Venom is a Slut part 10

VENOM SMASH!!

This amazing Mike Del Mundo cover is just a friendly reminder that February is Venom month at Marvel. Also that I can't wait for this story to happen. Carry on.

The Bill January 5, 2012

It wouldn't be Thursday (because it is TOTALLY Thursday) without my ramblings about the week's new comics. That's right, those past few weeks: Thursday-less. No more! 2012 is the year of the Thursday (or something like that), so let's get to some reviews to make it official.




Starting Off on the Wrong Foot:

Avengers X-Sanction #2
Writer: Jeph Loeb
Artist: Ed Mcguiness


Avengers X-Sanction is a very frustrating book. It's exactly what it promises to be (Cable fighting the Avengers) but, somehow every issue leaves me unsatisfied. It's just superficial fluff pretending to be something much more substantial and failing miserably.

Don't get me wrong, I really want to like this book. Really! Truth be told, Cable is one of my favorite characters from my comic reading youth. There was something about the combination overly complex origins and cybernetic parts (yes, I know they're not cybernetic... anymore) that made him wonderfully intriguing to my 11 year-old brain. I grew out of it, of course, but I've always had a soft spot for him and always like to keep an eye on his exploits. Even if they mostly involve him dying and returning in increasingly gimmicky ways.

And then there's Jeph Loeb, who I really have a hard time not liking. Sure, it's easy to hate on him for Ultimates 3, Ultimatum, or whatever else is the hip thing to not like him for, but I still like him. Personally, I loved his first few issues of the Red Hulk series, with its unabashed wide screen insanity. Sure it was kinda dumb, but damn if it wasn't a good time.

So with all that going for the series, you can understand how I was really prepared to love Avengers X-Sanction.

It's not that the issue is unreadably bad or anything, it's decent but it's not anything special. The characterizations weren't out of whack, there's a sense of logic to it all, and the fight was pretty cool (and epically drawn by McGuiness), but there wasn't anything that gets me excited.

Meanwhile, Loeb keeps dropping the barest of hints to a bigger story (more than likely Hope becoming the Phoenix), but not enough that I find myself intrigued. More, I just find myself bored because I can see the obvious conclusion. Maybe that's the whole problem: This book that's supposed to be amping my excitement for Avengers V X-Men this summer simply isn't.

And that doesn't bode well for the future.

Looks like it's gonna be a long year....

The Greatest Amusement Park Ever

Hey, lookit that, it's 2012!

Crazy how time flies and all that. How was your holiday? Me, I ended up visiting sunny Orlando Florida and the greatest amusement park I've ever been to: The Wizarding World of Harry Potter.

No wait. That's not how it looked. Lemme try that again, this time with a non-promotional picture.

Yeah, that's more like it. Because it ain't Harry Potter Land - Yes, that's what I'm going to call it from now on - without at least 10 people per square foot. But before I get into all that, allow me to introduce another 'land' from the same park for some perspective on just how cool Harry Potter Land is: The Marvel Super-Heroes Island of Adventure!

Since it was announced sometime in the late 90s, Marvel Land - at least I'm consistent with my naming conventions - has been a dream destination of mine. Seriously, what could be cooler than an entire section of an amusement park dedicated to my favorite four-color heroes? (don't answer that) Suffice to say, after a decade and a half, I had kind of built the place up in my mind to be the best thing ever. Unfortunately, the reality of the place didn't quite live up.

"Are you sure this wasn't something else before it was Marvel Land," I continuously asked the Florida-native FutureWife to her constant denials.

To be honest, there was nothing really bad about Marvel Land, there just wasn't anything special. Sure, there were cool little easter eggs here and there (a random Nelson and Murdock sign, Daily Bugle Newspaper dispensers, among other things), but on a whole the place looked like Tomorrowland with Marvel Heroes cut and pasted onto the buildings. Simply put, everything was very surface.

If Universal lost the rights to Marvel amusement parks tomorrow (which could happen now that they have Disney behind them), that land could be easily and quickly altered to something new. Tear down those giant cutouts of Dr. Doom and Magneto and you're left with just another futuristic looking city street ready to be anything from... uh... well, something futuristic. You get my point, it's generic looking.

