Owner: The Four Color Media Monitor URL:http://fourcolormedmon.blogspot.com/ Join Date: Thu, 10 Aug 2006 13:59:42 -0500 Rating:1 Site Description: The idea of this blog is to study how the mainstream media does its coverage of comic books, and to see what's being done right or wrong in how they report about comic book related news. Site statistics:Click here
Beware of the (returning) Onslaught! 2006-12-07 21:10:00 I almost forgot about this, but it appears that Onslaught
, one of Marvel's bummer ideas from earlier, is coming back after vanishing a decade ago. The exact title of this miniseries is Onslaught Reborn. And uh oh, it looks like it just went to press a few days ago. And double uh oh, it looks like Rob Liefeld is the artist! Gee, what a very big shame, since the artwork for Scarlet Witch on the cover, by Michael Turner, sure is hot. But if this miniseries is intended to pay homage to a gigantic dud from the late 90s, and even goes so far as to employ one of the worst artists/writers in comicdom, then no way am I ever going near this item. Read more:Beware
Not quite a talented trio 2006-12-04 20:50:00 The Philadelphia Daily News talks about Geoff Johns's, Richard Donner's and Adam Kubert's take on Action Comics:
When it was announced that DC superstar writer Geoff Johns and "Superman: The Movie" director Richard Donner were teaming up to write the Man of Steel's comic book adventures, most fans were giddy with glee.Well, I'll hand it to them there, that they admit that it was most fans, which probably means not all. Because no, I can't say I'm one of those who looked forward to this run. Not after what Johns did with the Turtle in the pages of the Flash, Captain Carrot's Zoo Crew in the pages of Teen Titans, and couple of other things to boot. Put another way, I've lost faith in Johns as a writer, because I realize he's no different, and thus, no better, than a lot of other recent writers.
Is it any wonder I can't get as excited about Johns' and Donner's run on Action Comics as I'd like to be?
Will the madlateness never end? 2006-12-02 20:52:00 For Civil War, apparently not:
Marvel Comics has confirmed for Newsarama that the on-sale date of Civil War #6 has been moved to January 3rd, two weeks later than the previously announced on-sale date of December 20th, given when Marvel originally informed retailers and readers issues #4-6 of the mega-selling limited series would not ship on their originally solicited dates, along with the necessary delays of Civil War related tie-in titles timed to the release of the main mini-series.
Marvel also informed Newsarama that Civil War #7, originally solicited after the announced delays of issues #4-6 for a 1/17/07 on-sale, will remain on January's schedule and is now scheduled for a 1/31 release.
Unlike the previous schedule changes, these changes do not affect many Civil War tie-in issues. Only Punisher War Journal #2 will be delayed one week until January 3rd, to time it to the release of Civil War #6.Right. Everything must be timed only soooooo perfectly, to coincide with something th
Third edition of the Comic Book Carnival 2006-12-02 17:01:00
Welcome to the December 7, 2006 edition of the comic book carnival. Again, I'm posting the results a few days early, this time because on Thursday, I'll be going on a day trip to the city of Acco, and have no idea if I'll have time to post it on time then! So anyway, here's the latest:
Alvin presents Alvin's Art posted at How to draw Anime/Manga. "Learn how to draw Anime/Manga!"
Hube presents Hypothetical "Bullet Points" of modern comics writers posted at The Colossus of Rhodey.
Googum presents Random Happenstance posted at Random Happenstance.
Adam Warlock presents Civil War 5: Yawn. posted at Photon Torpedoes.
India Uncut presents RIP, Dave Cockrum posted at India Uncut.
Hube presents Dave Cockrum dies posted at The Colossus of Rhodey.
CAMB presents
New Teen Titans #s 39-40 and Tales of the Teen Titans #s 41-44 and Annual #3: "The Judas Contract" posted at Comic
s Ate My Brain.
Adam Warlock presents Farewell, Dave Cockrum 1943-2006 posted at Photon Torpedoes.
