Four Pitches I Never Wrote For Comics

I don’t know about you, but God! There are days when I just can’t move for getting phone calls and emails from editors at Marvel Comics and DC Comics. “You’re a famous comic blogger,” they say, “why can’t you just come and write our comics for us?” And I have to keep turning them down, saying “I’d love to, but I have another blogging deadline. Let’s not and say we did, huh?” and that’s how I discovered the sound of Dan Didio’s tears.

Wait, that’s not what happens.

I’ve never written a comic that’s seen print and, to be honest, the idea kind of terrifies me a bit after making a name for myself by being a dick online. But that hasn’t stopped me from coming up with ideas by accident, thinking about them a little too much, and then not writing them up. But here are four that stuck in my head longer than they should’ve. 

1. Fantastic Four

Everyone and their sister has a Fantastic Four pitch in them, I think, and almost all of those pitches are exactly the same, all a return to the imagination and dynamism of the classic Lee and Kirby run (Or, more specifically, the era around #48-#70something where Lee, Kirby and Sinnott were really cooking). My imaginary pitch was no different, and all about familiar plots, as well; the replacement of a team member by an impostor, time travel into the far future to discover society has splintered into four tribes inspired by each member of the team, the introduction of the alien who wants to be Galactus’ girlfriend, that kind of thing. Along the way, the Thing would turn into Ben Grimm again – of course! – and Wyatt Wingfoot would return, this time as a college professor and with a son in tow. My aim would never have been to revolutionize the book, just to be familiar and familial enough.

2. OMAC

I actually did write this one, kind of, but I’ll be damned if I can find the document anywhere on this computer (There’s apparently something about Kirby’s DC Comics; years earlier, I wrote one for the Manhattan Guardian series I could see spinning out from Seven Soldiers; that one’s right here). The short version of my take on OMAC was that it could be repurposed from where Countdown left the character/concept into being DC’s Iron Man or, at least, their technological hero. SHADE, DC’s often-ignored counterpart to SHIELD would capture Brother Eye/Brother Mk. 1 and reprogram him to be less of a crazy killer and more of the classic Kirby Brother Eye. Buddy Blank, the character left as OMAC at the end of Countdown would become OMAC permanently and be tasked with investigating and policing use of future tech in the DCU, bringing him into conflict with the publisher’s time travelers, mad scientists (Oolong Island!) and the like. The tagline would have been “Get Ready For The World That’s Coming.”

3. Power Man and Iron Fist

If ever there was a series that made me nerdily nostalgic and hit all my fanboy points in reviving, it’d be Power Man and Iron Fist. Both characters are pretty much re-established in the Marvel Universe these days, but before Ed Brubaker and Matt Fraction made Danny Rand the hit that he is again, I came up with an idea for a story that was pretty much Fan Service Central, as long as that fan was me. The basic idea was that DW Griffith, Luke’s old film student slacker sidekick ended up both rich (Didn’t he have a rich dad all along?) and kidnapped by old Jo Duffy-era villain Montenegro, and Luke and Danny had to team up to get him back safely. Hilarity, no doubt, would have ensued.

4. Ultimate Rick Jones

I love Rick Jones. Love him love him love him. It’s all down to Peter David’s take on the character during his Incredible Hulk run. So, when Marvel announced their Epic open call for fan submissions around the same time as the announcement of their Ultimate line, can you blame me for thinking of coming up with a series based around Rick Jones? Of course, Ultimate Rick Jones would have been looked like Stu Sutcliffe and acted just like the original Rick did, way back in his first appearances; he would’ve been a ’60s throwback beatnik wannabe, both a loser and kind of awesome at the same time, and his series would’ve been a series of misadventures between himself and his buddy, Ultimate Doc Samson. Who, of course, would’ve been a former professional wrestler-turned-shitty radio psychiatrist. 

You can tell why I never bothered writing this one, can’t you?

Like I said; none of the above ever got written (with the exception of the OMAC one that I lost, so same difference), and even if they had, I’d never have done anything with them. I’m a coward that way. But here they are, just for you.

Political Science (Fiction)

(Yet another Onomatoepeia essay. This one from last summer, when I was starting to get obsessed by the Presidential Election, and wanted to write about it, even though Ono is really all about comics. Not that that stopped me, oh no.)

With the US Presidential elections just six months away, the cold and clammy grip of democracy has overtaken American culture. Everywhere you look, people are talking about politics this or politics that, as if it actually matters whose name you tick in the ballot box on that fateful November morning; there are television shows, YouTube channels and even these cheap inky things called “news” “papers” given over to discussing the latest to-ings and fro-ings of the Democratic and Republican parties, attempting to make them as exciting as if they were the Democratobots and Republicons. And, as we all know, where there’s the faintest glimmer of public interest, then comics will be there to exploit that glimmer.

