It is September 5, 2011, and I’m already sick of the 9/11 anniversary shit going on.  I agree that 9/11 is something that should be remembered but I’m as close to 100% sure as any human can be that it will be incorrectly remembered.  I say that not because I’m a cynical asshole but because of the previous nine years of fictional remembrance I’ve witnessed.  Also, because of it being the tenth anniversary and all, there seems to be this overly-patriotic celebration of how rad-ass America is as well as the (sadly) expected tie-ins to entertainment news, both of which are ugly and obscene and are the reason I’m so fucking grateful that I’ll be out of the country while it’s happening.

I’m leaving town tonight so I don’t have time to develop this into a more fully-thought-out idea but I want to mention it anyway.  A few weeks ago I was watching some dipshit pundit on television ranting against Muslims and citing the attacks on 9/11 as one of the reasons their presence and culture shouldn’t be tolerated in this country.  It occurred to me that these people always focus on the attackers being Muslim and never on them also being assholes.  It always amazes me that assholes never get called out for being assholes and instead get called out for being whatever it is about them that makes them different from the people they’ve angered.  Atheists love to attack nut-bar Christians for murdering abortion doctors.  Nut-bar Christians love to attack Muslim terrorists for bombing innocent civilians.  In both cases no one is getting angry over the fact that the offending group are a bunch of murderous assholes.  Amazing.  And in the case of the television “pundits” I honestly think it’s self-preservation.  If society got it into it’s head that assholes were the cause of our woes, and that they shouldn’t be tolerated, these fuckheads on TV would have about 24 hours to get out of the country alive.

Television pundits are worse than Muslims ten times out of ten.

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Non-comics nerds can skip this part.  Beginning last week, DC comics relaunched their entire superhero line starting over with all-new first issues.  They’ll be releasing digital comics on the same day as their print-version counterparts and they’ll be charging the same price for both versions ($2.99, I believe).  This is ridiculous for a number of reasons, but I’ll just focus on the economics of the thing.  First off, I haven’t read a monthly comic in years, partially because they’re too fucking expensive.  Asking me to pay three bucks for 22 pages of story and art in a digital format is fucking madness.  That would buy me three different songs.  That’s two dollars shy of buying me an entire album on sale at Amazon.  But mostly it’s madness because anyone with their head halfway pulled out of their ass can download that same comic that same week for absolutely free.  Sure, its illegal but that isn’t gonna stop most people from doing it, just ask anyone who used to work in the music industry.

I realize that DC comics is trying to do right by retailers but they’re going to fail.  Up until recently you couldn’t download digital comics unless someone had gone to the trouble of scanning them and uploading them to the internet first.  The other day I downloaded a torrent that contained the entire 18-year archive of Vertigo Comics, the mature-readers imprint owned by DC* so, yeah, people have been going to the trouble to scan and upload comics for a while now.  But now, by publishing digital copies every week on the same day of release as the print versions, all one needs to do to share them with others is legally purchase the comics and then copy and upload them to the internet as torrents.  So, congratulations, DC, you’ve cut out the most tedious part of the file sharing process by removing the need to scan your copyrighted material.  Well done.  And, assuming their digital downloads are loaded with DRM shit to prevent file sharing…well, just ask anyone in the music industry how that’s worked for them.

DC needs to get with it and realize that the era of the comic specialty shop as we know it is over.  This is sad for those of us who love those stores, but it’s the reality of the situation regardless.  If they don’t start offering a better price for their digital comics they’re never going to recover the people like me, who’ve had to stop purchasing print comics in lieu of paying their mortgage every month.

*I don’t feel bad about doing this since I literally already own more than 75% of it.  And because I fucking hate reading comics on my computer.