Conan Read more:Carnival
Dave Cockrum and Jerry Bails, RIP 2006-11-29 08:14:00 A little late, but, as the news has reported, Dave Cockrum and Jerry
Bails, artist of the X-Men and founding father of contemporary fandom, respectively, have passed away. Here's an article about Cockrum, and another one about Bails. Both of them will be very missed.
Update: Michelle Malkin also misses Cockrum, and Variety has some more news about Bails too.
For heaven's sake, make up your mind! 2006-11-27 10:28:00 I've complained many many times about fluff-writing, and will keep on doing so for as long as I have to. This can even include op-ed columns in which the MSM journalists writing them make it sound as though they find faults on the one hand, yet still fawn over the item in question anyway. Here's an excerpt from one of the articles of the comics columnist of the Colorado Springs Gazette on his own blog in which he pretty much does just that:
"Justice League of America" No. 3 came out yesterday. I'm enjoying Brad Meltzer's run, though I'm frankly more than a bit lost about what's going on. And after three issues of Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman sitting around arrogantly picking out new members of the JLA while other heroes are busy battling menaces that I guess are all related, I'm ready for the "Big Three" to join the action.
I'm still not sure how I feel about Meltzer's choices for the team, either. I'm pretty unfamiliar with Vixen and I'm not a particul
Shazam's new writer is the wrong one for the job 2006-11-27 10:06:00 The Columbus Dispatch writes about Judd Winick, overrated writer he is, taking up the assignment of writing "The Trials of Shazam" in an attempt to update Capt. Marvel's Billy Batson for the 21st century. "Come on! People call him the Big Red Cheese," says comic-book writer Judd Winick."Even Aquaman doesn't have a disparaging nickname."
Nevertheless, when Winick started writing for DC Comics years ago, his goal was to tackle one of the oldest franchises in comics - Captain Marvel.
And now he's getting his chance with "The Trials of Shazam," a 12-part miniseries that sets out to redefine the character for a new generation of readers. "Trials" has been a hit for DC so far.
The redefining includes a new costume, a different purpose and, DC hopes, more prestige.
Captain Marvel is the everoptimistic hero with a yellow thunderbolt on his chest who has been around since 1939. DC has tried for years to draw reader interest to the character but with little success.And the reason why this m
Black Canary may not be missing from Birds of Prey for long 2006-11-26 16:43:00 The Philadelphia Daily News has an article about Birds
of Prey (found via Chuck Dixon on his own board), which now reached its 100th issue. Regarding Dinah Lance leaving the team, they say:
This reached its apex in the first arc in DC's One Year Later event (Nos. 92-95), which had BlackCanary
and deadly assassin Lady Shiva live in each other's worlds - with Black Canary learning how to become the deadliest of the deadly while Shiva learned how to fight without killing. The arc ended with Black Canary deciding she did not want to take the final step that would make her a killer like Shiva or even as dark as Batman. To top it off, she took in a girl named Sin who was going to be trained to be the next Shiva, a decision that led to her leaving the team in issue No. 99 so she could be a mother to the child.
Issue No. 100 has a backup story featuring Black Canary (which also serves to give the lowdown on the characters for newer readers), so it is possible the heart of the team will not
Storm may have needed a development, but not the mohawk haircut 2006-12-09 17:35:00 On Howling Curmudgeons, we find the following argument about Ororo Munroe's going punk mohawk
during the mid-80s:
...the linked-to letter mentioned Storm
as having been a victim of two of the all-too-common and all-too-pathetic examples of female character abuse in mainstream superhero comics: uglification and depowerment (uglification when she went punk with the leather and Mohawk look, and depowerment when she got zapped by Forge's mutant-depowerer gun). ...
I was still a youngster when those issues came out (bought "em off the ol' Maverick Market magazine rack). I was pretty horrified by Storm's punk look at the time - I was offended because I thought the look was ugly, and because I hated the idea of the creators "arbitrarily" changing a character from the way they were "supposed" to look to something ugly.