DC Comics, still high off the relative success of their Countdown: Arena votathon at the end of last year (And, let me tell you, if any vote has been rigged in this country in the last decade, it was that one – Hanging chad or no hanging chad, there’s no way that Wonder Woman would have lost to Wonder Woman like that. Don’t get me wrong, Wonder Woman’s tough, but she’s no Wonder Woman. And then having Green Lantern go down like that to Green Lantern? It’s like Karl Rove himself was hiding behind that Monarch mask. Man. Don’t get me started), were the first ones to be waving the “Vote for me and I’ll set you free” banner with the announcement of their new DCU: Decisions series, wherein we shall learn how each citizen of the DC Universe chooses to vote in a series of stimulating ideological debates set to the soundtrack of punching. 

You may scoff at the idea of Judd Winick and Bill Willingham – surely the Hannity and Combes of mainstream comics if ever there was one – co-writing a story where their own personal political differences had the potential to bubble up and destroy the entire creative project, but reports from those involved have been remarkably positive, with the two agreeing not to attack each other directly but to trade characters and instead attack each other’s beliefs through hastily-assembled straw man attacks voiced by members of the Green Lantern Corps. You’ve not lived until you’ve seen Hal Jordan say “You’re nothing but a cut-rate Barack Obama” to John Stewart, only for Stewart to reply “Well, at least my political candidate isn’t a 71-year old appeaser of the more extreme parts of my party, subjugating his own principles in order to attempt to gain the ignorant redneck vote and in doing so, choosing to dumb down the political discourse of this country so that everything becomes a series of spokespeople saying that the other guy is hysterically overreacting instead of just trying to speak in sentences of more than four words. And what kind of name is Hal, anyway?”

(What DC have kept relatively quiet so far is that DCU: Decisions, and in fact the entire US Presidential Election Season, are tie-ins to their ongoing Final Crisis storyline. Final Crisis, which is scheduled to ship its final issue in November on the Wednesday following election day, will close with a hastily added page of the winner of the election wrestling manly with Darkseid himself before defeating the New God of Apokolips and declaring that that victory truly means that it is a brand new day in America. Rumors that, were McCain to emerge from the filthy scrum as the bloodier victor – and I’m talking about the election here, I should clarify – the ending of the book would be changed to his dying only for his soul to be collected by a new Black Racer who will be revealed to be Barack Obama himself, have yet to be verified.)

Dan DiDio’s desire to get more involved in the political process (Born, according to those who know him best, of the fact that his abstaining from voting in the year 2000 caused Al Gore to lose the election and the resulting guilt) is clear from the interviews he’s given about the subject. Take this, for example, from a recent piece at Newsarama.com:

“Some of you guys may have seen the tease ‘Superman Red or Superman Blue?’ on our chalkboard teaser image… Well, that’s to do with this series [DCU: Decisions]. I know that a lot of you guys out there think that it’s a really bad idea to piss off half our audience by declaring political allegiances for people’s favorite characters that they themselves don’t agree with, but I don’t agree. You see the long term damage such a decision could cause, but I can’t think of the long term, I’m just looking a couple of weeks out at best! That’s a clear throughline in, in everything I’ve done at DC. Think about it: Countdown! We didn’t know what we were doing there, but everyone kept asking ‘Are you gonna do another 52 when that series ends?’ so I had to say yes! One Year Later! It didn’t mean anything in the long run, but when I said it out loud for the first time, it sounded great! Same with Decisions. Maybe it’s going to make everyone upset to find out that Batman is anti-abortion and spends his off-panel time beating up doctors who give condoms to kids, but it’ll get a spread in the New York Times and that’s all I can think about right now.”

Of course, DC aren’t the only ones desperate for a piece of that hot hot voting action. Mark Millar, arguably the shyest man in the comic industry, recently started advertising his upcoming War Heroes series for Image with a poster of Republican nominee John McCain and Democratic hopeful Barack Obama with the slogan “John McCain would give you SUPER POWERS… Barack Obama would NOT.” Now, looking at it objectively, what sort of message is this sending the impressionable young Millar fans of voting age in the United States? Are we to believe that John McCain is a kinder, gentler, potential president who would be more willing to help us reach our true potential as ubermench? What does it say about the weasly, anti-superpowers Obama that he would try and keep us down like that? And how did Millar discover both gentlemen’s stance on the subject, when even George Stephanopolous failed to get either man to talk on the record about the fabled Kryptonian Gambit?

