56 Things I May End Up Remembering From Comic-Con 2012

San Diego! Land of perpetual 73-degree weather and $12 mixed drinks!

Like fellow blog bros Ben and Kevin, I made it out to Comic-Con International this year for work. I know that the general consensus from average fans or their moms is "Wow! That must be a lot of fun!" Conversely, the people in the industry I talk to's Twitter feeds are all, "And now I will lead this march into the jaws of hell!!!!!" In actuality, I think the show has some "crap I've got to do" to it, but that's totally drowned out by awesome adventures of drunken love of the artform revelry wrapped in absurd Hollywood promo materials and cosplay.

In other words, I had a great time. Maybe the best show for me in five years of flying out as a pro.
Here's everything I can recall of vague importance that would appeal to the CKT's readership of "People I hung out with at the show who are probably vanity Googling themselves right now." Let's do it!

* Randomly before the show, I got contacted by my hometown paper The Flint Journal, and they did a story about me going to the show. That was INSANE.

* Let this be the last time I tell this story with a twinge of stress in my heart: Comic-Con was already 45-times crazier for me this year since its early weekend meant it crossed over with one of my twice-annual, ten day graduate school retreats. I can't miss these retreats and still graduate on time, so I'm eternally thankful to my program head at Hamline University Mary Rockcastle for just being like "You should just fly out four days early! It's cool!" even though she probably should have busted my chops for it. Could not have survived the past two weeks without that.

* It was a super comics-y week at Hamline aside from the impending con. Not only have my job and proclivity to just say "Batman" as often as possible earned me the "comic book guy" label at school, but cartoonist Gene Yang was also at the residency for the first time as a full on professor. When I saw him, he was all, "Kiel...I heard you get to go to Comic-Con. No one told me there was a special dispensation, dude!" Apparently this is Gene's first miss in over a decade, but he was a rock star on campus all week, so I think it turned out.

* Of course, the night before I left it was my roommate's birthday part at a bar called The Happy Gnome. Of course, my flight to San Diego was at 7:00 AM. Of course, they didn't turn off the cabin lights the entire time we were in they sky. Of course, I was working ten minutes after checking into my hotel at 9:45 local time. Woof.

* On the up side, my father and younger brother Clint were at the show. 12 years ago, dad took me to Comic-Con for the first time as a high school graduation present, and this year, Clint wanted to do the same before he heads out to MSU. It was nice having them around on the CBR Boat and going out to eat at some weird British fish & chips place instead of hanging in the Gaslamp on Friday.

* It strikes me how much the con has changed even in my brief time coming when I think about how dad and I's trip in 2000 involved the Hollywood aspect where we saw a Kevin Smith panel and heard via a waitress the Angelina had bailed on a panel, but this year when I asked dad how his first day was, he said, "Great! We saw Anthony Bourdain AND McLovin!"

* Work went well. Despite my being at school in the whole runup to the show, the CBR staff was way on top of stories ahead of an at the con, which meant less freak out phone calls during the weekend and more partying. Props in particular to Jonah Weiland and Stephen Gerding – neither of whom made it into the show and onto the floor.

* But you know, when not making the show floor means you're on the boat all day, that ain't bad neither.

* My roommate Steve Sunu also did the all-star job of the Millennium covering for me and covering the show in general. You have to, have to, have to, have to, HAVE TO watch this first person video of Steve running the "Walking Dead" zombie course at Petco Park.

* Speaking of which, I found the above photo of Steve shaking Kirkman's hand at said event on the Facebook page for Geek Magazine, which I thought kinda funny.

* So happy I got to hit the comics blogging panel Thursday night hosted by Douglas Wolk with Heidi MacDonald, Andy Khouri, Rich Johnston and Tom Spurgeon. Sat amidst a packed room with Caleb Goellner and David Uzumeri. Perhaps the best parts were when Tom asked the crowd who there actually read their sites, and us and Brigid Alverson made up 50% of the respondents.
* But serial, at one point Heidi said she's stayed in comics this long because it has the nicest people, and the rows around shushed me for laughing too loudly.

* No but super serial, I thought it was really interesting how the default answer to Douglas' "Who do you write for?" question was "myself." I do a lot of writing for myself, but almost none of that involves my work writing. Maybe in selection of topic to cover do I get closer to writing for myself. But I always view my comics writing on CBR to be for consumers, retailers and creators...probably not necessarily in that order. (Okay, and I write for other journo-types a way higher percentage of the time than I'd care to admit). Not saying one is better than the other, but it was weird to feel in the minority there.

* If you're interested, here's a smattering of panels I reported live over the weekend: DC's Batman panel where I picked up one of the few giveaways I didn't lose – a Snyder/Capullo Court of Owls mask! Then there was the Ultimate Marvel panel and this Legendary Comics one and this DC graphic novel one and...oh hell, you get the idea. I've got to say that the panels for the big two came off as kind of rote this year. Part of that was a lack of big announcements outside of one or two things like new Sandman or Quentin Tarantino comics, but it's also because I just kind of felt like a lot of the standard bearers of these panels were a little off their crowd pumping game. No surprises even for the diehards, you know?

* That said, the fact that Marvel and DC have so many panels can kind of drown out the noise from something like the Image panel Saturday that seemed to carry a lot of energy and announcement weight. I suppose that the same can be said of how many books the big two release and how much of that sites like CBR cover what comes out, but I kind of feel like the pace that spaces out things in a regular news cycle fights against the wash of panels at CCI.

* So what I'm saying is, read that Image panel report.

* Okay, one more panel note: the DC Young Justice panel really gave you the feeling that between Scott Lobdell, Bobbie Chase and non-attendees like Tom Defalco, Bob Harras has just put his favorite lineup from his '90s Marvel band together on the Teen Titans comics like they never broke up. I imagine the readers of those books have at least a few genes in common with people who go to Credence Clearwater Revisited to hear "Down On The Corner" or whatever.

* I've always been a bit flummoxed by the costume people, but I can't admit that it's kind of fun to see what they pull out, and each year I seem to chat up at least one cosplayer who's terribly nice. This year, it was this girl dressed as Poison Ivy who sat next to me at the Batman panel. Every nerdy college student within five seats was trying to pick her up, and she dealt with it with aplomb.

* I was only on the floor of the show for 12 seconds on Friday, but I was happy that those 12 seconds were spent talking to Joe Keatinge. If you didn't already know, Joe is maybe the most ENTHUSIASTIC comics maker in the business right now. He's just so pumped about every project he picks up, and spoke to me in beaming fashion about his upcoming Thanos mini series at Marvel, calling the character one of his all-time favorites. I believed him. Also: Joe's Image series Hell Yeah! is severely underrated right now for how it riffs on comics history in a total non-obtrusive way, but that's going to have to be the subject of its own post at a later date.