Where Marvel Land was everything you expect from a typical amusement park, Harry Potter Land was the complete opposite. Where Marvel was all surface with random shoutouts here and there as an afterthought, Harry Potter was a fully immersive environment with everything in a very specific place to evoke a very specific feel. It was amazing.

Walking through the gates, you're immediately transported to the cobblestone streets of Hogsmead with it's quaint, and decidedly British, feel. All of the major shops from the books are represented, becoming more rides than shopping experiences with their attention to detail, movie-accurate merchandise - aside from the ubiquitous T-shirts and such that are readily available at almost every shop, of course - and completely in character staff throughout. However, while all this immersion is totally awesome, it only acerbates the worst part of amusement parks: Lines.

As cool as it is that every store, bathroom, and eatery in Harry Potter Land is it's own unique experience, it kind of hard to enjoy it when you're packed in like sardines. I honestly don't think I was able to take a full step forward the entire time I was at the park. Everything thing from Olivander's to the streets of Hogsmead were was full of shuffling and shoulder bumping as we attempted to get from one awesome sight to the next, but never enjoying the stroll down those cobblestone streets. And then there's the huge lines outside each and every store, requiring a solid 20 minute wait to do anything from entering Honey Dukes to buying Butterbeer (which is amazing BTW). While the whole land was amazing, it was certainly a test of my patience after an hour or so.

Seeing Harry Potter Land opened up my thinking to how awesome amusement parks can be. Hopefully the lessons that are learned from this money machine isn't that the kids want more literary lands - The FutureWife seems convinced that they'll use this success as a reason to make a Twilight amusement park. I hope against hope she's wrong - and instead are more interested in totally immersive parks. Imagine a Star Wars park decked out like Tatooine, A Lord of the Rings park made out to be part Minas Tirith and part Mt. Doom...

Or a Marvel Park decked out to look like a New York Street destroyed in a superhuman fight with very specific easter eggs and a real reason for the 'face' characters to run around. Now that's the park I wanted to see when I was 11. Here's hoping that's not too far off, now that Harry Potter has shown that it's possible.

The Greatest Movie Poster You've Never Seen

It speaks for itself.

Just When Community Couldn't Get Anymore Awesome...

Someone goes and does this:

This is probably the best thing ever and not just because it further solidifies my 'Abed and Annie are destined to be together' theory.

Go check out more of Kinjamin's awesomeness (including the Batman Heroes version of the same picture) over at his Deviant Art page. And after that, go check out some episodes on NBC so they know not to cancel it this season.

The Bill December 8, 2011

The Bill:

Did you like how, after a full month of nothing but new comic reviews, I ended up skipping a week last week? If nothing else, I'm trying to keep y'all on your toes. Just when you think I'm gonna zig, I dig and shatter your perceptions...

Of online comic reviews...

on a small blogger site.

YEAH!

Ka-pew!

Whatever. Let's get this show on the road, shall we?




Old-School At Its Best:

The Defenders
Writer: Matt Fraction
Artist: Terry Dodson




I want to know where this Matt Fraction was during Fear Itself.

Where Fear Itself felt over extended, limp, and half-baked, The Defenders is just the opposite. It's a fresh take on a old property, told in a manner that's satisfying to the buyer of a single issue, but still (potentially) satisfying in a trade. In a scant twenty pages, Fraction does in one issue what it takes Bendis to do in three. And it's honestly pretty amazing.

The story is pretty basic: A crazy new threat pops up and it comes to Dr. Strange to put a stop to it all. You know, standard stuff. From there, it's a refreshingly brisk, and active, tour of the world as Strange assembles his team around him. You can tell that Fraction is having a blast with all these characters and has no shortage of ideas.

The only odd stand-out, from a character perspective, is Fraction's take on the Silver Surfer. I don't know if it's a fall out from the Galactus Seed story line over the The Mighty Thor, or something that Greg Pak did in his mini-series, but the Surfer seemed very.... fluid. Literally. Something happened and now the Surfer is apparently made up of a sentient pool of liquid in the shape of a man. Is this a new thing? Can someone shed some light on this for me?