The answer lies in Millar’s shortlived stint as political commentator for the CNN Network. Looking for a vital new voice well-versed in popular culture and bringing politics to the people, CNN management turned to Millar, the man credited with turning Iron Man into a tool of the right-wing in Civil War and creating Captain America’s unique take on foreign policy in The Ultimates. For a grand total of several hours, Millar was on staff at the 24/7 news network, interviewing the Presidential hopefuls about matters that the everyday Joe Public cares about. Although he was fired once that same management got to look at the tapes of his interviews, some of the material has leaked out online. Here, for example, is a section of his interview with Barack Obama:

Millar: Hey, it’s MM here, your man on the street and I’m here talking to Barack Obama. Barry, do you mind if I call you Barry?

Obama: I’d, uh, I’d rather you didn’t, my name is Barack…

Millar: Listen, I’m as liberal as Tim Robbins having gay man sex with Sean Penn, but I’m also standing up to those terrorists out there killing our boys. What are you doing to stop America being blown up by exploding Islamofascists?

Obama: Well, firstly, I don’t think the term “Islamofascist” is a particularly helpful one, it’s a lazy stereotype created by…

Millar (Interrupting): A problem I have with fellow liberals like me is that they point the finger at guys like Bush and Cheney and don’t take responsibility for the way in which their eating tofu and driving Priuses damages the environment. The environment is screwed which is terrible, but oddly exciting. What will you do to save the world?

Obama: I’m not sure I understand, I don’t…

Millar: Will you give Americans superpowers to let them kick the ass of Johnny Foreigner or do I have to go and get an answer from a real man like John McCain? Yes or no, Barry? Answer the question.

Obama: Are you really from CNN?

Thankfully, Millar’s television experience isn’t a complete waste. In addition to raising the profile of comics in mainstream media – that New York Post article “Is This Comic Writer A Freaking Moron?” had some very kind things to say about Neil Gaiman – Mark has announced that the second “wave” of his creator-owned Millarworld books will launch with a brand new series called All Political Reporters Are Pussies And Only I Understand What’s Going On; the first issue is entitled “This is my face as I screw all your political parties are belong to me.”

Marvel Comics, of course, is also trying to get into the act. You may have thought that the “Colbert ’08″ posters appearing in the background of various Marvel stories throughout the last few months was some kind of desperate TV groupie behavior engineered to get the publisher into the good books of Comedy Central’s The Colbert Report, but insiders at the publisher are happy to leak that it’s actually the start of something much, much bigger.

“The idea actually came from watching Fox News one day,” our souce who most definitely isn’t Dan Slott, writer of Amazing Spider-Man and Avengers: The Initiative, no matter what you might think, said. “We were all in New York for a Spider-Man Brain Trust meeting, planning out how best to bring back everything we loved from 1976 while paying lip-service to being contemporary. Someone – I think it was Bob, you know, Bob Gale, the guy who wrote Back to the Future and that terrible Daredevil run that never got put in a trade because it was so bad? – had come up with the idea of a plot where Peter goes back to college again and meets Deb Whitman’s sister who suspects that he’s Spider-Man but… get this… she’s a blogger and so puts it on her blog and then we have this whole plot about how bloggers are really dumb and bad. But while we were all high-fiving ourselves around the office, Joe Quesada came in and asked if we were paying attention to the news. It was the day that Hilary Clinton had lost another primary and everyone was saying that she’d have to win over the super delegates in order to get the nomination. 

“As soon as Sean Hannity sneered the words ‘super delegates,’ the idea came to me almost immediately. I ran to the nearest computer and started to type. Five days later, I had the pitch. It took three seconds for Joe to approve it.”

The result of Marvel’s ingenuity will be seen in October’s brand new series, The Democratic Superdelegate. Written by Dan Slott and drawn by Joe Quesada himself, the series will see the Marvel Universe Stephen Colbert give up party politics for the cause of making politics a party for everyone involved. 

“The idea is that, each issue, Stephen will intercede in an argument between this charismatic black dude that everyone seems to like but doesn’t really know that well and this older white woman whose heart is in the right place but comes across badly in public situations. They’ll be having this whole back and forth that gets more and more extreme, like Road Runner-extreme with bombs and throwing each other off buildings and whatever, and then they’ll have to go to the Superdelegate to sort everything out and fix all the damage they caused. We’re thinking of Sam Wilson, the Falcon, for the black dude, and Agatha Harkness for the white woman.”

