Our Comics Decade: 2008

Rickey
It was 2008 when I left Wizard and started at DC Comics. And alongside stuff in my job life, there were all these fragments of changes in my personal life that year that piled up and kinda splintered my memory a bit of what all went down and what all I read. So in that spirit of change, instead of an essay on a single book, here are a few paragraphs about books I read that year that created some impact on me and have remained impactful on me two years (whoopty poop, I know) later.

WATCHMEN - In 2008, as con season loomed, my BFF David Paggi was packing something like 10 themed sketchbooks, all of which were intense ass-kickers (Calvin and Hobbes, Star Wars, Lockjaw, etc.). I decided I wanted to do a theme book, too, and (I think my girlfriend recommended this) I went with a Watchmen book cause it was one of my favorite stories and probably my favorite comic. I also recognized that other than the occasional special commission, there wouldn't be much new art featuring the characters, so collecting it myself from any artist willing to draw it was my only chance to see something new.
I re-read my copy of the trade paperback collection in preparation, fell back in love with it, and decided I'd found the perfect theme for me. It's just a reminder: Re-read your favorite books every few years! It feels good.

PLANETES - I guess I just thought manga was mostly boys with hilariously large swords and overly gelled spiky hair fighting each other. Or books with cute animals exploding into stars and candy. Or books about upskirt shots of high school girls or snot bubbles or tentacled monsters assaulting cities. Or books about guys drawn like girls who make out with girls and turn into pandas when they get water dumped on them.
I'd just like to say I'M SORRY, MANGA. I had you UTTERLY pegged wrong.
Other than tasting Akira back when it was released in phone book editions from Dark Horse, I'd never seriously tried the format until Sean passed me his copies of Planetes, a straight sci-fi series about space-garbage collectors and the drama they deal with while working in a stressful new environment. It was human and beautifully drawn and galactic-ly NOT what I thought manga was. After that, the solar paneling opened on the space shuttle of my interest and a whole universe of new, gravity-free books flooded my cabin. Without Planetes I'd have never been interested in smart adult fiction comics like Solanin or 20th Century Boys or Monster. Or smart adult horror/thrillers like Dragonhead or Drifting Classroom or Uzumaki. Or a dozen other fun, completely accessible titles (Gon, Museum of Terror, Disappearance Diary, The Push Man...the list goes on) my ignorance wouldn't have previously allowed me to try. I'm proud of the manga I read now. It feels good.



THE MONKEY & THE CROCODILE - I read this absolutely powerful short story from Robert Goodin for the first time in 2008 and, as goofy as it sounds, it put a lot of stuff in perspective for me that year. It's online here and will take you just you maybe 2 minutes to read and I beg that you do. But don't gulp it down so quickly you miss the lush cross-hatching and inking tones. I like to read it every few months now. It feels good.



CAT GETTING OUT OF A BAG - I think this Jeffrey Brown book about a kitty being cute came out in 2007, but I gave my first copy to my BFF Ryan and his then-new girlfriend Elizabeth because the night I met her they were looking at it together on my comic shelf. I had to buy my new copy at New York Comic-Con in 2008 (from Jeffrey directly, so he sketched a kitty in it!) and then, in 2009, Ryan and Elizabeth were married. :) It feels good.

So, comics comics comics. 2008 was all about feeling good and dealing with new, terrifying adventures. And sometimes it was about a monkey and a crocodile.

Kiel
I don't know now if I can put my finger on it today, but I was feeling a little burnt out on comics by the time 2008 rolled around. Well, maybe not comics really. There were still comics I liked, still comics I recognized were well done and still the occasional comics that really knocked me on my ass. But I was really fucking tired of having to look at every comic I read through the prism of how it related to my job – a job that for various reasons was becoming more and more of a bear to work through with or without comics being involved. By the end of my tenure at Wizard, every superhero comic I read was just a reminder of where our coverage was going. Every indie book an opportunity to try and weasel more page space in the magazine for the black & white contingent. Every web comic a note that told me I hadn't reached my mandatory blogging minimum for the website that day. I know Ben's complained about this before, but sometimes doing the thing you love for a living can work to stress you the fuck out.

Luckily for me, right when all seemed at its worst, Dark Horse sent me fat ass Casper The Friendly Ghost trade.

I'm sure most of the people who read our blog are died in the wool superhero people, and the rest of you are some strange cross section of blogging types and industry commenters. And if I had to wager a guess how many of you gave two fucks about Casper the Friendly Ghost, it'd be a very, very small number of our already paltry readership. But seriously, gang...Casper is totally fucking boss.

I read next to no Harvey Comics as a little kid, having stepped almost directly from "I Can Read" books to newsstand issues of Batman. And the few times I do remember crossing paths with the traditional Harvey characters like Casper, Ritchie Rich and Hot Stuff, I'm pretty sure I just assumed they were watered down kiddie stuff. But by the time I reached "adulthood" (arguable that), I'd grown one of the legion of people who regularly harp on there not being enough good comics for kids on the market, so having 480 pages of what were considered classic kids comics dropped in my lap for no reason was a welcome distraction.

Really though, what makes that Casper volume stick out for me is the fact that when I took it home to read, there was no job function motivating it. There was no way in hell Wizard was going to end up covering reprints of kids stuff from nearly 60 years in the past, even in the more bizarre corners of the web site that I was increasingly being put in charge of. No, I just knew that Jerry Beck, whose Cartoon Brew blog I'd become a regular reader of, had written the intro and that in general, I'd never given old Casper a chance. So I sneaked the volume out one weekend with my Dark Horse comps thinking I'd give it a ten-minute flip before getting back to the real comics.

And that weekend, I ended up reading the whole thing cover-to-cover without even considering picking up another comic.