And yet, even at the time on a certain level I realized that it made sense for the character. Up to that point Storm's main character bits were being overly
Series that may not be compiled in trades, worth campaigning for so they will be 2006-12-09 20:44:00 One of the ways to rescue DC Comics from the current desecration is to campaign for series, limited and ongoing, to be published in trades if they haven't been.
By this, here's a few of the items I'm thinking of. Ones that were published circa 1983-84, and were very well regarded in their time (in fact, there's quite a lot of very notable output during the very time I cite, and what I talk about below is probably just half of it).
Sword of the Atom. this for me is the miniseries I want to see being published in trade paperback format. It's a very recommended item from the mid 80s, a four-part miniseries and three specials, published between 1983-88, that developed a well written change in life for Ray Palmer and Jean Loring. And it could help to show the real story that went on between the two when they got divorced back then, and show why it was Jean who left Ray, and not the other way around, as Identity Crisis faked it. It should be pretty easy to put together into a 17-20 Read more:campaigning
, compiled
Elongated Man, rendered unrecognizable 2006-12-11 06:42:00 Monitor Duty offers another explanation why, even if pamphlet issues weren't becoming as expensive as they are these days, I still wouldn't buy 52. Because
Ralph [Dibny] as he is being written just doesn't even seem like the character I knew. He's almost mean, and terribly self-centered.And there we have it. Where Ralph belongs is in the comedy genre, not in some money-fleecer where he's turned unrecognizable from what his characterization should really be like and was to begin with in the Silver Age. It's really sad how DC missed a big chance to feature Ralph and Sue Dibny in a miniseries where they could go the slapstick adventure route again, instead turning them inside out in tune with what they think should be tone of comic books now.
As if that weren't bad enough, it would seem as if Ralph offers a minor the chance to drink alcohol:
Panel 7. Ralph offers the flask to Wonder Girl, and she sniffs it and says, "Eeew. No." So it must be something awful. Great. So Ralph's glug
A surprising revelation about Dazzler's history 2006-12-11 22:46:00 I found a Wikipedia entry on Alison Blaire that featured the following data on Marvel's mutant singer:
Dazzler: 1981-1985
Dazzler proved a success, largely due to guest-starring several key Marvel Comics characters in its first few issues: Spider-Man, The Human Torch, Dr. Doom, Galactus, The Hulk, The X-Men, and Klaw were just a few of the several guest-stars who placed Dazzler squarely into the Marvel Universe. Dazzler herself also guest-starred in Marvel titles, such as X-Men, The Avengers, and the Marvel crossover, Contest of Champions.
The series, however, was not free from critique. Several readers disapproved of the "real life" focus of Dazzler, including the focus on "soft plots" -- career, family, relationships -- rather than action-based and more traditional superhero plot devices. Dazzler's "superhero" outfit was her performance outfit, which also serves as a major disconnect from the superhero staples of the day. Years later, DeFalco reflected on these criticisms as an i
Martin Nodell, RIP 2006-12-13 17:10:00
The co-creator of Green Lantern back in the Golden Age has passed away at age 91 (the other creator, if I'm correct, was Bill Finger):
MIAMI (AP) — Martin
Nodell, the creator of Green Lantern, the comic book superhero who uses his magical ring to help him fight crime, has died. He was 91.Nodell died at a nursing home in Muskego, Wis., on Saturday of natural causes, his son Spencer Nodell told The Associated Press on Tuesday. He previously lived in West Palm Beach.
Nodell was looking for a new idea for a comic book in 1940 when he was waiting for a New York subway and saw a train operator waving a lantern displaying a green light, said Maggie Thompson, senior editor of Comics Buyer's Guide.
Nodell imagined a young engineer, Alan Scott, a train crash survivor who discovers in the debris an ancient lantern forged from a green meteor. Scott constructs a ring from the lamp that gives him super powers, and becomes a crime fighter.