(Because of Marvel’s stated intent to not endorse one political party over the other in this election year, this new series will be balanced by the relaunch of one of their more popular titles as John McCain’s The Republican Punisher, recasting the Republican candidate as Frank Castle’s best friend in Vietnam and coming up with the famous skull chest emblem while sharing cellspace as a POW with Castle. In the first issue, Tony Stark will appear and announce that he is supporting McCain’s campaign, but is so conflicted about it that he’s started drinking again and goes to sleep each night weeping in self-hatred and cradling Steve Rogers’ Captain America cowl.)

All of this ignores the important and no-less-indulgent work being done on political subjects in independent comics; the Hernandez Brothers are working on a special issue of Love and Rockets explaining why Hopey is considering Ralph Nader’s latest suicide run for office, and Chris Ware’s next Acme Novelty Library will feature a beautifully-designed cut-paper reconstruction of the first ballot box Ware ever saw, stained by the tears of his own masturbatory ruined dreams.

It seems that no matter where you may try and find escapism from the endless rhetoric and mudslinging of the flawed, cruel democratic political process, it will catch up with you; even this fall’s Peanuts reruns will feature, for the first time, a rerun of the infamous “Lucy models herself after Nixon” sequence, complete with Photoshopped-in references to George Bush and Nancy Pelosi. There is, at it tuns out, just one thing for the more electionphobic amongst you to cling to throughout the next few months: It’ll all be over by December.

For a few months, at least.

Iron Man: Comic Book Avatar

(Another Onomatoepeia essay. This one from just before the opening of the Iron Man movie, last summer. Remember when we were all worried about whether it’d be good or not. That’ll teach us not to trust in Jon Favreau, even though – let’s face it – he hadn’t done that much that was truly awesome apart from Elf and Swingers before that point. I’m looking at you, Zathura.)

Remember “comics”? Once upon a time, they were the way that children were given stories and adventure before television was perfected – And they were also the birthplace of the 21st century’s most successful movie franchise, the Iron Man series! You’ll discover all about the “comic book” and Iron Man’s place in the history of that forgotten medium in tonight’s episode of Fananoid Ramplog!

Hello. I’m Ira Glass Jr., and this is Fananoid Ramplog for today, May 2nd 2058. On today’s show, we’re looking at the history of the most popular fictional character in all human existence, Iron Man. His first movie was released 50 years ago today, changing the course of human history, but it may surprise some of you that Iron Man didn’t get his start in movies. No, in fact the character – as well as all of his supporting characters including shapely secretary Virginia “Pepper” Potts – were actually created for something called comic books. You’ve probably heard all about comics from your grandparents, or perhaps even their parents, but tonight we’re looking at the way that comic books and the armored avenger were, like Britney Spears and Kevin Federline, a match made in an entirely temporary heaven while in preparation for something much better indeed.

Even directly before the opening of the original Iron Man movie, no-one knew quite how important that one motion picture would be to the evolution not only of the entertainment industry, but also all of technology itself. After all, the movie – Iron Man 1: A New, Metallic, Hope, as it’s become known in the years since its release – has been cited by no less an authority than Steve Jobs as the one motivating factor in the creation of Apple’s iSuit:

“I sat there, watching Robert Downey Jr.’s sensitive performance as Anthony Michael Hall Stark, recognizing a lot of myself in his steely portrayal of an exec with a heart of stone and a hide of steel. As Stark moved from soulless war profiteer to soulless superhero in an awesome high tech suit of armor, it’s not too much to say that I had something akin to a religious epiphany, realizing that the previous Apple school of DRM technology and sleek, designer personal computers was entirely corrupt and the wrong way to run a multinational corporation. Who was I to profit off the desire for consumers to buy and listen to music? Especially when I could instead profit off their desire to fly into the blue skies in their own personal awesome high tech suit of armor.”

The iSuit, released in the holiday season of 2008, quickly became the cornerstone of the revitalized Apple empire. Its combination of telephone, music player and mechanical suit with boot jets and repulsor rays proved irresistible to the general public despite the horrific accident at the press launch that resulted in the death of original Iron Man actor Robert Downey Jr. when Jobs accidentally shot him in the face when demonstrating the incredible firepower available to everyone for a surprisingly low price of only $10,000.

(It was, of course, the death of Downey Jr. that allowed friend and fellow scary-eyed actor Joshua Jackson to step into the role of Tony Stark for the following fourteen installments in the series. Jackson’s performance as the homeless, alcoholic Stark in Iron Man 7: Demon In A Bottle, Not Literally, It’s A Metaphor For Alcoholism provoked such critical plaudits as “I almost forgot that he was Pacey in Dawson’s Creek for a second” and “He’s like a young George Clooney, if Clooney has no charm and had starred in Dawson’s Creek for seven years before disappearing into the career wilderness.”)