So, my friend Rob went to Comicon this year, as he does every year, and he brought me back some swag.  One of the things he brought me was Green Lantern: Blackest Night #0, which was mostly a preview book featuring the new direction for the character and blah blah blah.  Honestly, I don’t give a fuck about DC super heroes any more.  They’ve all died and been replaced and then been resurrected, and after a while, it all just boils down to bullshit.  When I was in high school, The Flash (Barry Allen) died and he was then replaced by his now grown up kid sidekick (Wally West).  Some of the coolest superhero comics I read in the 90′s were Flash comics featuring the Wally West flash.  But then he apparently went away for a while and was replaced by his kid sidekick (I guess, I’d stopped reading years earlier).  Now, I have no fucking idea what’s going on, because I read the short story in Blackest Night #0 and it was basically a conversation between The Flash and Green Lantern.  Only The Flash is Barry Allen again.  And Green Lantern is Hal Jordan again, who has also died, been replaced, and, finally, come back from the dead to resume his role as Green Lantern.  And they’re standing at the Batman’s grave, who has apparently just died recently (for the second time) and the conversation they’re having is basically how both of them died and came back from the dead and how crazy all that shit is and, “Do you think Batman will find a way to come back from the dead?”

Are you confused yet?  Because I am and I’ve been reading comics for 35 years.  And that, really, is exactly why I don’t read 99% of all Marvel and DC comics any more.  That, plus the fact that I’m 40…

Which pretty much makes the vast majority of superhero comics no different from Dr. Demento, in that they’re no more or less stupid now than they were when I was a kid…they’re mostly just a phase I went through.  But the realization that the stories I loved so much as a kid were really little more than just servicing a copyright kind of saddens me a little bit, and in that regard, superhero comics are nowhere near as cool as Dr. Demento.

Comics as a medium, however, are still as wonderful as ever.  And I can back that up by pointing you in the direction of The Programme and The Nightly News, as well as long-running classics like American Splendor and Love & Rockets, both of which have been nothing short of great for the last three decades.  And that makes me happy.

For a more entertaining conversation about comics, go here.

I love this comic so fucking much that it will be nearly impossible to not wax lyrical about it like a love struck high school girl going through her first serious crush.  But I’ll do my best.

The Nightly News is just an amazing comic book, written and drawn by Jonathan Hickman, that I seriously can’t see being told in any other medium without being watered down to the point where it isn’t even worth it to tell the story.  That’s because, on the surface, it would seem to advocate the wholesale slaughter of everyone in the news media.  Not a whole lot of television stations are gonna be too hip to that.  Hickman claims his inspiration for The Nightly News “were the stories of innocent people like Richard Jewell (the Olympic Bomber) whose lives are basically ripped apart by billion dollar companies so they can entertain us/boost ratings/charge higher advertising rates/make more money.   There are a lot of stories similar to his out there.”

The basic plot centers around The First Church Of The Brotherhood Of The Voice, a cult that has declared war on the American news media.  The members of the cult are people whose lives have been ruined by careless and indifferent reporting, all of whom want revenge and are willing to die for the cause.  However, the story isn’t a simple revenge / mass murder story.  It’s also about globalization, media conglomeration, the pursuit for ratings and the very real affect that irresponsible and inaccurate reporting can have on human lives.  At the same time, however, the story never forgets its place and gets too preachy and, in fact, actually offers a reasonably in-depth examination of both sides of the conflict.  Plus, you get to see lots of reporters get shot in the head.

Stylistically, the book is just amazing.  Every so often a comic gets released that artistically raises the bar a little.  This is one of those times.  At no point while reading it, did it feel like reading a comic, which is always something I appreciate (when done well).  Abandoning traditional storytelling techniques displayed by most comics, the art in The Nightly News still manages to guide the reader through the story but at the same time offers more than just visuals.

Click To Embiggen

The book is packed with charts, info-graphics and footnotes which, if attempted by a lesser talent, would only wind up distracting from the story.  Instead of distraction, however, these elements wind up enhancing the story, forcing the reader to actually (Good Lord!  Gasp.  Choke.) think.  Rest assured, this is not the passive, first-this-panel-then-that-panel experience you have when reading, say, The Ultimates.  The Nightly News requires full participation on the part of the reader, which is something that just doesn’t happen very often.  Also?  Lots and lots of reporters get shot in the head.