He brought his drawings and story lines to All-American
Is this the reason why DC spat on the Silver Age Atom? 2006-12-14 17:11:00 If this article in The Jewish Week has anything to it, then one could certainly argue that DC may have been more discriminatory than one would think:In "Marvel Comics Holiday Special" (1993), green-haired, red Spandex-clad superhero Doc Samson returns to his childhood yeshiva to tell the story of Chanukah to the school's young Jewish students. In "Justice League of America" No. 188 (1981), the tiniest Jewish superhero, the Atom, celebrates Chanukah with his superhero friends and experiences his Chanukah miracle: when the team's life-support system fails, the oxygen supply lasts long enough to make the repairs that save them. Chanukah is indeed a time for superheroes.I don't know if Ray Palmer (and Jean Loring) has ever truly been identified as Jewish (Al Rothstein, Nuklon/Atom Smasher of Infinity Inc. and JSA has), though as this item from the Orthodox Union says:From DC's largest hero, to the smallest: the Atom may be Jewish. Sure, he was married in a church, but in Jus Read more:Silver
"Red Arrow"? 2006-12-14 21:04:00 DC releases some new action figures, one being of Roy Harper, and it's called Red Arrow
.
If this is supposed to indicate that they're changing Roy's code name from Arsenal to something that sounds a lot less appealing, sorry, but I'm not buying, and I hereby voice my objections.
Arsenal is one of the coolest codenames for a superhero around, and that's what Roy should have.
They want us to tolerate the abnormal, the perverse, the sick 2006-12-17 06:44:00 Not to mention the character destruction. In Broken Frontier's interview with Geoff Johns from last month, there appears to be a really unimpressive message being sent that we're supposed to tolerate
that Alan Scott's son, Obsidian, was "outed" as homosexual in Manhunter, while at the same time we're supposed to believe that conservatism is bad:
BF: New member Obsidian was recently revealed as being gay. As his father, Green Lantern Alan Scott, is from an earlier, more conservative generation, will this be a source of conflict?
GJ: Alan's been around. He's seen a lot. Maybe he didn't expect it necessarily but he can accept it. If he can accept The Spectre as an avenging ghost, I think he can accept a gay son.
Translation: his son is mentally ill, and needs therapy and counseling, yet it's implied that Scott is supposed to just grin and bear it, and not do anything to help his son out of the mind-jam, because, as decreed by TPTB, and some of the industry insiders, this is h
The Brave and the Bold is now returning 2006-12-17 08:17:00 The 1955-83 anthology series that, in its latter years, became more of a Batman-related anthology (but was still one of the best books around), is now being revived. But, given what DC's done to its books in the past two years, that's why I simply must keep my hopes on this revival to a minimum, even if George Perez is going to be drawing some of the first issues. Read more:Brave
DC's sales really are sliding into freefall 2006-12-17 18:17:00 PW's The Beat took another look at DC's sales results a few weeks ago, and it looks like a lot of the high hopes they may have had sure aren't as high as they might've hoped. I'll take a look at a few of the things they have to say in turn. Of all the books they've put out, it seems that 52 is doing the best of all. I'm really not happy about that, not just because the stories and plots, even at a glance, don't look like anything great. And, as the Beat contributor says here:
Reportedly, a weekly follow-up series is already in the pipeline, so it seems that DC are viewing the book's frequency as a major factor in its success.In all due fairness to the consumer, I gotta say, nice going there, letting them fleece you of your money over what already looks like a big nothing. As I may have argued earlier, from the looks of things, they sure do seem to be dragging everything out more than need be.
On the Flash, sales are not good:
Flash keeps shedding units at an alarming rate, an
Happy Hanuka to everyone! 2006-12-18 07:52:00 A little late, but, lemme wish a Happy
Hanuka week to everyone
. There may even be a comics convention held over in Tel Aviv for the holiday on Wednesday, and I'll be trying to go there to tour around.
Our troops are getting copies of a New Avengers special 2006-12-18 20:23:00 The Dallas Morning News reports that Marvel is sending free copies of "The New Avengers
: Letters Home" to servicemen in Iraq and elsewhere:
Copies of a free, special-edition issue of Marvel Comics' "The New Avengers" will be available to U.S. servicemen, retirees and their families beginning this week at worldwide military PX and BX facilities.
