Groan, creak, (insert knee exploding sfx)

-Oh man, am I ever having a hard time adjusting to my summer schedule. There might be another bumpy week ahead, friends. We'll see.

-Great thanks to Chris Mautner for summarizing the Badman/Santoro exchange re: Yukiko's Spinach. I'd been aware of the controversy for days, but I just couldn't bring myself to actually check it out--it seemed to much like having to eat one's vegetables (GET IT? SPINACH? VEGETABLES?), and I was more in the mood to read actual comics than read people's thoughts on a comic I had never heard of, and which looked unbelievably boring. I mean, I just hate, hate, hate photorealistic art in comics. I feel like I'm stuck in an a-ha video or something. Plus I like actual cartooning. Anyway, thanks Mr. Mautner. Now I feel better informed about the less enticing issues of the day.

-Did Matt Brady (Newsarama version) write this?

-One more Blogorama item--this whole thing is making me question my willingness to read comics anymore. First, Takeshi Miyazawa calls manga "J-Comics." Oh my god, do we ever not need that term. Are other people calling it that? Is there anyway we can get them to stop? Second, some comment-leaver named "Kent" left the following gem, which I will not comment on other than adding some emphasis:

"It’s not indifference–it is perspective. This cover is no more offensive than many other artworks done through the ages. From works of the Old Masters to more recent Pulp illustrations of the 30’s and 40’s. It is finding offense when there is none to be found–it is nonsense. It remains a tempest in a teapot."

Where is Matt Brady (Newsarama version) to add some Marvel stockholder-approved sanity to the proceedings?

-I'm shocked Michael Netzer hasn't shown up to defend Neal Adams' scientific credentials. He might very well have done so by the time you're reading this.

-Fuck you, commenter who calls him/herself Reality Check. Also, God is Brian K. Vaughan ever overrated. In fact, his suckitude isn't relative, it's absolute. As in there's absolutely nothing I like about any of his comics I've read (which, as I've said before, does not include Runaways).

Seriously, Mark Andrew wrote way, way more than I could ever bring myself to say about Ex Machina, and reminded me of why I hated the series in the first place (it was the Lincoln art thing that really turned me against Vaughan). I would add that I really dislike the art, for reasons mentioned in the second item listed above. (Let me edit this to add that I really liked MA's review. I don't know if I made that clear enough before.)

-Via Heidi McDonald, Tim Leong's account of a recent Dave Cockrum tribute:

"Clifford Meth, Cockrum's longtime friend, started off the speeches, reminding everyone Cockrum died in his Superman pajamas and was cremated in his Green Lantern shirt. He also read a statement from Marv Wolfman, who was unable to make it in town. Next Meth introduced a prepared audio statement from Harlan Ellison, but not before making a light dig at Gary Groth. Ellison read from a humorous intro he wrote for a Cockrum tribute book. It actually drew a tear from Peter David — which actually came out of laughter, not sadness. Not everyone was into Ellison's enthusiastic but long speech, as Mark Waid jokingly pretended to cut his wrists halfway through."

1. Fuck you, Harlan Ellison. I mean, yes, this is an obvious response, and I would hope that anyone read this would feel similarly (ditto if the roles were reversed, and it was Groth "lightly" insulting Ellison at a tribute to, I don't know, Gil Kane or someone). Still, it bears repeating.

2. I'm not sure how to praise Mark Waid in light of all the jokes I've made about his repeated, allegedly jocular challenges to physical combat. It's kind of in poor taste, but then so was Ellison's comments from the sound of it. (And it might not have even happened, so who knows.)

3. I probably shouldn't say it, but the comments about Dave Cockrum's clothing were really sad. And not in a noble way--I mean, I'm really disturbed at the thought of Cockrum wearing Superman pajamas as an adult, especially on his death bed. I generally try not to dwell too much on the latter days of Cockrum's life because they're so horribly, crushingly depressing. Kind of unrelated: He died in a small South Carolina town where my aunt used to live. I've always wondered how he ended up there, cause it's really not a place where you'd seek to live (unless you're attracted by low housing costs or something). There is a pretty nice comics store in the county seat, though--my current pick for Best Comics Store in South Carolina. The competition hasn't really been that fierce the past couple of years, truth be told.

