Dark Crystal: Creation Myths Vol. 1 (Archaia Entertainment)

Let me try to expand upon them a bit.

The first in a planned trilogy of original graphic novels, Creation Myths certainly lives up to its name.

Brian Froud, the creature designer who was integral in the creation of the 1982 film is credited with “Concept, character designs and cover,” and he also pens an introduction. Brian Holguin writes, while the talented Alex Sheikman and Lizzy John provide the art. Prose encapsulations of several of the stories follow, so that different versions of the same “myths” co-exist between the covers.

The work is all fine, but I found it lacking a relevance or urgency, due perhaps to how far it is removed from what I know or care of the setting and premise of the original film (a drawback that might fade in succeeding volumes) and to a more insurmountable deficiency of the medium: Comics can’t capture puppetry, the jolt of sheer wonder that accompanied seeing such bizarre creatures move so naturalistically across a movie screen that proved the film’s greatest and most enduring virtue.

I found reading this to be like reading a Classics Illustrated version of myths, but unlike those of the Bible or Greek or Norse or any human culture, it was a made-up, alien culture derivative of some of those human sources.

More invested fans will likely get more out of this than I did. As a five-year-old child, the film filled me with ennui—what did I care about that creepy Gelfling on some made-up world? At least, it was hen it wasn’t scaring the beejezus out of me. Returning to the film as an adult, I mostly found myself struck with certain set-pieces—like those weird stilt creatures that get ridden upon at one point—and marveling at the craftsmanship that went into making the film.

The comic doesn’t scare me, and there’s no real sense of wonder in the visuals—I know exactly how they were accomplished, with pencil and ink and computer program and paper. It was a bit like seeing a magic trick after you know the explanation, I suppose.

The Return of The Smurfette (Papercutz) Of the Papercutz presentations of Peyo Smurfs comics I’ve read—and I’ve read all save one, and that was because my local comic shop didn’t order it, not because I wanted to miss one—this volume features the most stories and, therefore, the shortest stories. The title is more of a theme uniting several of the shorts than the name of a major event or adventures.

Those that feature the Smurfette are filled with gags regarding the various Smurfs attempting to woo her, and the societal confusion the presence of her gender engenders, but it seems played lighter than the longer, more worrying story that introduced her (which you can fined in the volume entitled The Smurfette).

Probably the best, or at least weirdest, bits include Smurfette saying she’s decided to marry a Smurf, to which Papa Smurf replies, “Of course, I’m the one you’ll smurf! That way, you’ll be Mama Smurfette!” The beardless smurfs laugh at him, one saying, “Still wanting to smurf the Smurfette! At his age!” The fact that Peyo himself includes “smurf” as a dirty word jokes in his own stories amuses me to no end.

There’s that, and the bit where Jokey Smurf cross-dresses as Smurfette and lures a smurf into the woods to meet him, and gets, uh, beat-up for his trouble. These tend to be fun, funny, fantastically cartooned comic strips, but the subtext—which often isn’t even as sub as it is text—veers into weird, occasionally troubling territory often enough to make them more predictably surprising books than surprisingly predictable ones.

Spera Vol. 1 (Archaia) The in media res opening of this Josh Tierney-written fantasy is so, um, res that I felt like I was missing something, that perhaps this is the continuation of a story that began elsewhere.

Two runaway princesses, the gamine, magical sword-wielding aspiring adventurer Pira and the demure, ladylike Lono, and a benevolent fire-spirit named Yonder, most often seen in the form of a giant fox or dog aflame—are desperately seeking the titular kingdom, fleeing from Pira’s evil mother and her black magic.

Each chapter of their flight is lavishly illustrated by a different artist, each of these working in distinct styles that evoke classic fantasy and fairy tale illustration from different cultures as readily as it does master cartooning.

Despite the shifting styles, the three main characters are so visually distinct from one another  that no visual coherence or consistency is really sacrificed, and each of the artists—including Kyla Vaderklugt, Hwee, Emily Carroll and Olivier Prichard—are so accomplished that their taking of the narrative baton from the artist that preceded them is always welcome.