* Also important: Joe knows everyone who's ever done a book for Image Comics ever, so if you meet him at a show, look around the group of people he's with and say "Who are your friends, Joe?" Then you get to meet Emi Lenox!

* One more observation from the floor: when you're a fan walking around San Diego and you see people in the biz chatting each other up, you may wonder what they're talking about. Maybe they're talking about the proliferation of comics culture in the world? Maybe they're talking about the profits and perils of digital comics? Maybe they're talking about some rad new series you won't see for another six months? No, I'm just messing with you. What they're talking about is "how much the other publishers booths suck balls compared to theirs, because you think our booth is the best one of the floor this year, right?" Booth envy. IT'S ACTUALLY A THING.

* Saw my friend and my O.G. comics industry mentor Ivan Cohen at the show too briefly (always too briefly). If you didn't know, he's writing issues of DC's Green Lantern: The Animated Series comic now. Sounds like some FUN stuff coming up there.

* Met new ComicsAlliance E-i-C Joe Hughes, who I instantly recognized from cons past even though we were never introduced. That seems like the best kind of person to be running a site like CA. Bumped into Joe maybe 45 more times over the course of the weekend. Excited to see what he does over there.

* Speaking of CA and Caleb as I was a moment ago, he's had some pages from what I think may still be a kind of secret comics thing on his iPhone that were so cool they made my eyeballs bleed. And THEN he told me the final would be in full color.

* Thursday night, I hit the CBLDF party, which has become a kind of annual tradition. On my way there, Sam Humphries sidled up on me like some kind of ninja, and it was the first of many times we laughed a lot that night. Sam and I talked about how Comic-Con has gotten to feel like summer camp – i.e. you kind of know where you're going in downtown San Diego after having to walk around that crazy mall on 2nd to get to the Westgate one night each year. It's like remembering where the old canoe launch is.

* Speaking of Sam, I can never tell how many of the core readers of big superhero books are blog savvy enough to be caught up on things like "Our Love Is Real," but anyone who didn't know him before the Ultimate Marvel panel probably wanted to buy his shit after. He speaks with a lot of knowledge and enthusiasm for his stuff in front of a crowd.

* Ditto Nathan Edmundson on that front, actually.

* Anyway, back to the party: it produced the above photo with myself, Douglas Wolk, Tom Spurgeon and the rad ladies of Fantagraphics: Jen Vaughn and Jacq Cohen. It was worth it for that alone.

 * Let me be the 12,000th person to mention online that Spurge is looking GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOD. I wish I got to talk to him in normal human ways more often.

 * Highly Important: Finally met Tom's brother Whit – Comics Reporter super photographer. After flipping through his iPhone, I really get the feel Whit takes more pictures of CCI than both the ladies we had working for CBR combined. He also slides wonderfully into this hilarious, Jackie Mason-esque character schtick without ever overdoing it.

* The 35 minutes I spend with John Layman at any given CCI party rank amongst my most anticipated events at the show each year.

 * Spent a lot of time talking to Chris Roberson and his wife Allison Baker over the weekend. Hot damn if those two aren't as smart and savvy as any people you've ever met in comics or elsewhere. The launch of their Monkeybrain Comics imprint has finally gelled a bunch of my opinions on digital comics together. Namely that I'm not sure the app model is the so-called "new newsstand" so many keep proclaiming it to be. Apps are still too specific and impermanent to be successful as general public sales platform like that. But they sure as hell fill the gap left by the modern direct market's inability to sell high end genre serials not published by the few standing players. In other words, Monkeybrain is to the 2010s what First and Pacific were to the 1980s.

* Comics writer, toy industry pitch man and A+ Wizard alumn Justin Aclin was my guide through Thursday night, and I couldn't have asked for a better one. He's got big things coming, this guy.

* Friday night was the super secret "Bros of Wizard" enclave where we plotted our imminent takeover of the entire industry (haha) while hopping from bar-to-bar. Attendees included Aclin, Diamond Select Toys' Zach Oat, Marvel TV's Todd Casey (and his lovely friend Mel), Archaia PR man and lovely friend Mel Caylo, Topless Robot's Rob Bricken, Kevin, Steve Sunu, Dark Horse Editor Jim Gibbons and...damn, I'm sure I'm missing someone. There are a lot of us! I love them all like brothers. No bullshit.

 * Ended our night at the Marvel party where we collided with Ryan Penagos, and I somehow missed Ben while I was doing shots with Rosario Dawson (not really but kind of).

* Also got some real hangtime with my girl Josie Campbell at the show. Realized after many nights of balcony chit-chat that her boyfriend Marly runs the "JoJo" Remembered Heroes Tumblr, and now I have a crush on him.

* I don't know what was happening at this particular point in my Jeph Loeb video interview on the boat, but I'm pretty damn sure he and I were having a GREAT time.

* Surprise CBR Boat guest of the year: Jock. He is an extremely sweet man. Like, Stan Sakai levels of sweetness even.

* That aside, my favorite boat interview for the year was a toss up between fellow Michigan State Spartan and all around thoughtful dude JT Krul and unexpected guest "Foxtrot" creator Bill Amend. Watch for those!

* I used to do these goofy celebrity sightings posts from the show, but this year my Hollywood overlap was ridiculously low in the best way. So here's my randomly short bus list on that front:

* I met everyone in the above photo on the boat except Elija Wood, who I only ever see at Comic-Con at the bar late at night. They seemed like fine folks.

* At one point, a gaggle of Hollywood types came onto the boat, like they do. You can always tell who the PR folks are by their blazers and their six bags and their constant texting. And you can tell the talent because they're the pretty ladies in the tight green dress and the high heels. This time out, the pretty lady was this woman – who I'd never heard of before she left and I said, "Who was that?" But she talked to CBR Producer Remy Minnick for like 20 minutes about the business of DVR. I guess that's what Comic-Con is for some people too.

* The Marvel booth is always totally crazy at the show, but sometimes it's that crazy because your buddy Ryan is talking to Don Cheadle on camera while Robert Downey, Jr. re-embodies the role of Tony Stark amongst 45 little Iron Mans.

