Er, you do know Hancock wasn’t a documentary, right?: Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Annette John-Hall on her favorite superhero. Who is it? Here’s a hint: He comes from Philly.
“There aren’t stories where Thomas the Tank Engine turns into a vampire”: Well if there were, I’d totally read that book or watch the DVD. Noah Berlatsky discusses superhero-decadence in relation to a very specific personal example—his young son being frightened by a comic featuring a vampire Batman. Berlatsky raises an interesting question that I know from experience is an awful touchy subject among a lot of super-hero comic readers. Are these children’s characters or not? Because DC and Marvel both use the exact same characters in books and products geared toward different audiences. That is, you can read Batman in Super Friends or a Doug Moench/Kelley Jones vampire comic; you can read Thor in an Essential or a Marvel Adventures comic or in his Max miniseries series where he’s knocking the heads off of rampaging Viking zombies. Please don’t get me started on DC’s marketing of Captain Marvel and the Marvel Family. It’s always struck me as odd that the only characters in either of these companies’ catalogs that are specifically marketed to a single age group are the Vertigo characters. I’d argue that there’s a far greater gulf between Super Friends and, say, Identity Crisis than between Identity Crisis and Swamp Thing or Hellblazer, for example. Berlatsky isn’t necessarily pissed at DC Comics or the comic shop owner or anything—he specifically mentions that it’s up to him to keep an eye out for what his son’s perusing—but it serves as an interesting real world example of something a lot of us usually just talk about in the hypothetical.
“Why not Wildstorm?”: Jeff Parker rounds up a dozen positive reviews of his new series with Tom Folwer, Mysterius The Unfathomable, and addresses a recurring question about the book—why it’s at Wildstorm at all. Says Parker:
The short answer is “because Senior Editor Ben Abernathy asked Tom and I what we would like to do.” But I don’t know how to address people who feel WS is supposed to do only post-Watchmen superhero stories. Maybe… they’d like to try other things? I think that’s it’s a question that doesn’t demand being asked- a publisher wants to expand their base beyond superheroes into other genres. Should we look a gift horse in the mouth or give it some carrots and encourage it to keep pulling?
That’s certainly fair. I guess the question probably shouldn’t be posed to Parker or Fowler, but to Wildstorm, and maybe not of Mysterius, but of the rest of the line. The imprint remains a pretty confused brand, splitting its attention about equally between Wildstorm “universe” books and spin-offs of video games and TV shows, with seemingly random books like Mysterius and Storming Paradise appearing now and then. At any rate, don’t let the fact that Wildstorm is publishing it keep you from checking out Mysterius #1; I agree with the other eleven people who gave the book pretty high praise.
Spider-Man: Threat, menace or hero?: I passed on Dark Avengers #1 last week, since my need for Avengers books was already being met by the existing ones, but I have been enjoying reading folks like Paul O’Brien and this Snell character trying to make sense out of Norman Osborn’s marketing of his new team, which includes at least one former supervillain turned publicly perceived good guy (Venom) posing as a former superhero turned publicly perceived bad guy (Spider-Man). The increasingly experienced comic book virgin Nina Stone dug the book though, as it met the rather low bar she had set for it:
I don’t know the real version of these characters, this Ms. Marvel, that Wolverine—and yet I got a little freaked out by these very bad, very mean, versions of those characters. I don’t know the Avengers well enough to pick them out of a line-up. But I came away from this comic knowing that these weren’t them, and that what this Norman Osborn was doing was wrong. I got it, and I didn’t start with much. That’s something. Is it the best comic I’ve ever read? No. No way. But it sure wasn’t the worst.
Compared to this, the Omega Sanction doesn’t really seem all that terrifying: Rachelle Goguen on the single most traumatic thing to happen to Batman the week that Final Crisis #6 came out.
Twit for tat: Kevin Church catches a Twitter exchange between a fan and Marvel, and the Marvel Twitter tweeter takes the opportunity to denigrate the current output of long-time Marvel stalwarts Kurt Busiek and Mark Bagley, who happen to be working for DC at the moment. While you’re there, check out Church’s reader participation features this week.
January 28th, 2009 at 12:16 pm
It is absolutely the parents’ responsibility to monitor what their child reads. My wife and I try to be as mindful as possible, but things do slip through. I gave my stepson the Jeff Smith Shazam HC to read the other day and realized that there was a “HELL” in it as I looked over his shoulder. Call me a prude, but I really don’t want my nine-year-old running around going, “What the hell?!?” Marvel is pretty good about labeling things so that I at least have an idea of whether it is appropriate or not, but even that requires some investigation. Some books rated A by Marvel aren’t acceptable to me while others are, but at least Marvel gives me a gauge.