After the main story, which presumably continues into a Vol. 2, the book becomes a sort of anthology for its remaining 70 pages. Five shorter, standalone stories featuring the trio on mini-adventures by five more artists, each of whom boast even more distinct and more cartoony, comic book-y art styles give us more compressed, action packed tales. In these, monsters appear and are defeated more quickly, and the humor of the character conflicts bubbles more regularly to the surface. Also, we meet Chobo, a fairly ordinary fat housecat that also happens to be sword-carrying, treasure-hunting adventurer.

I can’t remember the last comic I’ve read that offered such an enormous and satisfying visual feast as Spera does.

Wolverine and Jubilee: Curse of the Mutants (Marvel Entertainment) The starting point for this semi-charming collection is a pile-up of plot points from silly X-events. First there’s the House of M business, which caused mutant teenager Jubilee to devolve most of the way back into a normal human, but not quite enough to be human, through the agency of magic. Then, in “Curse of the Mutants,” she apparently became a vampire.

In this miniseries, writer Kathryn Immonen and artist Phil Noto tell the tale of what happens to a vampire that used to be a mutant that used to be a human on the island of X-Men, which is that they keep her in a plastic cage until Wolverine convinces everyone to let her hangout with him like she used to do in the ‘90s.

Immonen does a neat job in these early scenes of comparing Jubilee’s nascent vampirism, and the weird-ass treatment of it—she has to drink plastic bottles of Wolverine’s blood daily—to the treatment of a more minor mental illness. It’salso  fun to watch the various Kitty Pryde-inspired characters of Jubilee, Armor and Pixie bickering with one another.

A fight plot eventually intrudes, and it’s one that has nothing to do with Wolverine, Jubilee, mutants or vampires, really, and thus seems kind of grafted on, something chosen from a pile of readymade plots simply to give Wolverine and Jubilee  (and Rockslide, whose name isn’t in the title but appears throughout anyway) something to physically fight with their superpowers.

It’s all diverting enough, even if it wanders pretty far away from its starting point, and Immonen writes engaging dialogue and characters. Noto’s art is great, although a little over-colored here for my tastes.

Because even Marvel realizes you can’t charge $15 for less than 90 pages, the book is further filled out by a reprint of Jubilee’s first appearance in 1989, some pages of character designs and artist Nimit Malavia’s covers.

X-Men: Great Power (Marvel) Writer Victor Gischler’s script for this story arc from his adjectiveless X-Men series—the one that became all-but-in-name X-Men Team-Up after the vampire-fighting “Curse of the Mutants” storyline—reads like something Chris Claremont might have written in the later years of his heyday. Even the cultural references are dated to the late ‘80s, with a joke about Boris Karloff and Club Med in the same panel and, a scene later, there’s a reference to Cagney and Lacey. Which I had to google to get. Because I’m “only” 35.

The plot is pure formula. The X-Men, trying to do the superhero thing, team-up with Spider-Man (after a misunderstanding in which a punch is thrown) to fight a menace that, it turns out, was cooked up by an X-Men villain and a Spider-Man villain. Convenient. (The villains don’t team-up, per se; the X-Men one, who is a minor enough character that I’ve never heard of him, uses the Spider-Man villain, whose identity is immediately apparent within the story).

Artist Chris Bachalo livens up the proceedings quite a bit, and offers perhaps the only reason to read the book. His character designs are delightful, as are the subterranean sets he builds for his heroes to run, crawl and fight through. So integral to the readability of the storyline is Bachalo that when a fill-in artist appears to finish up the epilogue of the story, the result if visual whiplash.

While the initiative was unveiled just this morning, this is not the first time comics publishers have used superheroes to help benefit charities seeking to end hunger and famine in Africa. Although organizations have been collecting donations for famine and disease relief in Africa for decades, one of the worst famines in recent memory occurred in Ethiopia in 1983-1985, which inspired the charity singles “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” and “We Are the World” from the music supergroups Band Aid and USA for Africa, respectively.

Jim Starlin and Bernie Wrightson picked up on the “jam piece” idea for comics: a book featuring numerous creators to raise money for East African famine relief. In 1985, Starlin pitched Marvel’s then-Editor-in-Chief Jim Shooter, who recruited Uncanny X-Men editor Ann Nocenti and writer Chris Claremont, and from there, the project continued to expand. Titled Heroes for Hope, the comic featured the X-Men in an adventure that eventually brought them to Africa, where they faced a god-like entity who feeds on human despair. In fact, Starlin details the entire process in a September 2011 blog post that includes a full list of the creative team, which included Stan Lee, John Romita Jr., Harlan Ellison, Frank Miller, Stephen King and Alan Moore.