 * My #1 celebrity moment came before I interview Joss Whedon in a little plywood room hidden in the middle of the Dark Horse booth. As a nice young lady from another website was finishing up before me, John Landis appeared out of nowhere looking for Mike Richardson (whom he referred to as "the basketball player"). Richardson was AWOL, so Landis just burst into the little room to shake Whedon's hand and tell him how much he loved "The Avengers." It was pretty funny to see a guy who causes nerds to freak out when they talk to him at the show freak out like a nerd because John Landis was talking to him at the show, let me tell you.

* On Saturday night, Ben and I embarked on the world's nerdiest, boringest episode of "The Amazing Race" ever when we tried to go out to eat with about a dozen Marvel staffers. 1.5 hours and seven restaurants later, we ended up eating alone in a diner with My Little Pony on the walls. Oddly, the only time I saw Bryan Lee O'Malley all show was when he was dashing through that diner towards the exit. Overall, best meal of the show. Thanks, Benny.

* Later, had the first ever event on the CBR Boat that I will qualify as a real, legit party. I mean, there's like a staff party early in the week, but those aren't ridic enough, you know?

* Somewhat related: MTV Blogs Editor Josh Wigler is a golden god. All that b.s. up there about me traveling at 5:00 AM? Chump change to how hard duder was going all weekend. * Talked to BOOM! Editor-in-Chief Matt Gagnon for a while. Really sharp in terms of how that company and their books function creatively and in the market. Example: he sees "Adventure Time" as both the kind of paying gig that can fill a comics-shaped hole in their commission work (a la the late "Nickelodeon Magazine") and also as a way to expose younger and more traditional comics readers to their other work.

* Best Eisner story I heard: upon winning the award for "Best Anthology" for Dark Horse Presents, Mike Richardson gave one of the three statues he got to his Assistant Editor (and my boy) Jim Gibbons. Not only is that a very cool thing to do, it also allowed us to declare "LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, EISNER WINNER JIM GIBBOOOOOOOOOOONS!" all night long.

* Over the weekend, Chris Roberson made a great case for never going to the Hyatt and instead hitting the Hilton Bayfront that was equal parts "The Bayfront supports unionized employees" and "Aw, fuck the Hyatt, man!"

* That said, was at the Hyatt for 15 minutes late Saturday. Spent no money, though.

* First time I ever heard someone refer to it as "The Riot At The Hyatt." How have I been missing that joke?!?!

* For some reason, I only end up catching up with Kyle Higgins in the wee hours of the morning when the bar is closed and we're both crosseyed tired. But I'm sure he's just as much fun when I'm sober/well-rested.

* People I barely missed over the weekend: saw Allison Bechdel walking through the lobby of a hotel, but she has no idea who I am, so I let her be. Saw Archaia's Stephen Christy by the pool, but he was on his cell phone. Saw Darwyn Cooke on the street, but I was on my cell phone.

* Sunday, my version of kids day involved a lap on the floor catching up with some of the folks making kids comics for the traditional print markets: * NBM's Papercutz has a new PR guy who's very helpful. Jesse Post in the hizzouse! Fans kept stopping by their booth to get some kind of Power Rangers stamp that combined with others for a free t-shirt. Power Rangers fans kind of fascinate me.

* Spoke with a few bros at Capstone Books – the Minneapolis-based publisher that did those rad Art Baltazar "Super-Pets" books. They've got a number of kids comics coming out this year and were excited both for their offerings and because it turns out two of them go to the same university as me.

* Ape Entertainment has had a TON of Richie Rich product hitting over the past few weeks. Between that and the app they've been pushing, I hope they're finding the audience for that material. New Ernie Colon/Sid Jacobson stories, y'all!!

 * Spent a while at that booth talking up Brent Erwin, Dave Hedgecock and Aaron Sparrow. They're stated ethos for publishing so many kids comics is "If we don't do it, who will?" I think that's a kind of a valid point, which is a little sad when you think about it too much. Still, they've gone from publishing creator-owned all-ages books like Scratch 9 to having a nice newsstand-distributed magazine dedicated to comics stories featuring one of the biggest animation studios in the world in a few short years without dropping much of anything along the way, so maybe not many others are meant to do it.

 * Wrapped my show getting an autograph on my copy of Love & Rockets: New Stories Vol. 5 from Gilbert and Jaime Hernandez. They said they barely had time to do anything fun at the show until that day either because they were so busy. As it should be.

* I'm sure I forgot to mention someone awesome I spoke to at this year's show. Tell me I'm a jerk in the comments, gang! And thanks for the memories!

New Linko! - Interviewing Stan Lee, Vintage Shuster Shop, Pokémon's Eternal Flame

Yo! Welcome to "New Linko!" which isn't much different from "Old Linko!" except I'ma do it more regularly and the heading is different and self-promotion yadda yadda. Shall we get to some links?

* Insert all "must-read piece of the week" qualifiers here for Alex Pappademas' Grantland profile on Stan Lee. Actually, in a lot of ways it's less a profile on Lee and more a profile on what it's like to interview Lee given the many contradictions surrounding his place in comics history. It was great to hear of another journalist struggling to reflect the full scope of what's happening today with the fact that Stan is a nice old man who's talking up his new stuff not to screw over others but to provide what he views as his part in their creation today. It's especially good to hear that since I'm talking to Stan on Monday (and no, I'm not going to bust his balls about Kirby and the Avengers).

Also: the above image is a promotional one for the documentary about Stan The Man created for some new cable channel called Epix which Pappademas summarizes enough in the article for you to know if you can skip it (though I'll probably watch because I'm totally stuck on archival interview footage). Anyway, I know that the backdrop in this image is meant to be a computery futuristic blast of Marvel energy thing, but it looks like they just threw up a kids bedsheet behind him and snapped a photo, right?

* Here's something I saw a while ago that I'm surprised I haven't seen more comic people discuss: a very one-sided post by animation critic Amid Amidi about how a planned Spumco coffee table book through PictureBox Inc. fell apart. I've enjoyed Amidi's books when I've read them, and I have mountains of respect for Dan Nadel, so I'm really bummed this fell apart, whatever the reason.

* In happier links that have been floating around my computer: Chris Kohler's Wired story about the continuing popularity of Pokémon the card game with kids is SO interesting to me. Raise your hand if you assumed kids stopped buying trading cards of any kinds circa 2004?

* Speaking of trading cards, this gallery of vintage 1940s Superman cards created by the Shuster Shop is fantastic (link via Mr. Tom Spurgeon). They say great art asks questions, and after looking at this art, I found myself asking questions like "Is that dude just throwing dynamite off a building?" and "Why is Superman fucking up that diver's game?"

Seriously though, I wonder if the card above's red-headed mad scientist is supposed to be the early Lex Luthor? God, I love Sigel and Shuster Superman comics.