And look, it's not like Casper revolutionized the way I saw the medium as a whole or anything. And it's not even that many of the comics were all that great, because some of the early ones were downright stupid. But I became so involved in the trade then because I was able to sit down with something that was generally well-crafted and watch its stories roll out one after another only for the joy of watching them come together. Issue after issue, I saw the animation artists who were moonlighting with the naive little ghost try to pull more and more new ways to tell jokes out of the almost immediately played out "He's a friendly ghost, but people always run away from him because he's a ghost" setup. And they succeeded!

Issue after issue (and by extension, year after year), the Casper creators found new ways to play with readers expectations, expand the cast, tell new stories and restick the landing on old jokes all with a slick, attractive line and a kind of off kilter charm that we almost never see in comics today – kiddie stuff or otherwise. And one of the ideas that came wrapped up in all of this which I was really enamored with was the idea that there was no real limit to what the artists could do. No one was over their shoulder saying, "You've got to explain that Casper isn't a dead little boy, because that will disturb children!" or "You can't have Spooky do anything that would be viewed as morally questionable because he's setting an example!" There's a scene in that book where Casper goes to an amusement part and while on a ride, a man recognizes him as a ghost, whips out a revolver and shoots the kid through the head (it goes through him of course). Can you fucking imagine DC trying to pull a joke like that off in Tiny Titans?!?!?

Those old school Casper comics reminded me that when you're telling stories for anyone, the best kinds of stories to tell are the ones you're entertained by, which I think we forget way too much these days and especially forget when talking about media for children. But more importantly, what it reminded me of was that the reason I got into this game was because I love comics, and if the job I'm doing isn't feeding that passion then it's not me that's screwing up or the comics that are – it's the job. Unsurprisingly, shortly after discovering that Casper trade, Wizard and I went our separate ways in terms of my full time employment (a true blessing, all things told)...and shortly after that, I took Ben up on his offer to write for this blog. And now every time I get a little burnt out on what I "have" to do for work, I shut out all the external pressures around covering comics as an industry and read some comics that no one told me too. You should try it sometime too!

Ben
Like most people, I’m pretty adept at being a big fish in a small pond, but toss me in the ocean and I gotta work a little harder. So it went when I was in high school and juggling all sorts of extracurriculars then went to college and was lucky to lead my intramural football team to a single win or get more than two lines in a play, and so I figured it would probably go again when I transitioned from working at Wizard to working at Marvel.

By the end of my three years at Wizard, along with my two illustrious co-bloggers and a few others, I was part of the group more or less calling the shots on what went in the magazine monthly and had a fairly big voice in the direction we were taking the ship. Making the leap to Marvel meant I was no longer one of the more vocal folks among a crew of 20 or 30, able to play video games in our Publisher’s office and able to turn my dreams of getting original art of the ultimate Suicide Squad into a reality with relative ease; now I was the low man on the totem pole in one of half a dozen departments that made up a huge, international, legitimate company and did not even know the names of everybody on my floor (I still don’t).

That was why when only a couple of months into my new job I received an e-mail requesting I attend a marketing brainstorming session on an upcoming event called Secret Invasion that would include the Publisher, Editor-in-Chief, heads of various departments and Brian Michael Bendis via speakerphone, I was determined to do something to make an impression.

At the time, my then-girlfriend had become somewhat obsessed with lonelygirl15, the YouTube phenomenon that started as what seemed like a video blog from a home-schooled girl then morphed into a strange chronicle of the protagonist and her friends as they were uncovering secrets about and were on the run from a sinister cult. At first, nobody knew if lonelygirl was truth or fiction; once the game was given away and it was revealed that it was indeed a staged series using actors, I used to give Megan a hard time about the cheesiness of it all, but at the same time, I was more than a little impressed at how little the folks creating the show had done with very little and how they perpetrated a pretty cool hoax for quite a while.

I was also sure we could somehow use the same template for Secret Invasion, a story entirely based on deception and the idea of something alien infiltrating normal society.

During the brainstorming meeting, I was nervous as hell with every important person in my new company in attendance and throwing ideas back and forth, but I finally gathered up the courage to speak up when marketing strategies were being discussed and mention the idea I had: based loosely on the lonelygirl series, we’d set up a video blog series about a seemingly normal girl that folks would believe was a real person, but we’d seed throughout that something strange was going on with her brother and drop clues now and again with the ultimate payoff being that this was all taking place in the Marvel Universe and the brother in question was a Skrull infiltrator.

I wasn’t sure how my idea—admittedly roughly-shaped at best at that point—would be received, but Publisher Dan Buckley almost immediately said he thought it had potential, and Bendis liked it as well, so before I had fully digested pitching something in front of such an impressive group, my “creation” had legs.

As soon as I got out of the meeting, I got on my cell phone and called Megan, who made fun of me for using the lonelygirl template after all the shit I had talked about it, but also congratulated me and made one thing clear: she wanted to be the girl in the video. Of course I thought she would be perfect, but at the time I just told her I would do my best.

Over the next several weeks, myself and an expanding group that included marketing gurus Arune Singh and Jim McCann as well as my own boss, John Cerilli, and other folks like Mike Pasciullo and Tim Dillon met several times on the project Tim called—to my chagrin—“Lonely Ben.” We had to act fast as we’d need to get these videos out there ASAP in order to have enough time to build at least some following before the reveal. Cost was also a factor as we could only afford to pay so much to get these done with it being a last minute addition.

Fortunately I had the perfect cast and crew in mind, and I knew I could get them cheap.

In addition to being super cool and rad at making ceramic wings, Rickey’s girlfriend, Sam, also majored in film in college and I knew she could take a project like this and bring it to life in the fashion we were looking easy; besides that, Sam is one of the most creative people I know particularly when it comes to using sparse materials to make something awesome, so if anybody could create the sets and props we needed on a shoestring (and that’s being generous) budget, it was her.

As far as actors, I was fortunate enough to have a lovely and talented girlfriend ready to play our lead, and she enlisted her friends Guy and Ashleigh to serve as the character’s brother and best friend respectively.

