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A Sad Passing:
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On February 22, 2011 comics writer and animated television writer/producer Dwayne McDuffie passed away. Known for his work first at Marvel Comics where he came up with the team known as Damage Control and gave Deathlok a new direction. He then left comics for a while and became a freelance writer. In 1993 McDuffie along with Denys Cowan, Michael Davis and Derek T. Dingle created Milestone comics which was published as an imprint of DC Comics. There Dwayne created three memorable characters Xombi, Icon and his biggest hit Static. Static was so popular that the WB Network started a Saturday morning cartoon for the character in the year 2000. I think repeats of the show can be caught on the DXD network on cable or satellite television. In more recent times McDuffie worked as a story editor for the cartoon series "Justice League Unlimited" as well as wrote several DC Comics direct to DVD films. In the 2000's he was also a writer for the Marvel comic series Fantastic Four and the DC series Justice League of America. Xombi is supposed to be getting a new series in DC continuity so it is up in the air whether or not that will go on. Static is already in the DC universe because he is now part of the Teen Titans. I really came to know Mr. McDuffie's work first in the Deathlok comic series in the early 1990's. I remember really struggling whether to spend my left over allowance for that week on a copy of Deathlok #1 from the new comics shelves and GI Joe #1 from the back issue box or GI Joe #1 and 2 and not Deathlok. Knowing how hot it would have been I picked up the Deathlok and GI Joe #1's and left GI Joe #2 in the box to get the next week. I have never regretted that purchase. A lot of the purchases I made of comics during that time I don't regret, but toys, that's a different story all together. I don't know why I was so hot on the Deathlok book, but I think I was on a cybernetics kick at the time. Looking back on it now, the story was so compelling to me that I liked it, but had to drop the series when money got tight. I'm trying to collect back issues of the series, but that is going to get harder because comics dealers drive up the price on everything that someone who has passed away has done. When I left comics shortly after that and came back in 2008, one of the first comics on my pull list was Justice League of America. The book was hit or miss at first, but when McDuffie came on the book there was a great up shift on the writing and I could see how some of his writing stuck with me. It was the compelling stories that kept me on the book for so long. The last thing I remember from the book that I am going to have to go re-read is some temporal hole opening up in the JLA's Watchtower and the Milestone equivalent of the League coming into the DC universe. The Superman analog for the team left the satellite and hung out on an asteroid as Superman came to meet him. The rest of the League was fighting the Milestoners. After he was unceremoniously kicked off the book for some comments on his blog, I dropped the series and pretty much everything DC and have picked up very little DC since then. Dwayne McDuffie is survived by a wife and my prayers are with her in this dark time.
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This link
talks about how there are just to many random comic book movies being made for the sake of making movies. Are you like me; sick of the same comic book movies being made over and over again? We've already had three X-Men movies and now they are doing a reboot of the whole franchise and it has only been what, 10 years and only two or three since the last one? Then they are blowing up the Spider-Man franchise they already had built up since 2001 to start that over again with a new lead and make more money. It seems like with the success of the original X-Men and Spider-Man movies Marvel has gotten dollar signs in their eyes like Scrooge McDuck when he hears about a way to make money. They are going to milk every character they have in their catalog from Abomination to Zizzax to make money. They are using the new Captain America and Thor movies to set up an Avengers movie for the future. Well, they are going to need to hurry otherwise the public will lose all interest in an Avengers movie and move on to whatever is going to be popular next. I think it is time for comic book companies to step back and look at what they have done and what they are going to do. It takes a boatload of money to make a live action movie of a superhero because of all the effects that they have to do digitally and non-digitally and those cost money to make them look realistic. DC you are not immune to this either. You've already rebooted the Superman franchise since it ended in the 1980's and are now going to do it again when the last movie was only made, what, four years ago? Then you are expanding the Batman franchise into another movie and starting a Green Lantern franchise. How long is it going to be before you blow those two up and start again? I'm setting the over under on those being rebooted at four years and I'm taking the under. For the love of Fuzzy Hollywood, can't you make original movies? The last original movie I saw that was not a sequel was UP and that was from Pixar. If an animation studio can produce quality storytelling without having to go into the well of comic books then the rest of Hollywood can too. This is why I say and am a big proponent of making super hero movies animated rather than live action. It is cheaper in the long run and does not require a lot of stunt work that makes movies more costly to insure. (UP has one of the best modes of transportation ever: BALLOON HOUSE!) Overall I think we all need to get away from the licensed titles and start being creative once again.