According to Shooter, the initiative raised more than $500,000. The money was originally intended to go to Oxfam, but because of a disagreement with an Oxfam America representative, the money instead went to the American Friends Service Committee.

In 1986, DC Comics released a similar book, Heroes Against Hunger. The story, called “A Song of Pain and Sorrow,” featured Batman and Superman teaming with Lex Luthor to fight a new villain named The Master, who, much like Marvel’s villain, drew his power from human misery. Starlin and Wrightson were once again instrumental in the organization of the book, with Starlin contributing the overall plot. Heroes Against Hunger also boasted an all-star creative team, including Neal Adams, John Byrne, Howard Chaykin, Jerry Ordway, Andy Kubert and Barry Winsor-Smith. In the 48-page comic, every two pages were handled by a different creative team.

While there are no details on a tie-in book for DC’s current “We Can Be Heroes” initiative, the press release indicates there will be merchandise for sale through WeCanBeHeroes.org, with 50 percent of the purchase price going to famine relief.

Joe Stone's X-Men Family Tree

I’ve always been a lost cause when it comes to math and science, so usually my eyes glaze over when there’s any talk of “formula” or “coefficient.” But I perked up when at Wired.com scientist and author Samuel Arbesman took on the question of inbreeding in Marvel’s X-Men universe. (It was the X-Men part, not the inbreeding, that piqued my interest, thankyouverymuch.)

Using as a guide Joe Stone’s X-Men Family Tree, with its lines designating clones, offspring nemeses and so on, Arbesman has determined that — surprise, surprise! — “there is no inbreeding whatsoever among the X-Men.” He does, however, raise an eyebrow at Ultimate Quicksilver and Ultimate Scarlet Witch.

“Despite the clones, immortality, and occasional mind control of comic books, the X-Men lack inbreeding,” he writes, “at least according to this chart. If we delve a bit deeper though, it turns out that the twin children of Magneto do have a sexual relationship. While no children have resulted from the union of the Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver, this would have resulted in an astonishingly high inbreeding coefficient of 25 percent, similar to a Pharaoh.”

According to a recent Radiolab Podcast, in order to get a 5.2-percent tax cut on Marvel’s imported action figures, the company’s lawyers successfully argued the toys represent “animals or other non-human creatures (for example, robots and monsters)” as defined by the Harmonized Tariff Schedule, a tome that determines tariff classifications for all goods imported into the United States.

Confused? There’s a lot of legalese involved, so here’s the way it breaks down: There’s a distinction between two categories of products imported into the U.S. “Dolls” are toys representing humans, whereas “toys” represent non-humans. While dolls are taxed at 12.8 percent, toys are taxed at just 6.8 percent. Two shrewd trade attorneys noticed the distinction and successfully argued to U.S. Customs officials that Marvel’s licensed products don’t represent human beings.

“We actually went down there. We had a meeting and brought samples of all the figures,” trade lawyer Sherry Singer told Radiolab. “We had 60 or 80 figures. We tried to convince them that these figures [did not represent human beings].”

The court cases, which began in 1993, went on for 10 years. Apparently a large part of the legal argument had to do with the X-Men not being, strictly by tariff classification, human. Oddly, the fictional governments of the Marvel Universe are usually the ones to claim mutants aren’t human — but in the real world, the government was the one defending the humanity of mutants while Marvel was opposed to the idea.

Even X-Men director Bryan Singer weighed in on the mutants versus humans issue during the podcast. “In the X-Men universe, humans are very often out to get the mutants, dismissive of mutants, fearful of the mutants, liquidating them, experimenting on them,” he said.

The judge’s ruling actually stated that all Marvel heroes were actually classified as non-human, not just the X-Men. I guess that means Super-Soldiers, gamma-irradiated scientists, billionaire philanthropists/playboys and thunder gods will all get a tax break when the bulk of The Avengers merchandise hits the U.S.