* Speaking of some classic stuff I swiped from Spurgeon's site, here are some very meta Joe Simon/Jack Kirby kids comics.

* Topical Link to this blog post Link: Infinite Copyright Is Killing Culture.

* Occasionally I got off on a streak where I buy a bunch of random stuff on Amazon without thinking of the price. Next time that happens, I'm getting some of these gorgeous-looking UK kids comics by Luke Pearson.

* In totally different news, here's two links I've been sitting on that have told me all I need to know about the Manga industry in 2012: Jason Thompson's much-linked to piece on how the manga industry is digging its own grave, and Deb Aoki's 25 most anticipated manga releases of the year.

Linko!'s Weekly Crew Round Up

So here's a new feature focusing on links to the work of me and my compatriots. For now, I'm burying it here, but I reserve the right to get cocky and put it up top in the future:

* Rob Bricken at Topless Robot has like a zillion things worth reading every week, but I was very glad to read him on the official timeline of ever Zelda game ever. He found one of his nerd Grails!

* I love that we live in a world where they make Lego-esque toy lines out of obscure Peter David Spider-Man comics, and I love that my friend Zach Oat is in a job where he interview PAD about both.

* Ben had AT LEAST two fun stories worth your time up on Marvel.com this week: Tom Brevoort on the return of Thanos to The Avengers and Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning on New Mutants.

* Meanwhile on CBR, TJ Dietsch has been killing it with pieces like this DC Collectibles interview with Geoff Johns and Jim Fletcher and this one with Robert Kirkman about The Walking Dead #100.

* Finally, I had a lot of copy go up on CBR in the past week or so that I thought turned out well even for me, including this chat with Ed Brubaker on Fatale and my first ever talk with Andi Watson, one of my A#1 all-time favorite cartoonists.

The CKT @ NYCC!

Tomorrow kicks off the 2011 edition of the New York Comic Con, and while it will shut down this blog for a bit, you can find us Cool Kids across the board covering the action and doing what we do.

I'll be reprising my role from San Diego Comic-Con as Ryan "Agent_M" Penagos and I host Marvel Live from the start of the show all the way to the end. We'll have dozens of great guests from comics, movies, video games and more, so tune in here.

Kiel will be decked out in his Sunday best filing news and video reports for Comic Book Resources and you can follow his adventures as well as all the latest headlines there.

Finally, Kevin and Rickey will be manning the DC Comics booth, shaking hands, kissing babies, signing autographs and educating fans on what's up with the New 52 and more, so stop by and say hey!

We'll "see" you guys back here next week, but hopefully we'll see some of you at the show! Have fun!

Pimping My Stuff: DC Writer's Relay at CBR

I've spent the better part of this week falling behind on the blog and about a half dozen other more important things working up transcripts for something over at CBR that I thought I'd plug before getting right back to a strict regimen of typing things all day instead of showering: The DC Writer's Relay!


See, a few months back Jonah Weiland and I got an itch to try a new feature on the site that we shamelessly stole from the BBC's Chain Reaction series of interviews (though we felt less comfortable stealing the name along with the idea). The basic set-up was the idea that one creator would interview another with interviewee then becoming interviewer on down the line until the whole thing revolved back on itself. We decided to make our first test run with some up-and-coming writers at DC Comics we felt would make for some interesting and in depth discussions. Clockwise from the upper left, they were: Sweet Tooth creator and Superboy writer Jeff Lemire, American Vampire and Detective Comics writer Scott Snyder, Jimmy Olsen and T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents scribe Nick Spencer and Action Comics and Knight And Squire author Paul Cornell.

And boy oh boy, did those guys impress in terms of really fascinating discussion. in terms of topics, we placed no restrictions on what they could ask each other about, so all sorts of work from Lemire's award-winning Essex County books from Top Shelf to Cornell's "Doctor Who" writing to Spencer's rad Image Comics all worked their way in. And in terms of depth, I think I learned more about how working writers approach the craft and business of mainstream comics listening to them on the phone over the past two months than I have all year.

It's really amazing content that I feel really happy to have had a small hand in bringing to the web, and sadly, I'm starting to worry that either nobody's noticed them or they're just opting not to read them because "shit's too long" or because they're "waiting for some REAL news like a teaser image" or because "nobody told anybody to fuck themselves" or something silly like that. So I'm pulling out some brief highlights below and linking to each interview. Spend some time with the pieces this weekend, huh?


First up, Snyder chatted up his good friend Lemire leading to some really funny and interesting exchanges including the following:

Lemire: I think that's because of all that formative stuff where I didn't know what I was doing. No one ever saw that stuff, and I think I waited until I'd done something good enough to publish before I even sought out a publisher.

Snyder: That's one of the weird things about the contemporary mythology of becoming a comic book writer – you write something and then burst onto the scene, so you have your formative years as a writer. But one of the things that's interesting for me is that a lot of people I talk to do what you did. That's what I did in the literary world in the same way. You discover yourself as a writer before seeking publication.

Lemire: It takes a long time to find your voice, I think, as a writer or an artist. One of the things that is so different now – and I say "now," but it was really only ten years ago when I was in that stage – but with the internet and Twitter and all that stuff, everything is so accessible. Everyone is so accessible to each other, and it's easy to put your stuff out there right away. The line between professionalism and the amateur world is so blurred, now that the formative stuff is in everybody's hands.

Snyder: I feel the same way. I feel like a cranky old man saying it, but I was watching a Rock N Roll Hall of Fame induction. Bono was giving a speech about Springsteen or somebody – my wife was watching it when I walked in – and he was saying that if the music industry was the way it is now when U2 was forming, there wouldn't have been anything past "October." Because they had a gestational period! It's like any of the bands I love – since there wasn't an internet when Nirvana was forming, you have time to play in the dark by yourself and figure out who you are. But it does, now, seem like the spotlight is so aggressive. It's so intrusive that the moment you do anything that shows any promise, somebody can pluck you up. There is a certain amount of protection you have to give yourself as a writer or an artist.

Lemire: I feel like a lot of young people trying to do whatever it is they want to do don't have the patience or the work ethic to really develop. Everybody wants to be famous right away. Hence, the fame and notoriety is more important than the work itself. No one takes the time to find their voice. They just start throwing their stuff out there, hoping it catches. I'm really glad – God, this sounds terrible – but I'm glad that I didn't really have a lot of friends in comics or a lot of friends, period, in that time of my life. Like I said, I spent the good part of ten years alone and working and trying to get better. I'm glad that I have that. It feels like if you go to school for comics and be with all these other kids with so many other influences, it'd be hard to make it. Maybe that's why my stuff is so distinct. I just did it in a bubble.