Weirdness aside, I very much enjoyed this issue. In this of four dollar comics, it's very nice (and sadly rare) to read an issue that's worth the money. The Defenders is certainly worth it, and I hope it's a trend that continues on into the future.

The Argument Against Digital Comics

Straight up: The digital comics movement scares me.

Not "scares me" in a I-think-I'm-going-to-die kind of way, but rather in a I-don't-know-if-the-comics-industry-can-survive-it kind of way. After years of being told that the industry is on the brink, I think I'm finally believing the hype.

Let's take a step back and start from the beginning. As I'm sure anyone who reads anything about comics online knows, there's been a big push from the major publishers to deliver their books digitally the same day they become available in print (otherwise known as 'day and date'). This idea, rightfully so, terrifies retailers who can only see customers leaving their shops and heading straight for their computer screens. To belay these fears, the big two have kept their prices online the same as in the store under the guise of not wanting to hurt their retail partners. Then, last week, Dark Horse jumped into the online game and nearly capsized the boat.

In their initial announcement of going 'day and date', Dark Horse declared that their new books would be offered for a dollar cheaper online than in the stores. The retailers were furious and within a few days pressured Dark Horse to amend their announcement to say that the books would be the same price at both points of retail.

Finally, a few days ago, Brian Woods (of DMZ and Demo fame) took to his blog to write a well thought out response to these retailers. His argument basically amounted to: 'the whole industry is hurting for cash, no one's making money, the fanbase is drying up, and something drastic has to be done'.

To Woods, an online component to retail only strengthens comics as an industry and will serve to get more people interested in my favorite hobby. Retailers ought to be happy that there's being made an effort to engage a new fan base that will eventually mean more profits for all. Except that, if we look at other entertainment mediums, it won't.

Here's where my cynical nature takes over.

Simply put: I don't trust these big publishers. For all the nice words they have for retailers and their attempts to 'make things right', I just don't buy it. When I look at the basic economics of the situation, it doesn't make any sense for the big publishers to try to work with physical retail partners.

Let's break down some numbers. Say, for arguments sake, that an average comic costs the consumer 4 dollars. Of that 4, let's say half goes to the retailer and Diamond with the rest going to the publisher. Of that half, so two bucks, carve out another dollar for production fees (printing, packaging, quality control, etc.) and royalties. Finally that last dollar is spent covering the 'above the line' costs of the writer and artists, with anything left over spilling over into profit. So that means, in real rough numbers, the profit for any book is probably pennies on the dollar (assuming that it meets the sales threshold to break even). To say that's a shitty return is putting it lightly.

So let's check out the numbers by going digital with the same cover price. So without having to go through a retailer or a physical distributor, a book sold for 4 bucks nets 4 dollars coming back to the publisher. We'll say that the the production costs, royalties, and 'above the line' costs remain the same, which means the publisher ends up with around 2 dollars profit per each book sold. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out, even with these rough numbers, that digital is far more profitable for the publisher than anything else. The question becomes: What about the collateral damage to the industry?

As an example to what I'm implying, let's look at the home video market. For years, when a movie came out for home consumption, you had two choices if you wanted to watch it: you could either go rent it from a video store or pony up the dough to buy your own copy. Then Netflix happened; rocking the boat first with their convenient 'rent by mail' model, and later with their 'instant streaming video'. As a consumer, it's awesome because I can get almost anything I want without leaving the comfort of my couch. But while that kind of convenience is awesome for me, it's death to the video retailer. In recent years, it's meant the decline of both video rental stores and DVD sales which has lead to decreased profits that are only now climbing up the chain to bite the distributors.

Worried yet?

Maybe we should look at the music industry, that (eventually) went full bore into the digital market place only to see their profits decline and record stores drop like flies. Or the magazine industry that's seen sales/profits plummet as their content becomes cheap and convenient online (not to mention the disappearing ad revenue) while the idea of a newsstand has wilted. The list goes on and on, but I'll stop before I sound like too much of a curmudgeon. You get the point.