After doing a number of peripheral X-Men titles and other work in recent years, the writer stepped away from mutants–and comics at large. The final issues of X-Men Forever 2, New Mutants Forever and Chaos War: X-Men came out in early 2011 but were written by the New York-based writer in late 2010. For over a year now, Chris Claremont hasn’t written a single page of comics script.

Although he’s turned his focus to prose novels for the time being, Claremont remains in tune with developments in the comic industry that he worked in for so many years. In a far-ranging discussion with the London-born writer, we talked about the modern comics movie blockbuster, digital comics, the seduction of work-for-hire and news about his own creator-owned comics.

Chris Arrant: 2011 was a different kind of year for you and for fans of your work, Chris. What are you planning for 2012?

Chris Claremont: Well, I’ve got a prose novel making the rounds to potential publishers, and a short story in Simon & Schuster’s Under The Moons of Mars: New Adventures of Barsoom anthology. I’m working on another novel that’ll hopefully be in a position to start sharing with publishers soon as well. This year’s the first time I’ve been able to do things that are all totally mine and all totally different.

Chris Arrant: Are these sequels to your Willow novels or perhaps the First Flight novels you did a few years back?

Chris Claremont: No, the Willow books are George Lucas’; the fate of that is up to him. And these aren’t connected to First Flight either. They’re all in different genres with different emphasis. The novel making the rounds now is a young-adult adventure, and the novel on my desk right now that I’m stitching together for my agent is much more of a mystery/suspense.

Chris Arrant: Even if you’re working outside of comics currently, you’ll always be associated with the medium. Given that you have a little distance from the day-to-day of working in comics, what are your thoughts about the comics industry and medium as a whole?

Chris Claremont: This is the first time in 40 years that I haven’t written a line of comics work in a year. That is part of what’s enabled me to do a lot more prose. It’s a totally different experience, and I’m getting used to being on the outside looking in and on the inside looking out.

As far as the industry is concerned, it’s clearly in a period of evolution. I think that DC’s revamping of their entire line conceptually has brought them a measure of strong success this year. I think Marvel is taking whatever steps it feels appropriate to respond.

Over in the X-Men line of titles, I see that there seems to be a structural redefinition of the canon that will substantially change readers’ relationships with the characters, in the sense that some characters who you felt were on one side of the line in behavior now seem to be turning into anti-heroes, as I understand. Wolverine’s become head of the school, and Cyclops has been positioned as a Magneto equivalent, a good soul taking a violently pro-active stance toward mutants’ perceived antagonists in the world. It’ll be interesting to see how that all relates to the readership.

Last I looked at the Fantastic Four, Johnny Storm was dead, so that puts that title in a period of evolution as well. I don’t know if that death will be one that’s permitted to last, especially if Fox generates a new film arc. But meanwhile, it opens up a whole plethora of possibilities for writers to try new wrinkles on the classic theme of the book.

The Avengers, I assume, will be more increasingly geared toward presentation in line with the upcoming film. I know that we all have incredibly high hopes for that to work, so we’ll just have to wait and see. I mentioned Fox earlier, and I don’t know if they’ve firmed up plans to continue with the First Class concept and if they’ll attempt to reintroduce the Fantastic Four.

Chris Arrant: Since we’re talking about movies, what do you think of the showdown that’s shaping up this year for movies? You have The Avengers, Amazing Spider-Man, The Dark Knight Rises and a few others all coming out close to one another.

Chris Claremont: Summer is going to get real crazy–much like it’s been recently with the holiday releases. There have been so many huge films opening that I’d argue who’s had time to watch them all. None of the December films are anything approaching mega-hits, which I think is partly because public schools like the ones here in New York City didn’t have a long Christmas break. So it’ll be interesting to see if the winter films make any money.

Getting back to your question, the summer film season is going to be a very “no holds barred,” “whack-a-mole” kind of situation. Again it’s interesting to look at it from the outside to see how the pieces get shuffled around and who comes out on top. You’ve got to assume The Dark Knight Rises is going to have the most momentum because Christopher Nolan’s last Batman movie made $1 billion and change, and Inception was a financial and critical triumph. This new one is a wrap-up of his trilogy and from the trailer alone–that football scene alone–it’s bound to intrigue the living daylights out of people. Thinking about that more in depth, looking at the structure of the trailer, I’m wondering if Bane could perhaps be what was left of Ra’s al Ghul in disguise.