Some of you are making me feel depressed on your behalf

-Hey, it's kind of officially summer now! What does that mean for you, gentle readers? More erratic posting schedules! Some days where I don't even have time to post! And probably some other things!

And let me just say, I was really saddened by the number of posts that came in over the holiday weekend (non-Americans excused, of course). Don't you people have anything better to do? Were any of you actually reading blogs this weekend? I wasn't and now I've got an enormous backlog of wacky scans and assorted other bullshit to wade through. Thanks a lot, fuckers.

-This post makes me think that DC editors in the 90s were exposed to some gases detrimental to brain cells, perhaps via an dangerously outdated air duct system or something. Geez, what's not to get? And frankly, I don't get the disgust at "Mary Provost," which I mostly just find funny. It does gross out my wife, but at least she likes funny cat pictures. (Wait...does this mean my wife shares two separate similarities with Johanna Draper Carlson? I really need to ask her what she thinks of young girls reading superhero comics.)

-Not that anyone's asking for my take, but I do think Matt Brady (Newsarama version) was a total weasel in the latest Joe Fridays thing. I'm reminded of the recent series of Newsarama interviews with the 52 creators, in which interviewer Vaneta Rogers referred to negative fan reaction as "unfortunate." Maybe this is the new interviewing protocol at Newsarama--mention criticism so that powerful figure can dismiss it, then praise this dismissal as just and wise. Maybe Newsarama is more like Wizard than I thought! Blogorama folks, be prepared to start preparing features on which robot babe is the most boobalicious!

-Isn't it about time for another mind-numbing convention, full of infuriating "news" and absolutely revolting preview art? Is anyone planning on going to any conventions? If so, will you please do all us convention-phobes a favor and put DiDio and Quesada on the spot for all the stupid shit they've pulled recently? Extra super bonus points for anyone who can do so in a creative way. I've got an extra copy of Pyongyang that I might be wiling to give away to an especially enterprising young lad or lass.

Speaking of conventions, I looked at these photos (and the other two sets, and we might as well throw in these Star Wars nerdstravaganza photos) and thought Thank God I'm Not There (And if You're Listening, J/Y-Dog, Could You Please See To It That I Never Have To Attend One Of These Things, No Matter What Nature of Fan Might Be In Attendance?).

-Eh, that's enough for now. I've still got like almost 60 entries I haven't plowed through yet. You guys need to change your compulsively blogging ways and find something else to do with your time (and I don't mean dressing like popular intellectual properties and cavorting with people dressed like intellectual properties from the same intellectual property pantheon).

I don't know if I've ever been so thoroughly drenched

-Not exactly an interview dept (I didn't have my tape recorder handy, plus he was busy): I asked my friendly local retailer yesterday about his thoughts on print magazines covering comics. We didn't discuss the Comics Journal, mostly because I know he's a big fan (he says it's the first thing he reads the week it comes out). He's also very high on Comic Art. I asked him how Wizard was doing, and he said that it was a very poor seller, and had been trending downward since the relaunch. He blamed this decline on the availability of news and interviews on the internet. On the other hand, the Two Morrows line of magazines were doing very well for him--in fact (if I understood him correctly), their rise seems to have mirrored Wizrd's decline (though, I'm guessing, not on a 1-for-1 basis). As for the prospects of Comic Foundry in the direct market, he was very pessimistic. This was before I told him about Tim Leong's plans for it--once I explained these plans, he was even more pessimistic. Bear in mind that this store, though not usually included in Greatest Comics Shops in the World discussions, nonetheless stocks that $50 Dupuy-Berberian art collection. It's very, very indie/art comix friendly. Obviously one store won't make or break CF's print launch, but Leong is going to need the support of retailers like my friend. I'm sure the actual Previews pitch for CF will be better than my half-assed description, but selling it as a "comics culture" might not be the wisest path to take.

(For those worried that this discussion might have soured my retailer on Comic Foundry, please bear in mind that I'm not sure I ever mentioned the title to him. And even if I did, it's not the sort of thing which would stick with him or prevent him from ordering it, assuming the solicitation convinces him it's worth a try. In other words, his decision to order CF will be based entirely on their ability to convince him to do so in the pages of Previews.)