Iron Man the movie franchise became a futuristic, faceless avatar for technological advancement, but for hardcore Iron Fans, this came as no surprise. The character had always been a chrome-clad personification of the cultural zeitgeist since his creation in whatever form he had appeared in. His video game appearances in the later 1980s and early 1990s were cutting edge examples of the pixel art, and his various forays into animation were, if nothing else, proof that American animation was kind of shoddily acceptable if you were ten years old and bored enough on a Saturday morning to watch Spider-Man and his Amazing Friends. According to cultural historian Ian Shameless-Grudge, however, both of those examples were just shameful additions to his original career as an American comics prime example of the spirit of the times:

“You have to consider that American comics started as a cheap, disposable medium aimed at children and functional illiterates at the time of a great economic depression,” Grudge explains, “and so their characters were almost intentionally simplistic so as to be shaped to fit in with whatever was happening in the larger American tapestry at that time. By the time that famous opportunist Stanley Lieber Lee invented the Iron Man in the early 1960s, that idea had become so ingrained that Iron Man was literally faceless, so perfect was he suited for that role.”

Iron Man’s first appearance before a hungry, if ultimately disinterested, American public came in 1963′s Tales of Suspense #39. In that tale, Lee and artist illustrator Donald J. Heck made Tony Stark an example of the American Dream made good: Rich, handsome, and with a pencil moustache that only Errol Flynn could pull off in real life. But like Flynn and the fractured American psyche of the time, Stark hid a terrible secret: His heart was weak. So weak, in fact, that he had to wear a metal chest plate that he had to continually plug into a wall socket to survive.

Grudge again: “Here, Tony Stark is the American everyman at the dawn of the information age, literally having to plug himself in to everything that is happening at the end of the day. Whether intentionally or unknowingly like some kind of autistic idiot savant, Lee places his hero into a situation with which everyone is familiar. Look, also, at the way in which women are drawn to both his suave demeanor and his Communist-fighting ways. Here, Lee is showing us that it is not enough to be a good American; in order to be truly successful, you must plug yourself into walls and be ruggedly handsome as well.”

For years, Iron Man was the intellectual mechanical bitch of Marvel Comics, who published the character throughout his entire comic history. Aiming to keep interest in the character at a premium, Iron Man slowly and accidentally became the personification of each and every movement in the evolution of American comics as a medium:

• Superheroes as Socially Relevant Vehicle: As American creators awoke to the idea of their stories becoming vehicles for more weighty subjects, Tony Stark went from being a social drinker to an unforgivable lush who forgets how to shave and, at one point, ends up homeless and sleeping on the streets in the middle of a snowstorm. Fans ate the subject up eagerly, but wondered why he didn’t use his armor to at least fly away to somewhere warmer.

• Superheroes as Replaceable Suits: Looking to create a sense of excitement over decades-old characters, creators started to kill off and replace their favorite superheroes. The Flash died and was replaced by his sidekick. Green Lantern quit and was replaced by an architect. Captain America quit about seventeen times to be replaced by whoever was nearby, but at the forefront of the movement was, of course, Iron Man. Mixing the replacement vibe with his social relevance, Tony Stark’s alcoholism forced him to step down and be replaced by an old war buddy who was – in a move that demonstrated even more revelance – black. Comics would never be the same again.

• Superheroes as Slaves To Creators Desperate To Do Anything Gimmicky To Grab Attention For A Failing Medium: As the 1990s and Clinton-era politics destroyed both the comics medium and America as a whole, writers and artists resorted to ever-more outlandish stories to try and stun fans into spending money. Like a mulletted Jesus, Superman died and was born again for our sins. Batman found himself crippled and then healed, and popular blind acrobat Daredevil put on a suit of armor to slow himself down and ruin his hearing with clanking. Again, Iron Man led the way, by turning out to be a mind-controlled murderer who then died, only to be replaced by a teenaged version of himself. Once this storyline saw print, such gimmicking ceased, with the entire medium realizing that it would never be able to top this kind of invention.

• Superheroes as Crass Political Stand-ins: Realizing the potential for moving political discourse forward using brightly colored characters with a propensity for punching, Marvel Comics’ Civil War storyline forever changed comics by aligning Iron Man with the far-right movement. In a masterstroke, the newly neo-con Iron Man fought the spirit of America Captain America and won, demonstrating the power of the conservative iron fist once and for all. Critics raved about the series and begged for Iron Man to go back in time and kick the crap out of Abraham Lincoln as well, leading to 2009′s Civil War II series.

Sadly, Civil War II – with its stunning conclusion where Iron Man returned to the present only to discover a partially-buried Statue of Liberty on a beach and exclaiming “You maniacs! You blew it up! Ah, damn you! God damn you all to hell!” – was the end of the character’s comic book career. In 2010, with a popular movie production arm easily more lucrative than their inbred comic book publishing division, Marvel Comics ceased the publication of their entire comic book line with that apocalyptic conclusion. 