I gave Jim—an actual published writer as opposed to a guy who kicks around on blogs and writes silent Werewolf comics—the outline of how I saw the project going and he created an actual script. Jim was also the one who named our intrepid lead Kinsey, after a relative, with Walden as a last name “because it sounds good” (I think). Another thing we tried to do was throw Easter eggs throughout the episodes as to revelations that would be made in the actual Secret Invasion series, like naming Kinsey’s brother Hank (since Hank Pym would be revealed as a Skrull) or using the actual Skrull alphabet Bendis had created on various documents.

Around this time, the idea was put forward that though the Kinsey video series would end as Secret Invasion began, it would be cool to have the character continue to appear throughout the event in comic book form. There was consideration given at some point to Kinsey potentially being the lead of Secret Invasion: Front Line, but Brian Reed had already outlined the series with other characters by then, so we scuttled it. Ultimately, it was decided that this could be the perfect opportunity to try something new with our Marvel Digital Comics Unlimited web comics, as we’d do three one-page updates a week and ultimately have enough material to put a trade out in the end; thus Secret Invasion: Home Invasion was born.

As Jim and I were working with Sam to get the scripts spiffed up for production of the video and approval by Bendis, me and Cerilli also met with editor John Barber, who was going to be heading up the comics end of Home Invasion. John being a smart and quite cutting edge dude, he immediately keyed in on what we were trying to do and set to work finding the right creative team to do the job, which ended up being writer Ivan Brandon and artist Nick Postic. While I never did get to meet Nick, Megan and I both ended up getting to chat with Ivan that year at the New York Comic Con, which was a neat experience that he admitted was a bit surreal as he had been writing a fictional version of a girl he was now being introduced to for quite some time by that point (I would be remiss if I didn’t point you in the direction of Ivan’s excellent Final Crisis Aftermath: Escape or tell you to pick up Nation X #2 for John Barber’s super-fun No-Girl story right now).

The weekend of shooting came and to their credit, Sam, Megan, Guy and Ashleigh got the whole thing done in two days, zipping back and forth between our apartment and Sam and Rickey’s (fortunately only a few minutes away), both of which were transformed into the types of places you could absolutely buy a teenage girl living in thanks to no small effort on Sam’s part as far as set creation. They seriously worked non-stop for nearly 48 hours straight (with eight or so hours slipped in for sleep) while I mostly just took people to and from the train station and picked up lunch using the funds generously contributed by Mr. Pasciullo.

The results were stunning and made even more impressive by the fact that a couple weeks later they had to re-shoot almost the entire thing (for reasons I can’t and don’t really need to get into) and it came out even better the second time around. I remain to this day immensely proud of the work Megan, Sam, Guy and Ashleigh did and am incredibly grateful they were willing to burn two weekends bringing my stupid alien version of lonelygirl to life.

So the videos began going up according to plan on MySpace and picked up a surprising amount of regular viewers who thought they were just watching a high school girl planning for her prom; as people would comment with dress suggestions or try to cheer Kinsey up when the guy she liked didn’t ask her, I felt both a giggly tingle that we were actually pulling this off and a small smidgen of guilt that we were somehow lying to these poor people.

As we came closer to the big reveal, we brought a couple of comic sites in on the act, and they were extremely helpful in directing fans over to the Kinsey series which suddenly jumped in views (the nice people at MySpace also helped by making Kinsey a featured friend). I was expecting a bit of a negative backlash as you always do from the Internet when we let everybody in on the trick, but most of the feedback we received was refreshingly positive, praising our attempts to do something different, which made all the hard work more than worth it. When we at last aired the final video, which ended on the cliffhanger of Hank revealing his Skrull form (I can’t heap enough superlatives on what Sam was able to do with a paper mask and shaky camera effect) then followed up with an ad for Secret Invasion as well as Home Invasion, the only folks really upset were those who had thought Kinsey was real.

It was pretty cool attending the aforementioned New York Comic Con the week that Secret Invasion #1 shipped and seeing that final video air before several Marvel panels to thunderous applause; it was cooler when some fans and even creators like Dan Slott recognized Megan and yelled out “Kinsey!” on the floor.

Over the next eight months, my job mostly done, I presided merely over loading the new pages Ivan and Nick produced for Home Invasion and updating the story on the homepage. I can’t deny how neat it was to see this character I had no small role in creating (and who looked like my girlfriend) interacting with Nick Fury and the Young Avengers as Ivan’s meticulous and suspenseful story unspooled with the help of Nick’s downright spooky art.

Kinsey Walden has not been seen since the end of Secret Invasion, but she is out there in the Marvel Universe and I do have a Secret Invasion: Home Invasion trade paperback sitting on my shelf that credits me with special thanks right up front and tells the tale of my little viral marketing idea and the life it took on. No matter what I do or don’t accomplish in comics, I will always have that book, and I’m so thankful to everybody who made it possible.

I’m glad I spoke up at that meeting.

2009: A Year of Paragraph Movie Reviews

I sure did see quite a few movies this year, and wouldn't you know it, I wrote about them all.

Before the new decade kicks in later this week, I thought it might be fun to go back through my Paragraph Movie Reviews for 2009 and snag a couple relevant sentences from each breaking down the gist of what I thought.

Hopefully this will help guide you through the use of all those gift cards you got for Christmas or Chanukah or at the very least finally clue you in as to what I thought of He's Just Not That Into You in case heaven forbid you missed it the first time around.

I included links to the full reviews if these teasers peak your interest at all. Also, I realized I start a lot of review pieces out with "This movie" or "This film" and have thusly grown as a person.

Doubt
My favorite thing about Doubt is probably the way it is shot. There are no quick cuts; every shot is long, deliberate and creates an effect that you need to be paying attention. John Patrick Shanley, who both wrote the play adapted for the movie and directed the film, did an excellent job.