-A few brief reviews of the comics I've bought this week:

Captain America 26: There's something about the art at the beginning of the book I don't like. I think it's Perkins--I couldn't find any credits other than the ones on the cover. Anyway, Sharon Carter looks weird, like it's not plausible that she's the same person from panel to panel. More distressing is Tony Stark's body language on page 3--he looks like an 11 year old girl throwing a tantrum. On the other hand, Brubaker's writing is still phenomenal--the Winter Soldier is a legitimately compelling character. I don't think I've ever read any GA Captain America, but I'd be shocked if Brubaker hasn't done more for Bucky than any other writer.

Legion of Super-Heroes 30: This is the way to play to the continuity fiends--the issue makes sense even if you don't know the stories to which Waid is alluding (it doesn't hurt that he's alluding to some very well-known LSH stories). And it all makes sense in the context of the story at hand. I'm not thrilled about the upcoming fill-in run by Bedard, and I'm a little worried about the possibility of the book being canceled to make way for the triumphant return of the Levitz-era LSH (as part of DC's ongoing "The more it resembles the comics of my childhood, the better it is!" sales initiative), but this was a pretty good send-off for Waid and Kitson.

Spirit 6: I never considered myself a fan of Darwyn Cooke, mostly because I just didn't like The New Frontier--Cooke's style just doesn't work for me when he's illustrating superheroes. Plus, much like The Golden Age, it seemed more like a eulogy than a celebration. Thankfully, the Spirit is an intellectual property much better suited to Cooke's talents. I wasn't annoyed by Cooke's sort of goofy idea of what a punk scene looks like (plus it's been so long since I've been in anything resembling a "scene," I figured I had no right to complain about its inauthenticity). However, if my first exposure to punk rock had been the Clash's horrible re-working of "Police On My Back" (maybe the nadir of their painfully long series of terrible covers of great Jamaican (see comments) songs), I would have given punk such a wide berth that I might have written off all rock music in general.

Criminal 6: I'm not sure how I feel about the third person narration, but this was a pretty intriguing setup issue. The protagonist's background in the army is a great hook for the character. I wasn't crazy about the "he escaped through a hole in the fence" caption, but I did like flash forward at the start of the issue. As always, Sean Phillips' moody art is exactly suited to this material. My one complaint is my initial difficulty in identifying the thing on the side of Tracy's face/neck as a scar rather than a tattoo. Speaking of which, I'm actually glad they haven't called attention to this scar yet--Brubaker thinks his readers are smart enough to figure out that it's one of the reasons nobody recognizes Tracy once he returns to town. This respect for his audience's intelligence was also evident in this week's Captain America, in the scene where the Falcon met with the New Avengers. It's a refreshing approach--subtlety doesn't always work in comics (especially superhero comics), but Brubaker is pulling it off.

I'm really not in a bad mood today

-If the joke mentions me, it went on just the right amount of time. ("Don't be fooled by cheap imitations" cracked me up, actually.)

-I'm shocked more people (by which I mean Graeme McMillan) aren't covering round two of Tom Breevort's Simulation Madness. For those few of you unfamiliar with the concept, Breevort picks a few volunteers to serve as mock editors for existing series. This time he also added an editor-in-chief, whose duties include supervising the mock editors and trying to promote Marvel as a whole. Anyway, as you might expect, there are plenty of amusing highlights:

• Mock John Byrne is offended very early on
  
• Breevort's again expresses his real-life enthusiasm for a third major publisher to compete with Marvel and DC; in the simulation, mock Steve Wacker is the editor-in-chief of such a hypothetical company
• Breevort has mock Quesada fired in a "coup executed by editors that he himself had hired"
• Participants indulge in nostalgia fetishism: one editor hires David Michelinie on Spider-Man, and another hires Robert Weinberg (who?) to write Uncanny X-Men
• The mock e-i-c fires the latter editor; this editor then goes to work for Wacker's company (which, I assume, brings an end to his mock editing days, unless Wacker has a blog I don't know about where he runs his pretend comics company)
  
• Rich Johnston writes a mock Lying in the Gutters to comment on all this
• The e-i-c (I think) proposes two different, major crossovers, including the incredibly lame-sounding Rise of the Defenders (and I like the Defenders as a concept--I even read New Defenders as a child)
• Breevort may or may not think David Finch is a whiny prima donna and Ed Brubaker is a deadline-missing slacker
  
• The mock e-i-c attempts to bribe Back Issue into running a retrospective on the Defenders; he's unsuccessful only because Breevort apparently thinks Back Issue would be happy to run advertorials for free.
• Breevort calls Brian K. Vaughan (who refuses to write one of the crossovers) "Dr. No;" I'm unsure if this is a joke of some type or a rare glimpse at how Marvel editorial views its non-exclusive freelancers
  
• The editors repeatedly try to defraud retailers and consumers by submitting false solicitations.

