Brad Meltzer
‘Man of Steel’ broke Mark Waid’s heart (and other Super-tidbits)
With director Zack Snyder’s Man of Steel opening today nationwide (many theaters had screenings as early as 12:01 a.m.), it’s impossible to swing a dead Kent without hitting a dozen Superman-related items online or in print. Although most of them are directly related to the Warner Bros. franchise reboot, there are plenty with clear comic-book ties. Here are just a handful of them:
• Superman gets the cover of this week’s Entertainment Weekly, on which Neal Adams and Murphy Anderson’s rendition of the Last Son of Krypton (from December 1972′s Action Comics #419) is given prominence over the movie and TV versions — possibly because Man of Steel star Henry Cavill was featured in April, but hey, we’ll take it. But poor, poor Brandon Routh …
• Mark Waid, whose 2003-2004 miniseries Superman: Birthright (with Leinil Francis Yu) influenced Man of Steel, saw the movie last night and tweeted, “That thunder you heard at around 9:15 EST was the sound of my heart breaking in two.” He followed that with a review on his Thrillbent website that he prefaced with, “It’s a good science-fiction movie, but it’s very cold. It’s not a very satisfying super-hero movie. That said, if your favorite part of SUPERMAN: THE MOVIE was Superman standing in the Fortress while Jor-El lectured him, you’re gonna love MAN OF STEEL.”
Art Baltazar and Franco take Aw Yeah Comics! to Kickstarter
If the cancellation of DC Comics’ Superman Family Adventures has left you a little deflated, take heart: Longtime collaborators Franco Aureliani and Art Baltazar are turning to Kickstarter to launch their Aw Yeah Comics!, an “all-reader friendly” series with contributions from established and new talents alike, including Mark Waid, Brad Meltzer, Chris Roberson and Jason Aaron. The series was originally announced in July.
The comic, which stars Baltazar and Franco’s Action Cat and Adventure Bug, is designed to appeal to children and adults alike: “Our hope is to present a comic book that has just as much to offer a little girl as it does a little boy, and leave absolutely no one out of the fun. Because fun is important. Fun is a good thing for a comic book to have, and we want to add a little bit more of it to what’s out there now.”
Aw Yeah Comics!, which shares its name with the duo’s Skokie, Illinois, store, will debut in April with Chicago Comic & Entertainment Expo. According to the Kickstarter page, work on the first three issues is about 80 percent complete, while issues four through six are at about 60 percent. To help reach their $15,000 goal, they’re offering pledge incentives like an exclusive digital comic, an original mini-painting by Baltazar, a guest appearance by a donor’s own character, and a cover by Franco for a donor’s comic book.
The Kickstarter campaign ends March 7.
Grumpy Old Fan | New 52, Prologue: This is the way the world begins
The Flash #139, the beginning of the end
I’m pretty sure every other DC-Comics blogger in the known universe will be doing this, but for me it is an imperative: from now through the end of the month, this space will give short, probably reactionary, and likely ill-considered reviews of all 52 new titles. Not surprisingly, then, this week is all Flashpoint #5 and Justice League #1.
* * *
I liked Flashpoint #1 pretty well. I thought it was a promising start to a story that — in a daring departure for a big event — could stand on its own without universe-altering ramifications.
Of course, that was in early May, a lifetime ago.
While Flashpoint #5 finishes that story, it does so in a way that feels maddeningly hollow. Not the epilogue, mind you — that sequence just manages to avoid mawkishness, and is a well-done counterpoint to the end of issue #1. No, my problem with issue #5 (and to a lesser extent with the miniseries generally) is the way in which writer Geoff Johns apparently just decides he needs to wrap things up.
SPOILERS FOLLOW for Flashpoint #5, and later for Justice League #1 …
Grant Morrison on Mark Millar, Identity Crisis, Alan Moore and more
Grant Morrison
I really, really enjoy Grant Morrison interviews, even if they tend to arrive in bunches, with one entertaining Q&A sometimes indistinguishable from the next. He’s immensely quotable, peppering his comments with humor, observations of the holy-cow-I’ve-never-thought-of-it-that-way variety and occasionally surprising honesty.
This new interview with Rolling Stone is little different, with the writer discussing Supergods, the Action Comics relaunch, Alan Moore, Brad Meltzer’s Identity Crisis, and his strained relationship with former protege Mark Millar. While it may feel like we’ve read some of Morrison’s remarks before, others feel fresh, and even a bit brutal. Some highlights:
On his chances of encountering Millar in Glasgow: “There’s a very good chance of running into him, and I hope I’m going 100 miles an hour when it happens.”
On Meltzer’s divisive Identity Crisis: “He’s a nice guy. I have a lot of interesting conversations with him so I tried to focus on what I thought was good about it and there was actually quite a lot when I read it again. The first time I read it I was kind of outraged. I thought this was just … why? What the fuck is this, really? It wasn’t even normal. It was outrageous. It was preposterous because of the Elongated Man with his arms wrapped several times around the corpse of his wife. I thought something is broken. Something has gone so wrong in this image. [...] It’s hard for me to believe that a shy bespectacled college graduate like Brad Meltzer who’s a novelist and a father is a really setting out to be weirdly misogynistic. But unfortunately when you’re looking at this beloved character who’s obviously been ass-raped on the Justice League satellite, even saying it kind of takes you to that dot dot dot where you don’t know what else to say.”