Obviously, this isn’t the sort of thing that’s going to have a broad appeal.  In fact, based solely on the story, there might not be much appeal to anyone who isn’t mad as hell at what a sick fucking joke the news media has turned into.  However, if you’re one of those people – like myself – you’re in for a seriously great read.  Do yourself a favor and buy it.

(Image copyright Jeffrey Rowland / overcompensating.com)

Overcompensating is my favorite web comic and this one made me laugh more than usual.  Click the image for the full comic.

The other day a friend of mine sent me a couple links to entertainment news stories about a couple different movies in the works.  Apparently there are going to be movie adaptations of Jonah Hex and Y: The Last Man.  And I really don’t care.

For those of you who don’t know, Jonah Hex is the single most kick ass comic book character to never actually appear in a comic book worth reading.  He first appeared back in the late sixties, early seventies and had his own series that lasted into the eighties as I recall.  Every last issue was shit.  So-so stories with occasionally good art.  Back in the nineties Vertigo (DC’s mature readers imprint) tried to reboot the character by making him grim and gritty, and by dropping him into a supernatural/horror setting.  It was a fun read, and the art was good but ultimately not worth spending your money on.

Grim and gritty, by the way, is how they used to reboot every character they deemed in need of such treatment:

Editor 1:  Gosh, The Metal Men seriously bore the shit out of me.
Editor 2:  What if we gave them razor cocks and had them rape humans?
Editor 1:  Saaaaaaay…

So I’m not expecting much from the movie.  Same goes for Y: The Last Man.  I tried reading the first collection (also published by Vertigo), and it did virtually nothing for me.  I’d read the entire run of Brian (the creator and writer of Y) Vaughn’s Swamp Thing run (the one where Tefe is the main character) and it was alright but if I’d had to pay for it, I’d have dropped it pretty early on.  It was very Wizard Of Oz in that the characters all came together and wound up on a journey/quest.  By the end of the first Y collection, the same exact thing was happening so I just bailed out and sold the copy I’d just purchased on eBay.  Thank God for eBay.

Anyway, this got me to thinking of the various Vertigo books that have come out in the last five to ten years and I realized that there’s a pretty even split between quality and shit.  I’ve had this vague impression in the back of my mind that Vertigo just isn’t the same company it used to be, especially compared to where they were in the early nineties, when their talent pool included names like Gaiman, Ennis, Morrison, Milligan, Delano, Ney Rieber, and a handful of others.  I was wrong.  They’re about where they’ve always been:

Transmetropolitan:
This is the one that just goes without saying.  If you don’t like this book, something is broken inside of you.  Take Hunter S. Thompson, force-feed him steroids and crack for a year, turn the anger up to eleven, change his name to Spider Jerusalem, and there’s your protagonist.  Now throw him x00 years into the future and pit him against a corrupt American President.  Be amazed as some of the future-tech predicted in this amazing comic by writer Warren Ellis has already come to pass in the real world.  Perhaps the single best comic from the last ten years.

Fables:
I’ve pretty much despised Bill Willingham for the better part of a decade now but I tried the first Fables trade based on an article I’d read that made it sound intriguing.  The premise is basically that all the characters from the old fairy tales are now living in modern-day New York in some form of exile or hiding.  I don’t really remember much else because it turned out to be amateurish, cliche and boring.  Years earlier, he’d written a mini-series called Proposition Player, which a friend of mine made me read.  It was decent but somehow I’m able to resist buying the trade.

Hellblazer:
Hellblazer has been around forever and has had several good, great, or flat-out brilliant runs written by various writers.  I still read it but only because I’ve been reading it forever.  It’s still pretty good (usually) but it’s kind of turned into this aged dinosaur of a book, much like DC/Vertigo itself actually – just a well-established institution that we must all respect.  The newer generation of writers seem to sometimes think that Constantine is all about smoking, trench coats and being a bastard, which of course is only the exterior of the character and not actually what he’s all about.  The movie version was such a drastically  watered-down version of the character that it was hard to enjoy and I’m only mentioning it here because once I got past how just wrong the character was, I found myself really enjoying several different aspects of the flick.  Not a ringing endorsement but more than I’d have guessed I’d be able to say about a moving starring Keanu Reeves as one of my favorite characters.