Chris Arrant: That’s an interesting theory.

Chris Claremont: At the same token, Sony’s got a huge stake in making Amazing Spider-Man successful. Raimi’s trilogy was successful in their own right, and if this one doesn’t hit that level right off the top then they’re in trouble. And Marvel and Disney have a huge stake riding on The Avengers. All of these films have a lot riding on them. The irony is that there’s so much emphasis and raw money on the films that the source material, the comics, are a little bitty piece off to the side now. From the studios’ point-of-view, the comics aren’t as relevant as we like to think, which is intriguing and sad. You then have to wonder how the publishers are going to respond, or anticipate whatever happens in a way that’ll make the comics reach out to a wider, more enthusiastic and long-lasting audience.

The next level in the equation is the evolution of the marketplace itself. The three-dimensional comic store is not the only way of presenting comics to an audience, with every comic having the potential digital download product to your iPad or whatever. That opens a whole new level of possibilities for a wider, global audience instantaneously. Not to mention the money publishers could save on print runs as they lean more digitally in distribution. Imagine if one of the primary publishing houses started doing in-house translations of new work for foreign-language audiences. Imagine if, as Avengers vs. X-Men was being lettered, there was also an in-house translation team doing the same for Europe, South America and other places for simultaneous day-and-date global release. That would in turn open up a whole new vast spectrum of audience, much like movies did.

If you go back 15 years, the domestic movie box office was the primary and near-exclusive revenue source for studios. Now the domestic American box office, strong or weak, is a minor fraction of the global take. Remember me mentioning how the last Batman movie did $1 billion and some change? $400 million of that came from U.S. movie-goers, but the other $700 came from outside our borders. Look at Avatar: the foreign ticket sales were over twice the domestic returns. The mind boggles at those kinds of numbers, but that’s what you get when you effectively reach out to a global audience. If that kind of thing came to comics, it would undoubtedly change how people perceive the mainstream industry.

If you look at that kind of thing coming in the horizon, you then think, “Do you write books exclusively for English-language audiences, or do you try to find ways to appeal elsewhere?” That was, in my own mind, the base subtext of GeNext when I was doing it a few years ago. One of the reasons all the stories in the second arc were set in India was because I wanted to see if it was possible to reach out and perhaps appeal to the sub-continental audience. If we’d gone to a third series, that would have been set in China; an intentionally global concept if it went forward as an ongoing.

Think about it: you have a whole host of X-Men locked up in North America; enough already, let’s see if we can entice a more international clientele. In a way, this kind of thinking goes back to where we started: Stan Lee, Roy Thomas, Dave Cockrum, Len Wein in 1975’s Giant-Size X-Men–with the intentionally international team. It worked then, and it could work now.

Again, following the paradigm of cinema, in the old days releasing movies overseas was an afterthought but now it’s integral to the movie business. In some films it wouldn’t be surprising to see the United States envisioned as a significant but not primary dominant marketplace, and treated accordingly. But in comics, that’s for the governing minds at each of the companies and corporations to find out for themselves. Whether or not any of it comes to pass or whether or not the management teams at Marvel and DC are all that interested, or capable, of doing it is open for debate. I’m not interested or qualified enough to make that call.

Chris Arrant: You’ve put a lot of thought on the shape of the comics medium even though you haven’t written comics in a year. Do you feel any excitement for anything currently on the comics shelf?

Chris Claremont: Embarrassing as it sounds, I don’t. I’m not that interested. My basic response is that I’m not the intended audience anymore. But I have a certain vision for certain characters, and Marvel, for example, is taking their books in a direction that is not simpatico with that vision, so for me it’s easier to focus on other things that are definitely more enjoyable. I enjoy the memories, and enjoy the work that’s been done when I come across it, and then I move on to other things.

Chris Arrant: Earlier this year you donated your writing archive to Columbia University to act as the basis for a comics research center. How’d that come about?