So here's what I gather from all this: Tom Breevoort thinks the participants are kind of dumbasses, and is constantly having the creators object to their heavy-handed editing style (including some interminable controversy over a softball sequence in Fantastic Four; I don't really get it either). The fan-participants are from the "comics reached their zenith during my youth" corner of the internet, as reflected by some of their bizarre assignments. They're also really kind of unethical. I have no idea how much longer this experiment will go on; hopefully forever.

You know, I really intended to throw my name in as a potential participant. The current mock editors have some really goofy ideas for promoting Marvel to the general public, like die cut bookmarks (no, seriously). My ideas are much more aggressive:

• Have Spider-Man marry Dr. Octopus (but not divorce Mary Jane--this will be a polygamic marriage)
• Produce a hardcore pornographic comic depicting their honeymoon, featuring extreme (yet consensual) tentacle action
• Incorporate an extreme right wing political message into all comics; hire Steve Ditko as consultant
• Kill off Spider-Man due to his immoral lifestyle; have replacement (Sean Hannity look-alike) fight in Iraq
• Incorporate an extreme Fundamentalist Christian message in all comics; hire Jack Chick as consultant
• Sell e. coli-infected gummi candies in the shape of all the Marvel heroes
• Make amends for e. coli incident by giving away unsold copies of the Spider-Man-Dock Ock honeymoon comic
  
• Claim to have produced a functioning Fanasti-Car; have Stan Lee drive it off the top of the Empire State Building
• Put Jack Chick to work on a new tract speculating on Stan Lee's afterlife; have Michael Turner draw variant cover
  
• Make up for Fantasti-Car and Chick tract incidents by setting self on fire in order to warn children about the dangers of imitating the Human Torch; distribute copies of the video as a premium for mailing in coupons running in all the August Marvel Adventures titles
  

Breevoort and Quesada should feel free to borrow any of these ideas. Upon the advice of my lawyer, I'll waive my usual consulting fee.

-On a completely different note, this is very, very encouraging, and sort of makes me feel better about being a human being.

-You know what strip I really like? Fred Basset. It's not funny--sometimes there's a Marmaduke-like anti-humor involved--but there's something very charmingly old fashioned about it. I'm under the impression that the quality has greatly suffered in the last few years, but (a) it still compares favorably to other newspaper (or online) strips, and (b) I had never heard of it until sometime last year, so I don't have first hand knowledge of the older strips to warp my perception of the current version.

BTW, this is a good example of how fucked up Wikipedia's comics editors are. Fred Basset gets a "low importance" rating, but something like Baron Mordo is mid-level importance? I guarantee you a whole fuck of a lot more people know about Fred Basset (even years after its apparent peak) than Baron Mordo. Is it any wonder that these fuckers went on a webcomic deleting spree? I guess if they haven't made it into a hideous action figure or garish statue, it must not be very important. Go fuck yourself, Wikipedia Comics Project editors.

-I don't think I've agreed with anything Tom Spurgeon has said lately more than this, and I tend to think Spurgeon is the single smartest comics blogger. You know, we should be able to enjoy something as weird and wonderful as Fletcher Hanks' oeuvre without having to seek shelter under the cover of irony. There's a broader point to make here, one that many of you could probably see coming, but I'll leave it alone for now.

Image and continuity porn

-For some reason, Friday's entry was set to "do not allow comments." Don't know how that happened, but it did. Sorry about that. My apologies to anyone who wanted to comment, especially since the post in question was rather critical of Tim Leong's plans for Comic Foundry. But the comments on said post are open now, and I'll be double checking all future posts to make sure they stay that way.

-Rich Johnston reports that DC's current Countdown series is counting down to something tentatively titled Final Crisis. Bleaugh. Final Crisis? And then there's the recent news that Marvel seems to be meandering down basically the same path of relentless eventeering.