Second, Lemire picked up the ball by talking to Spencer, who he'd never met, and pulling a lot of information out of the writer on his process for both creator-owned and work-for-hire gigs:

Lemire: That leads into what I was going to ask you next. What's your process like? For me, all my stuff tends to come from a visual place where I'm sketching in a book and a story grows from that. For you, you started to touch on this, but where do things start for you? A line of dialogue? A character? A high concept?

Spencer: Almost every idea that I have tends to – a lot of times I'll get a high concept first. It's a weird thing where I'll be sitting on the subway or I'll be walking through the park, and a general pitch line will float into my head. I have no idea where it comes from, but usually from there, I start thinking about, "Okay, what does this say? What's the theme of this story? What's the moral here? What's the question?" Then I start thinking about characters or who's going to be a part of that story. I usually think of myself as a "scene first" writer, but it usually comes out of some general premise that sprung up. And that process can take months.

So with "Existence" as a really easy example, I think the initial idea was "A guys wakes up in the body of the hitman that just killed him." Then you let that roll around in your head for a bit, and you think, "This is a story about a guy who had a life previously, and then he moved into a new life." Then it becomes a story about how when we make mistakes or even when we're unhappy in our lives, the solution isn't always to just go start a new life. The people in our old lives and our feelings for them reconnect us with what we've left behind. So then you start to flesh out the character. Who is this guy? He becomes this self-absorbed physicist who's been stealing from his partners and cheating on his wife, and he's made a general mess of everything. Now he's got this new life where he's a dangerous hired killer. And it's glamourous, and he's better looking. But then his daughter gets kidnapped, and he has to go figure out what happened to her. He's got to go back into his old life, and the choices he ends up making spin out of that.

So you can see how it starts from this standard line that the Hollywood guys love, but you never leave it there. I feel like a lot of writers go, "Oh, that'll be fun!" [Lemire Laughs] But you've got to put substance in that. You've got to build out layers, and that took months of having the idea roll around in my head.

Lemire: That's interesting. How regimented are you in your writing routine? Do you do the same thing during the same hours, or are you a little more open?

Spencer: No. Right now, it feels like it's just a continuous state of writing. [Laughter] It's all just bled together where there's no more times of "break." There are more times writing than there are not writing. I tend to write a lot at the start of the day and a lot at the end of the day. I'll wake up, and I'll have a few hours. Then the head gets a little tired, and you've got to take a break. Then later at night, I tend to be able to bang out a few more hours. I used to be a strictly late night person where I didn't get much of any writing done before ten or eleven P.M., and it wouldn't at all be weird for me to write until six or seven A.M. It was working fine, but I've sort of adjusted now, and I've broken it up into a couple of big blocks. Even though the time is probably about the same, I feel like it's better because I feel like I'm getting twice as much done because I'm sitting down to write twice. It just really depends. Every book is different in terms of how quickly it comes and how much time I have to spend on it and how many times I need to stop and start on it.

The Action Comics had a team-up next as Spencer interviewed Cornell while they both happened to be in the UK, leading to some highly British discussions:

Spencer: I really wanted to ask you some questions about "Captain Britain," which was one of my favorite series of the past decade. I just reread the first arc in anticipation of talking to you, and I'm in London right now, so it was a blast to read it here. The first thing I wanted to ask about was that this was an amazing story about patriotism, but it's also a story about how people don't wear their patriotism on their sleeves. You get goosebumps from these amazing calls to affection for your country, and then the very next line will be somebody making fun of that. Or there's that great splash page of, "We don't like to make a fuss about it." I was curious as to how you handled those moments and tried to strike that emotional chord.

Cornell: That's the nature of British patriotism, I feel. We have a very complicated relationship with our flag especially. And we can never say something straightforwardly patriotic without undercutting it with a joke or irony immediately afterwards in case somebody might think we were being too above ourselves or too serious. British patriotism annoys the hell out of me. It's really complicated. I think I am a British patriot in a lot of ways, but that's a very complicated thing to be. You could ask me that question ten different ways, and I'd have ten different answers. That book is an attempt to honestly address what the Brits would like these days in this field. It doesn't always succeed, honestly. A lot of people tend to view that run as what we like over here to call "jingoistic" which you would just call "patriotic."

Spencer: And at the same time, you wrote Gordon Brown there. How was the feeling of that?

Cornell: Obviously, the only way that a real British politician is going to be in "Captain Britain" is if he's portrayed as absolutely wonderful in all respects. [Laughter] There's no real figure that's going to enter the pages of one of my comics who is still alive and has the option to legal redress by "the Lord High Chamberlain" who is not going to be portrayed in a good way. We actually did have it where the leader of the opposition was supposed to be meeting Dracula on the moon at the start of "Vampire State" rather than Dr. Doom. And we were going to have it that he would initially seem to go along with Dracula and then once he got back home, rush in to call MI-13. It would've been a bit of a fake out. But then our lawyers informed us that that might not be the best idea. I'm the only person in the world, I think, who replaced David Cameron with Dr. Doom. [Laughter] Although, now I'm wondering how Dr. Doom would react to being in a coalition with the Liberal Democrats. That's a comic unto itself.

Spencer: Who would you replace Nick Clegg with?

Cornell: Nick Clegg is obviously Loki, the god of mischief.

Spencer: [Laughs] That's fantastic. But "Captain Britain" did use a lot of British iconography and Excalibur. One of my favorite lines was when she said to Dane, "You're with the N.H.S. now." I wondered how you approach that, knowing a large portion of the book's audience was going to be in the States? Did you think about that at all, or just say "I'm writing this for myself"?

Cornell: I tried really hard to make it not "that British book." I think an American audience likes a little tiny bit of Britishness...but not too much. I think we tried to strike a balance in "Captain Britain" whereas there wasn't anything that had to get explained, but contextually, you'd see the point of what we didn't explain. Maybe it was pretty obvious in context, I don't know. But I tried not to have stuff that had to be explained.

With "Knight And Squire," on the other hand, it's almost offensively British. We don't get any reviews that go, "Oh, that was all right." [Laughter] We either get great love or screaming hostility. I think it's interesting that I've managed to sell to British people both the quite serious superheroics of "Captain Britain" and the over the top Dick Van Dyke superheroics of "Knight And Squire." The Brit audience seem cool with both, which is a bit of a surprise. I thought they might dislike "Knight And Squire." In terms of the American audience, nobody much read "Captain Britain," which was always the problem, and now nobody can quite understand "Knight And Squire." Even with my translator's notes at the back!

