“Hey, Arch, leave your comic book alone”: Hey, Andrew Heller, Archie Andrews doesn’t really make those comics himself.
“The late, great Dave Stevens drew comic book characters that rocketed right off the page”: Writing for the LA Times’ Hero Complex blog, Geoff Boucher appreciates the late Dave Stevens. It’s a piece occasioned by IDW’s release of Dave Stevens’ The Rocketeer: Artists’s Edition.
“Robert Downey Jr. confirms Iron Man 3″: Hey, just two more and RDJ will beat Tobey Maguire’s record!
“I told him repeatedly that it was a bad idea. I’ve never had an editor so dogged to chase a project”: That’s Berkeley Breathed on how IDW’s Bloom County reprint program came about, in this Q-and-A with Publishers Weekly.
“I want to see Aquaman respond to the environmental disaster of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill. I want to see Daredevil try and track down the Times Square car bomber”: Johanna Draper Carlson offers an idea on how to make superhero comics interesting again for her—more ripped from the headline stories. In theory, that’s a great idea. But seeing how the Big Two superhero comics makers have done that sort of thing recently—think DC’s weird Decisions fantasy election thing, or Marvel’s painfully unfunny Spidey-meets-Obama back-up—I’m cool with them staying as far away from the headlines as possible. (By the way Marvel, if you wanna hear a Namor, The Sub-Mariner versus The Somali Pirates pitch, call me!)
You call that homoerotic?: Artist Nick Mullins has a neat drawing of some Masters of the Universe characters up at his blog under the post title “homoerotic he-man.” As a one-time Masters of the Universe expert, I don’t really see how his He-Man is any more homoerotic than plain old normal He-Man. The main difference between his drawing and the characters in their natural state seems to be that Stratos and Man-At-Arms aren’t wearing their body paint. (Via Tom Spurgeon)
May 5th, 2010 at 11:01 am
I seem to recall a lot of Marvel heroes vs terrorists comics after 9/11. I seem to recall that most weren’t very good, with one leading to the cancellation and restart of Capt. America with a writer who uses the same themes in ways that made the point without ever using any remotely like the real world.
May 5th, 2010 at 12:16 pm
The very last thing in the world I want to see is Superheroes dealing with real life issues. I read these things for escapism, to get away from my job and my life in and around DC and all that. I want them to be well-written with great plots and interesting, human, character development, but I want them to be about all the crazy stuff Hickman is writing about in Fantastic Four, not about the Times Square terrorist.
May 5th, 2010 at 2:50 pm
Another problem with using real world events is most of the fallout will already be dealt with by the time the book is out. How long from now would we see a comic about the Times Square bomb attempt? 3 months at LEAST? Probably 5 months by the time the writer can incorporate it into his story and the editor gives it the thumbs up, the writer actually WRITES the script, and it’s drawn, inked, and colored? By then most people’s reactions would be “Oh yeah, the Times Square terrorist… that happened, didn’t it?”
Sure, terrorism in general is something we had to and will have to deal with, so let’s stay general. It’s the same reason most cartoons don’t bother with specific events… they take months to write and animate (South Park being the exception to the rule of course, being able to write, animate, and record the voices in less than a week).