Is this all the Big Two have left? Things were looking better at DC about a year and a half ago, when it efforts like the All-Star line and Alex Ross' Justice seemed like the evidence of a dual publishing strategy, combining short, out-of-continuity prestige projects (like Jeff Smith's Shazam) with more fanboy-friendly, continuity-heavy offerings (most everything else).* But here in 2007, the All-Star line is losing credibility and I never hear anyone talking about Justice (possibly because bloggers--including myself--tend to dislike Ross' tediously realistic art). Smith's Shazam is certainly an online favorite, but we all seem to view it as something of a hothouse flower, especially in light of the rest of the DC line. Marvel, meanwhile, is certainly winning the post-big event sweepstakes (at least in terms of sales), but it's too early to tell how much of this is easily-satisfied curiosity. It's telling that Marvel editorial is already starting a new Things Will Never Be the Same!!! hype cycle while the corpse of the last Things Will Never Be the Same!!! event is still warm (and, for that matter, while the Hulk mini-event is just getting started).

Sometimes I wonder if the direct market, ruinous speculation aside, was in better shape in the much-maligned early 90s. We look back at the attention given to the Image founders as laughable, but I would gladly trade Hot Artists for Event Fever. I mean, DC and Marvel might be reluctant to do so--after all, people can leave, while intellectual properties and years of accumulated continuity can't. But for the rest of us, I think an industry driven by popular creators is much more healthy than one driven by...whatever it is that motivates people to buy Geoff Johns comics. It's hard to imagine an equivalent of Image starting today, largely because there are no figures of comparable stature to Liefeld, Lee, and McFarlane c. 1992. Johns, Loeb, and Bendis all sell books, but only books featuring established, beloved characters. And there really aren't any unfathomably hot artists who weren't already hot in the mid-90s; the closest would probably be John Cassaday or Bryan Hitch, and they're nowhere near as popular as Todd McFarlane was in his heyday. The absence of new, mega-selling artists is part of this larger phenomenon of fans' seemingly contradictory fascination with continuity and change, which has all but supplanted the creator-as-selling-point model of the 90s (with the exceptions of Lee and Ross, two talents who managed to establish themselves before the current epoch).

On the other hand, I don't know that people appreciate the extent to which Image presaged the current, continuity-heavy era. We typically blame the downfall of Image on the founders' eagerness to play media mogul, particularly their horribly ironic embrace of work-for-hire practices. There's certainly truth to that, but I think it's worth considering how quick some of the Image founders were to put themselves in a position which necessitated hiring outside creators. These guys weren't satisfied to make their own bestselling, fully-owned comics--they all wanted to be world-builders as well. Youngblood and WildCATS weren't enough to fully shape out the convoluted mythologies Liefeld and Lee--easily the worst offenders--felt compelled to produce. It's one thing to develop a rich backstory in the process of making a comic, but too many of the Image founders apparently thought this was a prerequisite for making superhero comics. Having grown up reading Chris Claremont's X-Men, they just couldn't fathom producing comics without deep layers of intrigue, red herrings, mysterious strangers from the past, secret betrayals, unspoken alliances, and ornate taxonomies of aliens, mutants, mercenaries, and cyborgs. But while Claremont weaved this dense skein over time, the Image boys tried to do so right out of the gate. And so their comics were dense and colorful, yet utterly incomprehensible and totally unsatisfying.

So then, do we blame Claremont for the current predicament? Gardner Fox for integrating multiple continuities into the same "multiverse"? Roy Thomas for taking this seven or eight steps beyond what Fox had intended? Mark Greunwald and Len Wein (I think) for The Official Handbook to the Marvel Universe and Who's Who, respectively? Carmine Infantino and Stan Lee for hiring fan-creators? Or do we just buy Josh Simmons' really awesome-looking House**, thank the appropriate deity that we like a rather broad range of comics, and hope this all blows over without doing too much damage in the process?

*Tom Spurgeon was the first person I saw advancing this idea, but it was so long ago that I'm not even going to try to find the original article. I do recall him alluding to Night of the Hunter in his framework, which might be why it sticks with me so long after the fact.

**Just to be clear, I'm going to do this regardless of what DC chooses to call its next mega-event.

-This was the saddest thing I read this weekend, assuming it's not a joke. I do so hope it's a joke--I mean, I'm not unrealistic about this kind of stuff, but it's the internet, for god's sake. Even if you don't want to lie, you can at least avoid these kinds of subjects.