Back to Ian Shameless-Grudge: “Quite simply, with the monolithic success of the original Iron Man motion picture, there was no need for Marvel to continue with comic books. For years, their publishing line had been merely there as something to promote and provide additional profit from their movies, and even the failure of all three attempts to make a watchable Hulk movie could not dissuade them from making the decision to move full-time into movie production in 2010. Of course, the fact that Civil War II killed off all of their characters both literally and, thanks to the controversial pornographic interludes in the third to fifth issues illustrated by Greg Horn, in the minds of their fanbase helped that decision to an expected degree.”

Marvel’s first movie following their switch to permanent movie producers was, of course, the second Iron Man movie, Iron Man 2: Electric Boogaloo. This multiple-Academy Award winning movie – including one for Brian Michael Bendis and Larry McMurty’s controversial script depicting Tony Stark as a scientologist coming to terms with his sexuality with the help of new bodyguard Luke Cage – was exactly the kind of smash hit that they had hoped for, and the perfect launch pad for a series of follow-on movies including My Date With Millie, Night Nurse and Halle Berry Is Storm Because She Was Cheap When We Were Making The First X-Men Movie And Now We’re Stuck With Her… all of which started life as a comic book.

Some say that this was a sad ending for the life of the comic book medium, its audience finding cheaper and more satisfying thrills elsewhere when even its own top characters moving into cinema and television productions, but others disagree, claiming that the comic book format had achieved all it could be hoped to achieve – Namely, introducing the world to the particular fetishes of auteur Frank Miller and making Stan Lee into some kind of counter-cultural icon – before simply rolling over and dying in some distinct Darwinian fashion. As ever, we leave the last word to our cultural historian, Ian Shameless-Grudge: 

“Now that we’re in the latter half of the 21st Century, it’s astounding to see how much of our culture has come from comic books. You can’t leave your house without running into a mailman trying to wiggle his ears like Willie Lumpkin or hear someone who’s attended the Victor Von Doom School of Rhetoric. The tragedy is, of course, no-one now knows where all of these beautiful ideas have come from. With DC Comics going into bankruptcy following their 2008 Final Crisis series and then Marvel leaving the industry two years later, comics disappeared from the public consciousness just as their ideas moved beyond even the pop culture supremacy that they’d been enjoying at that point. It had long been a belief that the industry would survive without those two publishers, but, sadly, that turned out not to be the case. I would say it was a bad thing, but I’ve read Tarot and Return to Wonderland, and really? Good riddance.”

It’s Just Like Being There, But Quicker

(Because you, uh, almost demanded it? Okay, you didn’t – unless your name is Jeff Lester, in which case you totally did. But I digress. 

(At last year’s San Diego Comic-Con, I ended up covering the Eisner Awards for io9.com; you can find the official post here, written in the weirdy sleep-deprived state that you end up in when you’re at con for more than two days, but these are the notes I took throughout the ceremony proper… well, until the battery on my laptop died, anyway. They’re unedited for the most part – I took out Kate’s snarky commentary to save her blushes – and, if nothing else, a good document of my then-increasingly odd mindset.)

EISNERS

20th Awards – sponsored by The Spirit movie. People applaud.

Jackie Estrada introduces Bill Morrison, MC for evening. Keynote speaker is Frank Miller.

Frank Miller is old man. “If we ran cartoons on this, just to get rid of extra paper, maybe kids would buy ‘em” – He’s really doing origin of Will Eisner’s career? Oh shit. “This is my first opportunity in a very, very long day to talk about comic books” Applause. Old SDCC was “as if there were these figures huddled together with torches, holding onto artform they think might be forgotten.” Eisner took the medium forward with Contract With God (1st OGN) “Will never stopped giving in this field”. He’s drunk “straddision continues”? Biggest danger with improved audience is “splitting of focus”: “If you’re trying to do comic books: Forget the movies, forget the games. Don’t try to do three things at once. Give me a really good comic book.” Walks off. WTF?

Jackie Estrada’s back, talking about who votes for awards. She’s very dull. Also, she didn’t want to try and dress up?

Bill’s back. Can we start the awards now? Or at least do some songs like the Oscars? Oh, but there is weak comedy! And magic tricks! Entertainment weeps in pain.

Tom Lennon and Ben Garant (Reno 911) present. “Normally when people say that ‘if you’re nominated, then you’re a winner.’ Usually that’s bullshit. But tonight, everyone who’s nominated as best penciler/inker really is a winner, because you’ll go home with a George Foreman grill. Cash value may be higher.”