On sexism in DC Comics: “There’s been lots of things, the sexism in DC because it’s mostly men who work in these places. Nobody should be trying to say we’re taking up a specifically anti-woman stance. I think it would be ignorance or stupidity or some God knows what. I was reading some Alan Moore Marvelman for some reason today. I found one in the back there and I couldn’t believe. I pick it up and there are fucking two rapes in it and I suddenly think how many times has somebody been raped in an Alan Moore story? And I couldn’t find a single one where someone wasn’t raped except for Tom Strong, which I believe was a pastiche. We know Alan Moore isn’t a misogynist but fuck, he’s obsessed with rape. I managed to do thirty years in comics without any rape!”
Needless to say, the entire interview is worth reading. There’s also a more involved profile.
Comics A.M. | Comic-Con passes sell out, Rep. John Lewis to co-author GN
Isotope's "FailFrog" button
Comic-Con | Badges for Comic-Con International sold out Saturday during a marathon online-registration session that taxed the servers of convention sales partner TicketLeap and frustrated ticket buyers. Four-day passes were gone by about 2 p.m. PT; the event sold out by 6 p.m. (Additional passes may become available as cancellations are processed.) As we noted earlier, San Francisco comics retailer Isotope is memorializing Saturday’s experience with a “San Diego Comic Con 2011 Registration Disaster Commemorative Fail Frog button,” featuring a modified version of the TicketLeap logo that frustrated users saw every time they refreshed their web browser.
On the TicketLeap company blog, CEO Chris Stanchak acknowledged that “our platform experienced capacity issues for a 4 hour period” on Saturday: “While we knew the event was going to put significant demand on our system, we did not expect the traffic we received. [...] The traffic we received yesterday was several orders of magnitude higher than our high end estimate. Due to the heavy strain on the system, users for all events across our system received ‘Over Capacity’ errors. This prevented ticket buyers from buying tickets and it prevented event organizers from managing their events.” Tom Spurgeon offers commentary. [Comic-Con International]
What Are You Reading?
Batgirl #17
Welcome to a long holiday weekend (at least here in the United States) edition of What Are You Reading? Today our special guest is Doug Zawisza, who writes reviews and the occasional article for Comic Book Resources.
To see what Doug and the Robot 6 gang are reading, click below.
Stan Lee, Brad Meltzer team up with the History Channel
Stan Lee
Per The Hollywood Reporter, two comic scribes are making history — History Channel shows, to be exact.
First, comics legend Stan Lee will co-host a show with Daniel Browning Smith called Stan Lee’s Superhumans. Smith, also known as “Rubberboy,” is a contortionist. Cue the Mr. Fantastic jokes now. Lee and Smith will be looking for “people who have remarkable abilities because of being genetically different,” the trade reports. It’s set to debut in the third quarter.
And in the fourth quarter, The History Channel will debut Brad Meltzer’s Decoded, where the Buffy the Vampire Slayer/Identity Crisis writer will decode “familiar symbols.” No other details were mentioned, but maybe you can slip in a question about it tomorrow when he answers questions on Twitter about his Buffy run.
Meltzer likes Logan as Spider-Man
Buffy #32
With word spreading that Logan Lerman is the front runner to succeed Tobey Maguire as Spidey/Peter Parker in Sony’s Spider-Man franchise, Robot 6 reached out to New York Times best-selling author Brad Meltzer (Identity Crisis) for his thoughts on the possibility.
Lerman, who plays the lead in the upcoming Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief, starred as Bobby McCallister on the Meltzer-created Jack & Bobby TV series that aired on The WB from 2004 to 2005.
Meltzer told Robot 6: “For all the fuss about how cute Logan is, people forget what an incredible actor he is. Think of it. We based a whole show around him. Most adults can’t carry that. Plus, I wrote his first real kiss, so I’m rooting for that.”
Meltzer is currently writing the penultimate arc of Joss Whedon’s Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Season 8 with his first issue out this week.
“I’ve waited 25 years to use the X-Men/Titans crossover. And the Superman jokes. And I deeply love every person who sent me a tweet (@bradmeltzer) about it. This first issue of Buffy was the comedy. The other genres are coming and are not nearly as happy.”
Brad Meltzer invites you over to Superman’s house July 11
On his blog, Brad Meltzer offers a personal update on the efforts to restore Superman co-creator Jerry Siegel’s boyhood home in Cleveland, Ohio:
As some of you know, our goal was to raise $50,000 to work on the outside of the house. In the end, we raised $101,000. So work is now going on in the inside as well. It’s just beautiful.
So let this be my invitation to all: On Saturday, July 11, 2009, in Cleveland, we’ll have the official ribbon-cutting and unveiling of the redone Siegel house. The roof, the siding, the cement…so much has been done to this place. They even repainted it back to historic colors (honestly, I kinda liked the red and bright blue), but history won in this one. The only thing that made me crazy was the dark green trim. Green on Superman’s house? A bunch of us screamed bloody kryptonite, but again, it’s good to have the history. And from what I hear, we’ll have a great showing by the Siegel family for the big unveiling. So if you’re anywhere near Cleveland, hope you’ll join us.
As Kevin noted in today’s Comics A.M., the ribbon-cutting ceremony is tied to the Screaming TikiCon happening that weekend.
Last fall Meltzer teamed up with The Siegel & Shuster Society to raise money to restore the house. Meltzer said he’s now turned his attention to a new cause called City Year. More information on it can be found at Ordinarypeoplechangetheworld.com, an organization founded by Meltzer.