Finally, Cornell brought it full circle by talking to Spencer about stuff like the metaphorical dimensions set to run through Detective:

Cornell: Sideline here that you may not be able to answer: Are the birds meaningful? Are they metaphorical? Are they set dressing? Are the plot?

Snyder: Well, I try to make them all of the above. [Cornell Laughs] I'll show the bones of it. They're metaphorical in the way that Gotham is transforming into a Gotham that's a manifestation of Dick's strengths and weaknesses and also sort of a nightmare funhouse mirror of his psychology as opposed to Bruce's. For me, there's an aspect to it that's about making it all feel tribal and animalistic and raw in a way that's changing itself. And the reason there are vultures in the beginning is that the first mystery deals with memorabilia. It turns really dark in the second issue, and for me it's all about the fact that Dick hasn't accepted the fact yet that he's the Batman of Gotham – even though he has Bruce's blessing. It's a light nod to this idea that Bruce's villains are on hiatus, at least for this series and run. The vultures are the whole idea of that Batman being dead and now you're Batman.

So they're metaphorical in that way, and they're plot-driven in a way that I wanted something that carries over into the backup. Thematically, we use them in issue two, and then they come back in #874, also. Hopefully it's not just window dressing for me.

Cornell: Well, it is literally. They're dressing that window. [Laughter] For me, it's a bit like Carl Jung, isn't it? You think of a beetle in a therapy session, and then that particular beetle flies in through the window. It's like Dick's attracting the pathetic fallacy in the form of birds to him.

Snyder: Exactly! I feel like the fiction that I write is pretty paranoid, too. The character is usually anxious and struggling with some diorama of the world that's projected around them with representations of those insecurities or fears so that you're facing those nightmares in a physical form. That's what I'm trying to do with "Detective," now. Hopefully it is a big story about the way that Dick is a very different character than Bruce, psychologically. I want him to be challenged by Gotham, where the mystery will have this effect to show him the ugly face of Gotham's people – its citizens. There's a possibility of them being really ugly in some ways. The second arc is about the new face of crime now that the Black Mask is gone and the Falcone's are diminished. I want this slow transformation of the city into Dick's worst nightmare that culminates in the end of the run.

Cornell: That's beautiful. I mean, how many comics these days ever have an unconscious dimension?

Snyder: I mean, reading them, I feel like your's and Grant's and all my favorite stuff! [Laughter] I do feel like the bar is so high now. I remember it feeling significantly lower when I was a kid where there were a few great comics and then a slew of comics in the middle. Now it feels so much more porous between the literary world and novels and comics and mysteries. The writing quality is so high across the board that it's inspiring to look around, but it's really intimidating too.

Trust me, there is so, so, so, SO much more in each interview than what I've got above. Please read them and share them around with your crew on the web. If this goes over well enough, I might be able to organize something like this again!

Come see us at New York Comic Con!

New York Comic Con officially gets underway tomorrow morning and your favorite Cool Kids will be in full effect!

-Kiel will be steering the ship over at Comic Book Resources, covering the full breadth and width of the show, so check out his and his team's coverage.

-In addition to filing stories for Marvel.com, Ben will be co-hosting the Marvel.com Live live streaming video with Ryan "Agent M" Penagos and Grace Randolph all weekend.

-Kevin will be pulling double duty for both Marvel and CBR.

-And Rickey will be manning the DC booth throughout the show, so stop by, get one of the world's greatest high fives, and tell him how great his hair looks (it always looks great).

See y'all at NYCC!

Pimping My Stuff: What I'm Reading

Big thanks to JK Parkin and the rest of the crew over at Robot 6 for letting me be a part of their weekly What Are We Reading? feature and gave me a chance to rant about Thor: The Mighty Avenger, Daytripper, X-Factor and more.

I'm a big fan of the blog and WAWR in particular, so this was a real pleasure for me. And as if that weren't enough, I got to team with my main man, Sean T. Collins! Score!

So consider this my Five Comics to Read for this month and do check out Robot 6 on a regular basis as they're doing rad stuff over there.

San Diego: What Kiel Wrote!

San Diego, man. Woof. What a long, strange, tiring, exciting, stabbing thing. As normal, I thought I'd take the massive gap in posting the collective Cool Kids underwent because of the show as a cue to fill up our corner with some ego stroking in the form of posting all that I wrote over the past week for CBR. But before I got to patting myself on the back, I wanted to note the following:

1 - For all my coming congratulatory bullshit, there is absolutely nothing that I did this weekend or ever will do at any show that will hold a candle to the unstoppable reporting prowess of Team CBR. At the end of the weekend, our on site panel coordinator – and all around chipper dude – Seth Jones sent out a text to the 30+ staffers we had on site thanking them for their hard work, and in it he said simply, "Best crew ever...I want you ALL back next year!" I couldn't agree more. At the risk of sounding like a total dickcheese, I take an extreme amount of pride in the fact that CBR probably covers this show with more depth and passion than any other media outlet – not just comics press or nerd press but ALL press. If you doubt me, check out our Comic-Con coverage index where the team delivered more reporting on panels than you can even imagine with more pouring in every day for this week and likely into next. Having so many people who were professional, timely, thoughtful and smart made what little I had to do administratively a breeze, and I swear to God I've never seen Jonah Weiland so laid back around late July ever. Thanks so much to everyone who kicked in.

2 - Holy fucking shit, Robot 6 and Spinoff Online! I would honestly be a hot mess if it weren't for the ladies and gentlemen behind those blogs, you guys. Every time I had some con-related news come across my desk last minute where we were all freaking out, I'd e-mail the Robot 6 crew and they'd not only respond immediately with a "YES!" but in some cases would actually say, "We were already chasing that." Can you fucking imagine how awesome those guys are?!?! They broke a lot of news on the show itself all by their lonesome and gave more better round ups of the breaking news of the show than any blog on the internet. Amazing, amazing, amazing, A-MAZE-ING, you guys.

And Spinoff? I can honestly say that when Jonah and I dreamt up the idea of a bigger media blog for the CBR network while doing drunken girly phone chats one night, there's no way we imagined it'd be as strong as its been in its brief life under Graeme, Kevin, Josh, Erik Jeffrey and the rest of the crew. We wanted to make a place on CBR that could expand out our coverage of other media that our readership seems to dig without sacrificing one iota of our comics coverage or comics focus, and I think we've done exactly that...and when I say "we've done" what I mean is "they've done, but it's so nice they put my name on that site too." Super aces, bros.

