both events objectively, or at least as objectively as comic book readers can get.

That is where I come in. I want to look at the different aspects of both events, measure them up against each other and see who comes up on top. To do so, I have chosen several categories (or rounds) which will allow me to compare both sides of the 2008 Special Edition Event Coin. If you have not yet read both series in their entirety, there will be spoilers ahead. Oh, yeah, and the point system may or may not be arbitrary or what most people consider fair. You have been warned.

This is day four of the Eternal Debate, with Secret Invasion taking a lead of 2-1 against Final Crisis.

The Tie-ins

Ask any comic book fan what three aspects of their hobby frustrates him or her more than anything and they will probably tell you the following: continuity (and the disregard for it), volumes (deciding what volume a given comic book is part of) and useless tie-ins, almost always stemming from big events such as Secret Invasion and Final Crisis. Depending on who you ask, and how cynical that person happens to be, tie-ins are either a shameless money grab by the Big Two trying to cash in on the popularity of big events or just a chance for other writers to explore themes from said big events. The truth is that they are probably a bit of both, but there is no denying that some tie-ins are actually very good while others are almost completely useless and only partially related to the main event. The amount of tie-ins in the past year for the two events I'm reviewing is incredible, according to my hand count on Wikipedia, there were more than twenty Final Crisis and around one hundred or so (holy $#!&) Secret Invasion tie-ins.

Final Crisis had a smaller set of tie-ins that were for the most part released as mini-series and one-shots, the most notable exception being the tie-in in Batman's title that were also part of the highly publicized R.I.P. storyline. One of the most exceptional aspects of the Final Crisis tie-ins was that Grant Morrison wrote five of them, and these issues played a very big part to understanding the events of Final Crisis (Morrison himself has released a reading order , and his tie-ins are indeed there). Of course, this is a double edged sword because there is a huge amount of comic readers that did/do not purchase all of the tie-ins, either because of event fatigue or the dwindling economy and shrinking wallets. According to the sales numbers, only about one out of two people that bought Final Crisis 03 also bought the Superman Beyond 01 tie-in, meaning that there's a good portion of the readership that is missing a chapter in their Final Crisis storyline. To make matters worse, the hardcover and paperback collections of Final Crisis are being released as two parts (the main event and a companion book), it almost seems that they are purposely trying to do the opposite of what Morrison says. While the Morrison-written tie-ins are almost essential to understanding the story, the rest have been only tangentially related to the main event but at the same time overall enjoyable (most of them by Geoff Johns and Greg Rucka). As I mention in the introductory paragraph, there is still one tie-in that has not ended, Legion of 3 Worlds, which is kind of ridiculous when you consider the events in this mini-series happen before the events of Final Crisis.

Marvel opted for a different approach for their Secret Invasion tie-ins: they seemed to have thrown everything at the wall and hoped that it would stick. Almost every Marvel ongoing series felt the repercussions of the Skrull invasion in their pages, while the ones that were in the middle of an important story arc were given a special mini-series (such as Fantastic Four, Thor and Spider-Man). Looking at this from a marketing point-of view, this is a genius move from Marvel's side because it forces almost every one of their readers into reading a part of the event. The problem with dealing with such a huge amount of tie-ins is that the end-result is a mixed bag of stories ranging from good, such as Guardians of the Galaxy, to bad, like X-Factor (a title that has only suffered every time it gets dragged into an event). In addition to the above-mentioned tie-ins, there were also several one-shots and special mini-series to further showcase just how global this invasion was. The Secret Invasion tie-ins took place in several locales around the world: Washington (Thunderbolts), San Francisco (X-Men), United Kingdom (Captain Britain and MI13), Wakanda (Black Panther), and even the moon (Secret Invasion - Inhumans). The Black Panther's Secret Invasion tie-in is my personal favorite of the whole bunch; written by Jason Aaron, we not only see the Skrulls in very different light (as soldiers who are just caught in a war and want to head home), we also see the Black Panther deal with the heavy burdens of being a ruler of a land while at the same time battling the Skrulls in a way that would make The God of Prep-Time proud.

DC and Marvel took different approaches to their big event's tie-ins this year. I (obviously) have not read them all, but in sheer terms of quantity Marvel would have won this round. Even if the results weren't that good, the Secret Invasion tie-ins really did help to convey the global (and universal) scale of the Skrull invasion in the Marvel Universe. On the other hand, some tie-ins felt very forced or useless and just harmed the ongoing storyline of some titles. The Final Crisis titles aimed for quality over quantity, with each tie-in focusing on very specific parts of the DC Universe such as the LEGION, Flash, Batman and Checkmate. The only fault (and sadly, it's a big one) that I can find with them is what I mentioned above: if the tie-ins are fundamental to understanding the main story, then they should have been part of the event. I feel that both of the Big Two, while having vastly different approaches, handled the tie-ins in a successful manner with only minor missteps. Therefore, this round is declared a draw and each company adds a point to the scoreboard.

PS: I realize I should have done the post about the tie-ins before the post about the spin-offs, just because it would have flowed better thematically. It's only my fourth day in the blogosphere, I'm allowed to make mistakes.

The Eternal Debate - Part III : Final Crisis vs. Secret Invasion (The Spin-Offs)

2009-02-05T23:46:00.008+01:00

The Eternal Debate - Part II : Final Crisis vs. Secret Invasion (The Return)

2009-02-05T00:41:00.005+01:00

The Eternal Debate - Part I : Final Crisis vs. Secret Invasion (The Death)

2009-02-04T00:58:00.008+01:00

In the end, both Wasp and Martian Manhunter were tricked into oblivion by the antagonists. Martian Manhunter went down early in the event, as a means to establish how evil/resourceful/hardcore Libra was. With his dying breath, however, he not only gave the bad guys the biggest scare of their lives, he also sent one last telepathic message to his friends who would become his caretakers. The Wasp, however, almost killed all of her friends and someone else had to come to the rescue. I guess this round goes to MartianManhunter and Final Crisis. But...

DC, in an incredibly stupid marketing move, revealed the figures for the upcoming Blackest Night event. The event is going to feature the Black Lanterns, formerly dead people brought back to life, and guess who is there? That's right, everyone's favorite Martian is back mere months after his death, in the company's next big event. Comics already get a bad reputation for their revolving door policy on the death of characters, and DC has just affirmed it even more so. Wasp's death was also suspiciously ambiguous: with no body to be recovered, a future writer could very easily turn back her death in the future, I have to respect Marvel a bit more for not immediately returning one of their characters back to life. So this round goes to Secret Invasion, because DC shoot their own foot with Martian Manhunter's return.