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Some Random Comic Related Tweets
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As we all know, Twitter is the number one way to get your information in 140 characters or less. I was looking at the ones I follow yesterday and @NathanFillion had a chain of them where he was answering questions related to DC and Marvel. I'm guessing this had to do with him voicing the Green Lantern in a Direct to DVD Animated movie to coincide with the release of the motion picture later on this year. "@FarahKeys: @NathanFillion If you could play a SpiderMan villain, who would it be? :)" Definitely The Scorpion. Personally for him I would have picked The Shocker, but Scorpion is cool too. "@lexistential: @NathanFillion if you could be part of the DC universe, who would you pick?" Ambush Bug. This proves that he is 100% fanboy and lover of obscure characters. It would have gotten weird if he said Detective Chimp. "@RyanLightsFade: @NathanFillion if you and Ryan Reynolds got into a fight who do you think win?" Ryan, but then the guilt would crush him. I'm not sure if this one has to do with comics, but since Ryan Reynolds is in the new Green Lantern Movie coming out later this year, and Mr. Fillion is the voice of Green Lantern in a direct to DVD movie; I figured he was talking about that. "@1NerdGirl: @nathanfillion who's the hottest DC chick?" Power Girl. At least most younger male comics fans can agree with that. I really think he's got a fanboy streak in him, but he does not like to show it all that often. I do love Nathan Fillion as an actor on Castle and think he should get more parts that are fun to play. He was the voice of Vigilante in the Justuce League Unlimited cartoon so I guess voice acting is one of his many talents.
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Tickets went on sale last month for the 2011 San Diego Comic-Con for all four days as well as individual days. I had totally forgotten about this because of a little thing called the weather here in Dallas, Texas. As I looked on the Bleeding Cool web site, most people were getting an error message when they tried to load the site to buy tickets. To add insult to injury, the company that was running the site was re-tweeting the tweets of the people who were successfully ordering tickets. This really infuriated those that could not order their tickets after sometimes hours of waiting. It appears that the site that was selling the tickets got over 33,000,000 hits in the time tickets were available. I don't know a lot about the company that was running the whole on-line purchasing site, Ticket Leap, but they really dropped the ball on this. One of the San Diego Comic-Con staffers said to someone on Bleeding Cool "There has to be an easier way than this." I have a proposition for San Diego higher ups to look at. With everyone all around the world trying to hit the site at the exact same time then there is bound to be problems with bandwidth and not being able to fit every load request into the site at the same time. Maybe they could have staggered the buying windows for certain parts of the world. Let's say that England, France and other parts of Europe had a window of a day or until all the tickets allocated were sold. Then North America (USA, Canada, Mexico) would be broken down into four time periods in a 24 hour period to buy tickets. East Coast could have 6:00am to 12:00pm (eastern time), 12:00pm to 6:00pm (Eastern Time) and so on until you hit the Pacific time zone and have a six hour block just for those times. It would lessen traffic on the site and make most of the people happy because they would at least have less of a crap shoot of buying tickets with everyone else in the world trying to get them all at once. They could have also teamed up with a higher volume ticket seller like Ticketmaster who is used to having their site slammed all at once to get tickets to a concert or show. I know there are a lot of people out there that will not buy tickets from Ticketmaster because of some reason or another, so that would instantly eliminate those people and then leave more positions open for people who might be able to buy tickets and could also get a hotel as well. That is another thing that is going to be a nightmare come later on this month, booking hotels. I know a few years ago when the editor at the Collector Times wanted to pay for an admission ticket and hotel room for those of us that could afford to fly to San Diego to have a group working the convention. I did not get to go, but I am poor and can barely keep my head above water so I had a good reason. Someone also asked something very important on the Bleeding Cool Web Site, and that is: Did all the Twilight fans bring the servers to their knees because SDCC was going to have the first ever showing of footage from the last pair of movies in the series? As much as I would like to blame them, I think the whole thing falls in the hands of all the companies that are there to shill their Hollywood Crap movies to fans and think they need to buy huge blocks of tickets just to get everyone in the company down there to have a good time. You think those girls that go around in their short shorts and tank tops carrying fishing nets are there for the con? No, they are there to make their weekend pay from whatever agency hired them to in turn to give away caffinated chewing gum. If you want to come to a convention that is not as big and much more friendly, come down to Dallas on May 21 and 22, 2011 to see "Smiling" Stan Lee and Leonard Nimoy are just some of the guests that are going to be there and you won't have to pay the $105 price just to get in for two days. It is only $60 for a VIP pass that gets you in to see the guests first as well as other perks like getting to the dealer's room thirty minutes before general admission folks. You won't have the guest line up of San Diego, but I like to think that we are going to catch up with them and have just as good a con as SDCC in the future. Enough of my shilling the Dallas Comic-Con, you can have San Diego and I'll take Dallas anytime. (Except when it is snowy and icy at the same time.)