100 Bullets:
100 Bullets is total greatness and I have a hunch that by the time the series has come to an end the story will turn out to have been about half a dozen different things I wasn’t aware of while reading it the first time around.  Killer art, too.

Loveless:
I read the first trade collection twice and I still don’t know what the fuck it’s about.  On the surface is cowboys and foul language.  There’s something going on underneath but, like I said, I have no clue what that is.  And if the first storyline of a book doesn’t establish a clear direction and character motivation, then somebody failed as a storyteller.  Was it the writer?  Was it the artist?  Was it both?  Do I care?  The only question I can answer for sure is that last one.

The Losers:
I really liked The Losers but the art was varied and sometimes weak. Story-wise though, it was a damn good time and it’s one of the very few comics that really needs to be turned into a movie or HBO series.

The Exterminators:
I’ve read the first two volumes of The Exterminators.  Oh my God I love that book.  It’s pretty much the only comic coming out right now that I can’t fucking wait for the next collection to come out.  I can’t even tell you exactly what it’s about and that’s the biggest reason I love it.  I could try telling you it’s about this exterminator dude working for his uncle’s extermination company or that it’s about corporate evil or shadow governments and conspiracies, or old Aztec gods coming back to life or the end of the world or even hot lesbian sex, and that would all be true, but that just doesn’t do it justice.  It just needs to be read.

American Virgin:
I tried the first volume of American Virgin.  Steven Seagle used to be a damn good writer.  Maybe he still is, but I have no fucking clue what he’s thinking with this latest effort.  Let’s take everything we despise about crazy, right-wing fundamentalists – ESPECIALLY their arrogance – and mix it up with emo-boy faggot and make *that guy* our protagonist. Fucking ridiculous.  I could barely get through the first trade and refuse to read another word of that wretched horse shit.  I’m assuming that the main story arc of the book will entail a spiritual journey of awakening where the fucking douche-bag lead character discovers himself and is exposed to the lies and hypocrisy of his beliefs and upbringing but then realizes that Jesus’ message is still good and pure even if some of the messengers are sometimes a little fucked.  And I’m assuming that the character will transform from the right-wing fundamentalist that he is into something more stereotypically left-wing and “centered” – while retaining his insufferable emo-boy faggot look.  And you can assume (and your assumption will be correct) that I won’t give enough of a rat’s ass to stick around and find out how on or off the mark I am.

DMZ:
DMZ is a fantastic comic by Brian Wood with rock-solid story and art. The basic concept is that America is in the middle of another civil war and New York has been torn to shit as a result.  The area is a sort of no-man’s land/demilitarized zone, hence the title.  The people living there are just fucked – and the government won’t let them out.  They are subject to lack of food, water, and medical care.  Random shelling and gunfire is a daily fact of life.  And various factions and gangs have arisen, in addition to the armed forces on either side of the city.  The story centers around a young broadcasting intern who winds up being the only reporter in the DMZ, and his struggle to tell the world the truth about what goes on in there, as opposed to the bullshit that gets broadcast to the public by the major networks.  Sound at all familiar?

American Splendor:
American Splendor, like Harvey Pekar himself, you either get it or you don’t.  I fucking love it.  Not really a Vertigo book but they did give a run of four issues or so.  Of course they waited until after the American Splendor movie was made and won all sort of critical praise and several awards at various film festivals to do so.  And the book didn’t really feel like an American Splendor book in various parts due mostly to the art.  There’s just something sorta wrong about Harvey Pekar as drawn by Richard Corben.

Testament / Scalped / Army @ Love:
No idea, haven”t read them.  I’m tempted to pick up Scalped and Testament…sorta.  Then again I might just spend the money on the latest volume(s) of The Walking Dead, which is a comic that makes me happy as a pig in shit.  Army @ Love can go screw itself because Rick Veitch is a tool.

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