3 - Finally before I link to something that more than three of you want to read, I just wanted to say that I got back from this San Diego more excited about my working future and my future in general than I've felt in a long time. So everyone who hung out and said nice things and kept my positivity up all weekend...basically to all my friends at the show: THANK YOU. I went into this year's show not knowing what experience I wanted from it but walking away with the best one possible, and that was hella keen.

OK, so...content!


* I don't want to foist every piece of pre-con news that I worked on upon y'all, but in the ramp up to the show, there were a few legitimately newsworthy stories and/or just plain fun interviews I got to do that were tangentially tied to the con. For one, I was happy (and a little surprised) to be the only person to reach out and get comment from Jimmy Palmiotti and Larry Young as two of the principals in this coming Kickstart Comics company that's going to be hitting comic shops and Wal-Marts later this year. I know a lot of people throw automatic sneers at any company run by Hollywood folks, but my view is always that if someone is paying creators to get comics done, printed and sold, they deserve a shot to talk about that process in a forum where their potential readership can come and get facts on the product.

On the flip side of that particular story, it was nice to speak to Mark Waid and Matt Gagnon about their changing roles at BOOM! Studios. For being a place whose name carries "the S word," BOOM! has pretty much proven its commitment to comics first, and I'm always glad to see more healthy players of that stripe in the market.

Finally, there were a shit ton of product announcements and product announcement interviews from me in the ramp up to the show, but if I had only one to steer you towards, it'd be this one with Scott Snyder on his upcoming Detective Comics run. I don't know how well it reads through in the final copy, but I haven't spoken to any creator who was as flat out enthused over his new gig that Snyder in I don't know how long. It's nice to see new guys who are fucking hungry in comics, you know?


* Once I landed in San Diego on Tuesday morning, things pretty much started to fall on me left and right. For one, Jonah hatched some hairbrained scheme to get me onto the floor of the show before it opened (my brief photo set is here), and I'll admit it was kind of fun in its fake clandestined-ness. I think aside from all the other awesome perks, fans who want to become professionals should chase that brass ring with the knowledge that when they get that coveted exhibitor badge, there are few things more creepy awesome than walking the floor of Comic-Con when it's totally fucking empty of people.

The other major bit of Tuesday insanity for me was the fact that despite traveling to the show on little to no sleep, I'd committed to doing the latest of our new "Marvel T&A" column for the Friday of the show. We didn't want to miss a week so early in our new weekly column for any reason, so I called up Tom Brevoort from the Taxi stand of the San Diego airport for what I thought would be a ten minute "what do you do when everyone else is at San Diego?" chat and ended up with over 40 minutes of Q&A. If you're at all interested about the inner workings of Marvel Editorial over the product discussion these things usually gravitate towards, you may want to check that out. Also: Brevoort owes me a dollar for including that "T&T" gag in there.

* Once CCI gets underway, the majority of my time doing "live reporting" – that is to say I cover some of the bigger publisher panels as they happen while trying to lose neither my mind or my tenuous wireless signal. I can't complain about it really as doing a panel live means one hour of stressful typing followed by zero work on my part. It's honestly a sweet gig, and I hope that in the rush to catch as much of the news and quote people as accurately as I can, what I produce somewhat resembles readable prose rather that some kind of strange fanboy bulletpoints that need to be decoded by the message board kids. Anyway, the lion's share of these reports included: The first DC Nation panel, the Geoff Johns spotlight, the Marvel Avengers comics panel and the famed Cup O' Joe panel.


* And as part and parcel of that panel coverage, I also spoke to writer Jeff Parker about his plans in taking over Marvel's Red Hulk character with his "Atlas" artist Gabriel Hardman. To be honest, I wrote that story from a couch in the lobby of my hotel at four in the morning during a night of restless, stressful insomnia, so if it makes no sense please don't blame Parker.

* In between that, I found a moment to interview DC co-publisher Dan Didio about the whole "Alan Moore doesn't want Watchmen back or to write a sequel" thing. I mean, I got as much out of DDD as he was willing to give on the subject at least. I honestly don't know what to make of that whole story or even if it's that big of a story, but I'm always interested in hearing the big whigs talk about their big plans – even in vague terms – so it was an interesting thing in that respect at least.


* The other big chunk of my week was spent diving head first into Scott Pilgrim madness. It's kind of insane to me that one of the first things I did as a web reporter on comics was to interview Bryan Lee O'Malley about the release of the series' third volume, and since then the bond I've made with those books and that particular piece of my work life has been an incredibly satisfying and...I don't know? Humbling? experience. I'm going to miss waiting for new books in that world terribly, and I can't think of a better way to have ended my run following them than by live reporting on the star-studded movie panel and then on O'Malley's own comic-themed spotlight.

* I should also mention even though they're not up that for the first time this year, Jonah tapped me to do some of CBR's "Boat Show" video interviews. I hadn't done anything of the sort since the very end of my Wizard tenure where the process of talking to people at the New York Comic Con was as humiliating and degrading work experience as I've ever been through and made me want to stab an ice pick into my inner ear so I wouldn't be able to stand up straight in front of the camera anymore. Anyway, doing it for CBR was a much more pleasant experience, and in the weeks ahead you can all be on the lookout for video of me embarrassing myself in conversation with the aforementioned O'Malley, writer Kieron Gillen and the tag team supreme of Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning.


* If I could point you towards just one thing I wrote at the show you should check out (or the one thing you probably already have), it'd be my writeup of Grant Morrison's spotlight panel. Jonah very smartly didn't make this one a live affair as trying to encapsulate Morrison's thoughts on the fly would do the writer and his fans a real disservice. I hope I was able to cram as many of the interesting ideas, news and quotes I heard in that hour into my final report. and if nothing else it seems to be getting linked around a lot, for which I'm very grateful.

* Saturday evening at the show, some poor kid in Hall H got stabbed in the eye – a fact I learned while sitting in another panel taking notes, which I then had to leave to rush across the con to cover. Incidents like that are never the most pleasant things to write about, but I hope the report I filed with quotes from the police and Comic-Con's David Glanzer helped keep discussion of the event grounded in fact rather than wild speculation, despite the highly surreal factor that came in when I was asking questions of said police alongside local news stations, Entertainment Weekly and the Washington Post. Of course, that wasn't nearly as surreal as typing up said police quotes about the stabbing while sitting next to Todd MacFarlane on the couch on the CBR Yacht a half hour later. Saturday was fucking weird, man.