Making things conveniently available online seems like a great idea for everyone, but ultimately just ends up hurting the overall industry.

The way I see it, the comics industry is standing on the same digital precipice that all those other industries stood on years ago and needs to be careful to not make the same mistakes. While the physical distribution model isn't perfect, and certainly isn't as immediately profitable, it does more to sustain the industry than a pure digital model could. The implicit costs of changing things need to be weighed just as much as the explicit costs because once you start going down the road of cheap and convenient, it's damn near impossible change course.

In the end, I hope everything will work out; that this, as with most proclamations of the 'Death of Comics', will fade in time. For whatever reason though, I have this nagging suspicion that it won't and I am, for the first time, very scared about the future of the comics industry.

Mondays are for M.O.D.O.R.D.

That's Mental Organism Designed Only for Roller Derby, of course. The greatest creation to ever come out of a drunken A.I.M. technology jam session. Well, second greatest, if you count this guy.

Those A.I.M. guys really know how to have fun. It's only a matter of time until they splinter off to form A.I.F.T. (Advanced Ideas in Fun Times!)...


From the disturbed, but awesome minds of Jed MacKay and Sheldon Vella in X-Men: To Serve and Protect #4, the greatest issue of an X-Men anthology that you've never heard of.

The Punisher's Aging Problem

As I was driving to work today, I was stuck behind a Chevy S10 with a walker bungied to the bed. Just above it, stuck to the rear window of the cab, was a sticker that read: Proud Vietnam Vet. The juxtaposition of these things lead me to one thought: The Punisher's getting old. Like, really old.

As a point of reference, consider the miniseries Punisher: Born.

In this gripping, but dark-as-all-get-out pre-origin story, we see Frank dealing with the dark days of the Vietnam War during his third tour in 1971. A quick extrapolation of dates puts Frank between 20 and 25 years old during this period. Tack on thirty years to get him to present day, and suddenly Frank becomes a very angry middle-aged man.

So ol' Frank finds himself in a unique position in the Marvel Universe. For most heroes, the sliding and compressed timeline isn't so much of an issue. Changing small details like locations (See Iron Man going from the jungles of Asia to the deserts of the Middle East) or motivations (See the Fantastic Four going from a race against the Communists to an unbridled sense of adventure) aren't a huge deal because the core tenants of the origin still remain. For The Punisher though, it's different, he's intrinsically tied to the Vietnam War.

More than the tragic death of his family, It's the horror and atrocity of Vietnam that shaped Frank Castle into The Punisher. Call it a stereotype bias, but there's something infinitely more tragic about soldiers fighting in a war only to be disregarded (or worse) when they returned home than there is in a modern day soldier. It's that combination of seeing/doing horrible things with the lack of public support when he returned that makes The Punisher who he is, the death of his family is just what keeps him going.

Of course there are methods to aging slowly in the Marvel Universe. From magical formulas (I'm looking at you, Nick Fury) to the classic de-aging trick (Magneto, Xavier please stand up), there are some definitely options to help Frank still stay relevant while approaching old age. The problem is, of course, that the fans don't like to mix their vigilante justice with magical Marvel technologies, as witnessed in the massive flops that were Angel-Punisher (The less said about, the better) and Franken-Castle (which is still awesome!).

The conclusion is clear: The fans want their Punisher to remain 'realistic'. Or at least as realistic as a 60 year old man with an unlimited cache of weapons and boundless mafia-rage can be.

I'm honestly at a loss for a solution here. On the one hand, I fully enjoy the grizzled old veteran Punisher that's been presented over the past few years. On the other, I know that septuagenarian super-heroes are kind of a rough sell to the younger generation.

It's a problem that's going to need to be solved in the next decade or so, otherwise the next major transformation the Punisher will go through will involve a new hip and a walker.

Venom is a Slut Part January

Apparently Venom is going to grace the covers of all of Marvel's books this coming January ala those 'I am Captain America' variants earlier this year and the 'Deadpool' variants a few years back. As a result, I think I just found the fodder to keep this feature going well into the next decade.

Thanks for making things easy for me, Marvel! It's much appreciated!