It’s been a weird week for comics. You’ve got Mark Millar’s fantasies being reported as possibilities, and when reality intrudes, fans start complaining that DC - who weren’t even involved - are creating injustices across Hollywood (Personally, if Mark’s got enough spare time to write a movie, maybe he can pick up a pencil and help One More Day reach some kind of conclusion before the end of this year. Remember when this was announced as a weekly series? Those were the days of optimism and happy readers…), and DC announcing the first 10 contestants for a year-long Zudacomics.com contract while also announcing one of the original Batman writers, Jerry Robinson, as their latest creative consultant. Are they looking to the future or the past…?

Alongside the first 10 contestants, DC also announced that Jeremy Love was the first of six “immediate winners” of a Zuda contract, with his new strip Bayou. Love talked to the mothership about what this brave new frontier meant to him:

I don’t really see working with Zuda as all that different than a print comic. Working in 4:3 screens is a challenge at first. I looked at a lot of Sunday newspaper strips and used that readjust my brain. Each page is like a Sunday comic. The biggest advantage is being able to control the pacing because a reader can’t just flip through the pages.

On the print side of DC, newcomer Sterling Gates was feeling a lot more excited about his own breakthrough:

I called my mom way, way early in the process and told her I was going to be doing some comics stuff. She said, “Oh, that’s amazing. Your father would be so proud of you, God rest his soul.” But I didn’t tell her anything after that because I knew it would be a much bigger impact if one day she opened the door to a Fed Ex box full of comics with my name on them. And so, I’ve neglected to tell her anything at all about it. So, no one tell her.

Equally full of vim and vigor, Si Spurrier was only too happy to talk about his upcoming Silver Surfer series for Marvel:

This is going to sound really crazy, given that he’s an all-powerful alien on a flying surfboard, but I find I can believe in the Surfer so much more than a lot of other properties out there. For me, a lot of the morality and motivation behind certain characters (naming no names) is dubious at best and idiotic at worst, whereas there’s something fundamentally honest about the way the Surfer treats the universe. He’s not some overmuscled idiot spouting platitudes about justice, but an achingly lonely wanderer who’s been disappointed again and again by the petty, violent and pointless acts that so-called “intelligent life” inflicts upon itself. There’s enough of the Otherworldy Guru inside him to recognize the potential we each have, and enough of the man he once was still lurking in his soul to get royally ____ed-off when we shoot ourselves in the foot.

Norrin would never use a word that gets censored on the main site, Simon. Just remember that.

(Artist for the series, Tan Eng Huat also appeared to talk about the book. I think this is what’s called a “publicity push”.)

Elsewhere on the site, thoughts were along similar lines to Mark Millar’s… Namely, switching mediums. Sure, you had Tomm Coker talking about his The Ride oneshot, or Cliff Meth and Rufus Dayglo on their IDW mini Snaked - you even had Gary Frank talking up his forthcoming Action Comics run by saying that he was on the book for the foreseeable future, which probably means he’ll be gone within six months - but look what else was happening: Steve Mumford talking about his illustration and essay-filled Baghdad Journal! Shaun Tan interviewed about his storybook The Arrival! Even comic great Walt Simonson is working on a cross-media adaptation of World of Warcraft! What the hell is going on?

Thankfully, novelist Junot Diaz was onhand (twice - the interview started here) to remind us all of how little respect the real world affords us comic people:

I think the problem is that when you see literary people sort of dabbling in comic books, it’s kind of uni-directional. In other words, we literary types can go dabble in comic books, but it doesn’t change the fact that we’re still considered “high literary” writers. We can go through and rummage through this material and talk about supervillains, and we’ll still get nominated for Pulitzers and other awards.

Now…the same thing really ain’t true when you’re a comic book artist. Let’s say you’re a comic book artist, you draw superhero comics. It’s not like your average Superman artist (at least at this moment) going to gain mainstream literary acceptance doing comic books. In other words, I dream of a day when the guy who’s writing the Hulk is up for a Pulitzer, and not just the literary writer who jumps in and writes a novel about the Hulk.

It’s almost as if the literary writers have an American passport, and we can go into the third world of comic books any time we want, and we can come back fine. But comic book writers are like holding passports from North Korea, and when they try to enter the pearly gates of the high literary nation, they’re always stopped and blocked and stripped and denied access.

It’s an interesting thing. I think this kind of mashup between high and low culture is good, but I don’t want anybody to hide the privilege and the power that one has over the other. Michael Chabon writes a book about comic books and everyone’s on his jock, but Michael Chabon is never going to be competing with the poor guy who’s writing Sinestro Corps for an award of high literary merit. And I’m like, “Why not?”

Thankfully, grocery stores are willing to help us. And not just grocery stories - internet auction sites will take our money and then give a little to comic-related charities, as well.

If you’re as conflicted about this week as I am, don’t worry; the New York Comic-Con is already announcing their first guests of next year’s show, which just goes to show that hiring that Show Manager wasn’t such a bad idea after all. Maybe by that time, One More Day will have finished.

Nah, probably not…

This entry was posted on Sunday, October 28th, 2007 at 9:38 am and is filed under 'Rama Rampage, Art and Design, Books, Comic Books, Comic Strips, Conventions, Creators, DC Comics, Events, IDW, Image, Industry, Internet, Interviews, Marvel, News & Views. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.