Chris Claremont: They called. [laughs]

It was incredibly flattering and a significant honor that they would be so taken with the work I’ve done that they would wish to archive it in this way. It’s over 40 years of material, and there isn’t a writer around who’s been working for a lifetime that doesn’t have a room/basement/house full of crap, [laughs], that their spouse has been passionately suggesting to get rid of. Not because they don’t like the stuff, but because it’s clutter. For me, the longer it stays in the basement the more risk there will be that it’ll be lost. I’ve had enough basement floods in my life that it would be a shame to lose all my articles. I’ve lost most of my comics before, and manuscripts as well, so I’m glad as much survived as it has.

The collection really bridges the distance between when we worked on typewriters to the digital age. So while I may have 25 years worth of computer files or print-outs, I also have a dozen years of typewritten original manuscripts and drafts. It’s the original pages where Jean became Phoenix, and even John Byrne and my early work on Iron Fist leading into Uncanny X-Men. All of that stuff was done on a Selectrix typewriter. There may be bad Xeroxes of some of this stuff out there, but this archive are the originals. There are handwritten notes for ideas that worked, and ideas that didn’t work. Sketches of novels, musings, you name it, it’s in there. It’ll be interesting to see what it involves into once they fully access and collate the material. Hopefully it’ll prove of value to students and scholars in the future.

Chris Arrant: Since you mentioned rarities, it gives me an opening to talk about some unfinished projects you’ve done, namely the plans for the creator-owned Huntsman series. The characters debuted in an arc of Jim Lee’s Wildcats, but nothing ever came of that. Will that material be in the archive?

Chris Claremont: I still have all the raw material for the Huntsman, but it’s staying with me because it’s still an active concept. There’s a lot of stuff not going to the archive because it’s still being worked on. Although Image/Wildstorm couldn’t find a way to make it fit with their plans, it’s just a matter of finding a new venue to present it. Whether that’s in comics, prose or a screenplay, I don’t know.

Since you’ve showed interest in Huntsman, I’ll tell you something: the irony of that project was that it was planned to go into its own series shortly after its debut in Wildcats, but the artist involved had other ideas and wanted to do a series of his own. We couldn’t find anybody to take his place, and things moved out of sync and the opportunity evaporated. It happens all the time; everybody pitches scads of ideas that don’t make it. The first challenge that every writer or creator of material faces is getting through the crowd so that the person you’re trying to sell it to hears the pitch and is able to respond to it. If you get a positive response, then you have to produce.

I have two comics projects that I started in Europe, one science fiction and one fantasy. The fantasy series, titled Wanderers, got one issue published, a second issue fully complete and a third one plotted out before the artist left to work for Marvel. That’s no fault of the artist, but the book was published as a dual-publishing arrangement between a French and Italian publisher that came to blows. I think the French publisher was hoping for better sales of the first volume, and lost interest afterwards. But now because of that, I’ve got a hundred pages of story sitting on my desk. The other series, the science fiction one, went to the publisher and an artist drew 20 odd pages before the company collapsed. The other publishers I’ve shown it to were interested, but said that either the artist or the story wasn’t quite right for them. Again, there are many cases of concepts that look golden to creators but hit speed bumps along the way and never make it to fruition. That’s the business.

Chris Arrant: But from the way you’re talking, we might eventually see them released in one form or another.

Chris Claremont: Right, but it also provides reasoning from a writer’s perspective why many prefer prose over comics. At least with prose, the only person you have to worry about is oneself. You don’t have to worry about the artist. I’ve got concepts galore, but in the modern formula for getting comics made you have to find an artist, produce samples, then pitch and sell it. The pressures of the marketplace make it extremely challenging for those pieces to come together in an effective way. Finding an artist to take the time and risk, and paradoxically for a writer to take the time and risk. Teaming together, producing the work, flogging the work, finding the right marketplace in terms of a publisher and the right marketplace in terms of readers.

But if it was easy, everybody would do it. That’s why work-for-hire is so seductive; you don’t have to worry about any of that. You just do your job, stay friends with the editors, cash your check and move on.

Chris Arrant: Since we’re on the subject of creator-owned work, I have to ask; is any of your previous work like Sovereign Seven or Black Dragon up for re-release?

Chris Claremont: Funny you mention it, but Black Dragon is coming back via Titan Publishing this year, along with Marada, The She-Wolf.