* I wrapped my on site reporting of the show with a brief chat with Glanzer about some of the events and issues that had sprung up during the week, and you can read that here. I hope to get David back on the phone for one more Con wrap-up talk this week, and I'll have two more panel reports hitting in the days ahead: A Mike Mignola spotlight and one about Paul Dini and Phil Hester's respective new Cartoon Network projects. Please be on the lookout for all of that in the days ahead, and see you next year!

C2E2 Is Here!

The first ever Chicago Comics & Entertainment Expo--or C2E2 as the kidz call it--is currently underway in the Windy City and we're pretty darn psyched about it. Rickey and Kiel are both on site partying it up while I'm following intently from tropic New Jersey.

Just a reminder that you can follow all the C2E2 action on Comic Book Resources, Marvel.com and The Source, as news about neat stuff like Ed Brubaker & Dale Eaglesham's Steve Rogers: Super-Soldier (pictured above) and Roger Langridge & Chris Samnee's Thor: The Mighty Avenger (pictured below) is already breaking.

Have a great weekend, folks! Comics!

Pimping My Stuff: To Hellboy And Back

Yo.

Like Ben, I don't like to spend too much time on the blog linking up to what I write for "the day job" because most likely anyone who likes comics enough to read this site already check CBR with some frequency (and reposting all I write would be annoying, especially during those weeks when it feels like all I write are soon to be shot down Captain America casting rumors). But sometimes I've got to make an exception, and this week I'm drawing y'all's attention to my new interview series with Mike Mignola "To Hellboy And Back."

What this is is a slew of interviews with Mike Mignola coming over the next few weeks supported by exclusive art, the announcement of a bunch of new HB/B.P.R.D. projects and support materials including character bios for the main players in the Hellboy universe and thoughts from some of Mignola's collaborators on the various series Dark Horse puts out. Now, I'm sure some of you are thinking, "Kiel, isn't this just one big ass interview broken up into a bunch of tiny little pieces?" (and I'd be asking that too because I hate when places do that for no good reason), but I really think that ultimately the material is much stronger formatted the way we're doing it (not even counting the fact that Dark Horse approved the interview with Mignola based on a desire to not blow their entire year of publishing plans for one of their biggest characters in one interview that'd be on the top of CBR's front page for less than 24 hours. They're crafty like that).

But no, the initial call I did with Mike was a little all over the place, and not all of it would make sense as a straight transcript, nor would most of you want to hear about me bitch about comics made to be movies for several paragraphs like he had to. Plus, with all the other material I'm gathering to strengthen our stories including more from Mike and guys like John Arcudi as well as some theoretically cool art which isn't even ready to be shown yet (so Jim Gibbons tells me), I think that each and every week one of these runs, you'll be able to see a different piece of the Hellboy universe and understand what makes it an interesting and compelling piece of comics.

For whatever reason, Hellboy remains something of an "outside the mainstream" property in comics despite being, let's face it, one of the most critically acclaimed superhero concepts invented in the past two decades. I'm not sure why so many members of Fanboy Nation don't pick up these books with the same frequency they do Batman or the Avengers, but if you've ever been interested in learning more about what makes Hellboy work, this is your chance to get informed at no extra cost.

So yeah...part one is up right now on CBR and more installments of the column will be held at this link. Let me know what you think, huh?

So...Um...I Got Promoted?

Hey.

So an interview Jonah Weiland and I did with Dan Didio just went up on CBR, which I think is supposed to be the official word that I'm now the CBR News Editor. As for what that means, well...I'm still trying to figure that out. I've been "on the job" since October, and so far what's changed is that I've shifted from doing your standard "Here's some product coming down the pipeline" interviews to more stuff like this, this, this, this and this. Long term, I'll be taking over a lot of the day-to-day planning of CBR's editorial content and helping to grow the site in a few specific places over the next year.



Beyond that, I'm not sure there's much else to say for now, although while I've got the attention of possibly dozens of readers I'd like to point out how rad the CBR staff has been to work with the past year and a half and particularly how great of a boss Jonah Weiland is. I've had the benefit of learning from a lot of extremely smart, talented people since I started being semi-professionally connected to comics seven years ago, and not to knock any of the others, but Jonah's the best guy you could ever possibly want to work for. Since I came on to CBR in the summer of 2008, Jonah has been nothing but supportive of my work and my ideas and trusts my news sense without question. His giving me the News Editor gig is an extreme vote of confidence, and I'm a little nervous as to what he's going to say when I inevitably fuck it up (Kidding!.....I hope)

And not to get all LiveJournal douchebaggy here, but you know, I thought a lot about quitting this comics thing over the past year. I'm sure it might sound stupid to a lot of you to hear anyone complain about doing the kind of job I do, but when you get up day after day and do the exact same thing over and over again (even if that thing is calling people up to talk about Batman), it's pretty easy to get burnt out. Add on a lot of moving, family stuff, personal garbage and your average "economy is in the toilet" concerns, and the gig of chasing around people on shin-killing convention floors to ask how their respective stories will "Totally change the universe forever!" loses a lot of its allure.

But I'm sticking around, and it's because of you. You people I've met through comics are the absolute coolest folks on planet earth from my esteemed co-bloggers to my many editors and co-workers to the rare people who take the time to comment on what I'm writing without calling me a dirty shill with no "journalistic ethics" to everyone who's ever hung out at a con and bought me a drink and generally made me feel like this whole enterprise is worthwhile. I hope in this new gig I can find a way to contribute a little more to the industry and the art form than I have in the past. I hope to make you proud.

HIGH FIVES ALL AROUND!

- KP

Pimping My Stuff: Cup O Joe

NOTE: This is a verbatim repost from Four Color Forum, which I almost never do, but this time I kinda thought it appropriate. Sorry if you don't like reading my crappy prose twice. - KP

So, I'm not 100% sure how this happened to me, but a little while back Jonah Weiland (AKA Mr. CBR, AKA My Boss, AKA Captain Moneytrain) called me up and asked me to participate in CBR's new Cup O Joe feature, a weekly Q&A with Marvel Comics Editor-in-Chief Joe Quesada. After a few weeks of being copied on e-mails and other unspectacular planning type stuff, the feature launched today over at CBR, and it's pretty nifty.

I encourage all six of my regular readers to bookmark the Cup O Joe mainpage where new interviews will go up at least on a weekly basis (and almost daily for this first week) and where Joe will be posting some fun sketch material like his process for drafting the above Spider-Man cover.

In the meantime, check out the first interview where Jonah and I ask Joe about the possible resurrection of Captain America, Marvel's renumbering to 600 madness and the controversial topic of changing comic prices.