Revolutionary Road
Forget Friday the 13th or Nightmare on Elm St; if you're a 20-something looking to get married anytime soon, this is the scariest horror movie you'll ever see. That aside, it's one heckuva film and I was thoroughly engrossed for its two hour duration.

Frost/Nixon
I'd describe this film as competently constructed and occasionally powerful, but never quite reaching the level of brilliance it seems to be striving for. [Frank Langella] is a force, physically occupying the figure he is recreating with incredible commitment, and making Nixon aggravating as a foil for the "good guys," yet charismatic and fascinating as well.

Slumdog Millionaire
Boy howdy, this wasn't just an awesome movie, it was an incredible feat. It's been some time where I walked away from a film marveling at not necessarily a performance or a scene, but how well constructed it all was and my hat is off to Danny Boyle for one of the best directing jobs I think I've ever seen. This movie is like a perfect stew or a well-assembled machine in the way it takes so many disparate moving parts and matches them up into a final product that just takes your breath away.

Milk
The unfortunate thing for me is that I'd say the bulk of my problems with it come from filmmaking decisions which overshadow a great script and excellent acting performances. The first half of the movie is just badly paced, racing through the early portion of Milk's awakening as an activist and taking all the punch out of landmark events. Once things slow down for the second half after he's established and time is taken to really invest in the workings Milk's life and the political system, it gets good, but your end result is an uneven viewing experience.

Watchmen
Even though most of the lines and scenes are verbatim from the comic, it's simply not Watchmen brought to life ala how most reverent fans would probably like. The sooner you put that aside (I did it around the scene where Dan and Laurie fight the thugs in the alley and it became clear that it was just going to be all the super hero scenes and that's all), the better off you are.

I Love You, Man
This movie has a little more meat to it than some of the other comedies much of its cast has done lately, and that works both for and against it. Me personally, I enjoyed seeing the actors stretch and appreciated a lot of the heavier stuff behind the laughs. On the flipside, I can see where the slightly more realistic tone and reined-in characters could be jarring for somebody expecting another "Forgetting Sarah Marshall" or "Knocked Up."

Rachel Getting Married
Honestly, the last half hour or so felt like I was just watching somebody's wedding video and I'd only get yanked out of it when they showed Anne Hathaway because I wondered when she was going to snap. Speaking of Anne Hathaway, she's absolutely brilliant and I don't think I would have checked in with the rest of what was going on around her if not for her performance.

Adventureland
I have definitely seen films that are more technically proficient, funnier, and flat out better than "Adventureland" pretty recently, but I haven't seen a movie that gave me the kinda enjoyment and satisfaction I got with this one in years. It's a very intangible and hard to pinpoint thing, because like I said I know I've seen plenty of good movies lately, but something about this one just caught and connected with me on a level that made me grin.

Vicky Cristina Barcelona
Stir that all together, mix in some trademark bold Woody Allen camera choices (I presume, having never seen another Woody Allen movie) and narration I personally found grating, and you come out with a movie I didn't mind seeing, but could have done fine without.

Star Trek
I'm by no means a Star Trek devotee, so I think I can say I'm fairly without bias when proclaiming this a really fun, really exciting, really clever and really just all-around well-done movie. Honestly, I hope more action movie writers and directors use this as a guide for how to do their stuff the right way. There was a pretty big ensemble cast but nobody got lost in the shuffle, screen time was well-managed, and while everybody got their moments, there was no doubt who the story centered around.

Terminator Salvation
A really good action flick should have a clear endgame established early on and everything that occurs leading up is either a landmark or sidetrack on the road to getting there; with Terminator Salvation, you don't get the sense that there is a long-term destination, just a series of meaningless fights and chase scenes cobbled together without an idea of the big picture.

The Hangover
Ed Helms and Bradley Cooper do what they do best as the dork and the asshole they respectively always seem to play, but that's kinda the clarion call of this movie: don't fix it if it ain't broke. Zach Galifianakis is the breakout here as he has a creepy awkwardness that makes you uncomfortable but also makes you just need to laugh; he really milks every line without being ostentatious about it.

The Proposal
This movie is a textbook example of how good actors can elevate subpar material when they really try. As far as story and script, "The Proposal" is pretty clichéd, not that well-paced and generally lacking in a lot of areas; in other words, it's an average romantic comedy. However, this film is so well-cast that the lean portions are at least watchable and the good stuff that could fall flat in lesser hands really shines through.

He’s Just Not That Into You
I'm shocked that A) Somebody made this movie (ok, not that shocked, Hollywood is crazy), B) Somebody else thought it needed to be over two hours and C) That so many talented actors read the script and still signed on. It's basically 129 minutes of people having the types of annoying conversations about relationship clichés that you fast forward in other movies and avoid in real life.

Bruno
Despite the fact that it was essentially a movie about fooling regular people and making them look foolish, Borat still had a certain earnestness and sincerity at its core that gave it a sort of uplifting quality that Bruno lacks. There are some truly funny parts of Bruno to be sure, but I noticed most of them involved extreme and graphic sexual comedy, which was more of a rarity and "final level" type deal for Borat, whereas here it feels like they couldn't figure out more subtle but equally funny alternatives.

Married Life
In the end, this film's biggest problem was that it simply wasn't that interesting or captivating, even for 90 minutes, and the good acting, decent jokes and quality camerawork only elevated it to an average piece of work.

Step Brothers
This was less a full-formed movie and more a series of bits that Will Ferrell, John C. Reilly and Adam McKay didn't have room for on Funny or Die. The physical comedy is top notch and some of the scenes and lines are hilarious, but there's no real coherent plot or flow to get caught up in.

Sunshine Cleaning
The premise here--down-on-her-luck single mom and her bad seed sister make cash by cleaning up crime scenes--is a neat gimmick and decent hook, but really more just a clever set-for a group of talented actors to do what they do best. However, as much as this film was more of an actor's showcase to me, I don't want to undersell the script, which did a nice job of balancing dark comedy with some real heavy stuff centered on loss and family.