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On January 24th it was announced through various web sites that Wizard Magazine and Toyfare Magazine were ceasing publication as of that day and they laid off all of their staff. A lot of people on the internet were celebrating the loss of the magazine and I think that that sort of thing is uncalled for in this climate of 9% unemployment. A good chunk of the professional comics community had nothing but positive things to say about the magazine and were sorry to see it go. Turns out they did the whole thing because they are going to launch an online magazine called "Wizard World" some time this month. The thing that was probably the death knell for the magazine is something that is faced by the newspaper business right now in that the internet is making getting breaking news out to the public faster than a newspaper can. This will not effect their convention business at all and in fact they are expanding it to do 12 conventions in the year 2011 starting with New Orleans at the end of January. They say that they are hitting all the "Major" cities in the United States like Boston, Massachusetts; New York City, New York and Austin, Texas. Austin is not a "major city" it is not even a top 10 television and radio market in the US. If they wanted to bring a convention to Texas then they should have have brought it back to Dallas where we are a top 5 radio and television market or even Houston because these are bigger cities than Austin that can draw a big crowd. I guess that is why I'm glad Dallas has its own Comic-Con and will be moving it to a bigger location this May. Overall "Wizard World" is something that will either fail spectacularly or be a big hit.
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Looks like the Comics Code is a non-issue.
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About ten years ago Marvel Comics made the decision to drop the Comics Code Authority (CCA) seal on their books in favor of their own rating system. Marvel's rating system has been in a state of flux until they nailed down their current system that has been in place since 2007. The Comics Code Authority seal on a comic book showed that it was good for all ages and safe for even young kids to look at. The Comics Code Authority was brought into play after a series of hearings in Washington DC back in the 1950's that some members of the United States Congress back then thought that the content of the popular comic books back then, horror titles, were bordering on the obscene and profane. you look at those books now and they seem so tame. The news came in January 20th that DC Comics is dropping the comics code seal on their comics in favor of an in-house rating system much like Marvel's. This change will take effect starting with their April 2011 titles. The only DC Comics line that this new rating system would not affect is their Vertigo titles that would still carry a Mature Readers tag on their covers. According to various posts on the internet, that would only leave Bongo Comics and Archie Comics as ones that were submitting to the code authority for approval. That was until April 2010 when Bongo dropped the CCA seal on the cover of their comics without fanfare. Then the news broke on January 21st that Archie comics is dropping the comics code seal on their books starting with their February 2011 issues. I would have thought that the only two companies that would not need a CCA seal would be the Bongo and Archie titles. Archie, because they are harmless stories told about high schoolers with the biggest problem was not having enough money to pay for their meal at the local diner and having to go to Veronica to help pay the tab. Then there is the ever ongoing romantic tug of war between Archie, Betty and Veronica; again harmless. The Bongo titles like "The Simpsons" and "Radioactive Man" might be a bit more controversial because there are some types out there that don't like the show and think the comics are just there to convert good kids to bad kids. It is just harmless fun much like the show that you laugh at. Plus the art is a pretty uncanny match for the television show.
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