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Saturday, March 19, 2005
Comic News Catch Up
The Book of Lost Souls: I'm having very mixed feelings towards this announcement. On the one hand, Colleen Doran is an artist whose work I've greatly enjoyed in the past. Her name on a project is usually enough to get me to check it out. On the other hand, J. Michael Straczynski's writing I generally find wildly uneven. I never had any interest in either Babylon 5 or Rising Stars. Midnight Nation looked as if it might be good, but I've never found myself curious enough about it to buy the collected edition. Amazing Spider-Man repels me, and Strange is simply dull. Supreme Power is either very good, or very bad, but never of consistent quality from issue to issue. And as for the publisher, I'm generally not happy with the editorial tone or direction of Marvel Comics lately. So, I'm left leaning towards passing on the book, sight unseen, merely because my appreciation of Doran's work is not greater than my skepticism regarding the quality of Straczynski's writing and the antics of the book's publisher, and that's a terrible conclusion to have to come to.
Victoria's Secret Service: This will be a good way to test how quickly corporate lawyers can react to copy-right infringements.
Just as DC recently did away with the $2.95 price point, Marvel has eliminated their $2.25 price point. Cue complaining from comics fans about the expense of books and people desperately trying to work out the "value per page" of their comics.
Joss Whedon to write and direct Wonder Woman movie: Now, if I were a cynical man, I might point out that Buffy only ever had a vocal cult audience and was not the cultural touchstone that many of its fans seem to think it was and that Firefly couldn't draw flies, much less an audience, and so this news should perhaps be viewed with some restraint and skepticism. Were I a cynical man, I might point out that Whedon's writing in the past has been, at best, competent, and that the high praise his work garners is a sign of how low expectations are amongst the audience for the genres he works in. But were I a cynical man, and were I to say those things, other people would act as if I was the person being unreasonable.
Tokyopop declares that they don't censor manga, except, of course, for those several occasions in Initial D and Tokyo Tribes when they have. And that's not even getting into the extensive dialogue changes they've done on a number of titles. Or how Battle Royale's plot was altered to fit in a "reality tv" angle. And it seems to me that there's at least one CLAMP title where a male character is always referred to as "she" so as to avoid any implications of a gay romance. But apart from those times they've never censored anything.
Joe Quesada went to Wizard World and, miraculously, refrained from acting like a complete tool: Two things caught my eye. "Regarding the cover of Wolverine #26: Yes, that obscure figure is Northstar and readers will find out in that issue why hes back and whys hes so pissed."---Hmmm, could it be because he was killed in a cheap stunt to goose sales? Oh, and apparently Wha...Huh? will be published in August. And it will be published "as originally created." The sound you hear is me laughing my ass off at the boundless optimisim of that statement.