Bigger, Stronger, Faster*
In the case of Chris Bell's examination of America's steroid culture, the author has intimate ties to his investigation, and as such, he creates a powerful, informative and oft-times heartbreaking piece. The project comes off as earnest because you can sense through Bell he desperately wants to find some logic in the paradoxes that surround him, and his genuine reactions to his findings will hit you harder because he comes off more as an average guy doing a research paper or something as opposed to a polished director angling for awards.

(500) Days of Summer
From the first scene it totally tries to win you over with its cute little home movies, its endearingly witty leads and its wonderful soundtrack, but then somewhere around the 45 minute mark you realize all those narrative and flash-forward portents of doom weren't just the usual empty romantic comedy teases, this is indeed about a very REAL relationship, not a fairy tale, and you get gut-punched watching the couple you just fell in love with have to deal with the same stuff you probably did as you were searching for your soul mate and wondering why it didn't always work out like it did in the movies.

Extract
Writer/director Mike Judge tries to graft on some heart and some dark comedy in various places, but it's a forced, awkward fit; "Extract" is ultimately a flick that leaves you wondering with such great talent involved, what exactly went wrong.

Year One
I do have to say that after really getting irritated by Michael Cera the past couple years, his performance here reminded me why I was once a big fan; I really think he's at his best doing pure comedy and farce--as he is here--rather than trying to incorporate dramatic over tones beyond the grasp of that one character he plays.

Precious
Mo'Nique is shocking as the abusive mother, delivering a consistent intensity that she is able to manipulate beautifully and make terrifying by using her humor to lull you into a false sense of peace and then jolt you with her most heinous actions; Mo'Nique's final scene is basically what should be listed in the dictionary under "Oscar Clip" (with all due respect to Wayne Campbell).

Funny People
I'm impressed by the inventiveness and sheer endurance of the filmmaker here on a movie that he could have probably cranked out as an hour and a half chucklefest; he certainly had a vision and committed, accomplishing what he set out to do at least in part.

Anvil! The Story of Anvil
It's almost as if [director Sacha] Gervasi wants to delve into these guys' lives as much as is necessary to make them accessible, but then stop short so they can still be characters as well. If Gervasi failed in any respect, it's that he made half of a movie so good that I'm really bummed I feel like I didn't get to see the rest.

For what it's worth, here are my top five of the year in the order I saw 'em: Revolutionary Road, Slumdog Millionaire, Adventureland, Star Trek and (500) Days of Summer (with The Hangover coming in at sixth after a follow-up DVD viewing).

Seeya at the pictures!

The real reason why "Watchmen" hasn't lived up to box office expectations

Believe it.

via

Cool Kids Roundtable: Watchmen Plus

It's always been the forbidden question: "What would you want to see in Watchmen 2?"

Forbidden in that Watchmen is held in such nearly universal high regard that the idea of a follow-up of any sort in any medium has long been looked upon as blasphemy by many. Getting folks to accept the comic being turned into a movie was a tough pill for many to swallow, but even mentioning the idea of the story picking up past that definitivie end point causes headspinning at both the mindblowing possibilities and moreover the many many many ways it could suck.

Nonetheless, as a late coda to our (well, more Rickey's) unofficial "Watchmen Week" festivities, e posed this very question to some of the Cool Kids...

Ben Morse: Untold Tales of the Comedian. I thought of this after thinking over the shot from the movie where Comedian assassinates JFK, but there are totally a wealth of stories to be told about all the shady shit Eddie Blake was tangled up in over the years. I'd want to see all his dirty government missions and find out who was giving him his orders, as well as him teaming up with various other characters. It would be a bit like an expanded version of the funeral issue (one of my favorites) with solo stuff as well.

David Paggi: Tales of the Black Freighter. I remember wanting to read a good pirate comic SO FUCKING BAD after the first time I read Watchmen. I think I went into a comic shop asking for something of the like and walked out with an Essential Tomb of Dracula or something. Sorry, the details are fuzzy and I have no recollection of exactly how that happened. At least I developed a healthy affection for Tomb of Dracula, right? So I guess I've still never seen a pirate comic series that looks as cool as Black Freighter seemed. I honestly think DC or Vertigo would do well to produce one, perhaps in the vein of Vertigo's Weird War Tales or Weird Western Tales.

Matt Powell: We're Watching the Watchmen: A Villain's Tale. I'd like to see a super-villain team-up book with all the arch enemies of the hero gang. Gritty like the Flash's rogues mixed with stories in the scope of League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. We never really got to learn much about the villains, and I wanna know what they'd have to say.

T.J. Dietsch: I'd love to see the Watchmen/Minutemen/whatever you want to call them cartoon that would exist in the Watchmen universe. I'm assuming Ozy had this in the works along with an action figure line.

Hollis' book put to pictures!

Minutemen Classics - Tales of the Golden Age!

Fuck it, I'd like to see a follow-up (well, not really, but I wouldn't shun it). What happened afterwards? Did Rorschach's journal get published, did anyone believe it? Is there a new generation of heroes?

And finally, Watchmen recast as the Charlton characters! Pete Cannon in the mutha fuckin house y'all.

Rickey Purdin: You can label me as the guy who doesn't want to see anything new as I'm still stumbling through all the different ways to read the trade. I genuinely don't want to see anything else.

Kiel Phegley: Like Rickey, I have no interest in seeing more comics set within the Watchmen world. BUT....what I think would be interesting is the idea of more one off superhero tales built on the concepts of some of the old and abandoned superhero universes the way that Watchmen was built on the Charlton Action Heroes. These days, there are so many comics that sell themselves by riffing off the big two's characters, passing off the whole "It's a caped wonder with a reporter secret identity...but this time he's a hemophiliac!" I don't know. Sometimes fun stuff is built on those concepts (Invincible comes to mind) but mostly it's all played out. I'd prefer some original superhero concepts first, but I also really like the idea of taking a Watchmen approach to some comics characters. Imagine a story setting up old public domain characters like Daredevil and Black Terror in a straight noir story, or a post-apocalyptic comic centering on some Mighty Crusader stand ins. I'm not talking about a strict, licensed revival like Superpowers or the JMS' Brave & The Bold, but a killer one-off story that recasts some bigger archetypes in an interesting way like Moore & Gibbons did on Watchmen. That'd be rad.