DC does not. Unless it’s Johnny DC or older material, DC is (more and more) becoming just completely off limits. Between the sex, violence, and language, I just can’t give these to my kids.
Are these characters meant for kids? They can be. They were originally meant for kids. They certainly are marketed that way in the licensing. (Don’t even get me started on how creepy it was seeing a Ledger Joker toy in a kids’ cereal commercial.) DC, IMO, needs to do a better job of informing the parents of what their content is in their books. Right now, what I see coming from DC, covers the little kids (ages 4-7, or so) and then jumps to teenagers. There’s not a lot in between. That’s my perception right now. Of course, it is hard to tell, because they don’t really have a ratings system (that crap Didio was spitting out a while back about CCA and non-CCA comics was complete rubbish). I can’t help but think they’re avoiding a ratings system because Caleb is right. If you look closely enough at their output right now, it would skewer much closer to Vertigo (ie mature readers) than they’d like to admit.
It’s a shame. They’ve got these huge icons that they could be roping kids into, but they have a hole in their publishing plan that leaves the kids free to go for the latest fads like Bakugan or video games. My stepson was a huge Teen Titans Go fan. There should be something for him to step up to now, but there isn’t. I sure as hell am not giving him a series that has a super-powered dog ripping to shreds a teenager.
January 28th, 2009 at 2:31 pm
Marvel’s rating system could be clearer to most readers, I think. It’s not as well-promoted as it should be- the MPAA and ESRB go out of their way to make sure people know what their ratings mean.
But really, I think an industry-wide one is the way to go- I remember some fuss about how it would make it easier for local law enforcement to target the dirty adult books, but those already get segregated from the general population by most responsible comics store owners.
January 28th, 2009 at 2:55 pm
“Marvel’s rating system could be clearer to most readers,”
True, but in this parent’s eyes, it is much better than having nothing like DC does.
“But really, I think an industry-wide one is the way to go”
I totally agree with that. You would think that the industry would start being proactive about it so that they can govern themselves rather than having some outside bureaucrat dictate what the standards are.
January 28th, 2009 at 4:24 pm
RE: Wildstorm. It used to be that Wildstorm had three areas that they covered. The Wildstorm Universe, which included the superhero comics like WildC.A.T.s and Stormwatch, Homage, which was writer driven creator owned stuff, and Cliffhanger, which was artist driven creator owned stuff.
Now, it’s just Wildstorm, group of unrelated titles. I honestly believe that someone at Wildstorm needs to sit down and rebrand the whole thing. Have a Wildstorm Universe (though this whole section needs a true visionary before relaunching yet again), something for licensed titles, and something for the stuff that falls in between (is that creator owned?). I believe CMX is a part of Wildstorm. Why is that a separate brand, but the others aren’t? Doesn’t really make sense to me.
January 28th, 2009 at 4:32 pm
“I think an industry-wide one is the way to go”
That would be the comics code. And it took us fifty years to get rid of that.
No matter what ratings system is put in place, it will not supplant the mindset in many heads that comics SOLELY for children. Anyone else reading them obviously has a problem. This will not change for a very long time, if ever.
January 28th, 2009 at 10:30 pm
“That would be the comics code.”
The comics code is *not* a ratings system. It is merely a gateway to getting your title on the newsstand.
“And it took us fifty years to get rid of that.”
You mean at Marvel? Because DC and Archie still use it.
The code has outlived its usefulness. The industry has a wide variety of comics available to mainstream audiences, especially with all of the trade paperback and hard cover penetration of the book store market. It’s not just about what is on the newsstand anymore.
Just looking at DC’s CMX site revealed that they have a ratings system. Why doesn’t the rest of DC?
I’m picking on DC here, but truthfully, there’s enough blame to go around. I should be able to look at a title’s rating and at least have some idea of whether it would be appropriate for my kids or not. Dark Horse’s Star Wars, IDW’s G.I. Joe, Speed Racer, and Transformers. I know there are others. If you have a line of books based on a property that it marketed to kids that aren’t appropriate for kids, then maybe it would be a good idea to point that out. At least from my perspective. Maybe not from the publisher’s perspective.
January 29th, 2009 at 5:30 pm
I just wanted to say that I always really enjoy your posts. You always find such interesting links too. That second one was quite a good read and very thought provoking.