Random Crap

Welcome to another month here at Random Crap. August saw the passing of a comic book legend and everyone in comics telling a story about how they met the man. I wish I had a story about how I met him, but alas I do not have one. I'm sure if I had been into the comic book scene more thoroughly then I might have had a chance to meet the man, but meeting Joe Kubert eluded me for the longest time. Some of these guys could have wandered around the conventions we had in town and I would not have known them from the man off the street. Joe Kubert looked a lot like one of my grandfathers and the way everyone talked about the man he was a lot like my grandfather as well. It's always sad when one of the truly great people passes away.

Personal Ramblings

The history of comic books is something that I intend to dive deeper into and one day I will get around to reading some of the material that has been put out about that very subject. Lots of people would probably think that the history of comic books is just as varied and curious as the history of television. The scripts for both television shows and comic books are as screw with your head as ever. Only the major difference is that comics started out in the 1920's while television had to wait until the 1940's or 50's before the masses could get their hands on it. That is a twenty year head start. I'm a giant history nerd. I don't know why, but when I was in grade school I always seemed to do really well in my history classes. I guess this is what is leading me to want to know more about the medium that I love to read month after month. I want to go to a school that has a history or Art History department that would allow me to do more research into the history of comic books and maybe do a Master's Thesis on it. I don't think there are a lot of Colleges or Universities that would have that sort of thing. With the success of movies like The Avengers and The Dark Knight Returns I think there is a real need to have research done on the history of comic books and not just the limited handful that are on Amazon.

Blank Covers?

DC Comics has decided to revisit their "We can be Heroes" initiative to feed the hungry in Africa. They are doing it this time starting with a blank variant cover to Batman #0 that is due out in September. It was supposed to start with Justice League #12 last month but the solicitations were not in Previews for August and DC decided to start it with Batman #0 instead. Okay, I can kind of see the concept of the blank cover. You can buy the blank cover and take it to a convention and get an artist to draw on it and you have a nice keepsake to look at and share with future generations. I would see the blank covers at my local comic store and think, $4 for that. For $4 I would rather have the regular cover that, while not collectable, would give me something to look at rather than just a white cover with the title of the book on it in color and nothing else. Even if it were 50 cents less then I could justify buying a book without a full color cover, but full price? Nope not gonna do it. When I was at Dallas Comic-Con back in May one of the artists showcasing his wares had some of the blank Marvel covers of one of the X-Men books and Wolverine that he had drawn on and was selling for a reasonable mark-up. They were real nice too. I would have gotten one only I was on a budget and did not want to blow it on something I would never read, and would instead look at and feel inadequate. My local comic shop also has a couple of the blank covers that the owner had left over and had gotten a local artist to draw on and is selling them for $25 apiece. They are full color and well done so that might justify the cost, but I'd much rather spend the $15 and get one that was black and white. I look at it this way; for the price of two of the blank covers from Marvel, you could go out to any art supply or hobby store and buy a nice sketchbook and get something like 50 sketches in it. They would not be on a fancy cardstock cover, but you would have the ability to thumb through and remember the time you got that one sketch from your favorite artist and maybe see a few others that you like as well.

Black Kiss II

It appears that the Howard Chaykin comic book Black Kiss II being published by Image has been so controversial that Diamond distributors in the UK is refusing to sell it to stores in the country. Something about it being more sexually explicit than first thought. Really, Britain the home of the Page Three girl for the longest time is worried about a comic with sex in it? I saw the first issue of Black Kiss II on the shelf of my local comic shop, and the owner had done his due diligence in keeping it out of the hands of minors. He placed it in a sealed plastic comic bag with a board and had it on the very top of the new release shelves for the week. That is how he handles most adult books. I was tempted to get it and read it since I had never read any of Mr. Chaykin's other work and then thought better of it. Not because of the explicit content, but because I was out of the cash I had budgeted for the week. I may have some left over this week and I might get it. Deep down I know if something I read gets too intense then I know I can close the book and come back to it later when I am feeling better. Are we becoming that uptight of a world that sex in a comic is grounds for not selling it at all in one country? Are we all of a sudden going to clothe Michelangelo's David or the Venus DeMilo because they are nude? Nudity is what got the art world going a long time ago and you don't see people coming from the Louvre in Paris with sex on their minds. I think this world would be a lot better off if everyone took an art class where they had to do at least one class period of nude drawing, painting or sculpture. I did it for two different semesters and it did not turn me into a sexual deviant. There was this one guy in one of the classes though that was going to a private Methodist college here in town and was just getting his fine art credit out of the way in the summer by taking it at a community college. He never showed up for the next to last class because of the drawing nude requirement.

Really Liefeld Get Over Yourself

Rob Liefeld posted some pretty interesting tweets during the next to the last week of August. He basically had a public meltdown against the likes of Scott Snyder that basically is boiling down to Rob saying that the Batman family of titles only sells as well as it does because it is Batman and nothing else. Really Rob let's look at the books that you did. The books Deathstroke and Hawkman have been cancelled; leaving with you with the duties of Grifter that you started mailing in starting with about issue 9. You can keep telling yourself that the sales went up on those books when you started on them, but why were they cancelled? I don't think that Rob Liefeld is going to be working for DC again any time soon after these Twitter posts. Also Tom Brevoort of Marvel basically said on Twitter that there is a snowballs chance in heck that Liefeld is going to work for them. This link to Bleeding Cool has the tweet by tweet of both sides of this situation. I don't think Dark Horse is interested in the sort of stuff that he does so that just leaves Image. Maybe you can take over Prophet and "drive up sales" on that book too. This is one of those times that I am glad I am not on Twitter.   Sorry for being so short this month. Life got crazy and will be for part of September as well. I'm hoping that I'll be able to do a longer Random Crap in October.

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