Paragraph Movie Reviews Double Take: Watchmen

So I'll give my very brief, not terribly interesting review of Watchmen first, but I was far more interested in getting my fiancee Megan's view as she has never read the comic and could thus evaluate it simply as a movie with no bias, and I figured y'all would probably find that more compelling as well. So let's get me out of the way...

Ben: Even though most of the lines and scenes are verbatim from the comic, it's simply not Watchmen brought to life ala how most reverent fans would probably like. The sooner you put that aside (I did it around the scene where Dan and Laurie fight the thugs in the alley and it became clear that it was just going to be all the super hero scenes and that's all), the better off you are. That said, I thought it was a pretty fun movie with some good acting, some bad acting and amazing visuals that was very intellgient at times, not so much at others. I was entertained for nearly three hours, so that's all I can really ask for.

Megan: Overall I thought the movie was entertaining and I wasn't watching the time to see when it was over, so that's good, but I was also very confused and had questions pretty much throughout, most of which I felt weren't answered to my satisfaction. Let me start by saying it was a good-looking movie and the visual effects as well as the action sequences were both top notch; excellent stuff. Also, Jackie Earle Haley was fantastic as Rorshach and I enjoyed his scenes the most. As for nitpick stuff I didn't like, Malin Akerman looked hot, but I didn't think her acting was good in this at all. I also could have used more Jeffrey Dean Morgan, but that's a personal preference since I'm a fan of him. A bigger problem from a storytelling sense for me was it felt like the movie lacked a proper focus or through line; I didn't get where it was going or what I was supposed to be looking forward too. It's also interesting for me to hear that so much was taken out from the comic, because I felt like they raced over important information because they assumed the audience already knew the score. Key stuff wasn't explained well and I was left just guessing at a lot of stuff. It ranged from big stuff to little stuff. I definitely did not fully understand Ozymandias' master plan because the exposition went so quickly, which was as good an example as any of where I felt like the movie was being made for the fans who had already read the plan plenty of times. But there was other just basic stuff I wanted to know. Why was Rorshach's mask moving all the time? Why did Dr. Manhattan have a little speedo on in some flashbacks but in the present he was naked all the time? Why did they make such a point of showing him put that symbol on his head? What was that thing he made on Mars? Why did the Comedian break down in Moloch's apartment? It also took me about an hour to get straight who was who since nobody used their super hero names in conversations, but they tossed them around when talking about people. I didn't know who Nite Owl was until Ben told me after the movie. And they made the scene where Laurie's stepdad and her mom are fighting way too similar visually to the one where little Rorshach's mom yells at him; I assumed the whole time that the big revelation would be that Laurie and Rorshach were siblings. I'm glad I saw it and wouldn't tell people not see it, but I would warn those who haven't read the comic that you're going to spend a lot of time confused and asking questions that won't get answered unless you go with somebody who has read it.

My Watchmen Sketchbook

This one's gonna take a sec...

Following in the monumental footsteps of several of my closest friends, I decided to start a themed sketchbook in Spring 2008. My girlfriend has a monster book, my buddy Matt has a Saturday morning cartoon book, my boy Sean has a David Bowie book and my future ex-husband Dave has a Lockjaw book as well as a Calvin and Hobbes book! It took me about a year to decide on a theme and then it hit me. Watchmen.

It's my favorite comic, and you don't get much new art featuring the characters, so I figured it was perfect. The problem, though, is that I'm a huge wiener when it comes to asking people for sketches, so my girlfriend and Dave have had to push me to ask. I'm also reluctant because I have this fear that the artists will assume I'm just some kid who wants a Watchmen sketch so I can sell it online or because, "Hey, there's a sweet-ass movie coming soon, dude!" But I said screw all that noise and at MoCCA in 2008, I began the book by collecting the following sketches:

Rorschach by Jason

I couldn't believe Jason (writer/artist of many amazing, brilliant comics you should read) was going to be at the show in the first place, but when I thought about who I'd like to have start my book, he seemed like the perfect guy. I LOVE his work and he's the kind of artist other artists would see and know that they could take my book seriously. And not only did he happily sketch away for me, he chatted with me for a second about the film and how excited he was to see it. He's just a genuinely sweet dude.

Rorschach by Adrian Tomine

I walked right from Jason's table directly over to Tomine's and there was only one girl in front of me. He's another guy I absolutely love and who I thought other creators would respect if they saw in the book. But when I got to the front, he politely asked if I could come back because he only had a short while for the rest of his signing and wanted to make sure he could sign for anybody who had his book, Optic Nerve. It totally made sense, so I walked back over to Jason as my girlfriend got a sketch from him. Ten minutes later, I walked back to Tomine because his signing time was almost up and he apologized to me (!) "for making me walk away." He said not many more people came up after I left, and he could have knocked it out for me before. When I told him the theme, he seemed happy to oblige and we chatted about the then-upcoming edition of Good-Bye, the new Yoshihiro Tatsumi volume from Drawn & Quarterly. Watching him draw, even upside down, seemed very delicate and was a great pleasure. He even took the time to letter my name in and smiled when he was done.

Rorschach by Josh Cotter

Cotter first came to my attention when he won the Isotope Comics award for best mini-comic in the award's first year. My best friend Josh Peichoto had also entered that year with a mini-comic collection of his college newspaper strips so when we checked into the guy who "beat" him, I was stunned by how his work oozed gorgeousness. Cotter won for Skyscrapers of the Midwest, which was eventually published as a miniseries by AdHouse, which I eventually bought, which I instantly loved. Plus, Cotter's a great guy in person and very warm and was happy to draw Rorschach's fedora for me.