Galvanized content

-Uncharacteristic positivity dept: Mark Engblom's ongoing Worst Cover Ever feature is exactly the sort of thing I enjoy, partly because he's skewering Silver and Golden Age covers alongside more recent targets. I love the Silver Age (and I'm pretty sure Mr. Engblom does as well) and I'm always annoyed that it's predominately treated as a wacky, whimsical era. There is a lot of whimsy and wackiness in SA comics, but we're doing them and their creators a disservice by limiting our appreciation to "Look how crazy/naive this shit is!" Mark is evaluating these covers on their own merits, and I greatly appreciate it. He's also pretty funny, which also helps.

-Tom Spurgeon interviews Tim Leong, who gives a more detailed explanation of what he's trying to do with a print Comic Foundry:

"...really it's taking a lifestyle approach to comics. Covering lifestyle and culture. Which I don't think anyone is doing in print. Some people say they are, by covering more pop culture things, but that doesn't equate to me as lifestyle. I don't think anyone has covered culture and lifestyle before. I don't think it was really possible to do so. It's only in that comics has become more mainstream, and has enjoyed widespread acceptance, that it's possible to cover culture and lifestyle in comics. That's our main focus, approaching content that way. It is kind of positioning ourselves between Wizard and The Comics Journal, trying to cover superheroes, indy, manga -- a little bit of everything in that regard."

There's an accompanying sample page which suggests content about cocktails and picking up people in bars. I'm honestly not sure what that has to do with comics culture. Actually, I'm not really sure what "comics culture" is supposed to be. Those two words make me think about sweaty guys playing Heroclix or maybe that oft-discussed Mary Jane statue. Maybe he means comics creator culture, but that makes me think of, I don't know, people staring at a monitor/drawing table and trying to decide if a few minutes of Gears of War (or, if you want a more sentimental scene, a few minutes of playing with their children) would eliminate all hope of beating the deadline. Honestly, the only aspect of comics culture I would associate with this cocktails and alcohol-fueled hookups is maybe a signing at some hip store in NYC or California, or maybe the kind of heroically drunken convention escapades to which Heidi MACDonald often alludes.

So if that's it, then, uh, I'm probably not interested at all. Which is no big deal, cause I'm just one person, and kind of a tightwad at that. But I'm really unsold on the mass appeal of this periodical. When I think "lifestyle magazine," I think either "magazine intended to help get you laid" or "magazine intended to make your home nicer, including the meals you eat in your home." From the look of the sample page, I'm guessing this veers closer to the former. Leong apparently is looking more toward Wired, a magazine I've never bought because (a) I don't think it's geared towards people like me, and (b) Thomas Frank eviscerated it too thoroughly in the pages of The Baffler for me to actually take it seriously (these two points are probably related). I can understand how Wired manages to exist as a lifestyle magazine which isn't about finding new sexual partners or what to do with your life after you've settled on a single sexual partner. Extreme technophilia clearly is a lifestyle, and I guess the people who live that kind of life read Wired.

But how on earth does that appeal transfer to reading comics? I could get my head around it much easier if Leong was trying to launch something more ambitious, like a lifestyle magazine appealing to people who read comics, play video games, watch cartoons, listen to punk rock, etc., long after they were supposed to have given up all these trivial pursuits. Something which can cover ground in between kitsch and genuine, unironic enthusiasm for these types of juvenilia--that's a magazine which I could probably convince my friends to buy, or which I might read while drinking coffee in a chain bookstore. But a magazine about comics culture, a term which I've never heard anyone else use? I just don't see it happening.

I could be completely wrong about all this stuff, since (as I have previously mentioned) I never read Comic Foundry in its online incarnation. I'd go back and check, but I'm having a hell of a time navigating their site. In fact, the only article I could access was one about the question of environmentalism in a (for now) inherently paper-based industry. It's an interesting angle, but I cannot fathom the long term success of a magazine devoted to these types of articles.

Best news of the week

-Almost-forgot-to-mention-it-late-breaking addition: In the worst blogging-related news of the week, Jeff Lester is leaving the Savage Critic. He's a big part of what makes it one of my five favorite comics-related blogs, and I'm very sad to see him leave. Here's hoping that he behaves predictably and returns to blogging very, very soon.

