Just how crazy has DC Comics gone?: Crazy enough that Steve Rude would ask if he could maybe make them some awesome comic books and they said no, apparently. That’s just nutty. I can sort of see why DC would put him off for a few months, if they really want to instill a sort of uniformity to their line starting in September (there definitely doesn’t seem to be much in the way of stylistic variety in the designs and artists involved with their new 50-book slate, for example), but I can’t imagine it being a good idea to turn Rude down altogether. No original graphic novels or miniseries or Steve Rude Draws Whatever He Wants #1 one-shot? Ironically, yesterday DC announced that Rude’s fourth choice on a list of DC characters he’d like to work on, OMAC, would be getting his own ongoing title—with DC publisher Dan DiDio co-writing it.
Now read this: Check out the Level Up creative team of Gene Luen Yang and Thien Pham’s cute strip about where the arcade heroes of yesteryear are now.
“Here is a period piece for our postracial times — in the era of Ella Baker and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., the most powerful adversaries of spectacular apartheid are a team of enlightened white dudes”: In The New York Times, writer and X-Men fan Ta-Nehisi Coates talks about taking in X-Men: First Class with his son, and what he noticed that his son didn’t. Meanwhile, in the New Zealand Listener, David Larsen notes some of the quite disturbing implications of the film that the creators seem to have either not noticed or glossed over. And at his blog, David Brothers talks about his viewing (I agree with a lot of what he said, particularly regarding the awesomeness of Fassbender and McAvoy) and he also notes some of the disturbing (and hopefully accidental!) X-Men = Nazis implications. Peter David really liked it, though.
Nobody will ever like the new Teen Titans: Andrew Weiss is so confident in the rottenness of the new version of the Teen Titans DC announced this week, that he’s already inducting them into his “Nobody’s Favorites” hall of shame. I can’t disagree. I personally experienced aesthetic pain while looking at the cover image of Teen Titans #1. Of course, someone somewhere must like it, or DC never would have greenlighted it, would they? Do you like? Speak up in the comments, please. I’m genuinely curious, as I have a hard time comprehending anyone liking it.
Wow, Bryan Lee O’Malley used to suck: Check out his 1988 Transformers comic for evide—oh, he was only eight years old when he drew that? Damn, that’s actually pretty good then. (And he drew better Transformers at eight then I can at 34, the talented little punk…!)
“Batgirl’s Last Dance”: Will Brooker covers the hell out of The Brave and The Bold #33, the Cliff Chiang-drawn issue where Barbara Gordon, Zatanna and Wonder Woman do karaoke to a Beyonce song.
“The salient reason that more people aren’t reading about mainstream superheroes, of course, is not because they are…confused by backstory — it’s that they don’t happen to be particularly interested in mainstream superheroes”: Here’s NPR’s Glen Weldon on DC’s post-Flashpoint plans.
June 10th, 2011 at 8:10 am
I’m picking up the new Teen Titans book, actually. The changes are compelling and have captured my interest.
June 10th, 2011 at 8:54 am
I completely agree on Teen Titans. Red Robin is a great look, but the rest feels very 1990s. (And this whole Superboy as cyborg thing is just incredibly unfortunate.)
I also just want to say, I read the new interview with Gail Simone, and while I am grateful to hear her passion for the character and respect for the community, still, the end result of all that is saying, we’re taking the one significant handicapped character in the DC Universe away. And that’s a problem.
June 10th, 2011 at 10:05 am
I think Lobdell’s Generation X ranks up there as one of the best teen superhero comics ever based on its character work alone, and I’m down for checking out Teen Titans for that if nothing else. I know Booth is very much set in his style, but I don’t see what makes his work any more over the top than about 90% of other superhero artists. All things considered, I feel like I can always identify his work as distinctive and following that interest in lean, athletic figure work he tends to have. That’s more that you can say for a lot of his peers.
June 10th, 2011 at 10:18 am
Steve Rude drawing comics again … it’s a dream I’ve had for such a long time now.
Dear comic book companies,
If you’d like easy money, hire Steve Rude. I will give you cash for anything he feels like drawing.
June 10th, 2011 at 11:14 am
To be fair, I think they have their superman team completely tied up. It’s Superman. And obviously OMAC is Didio/Giffen so there’s no getting in there.
I have to assume, since there are no New Gods-esque things in the 52 books that it’s off limits for now.
But I can’t imagine whoever they put on Supergirl. is going to be better than Steve freaking Rude.
At least put him on one of the My Greatest Adventure anthology things.
June 10th, 2011 at 11:53 am
LOL, that Andrew Weiss article is awesome! Slamming the editorial regimes of both Marvel AND DC! Biting criticisms of an unreleased series based on nothing but costume changes! Decrying the new changes as…wait for it.. a “return to the 90′s”! It’s like the apotheosis of inane online comics rants. He even calls the new Superboy “dudebro”!
June 10th, 2011 at 1:04 pm
MattD,
All fair points, but Dude’s never been the fastest artist around, so I operated on the assumption he would be drawing miniseries or one-offs rather than the standard monthlies.
Ideal scenario: a miniseries featuring all four of his preferences together!
June 10th, 2011 at 2:42 pm
The question is, how do you get more people to love mainstream superheroes the way that many of us do. Because I see no reason they can’t.
June 10th, 2011 at 6:40 pm
I think what you may be missing in the Steve Rude comments is the fact that all three major comics companies have given Rude work in the past, but the projects have been less than successful, for a variety of reasons. At both DC and Marvel, Rude is well known for wanting to draw their characters his way, which is usually to go back to the root of the character (i.e. Bob Kane’s original Batman) and draw the character in that style. DC was less than pleased. Same for Captain America at Marvel, in which Cap walked the earth of Marvel today, that was suddenly filled with American’s straight out of the 1960′s – fedoras, men in blocky suits, big dresses on women, etc. At Dark Horse, he insisted on drawing on his characters, and sorry, but his NEXUS and MOTH have PLAYED OUT. Time to move on.
I love Rude but until he works WITH the comics company to put together comics that are relevant in 2011, I think he’ll continue to run into problems getting work.
June 10th, 2011 at 9:07 pm
No, I didn’t miss that. I bought those series and, the Cap series excepted, enjoyed ‘em. And I don’t buy much from Marvel or DC. Rude’s preferred versions share my own preferences.
So I will pay solid money for them. If they want my cash, hiring him’s a sure path to it.
And Nexus remains the best superhero comic of all time. For the record.
May 3rd, 2013 at 1:11 am
The question is, how do you get more people to love mainstream superheroes the way that many of us do. Because I see no reason they can’t.