Nite Owl II by Bryan Lee O'Malley

O'Malley (of the Scott Pilgrim series) was the last guy I got at MoCCA. He'd been signing and hand-shaking and selling things all weekend, but even still, he was happy to knock out this baby. It's cute and simple and I love it.

The next show was SPX in Fall 2008 where I got:

Dr. Manhattan by Jim Rugg

When I left Wizard, as a going-away present, the guys commissioned Rugg (Street Angel, The Plain Janes) to do this AMAZING original piece for me (It's Kamandi and Impulse (my two favorite characters) saving me from falling debris in an homage to this cover and kinda this one, too). I knew he'd be at SPX, so I made sure I introduced myself and thanked him personally. When I told Rugg what the book was, he seemed happy to provide me with a sketch! Then he asked if there was a character I'd like him to do that no one else had done and I told him Dr. Manhattan. He laughed about how he "got" to be the first one to draw a penis in my book. After a full-page try-out penis in pencil (which he didn't erase and I still have), he did this wonderful picture that does the God-like being right. Reminds me of Mobius.

Alan Moore by Brian Ralph

My second and final Watchmen sketch of SPX 2008, this Alan Moore was actually the second image Brian Ralph (of Day Break and many other books) did for me. I left my book with Ralph and walked the floor a bit before coming back and collecting my book from him. Later, at home, I found that he's done ANOTHER image, but pulled it out of the spiral book, folded it in half and stuffed it into the middle of the book. The discarded image was of Dr. Manhattan on the toilet reading a newspaper. But I don't wanna post it cause Ralph clearly didn't want anyone to see it. And besides, this hilarious image of Moore is completely rad. I like the socks.

And my one and only sketch at New York Comic Con 2009 was this beauty:

The Comedian by Cliff Chiang

Cliff is one of my favorite superhero comic artists, so it was a treat to break in my book with the superhero scene by starting with him. The only problem was, I had to work the DC booth at NYCC, and Chiang was signing at the time. In comes Dave with the save! Dave agreed to stand in line for a sketch from the Dr. Thirteen artist for me. And what do you know? Cliff goes all out for the Comedian in his earlier leather fetish wear. Cliff told Dave the fetish costume doesn't get enough love. I'd say Cliff doesn't. Check out his work here.

And that's it! I should note that I did get up the nerve to also start a ninja themed sketchbook and started it at the same time as the Watchmen one as a happy alternative for artists who don't even want to attempt a Watchmen sketch. Which I can dig.

And I gotta say, if you're looking to start a themed book, please, please PLEASE do it. It'll make you 87% more happy than you are RIGHT this second and you'll be all the rage at the local rave parties and gas stations. Just choose something you'd like to see an endless supply of and be polite when asking for submissions. Good luck!

Watchmen, almost starring Blue Beetle

I assume most readers of this blog being pretty familiar with comic book lore know that Watchmen was originally pitched by Alan Moore to star DC's stable of characters recently acquired (as of the mid 80's) from Charlton (although apparently even before that, he sketched out the plot using the Mighty Crusaders, a fact I'm sure Kiel is aware of and either endlessly laments or celebrates). But in the end, DC elected not to use Blue Beetle and company as, according to Moore, they "realized their expensive characters would end up either dead or dysfunctional."

Now I had always known about the whole Charlton thing, but kinda assumed it would still have been some sort of "Elseworlds before Elseworlds" story ala Dark Knight Returns (I guess the DC term then would have been "Imaginary Story," as opposed to if it had been at Marvel, where "What If?" was already coined), but Moore's quote would imply it was going to not only star known characters, but take place in the DC Universe! How wild would that have been?

Well, for one thing, we'd all be going to see a movie this weekend centering around the Question investigating the death of Peacemaker, Blue Beetle and Nightshade getting frisky, Captain Atom being the most powerful dude on earth, and f'n Peter Cannon pulling the strings!

But that aside, and even pushing past the fact that had the Charlton idea made it past the conceptual stage then Moore likely would have needed to work Superman and Batman in somehow as nobody is gonna be trying to pull this shit on their watch (ha!) without them noticing, there are so many ways that Watchmen would have affected the DCU in a continuity sense that may seem small, but would have actually been pretty huge:

-If Blue Beetle had gone through Nite Owl's arc in Watchmen and still ended up on Keith Giffen and J.M. DeMatteis' Justice League International somehow, he would have been a very very different character and that series would have taken a totally different direction. More than likely, Blue Beetle wouldn't have been in JLI, Giffen and DeMatteis would have used somebody like the Red Bee instead and we would have gotten Red & Gold instead of Blue & Gold.

-Captain Atom would have been insanely powerful and more than likely unusable as a character who regularly interacts with the rest of the DCU. He would have been like an energy-based version of the Spectre. Actually, I wouldn't have been surprised if he ended up starring in a long-running, critically acclaimed Vertigo series by Moore or Neil Gaiman or somebody and people would be asking questions at conventions about why he couldn't cameo in Justice League anymore. Also, Monarch would have ended up being Hawk in Armageddon 2001.

-We would likely never have gotten the classic Question series by Denny O'Neil and the character wouldn't have been awesome on "Justice League Unlimited." Renee Montoya would have ended up becoming a female version of Alias the Spider at the end of 52.

-Nightshade might not have been in the Suicide Squad. Peacemaker would definitely not have been in Checkmate. Life would have gone on.

-People would actually care about Peter Cannon, Thunderbolt.

-Somebody would have tried to revamp poor Judomaster and Sarge Steel, the sole Charlton characters without Watchmen avatars (unless I'm missing something and they were Mothman and Hooded Justice).