Best Penciller/Inker or Penciller Inker Team: Pia Guerra/Jose Marzan Jr. for Y The Last Man. Awesome! She’s very happy. She’s crying. It’s just like the Oscars! But the bad part!

Best Painter/Multimedia Artist: Eric Powell for The Goon: Chinatown. He has a pointy beard. 

Best Cover Artist: James Jean. Yes, Goddammit.  He jogs to the stage and looks very relaxed. “This may be getting a little bit old by now.” Is he complaining about winning so much? Bad form, James.

Tom and Ben have left. Aww. Back to Bill Morrison. Hey, it’s Paul Dini and Misty Lee! One of those odd “Well, he must make her laugh” couples. Poor magic tricks! The crowd goes mild.

Best Colorist: Dave Stewart. Kate: He looks like George Lucas. He’s very nervous.

Best Lettering: Todd Klein. It’s like the obvious part of the night. Who didn’t expect Todd to get this? It’s like the Todd award. He sounds so funny.

Best Anthology: 5, Fabio, Gabriel, Becky, Vasilis Lolos, Rafael Grampa. Fabio’s speech: I love comics. I’ve always wanted to do comics. I always want to do comics. Gabriel has rambly speech. “Comics are, like, so important to us.” Oh God, he’s getting emotional. Also, “Eel Weisner” is the best spoonerism to say at this event.

Mark Evanier and Jerry Robinson present Bill Finger for Excellence In Comic Book Writing. Jerry: “Bill Finger was the most talented comic book writer of our time. Our time was fifty years ago.” Ouch. Jerry Robinson doesn’t know when to stop talking. He’s like your amiable but worrying uncle.

Bill Finger Posthumous Award: Archie Goodwin. Well deserved. Archie’s widow makes a joke about getting award through airport security. She is awesome for that, no matter how nervous she is while talking to a crowd. 

Bill Finger Still Alive Award: Larry Lieber.

Sam Jackson presents awards. PEOPLE GO NUTS.

Best Single Issue: JLA #11 by Brad Meltzer and Gene Ha. Seriously? Brad Meltzer: “This award is for the losers, all of the freaks and all of the geeks.” Oh, Brad with your nerd love. Thanks Joe Shuster and Jerry Siegel. “I believe that ordinary people can change the world!” Oh, Brad. Again.

Best Limited Series: Umbrella Academy. Gerard Way is such a fucking geek. “Me and my kid brother, we used to grow up. Well, everyone used to grow up.”  I kind of like him more now. 

Best Continuing Series: Y The Last Man. Pia’s back up. Less emotional. Wait, she’s losing it again. 

Tom Kenney – Voice of Spongebob Squarepants – presents awards. He’s very funny, but sounds very like Spongebob even when talking normally.

Best Publication for Kids: Mouse Guard wins. Somewhere, Mice Templar people are sad.

Best Publication for Teens: Laika! AWESOME. 

Special Recognition: Please Matt please Matt. Chuck BB for Black Metal.

William Stout presents Russ Manning Award. Why are they playing “The Future’s So Bright, I Gotta Wear Shades”? Even William mentions it. Seriously, was someone bored?

Russ Manning Most Promising Newcomer: Cathy Malkasian for Percy Bloom.

Dana Wheeler Nicholson? and Al Jaffee present next set of awards. 

Best Archival Collection/Project – Comic Strips: The Complete Terry And The Pirates, Vol. 1. Sadly, Milton Caniff cannot be here to collect the award, being dead. WHO IS THIS CRAZY HOBO ON STAGE? Dean Mullany, apparently.

Best Archival Collection/Project – Comic Books: I Shall Destroy All The Civilized Planets by Fletcher Hanks. Editor Paul Karasik: “I’d like to thank my mom, but when I came up with the idea to collect all these classic strips she told me I was nuts. So, I’ll skip her.” A great speech about the power of the bastard.

Best Humor Publication: Perry Bible Fellowship

Rutu Modan and someone else presenting

Best US Edition of Intl Material: I Killed Adolf Hitler by Jason. Kim Thompson collects award.

Best US Edition of Intl Material Japan: Tekkonkinkreet: Black and White

Joe Ferrara introduces Spirit of Retailing Award. This is going to be about Rory. Sad.

Comic Book Retailing goes to Brave New World. Owners are very emotional.

Sergio Aragones presents Hall of Fame Inductees

Daily comic strip is “undaunting”? I don’t think that’s what you mean, my friend. Wait, you’re doing “married to a nymphomanic” comparisons? 