-I've been thinking a bit more about the Comic Foundry ordeal, specifically about the kind of people who would likely read the magazine in its printed form. It dawns on me: they're going to be the sort of people who read, and in all likelihood write, blogs. The current comics blogosphere is really the closest thing to the fabled middle path between Wizard and The Comics Journal. In fact, I would say that blogs are able to cover that ground far better than a single magazine ever could. I mean, it's an awfully big patch of real estate lying between Wizard and TCJ, and there's a pretty wide range of blogs covering it. And blogs have significant advantages over any magazine--price, immediacy, and interactivity being the biggest. This is not to say that Comic Foundry could not possibly succeed, but it would have to be a terrific product with a very distinctive and attractive voice and look (the latter supposedly being a given, due to Tim Leong's background in the magazine industry). Speaking as someone who doesn't know Mr. Leong and never read the online version of Comic Foundry (and thus probably closer to the demographic CF would have to attract to be a viable operation), I would have to be very, very impressed with the print version to feel the need to buy it on a regular basis.

-Oh thank goodness, ADD is still out there, and he's hinting that he might return to writing about comics (and, if we're lucky, cheering the industry onward to its inevitable oblivion). I was saddened by this, however:

"And I don't bother to read the shitty or otherwise aggravating blogs anymore, because really, I'm 41 years old and who has the time to spare for that sort of obnoxiousness?"

I'd almost think his pronouncement might include this blog, which I'm fairly sure has aggravated a few people before (but which, I assure you all, has probably never come into contact with any fecal material). But then I think, if he knows enough about this blog to be aggravated by it, then he must be reading it. But if this blog was, in fact, aggravating to him, he wouldn't be reading it. Ergo, Dick Hates Your Blog must not be an "aggravating blog" in ADD's opinion. In any event, Mr. Alan David Doane, I assure you that I have more to offer than "obnoxiousness," and you might find the comments section to be an appropriate venue for the unique blend of earnest promotion of good comics and occasional bouts of baffling rancor that you bring to the blogalaxy. In other words, welcome back.

-Political posturing dept: I saw this via Johanna Draper Carlson: a NYT article about the new prequel to Gone With the Wind, which will bear the repugnant title Rhett Butler's People. What an awful, awful name--"my people" was a euphemism for "my slaves" among the aristocracy of the Old South. I assume the writer (a "Civil War novelist" who resembles a slightly less dyspeptic Wilford Brimley) is familiar with this term, and he probably means it as some sort of clever play on words. But then I read this about the terms specified to the writer originally contracted to produce the sequel:

"Ms. Tennant’s contract specified that she retain Ms. Mitchell’s tone, vision and characters. It also forbade Ms. Tennant from including 'acts or references to incest, miscegenation, or sex between two people of the same sex.'”*

Man, who wants to read a novel about the Old South without all that baroque stuff? I don't know about homosexual or incestuous relationships being any more common in the antebellum South than the North, but miscegenation was part of everyday life. It was absolutely crucial to the gender dynamics of the period (and it still is in the modern South, thankfully to a much lesser extent). I mean, of course I realize this will be a fantasy version of the antebellum South, but it's kind of like having a fantasy version of Nazi Germany called Hermann Goering's People.

Anyway, it reminds me of my desire to pioneer The Southern as a new genre of fiction. Just as the Western's central theme of civilization vs. savagery is expressed in a multitude of forms (white man vs. Indian, lawman vs. ruffian, settler vs. frontier), I figure the Southern will revolve around the theme of "eductation," such as the white man's attempt to educate "his people" (Blacks, women, misguided Carpetbaggers) as to the virtues of hard work, Christianity, obedience, and communal violence. Anyone interested in collaborating on an epic, 22-volume series of graphic novels in this new genre should contact me ASAP.

*This may or may not have applied to the briefly-considered Pat Conroy, who the Margaret Mitchell estate lawyers apparently deemed too much of "an artist" to be interfered with. Conroy disputes this, and apparently planned to write a novel chock full of miscegenation, homosexuality, and icon murder. BTW, if any of you need a Pat Conroy autograph, I know a guy who can hook you up (which is to say, I'm related to a guy who works in a bookstore where he frequently appears for signings).