Anyways, even if DC had approved use of the Charlton characters, I've pretty sure somewhere in the course of development, either they or Moore would have pulled it out of the DCU proper to avoid the kinds of "Why isn't the Justice League stepping in here?" questions I posed earlier and because Moore would have wanted freedom to create his own world. It all likely ended up for the best of course.

However, before I leave you, let me pose you this little alternate reality scenario: What If (heh heh) the Watchmen Cast Replaced the Charlton Characters in the DCU? We would have...

-Nite Owl getting shot in the head by Maxwell Lord.

-Rorshach dying of cancer and getting replaced by a chick.

-Dr. Manhattan taking a vacation to the WildStorm Universe, becoming Monarch, then maybe(?) dying.

-The Comedian getting killed by Eclipso.

-Silk Spectre hanging around with Detective Chimp.

-Nobody caring about Ozymandias.

Yeah, I'm betting those characters definitely think it ended up working out for the best!

Pablo Marcos drew Watchmen art

Yeah yeah yeah, Pablo Marcos may not be as impressive a revelation as Todd McFarlane, but dammit, I know I get excited when I see anyone other than Dave Gibbons draw Watchmen characters.

Same deal as before. Watchmen characters found their way into the Who's Who 1987 update miniseries. This time, though, it was the "current" roster and it was Who's Who #5. Front cover seen below:


Artist Pablo Marcos did the wraparound cover this time, and it was the final issue in the set. Below is the art that accompanies the write-up inside:


You may recognize it as the cover of the newest trade paperback printing. Also, beware dudes who kneel in group photos. Below is the text for the group that appears inside the issue:

Click to enlarge

And now the cover. Below is the back of the wraparound, which features the Watchmen character mingling with some DCU regulars such as Rip Hunter. And I think that extra lady on the right is Laurie, though she's also there as Silk Spectre II, so I dunno...
I've labeled them all off for easy identification:

Click to enlarge

And there you have it. But speaking of artists covering Watchmen, below are a few of the recent images of note that I was able to find by artists whose names are not Dave Gibbons. Not included are the images from the likes of John Cassaday and David Finch, which appear in this book as concept art for the film. You ain't lived 'til you've seen Cassaday draw a crouching Nite Owl. Respeck. Anyways...

The group by Gabriele Dell'Otto of Marvel's Secret War:

Rorschach by Mike Mayhew for a Wizard Magazine feature a WHILE back:

The group by Chris Giarrusso of Mini Marvels:

The cover of the CURRENT Mad Magazine (on sale now!):

The group in a Peanuts homage by Eric Shaner:

And soon, my own Watchmen sketchbook will make it's first full online debut...

Todd McFarlane drew Watchmen art

Yup. It's true. Todd McFarlane drew some Watchmen art.

Back in the 1987 update of DC's Who's Who series - which was a glossary of all the DC characters post-Crisis on Infinite Earths - McFarlane did a wraparound cover for issue #4. He was on Infinity Inc. at the time, if I'm not mistaken. You can see the front section of that cover here:


Inside the issue was a write-up for The Minutemen, the Golden Age super-team seen in Watchmen. Here's that write-up:

Note at the end how they made a point to say the Watchmen Universe
was NOT a part of the DCU in the above scan

In the new movie, the above image looks like this:


The purpose of the series' wraparound covers was to fit all the characters indexed within on one image. The Minutemen landed on the back cover section of the wraparound, which you can see below with call-out notes for each member. Click to enlarge.

And there you have it. Todd McFarlane of Spawn and Spider-Man fame officially drew Watchmen art for DC.

The Dawn of Watchmen

Back in 1985, Neil Gaiman, a young journalist at the time, wrote a profile of Alan Moore a few months before the release of the first issue of Watchmen. Back in last week, Gaiman posted a scan of that article to his blog. Sharing that same spirit of mining the past for fun reading, I've decided to tackle some of my old comic press magazines for content, too. I'm kicking off with a bit about Watchmen.

What I have here is the 1985 Preview issue of Amazing Heroes, a spectacular mag that's been discontinued for some time now. Amazing Heroes was published by Fantagraphics (go now and buy stuff from them) and covered "mainstream" comics as passionately as, say, The Comics Journal (which is also published by Fantagraphics) covers graphic storytelling in all its forms.

dig that Jaime Hernadez cover...sigh...

I could write a whole post on Amazing Heroes alone. A few years ago, I switched collector gears from buying stuff like single issues of random comics to buying stuff like single issues of random comics AND comics magazines. Especially stuff from 1985-1987, the comics era I'm most obsessed with in terms of wondering how BAD ASS it must have been to be a fan at the time. So, in my quest to recreate the feeling of being able to snag issues such as Dark Knight Returns #4, Watchmen #5 or, I dunno, Raw #8 off the new comics rack, I buy comics magazines from the era. And oh, how the treasure flows.

For instance, in this 1985 Preview, we get the following bit on Watchmen. This is the first that Amazing Heroes ever covered the book. Just try to wrap your head around that. Imagine you work at Amazing Heroes - a magazine whose staff included Heidi MacDonald, Mark Waid, Peter Sanderson and many other names you may recognize nowadays - and you speak to people at DC Comics and they say, "Oh, we have this book called Watchmen coming out from Alan Moore, the Swamp Thing writer, and Dave Gibbons. Maybe you should cover that in your Preview issue. We think it may be big" Guh. Here's what writer Frank Plowright had to say

Click to enlarge

I thought it'd be nice to also add a scan of another article by Frank Plowright about a mystery project "coming in 1985" from Fantagraphics. Anybody know what this was/became/if it came out?

Click to enlarge

Hope you enjoy! And all due respect to the former writing staff, editors and publishers of Amazing Heroes. I hope I'm not angering anybody by posting these. I'm just posting because I want to share with fans whom I'm sure would like to read this stuff, but may not be able to get their hands on it. I'm not sure the legalities of posting portions of content from magazines that no longer exist, so I apologize in advance if I'm doing anything wrong here. Please contact me if you know otherwise.