STOP TALKING OLD MAN STOP TALKING STOP TALKING

John Broome gets inducted,  Mike W Barr collects. Mike Barr is round.

Arnold Drake gets inducted. Jerry Robinson collects.

Barry Windsor-Smith gets inducted. Gary Groth collects. Groth’s face is incredibly smug and punchable.

Len Wein should get a better photo. He’s getting inducted as well, those. WHAT THE FUCK IS HE WEARING?  You know why it’s a surreal experience for you, Len? Because of that outfit.

In Memoriam – It really has become the Oscars. But the depressing crappy part.

Jane Weidlin presents awards. Somewhere, Charlie is squeeing. She’s not here! This is awesome! Bill Morrison is trying to vamp with a dull story. Weidlin arrives with stormtroopers. HOLY CRAP.

Best Comic-Related Periodical: Newsarama. GO MATT BRADY.

Best Comic-Related Book: DOUGLAS WOLK!

Best Publication Design: Process Recess 2

When winners are announced, Stormtroopers stomp their feet. Also: Weidlin saying “Get these motherfrakking snakes off this motherfrakking plane”? Fail.

Len Wein, Joe Staton presenting.

Best Writer: Ed Brubaker: “I was texting somebody because I was so sure I wouldn’t win. I’m gonna get out of here, Brian K. Vaughan should’ve won. Don’t you guys know who Joss Whedon is? I mean, Jesus Christ.”

Best writer/artist: Chris Ware – Rebecca Rosen? collects. And is twelve years old.

Best writer/artist humor: Eric Powell. Should’ve been Brandon.

Some Important Albums

Just like I did with comics, here are some covers to important albums in my life. I’m still not entirely sure how I’m defining “important” in both cases, although unlike the comics, I still own all of these albums, somewhere, even if it’s just in a digital, iPod-friendly form. Anyway. Feel free to psychoanalyze me based upon my selections. 

Five Better Ways For Batman To Die

#5: Accidentally slices his throat open after deciding to shave with a Batarang because he thought it would look “hardcore” and impress Catwoman.

#4: Heroically leaping off a building with a specially-constructed Joker-bomb in order to save a gang of scrappy orphans whom he had teamed up with to solve some child-related crimes. Amongst said orphans are, of course, many undercover Teen Titans; Wonder Girl had found herself drawn toward one orphan boy in particular – Tobias, his name was, and he had a pure heart that blinded her to his terrifying disfigurement and oddly Cockney accent. It had been Tobias who had discovered the bomb and, seeing Wonder Girl’s look of horror at the thought of Tobias being blown into hundreds of ugly pieces trying to defuse said bomb, Batman grabbed it out of his stubby hands and swan-dived off the building. His last thoughts before his death: “Nothing is more important than two kids’ dreams in this crazy mixed-up world. Nothing!”

#3: Having been forced to use a gun, Batman realizes that he has betrayed one of his core beliefs and commits Bat-suicide in the privacy of his Batcave. His body is discovered by faithful butler Alfred, who immediately claims the mantle of the New Batman despite his advanced age. Batman comics are cancelled within six months, following the controversial Early To Bed storyline.

#2: The final man alive, Batman has survived not only three nuclear holocausts but also the passing of seven centuries since his birth. He saved humanity countless times, led the Green Lantern Corps in their most noble battle and trained Kamandi to survive in the World That’s Coming (No, wait, wrong Kirby). As the last children of Earth ascend into the skies to fulfill their celestial destiny, Bruce Wayne pulls off his cowl for one last time, sheds one final tear and dies.

#1: In a story in his own comic, and not in a big crossover event book that didn’t even advertise the fact in its solicitations before offering one of the most unconvincing death scenes we’ve seen in a superhero comic ever for people who know their Forever People. Just sayin’.

Awesome

It was the beginning of an era of greatness. It was the ’90s.

“Some people read comic books into their early 20s!”

(All jokes about how young everyone looks aside, can you believe that news of the formation of Image Comics really got covered by Lou Dobbs back in the day? I can’t work out if that’s a sign of a slow news day, or proof that the speculation boom of the ’90s was being taken seriously by all manner of money men.)

Some Important Comics

In an attempt to get some actual content back on this blog – Something that entirely dropped off because we moved, and that took up a lot of time and brainspace – I thought I’d start with something very simple (in part because I just wrote a long post for Savage Critics – my first there in months, too, so this isn’t the only place I’m ignoring online, honest – about Marvel’s weird Dark Reign brand/story, and my brain hurts), and show you some covers from comics that have been/are weirdly important to me, for reasons that even I don’t understand. I’m sure you’ll have fun working out what their meanings may be.

(And if and when you do, feel free to tell me.)