It's the fourth time that Dallas-based Army and Air Force Exchange Service has teamed up with Marvel to produce an exclusive military-only comic.
"The New Avengers: Letters Home," a 36-page comic, features patriotic hero Captain America working with the Silver Surfer, Ghost Rider and the Punisher when his regular teammates are away for the holidays. The superheroes band together to stop the evil Hydra organization when it takes over a military communications satellite and threatens to stop troops' e-mail messages from reaching their loved ones.
[...]
Jim Skibo, AAFES director of trade promotion management, said about 1 million copies of the s
Triangle interview with Scott McCloud 2006-12-20 18:45:00 The Triangle, a publication of Drexel University, interview
s artist Scott
McCloud. First, here's a good part:
The Triangle: What influenced you to pursue a career in comics, and how did you get interested in comics in the first place?
Scott McCloud: I wasn't interested in comics as a little kid, but I had a friend in junior high school named Kurt Busiek, who is also making comics professionally today. Back in junior high, he kept telling me I should check out some of his collection, and eventually it wore down my resistance, and I started reading them. It was less than a year after that that I decided I wanted to draw comics professionally.Wow, so he knew Kurt Busiek in his youth. That's impressive.
On the other hand, I must, well, partially disagree with him on the following:
s: How would you say that comic books and the comic medium have changed since you got started? And do you think it has evolved for the better?
SM: I think it has evolved for the better, and I'm very optimisti
The next comics writer to open his own blog... 2006-12-21 10:42:00 Is Len Wein, whose blog is called WeinWords. Wein was one of the group of writers who began their careers while in their teens, at almost the same time as Marv Wolfman did during the late 60s.
Hat tip: PW's The Beat.
Hardin Burnley, RIP 2006-12-21 10:20:00 We've lost another great influential artist, Hardin (Jack) Burnley, one of the first artists for the Man of Steel and co-creator of Ted Knight, Starman. From the Daily Progress of Charlottesville, Virginia: Hardin "Jack" Burnley, the artist who made visible the Man of Steel's inner strength and provided the prototype portrait for a universe of comic book heroes, died Tuesday in Albemarle County. He was 95.Burnley was the first person to draw Superman, Batman and Robin other than their creators.His drawing of the three heroes for the cover of an issue of "World's Fair Comics" in 1940 marked the first time the crime fighters appeared together in public. He was also the first to carefully outline the caped crusaders' muscle structures, setting the style for hundreds of heroes who followed."Just the fact that the creators let him take over says a lot," said Beau Eichling, owner of Atlas Comics in Rio Hill shopping center. "The extra ripples and muscles is kind of the c
Jerry Bails' Who's Who in American Comic Books 2006-12-21 10:08:00 Through the Grand Comic
s Database, I learned that the late Jerry
Bails put together a whole index site of Who's Who in American
Comic Books
. It's simply marvelous, with whole pages featuring alphabetical lists of writers, artists, colorists, editors, publishers, etc. We owe Bails many thanks for working on this project.
Who dominates the industry today 2006-12-22 14:18:00 I was looking over this post at CWR, wondering why the industry
is unfriendly to women, where a commentor said:
I was recently thinking about why most comic books and their writers and artists are so awful and came up with the same conclusions you did for why the industry is so unfriendly to women. Many (though not all) of the men working in the industry grew up on comics and don't seem to know much else, while talent in other professions tend to have worked in a professional capacity in a variety of ways, whether it be in journalism, teaching or corporate copy writing or design. Very rarely is this the case with comics. Plus it being such an insular world, mediocre talents like Brian Michael Bendis or Frank Miller are considered the cream of the crop and receive award after award, whereas in any other profession, they might not even be able to earn a living.Well, that's a reasonable assumption, but wrong. In more ways than one.
A closer look at what the picture is like today would
Recommend Site To A Friend