Speaking more broadly and coming back around to our discussion of digital publishing, that is an avenue I’m increasingly looking towards for more. I’ve got a lot of material that is now out of print; the First Flight prose novel trilogy is going to be released digitally. With the collapse of Borders, people need a place to sell books and digital looks to be just that.

The one problem there, the potential disadvantage of digital versus 3-D is the ability to browse. When wandering through a bookstore, you look for a good cover or an interesting genre to see what catches your eye. It’s tangible. There’s much, much less of that to me onscreen with digital books. For digital, you go to a specific place and search for a specific book and can’t see what’s proverbially standing right beside it. My wife had a professor at NYU whose way of doing research when beginning a project carried on with this thinking. He’d find a basic reference book and then go to the library and look it up in the Dewey Decimal System down to the decimal point and see what surrounded it on the shelves. He’d wander up and down the stacks all afternoon to see what caught his eye. If anything caught his eye, he’d read the first page and if it looked promising he’d keep going. Every so often he’d get a serendipitous moment that would spark him off in a whole new, different direction.

The problem with digital bookstores is that it’s an A-to-B link. You want a book by a certain author, you get the book. Readers have no idea what’s right next door; no way of exploring and being taken by surprise and discovery. So how that affects the industry–and the audience–will be an interesting thing to watch over the next few years and decades as we get used to it.

On one hand the convenience of digital distribution is unparalleled, but on the other hand there’s no opportunity to discover… and bluntly, that’s a problem comics have right now. With everything increasingly geared toward central flagship concepts and mass crossovers, you have stores being asked to buy all the Avengers-oriented titles, for example, then books that don’t have those connections, whether it’s at Marvel, DC or outside, that have a rougher time. Before you even think about getting readers invested in a title, you have to figure out how to get the retailers invested. If retailers are put in a position where they have to throw 80 to 90% of their available budget to get all of the mainstream titles from DC and Marvel and then dependable peripheral books from Dark Horse and others, the one little itty bitty book with no link to anything might get just get an order of one or two copies, optimistically. With another round of event comics coming down the pike this year, it’s a far more challenging and brutal environment for new material, unexpected material, non-canonical material. And on the flipside unfortunately, publishers have less incentive to push what’s considered non-canonical work because those non-canonical work diminishes canonical work which they need to sell.

Chris Arrant: It makes you think that if Watchmen debuted today if it would’ve been able to capture audiences like it did when it was originally released.

Chris Claremont: DC would still publish Watchmen; they’d sell it to the comic stories and maybe sell 30,000, and that would be it. Back in the ’80s, it took a mainstream publisher coming to DC and saying, “You guys are idiots! Let us have the book, we’ll market it and show you how it’s done.” The next thing you know, Alan and Dave are all over the bestseller lists. Even if the movie was self-destructive, the book still endures.

Comics publishers are used to looking in a very, very narrow focused prism. It’s like when I started writing X-Men. Our “meat and potatoes” money was made of newsstand sales, while anything that came through the Direct Market was considered gravy. In everything we did in those early years up through the ’80s, everything we sold to the Direct Market was pure profit because we’d already paid for the printing with our newsstand sales; we were just cranking out money.

But on the flipside, when DC made the decision to go exclusively to the Direct Market, it made life much easier because they’d have the orders in before they set the print runs and would just print a marginal amount of extra copies. That way you didn’t have to worry about 200,000 excess copies unsold by the newsstand, for example. But the negative to being exclusively aimed at the Direct Market is that you’re selling to a committed audience and not bringing any new kids in the door. When Marvel followed DC’s route for the Direct Market, they were going for guaranteed profit and minimal risk, but newsstands had a much bigger potential for sales and induction of new readers.

Once local comic shops began going away in the ’90s, it put a lot of those readers out because not many people are willing to drive 40 or 50 miles for comics; they’ll simply move on to other things. The fiscal decision in the ’90s to maximize profit at the expense of investment was like cutting our own throats. But on the other hand, the guys making those decisions are now billionaires.

Marjorie Liu is the sort of writer other writers envy. We in the comics world know her for her Marvel work, including X-23 and Black Widow and, most prominently, her just-announced gig as writer for Astonishing X-Men, but she has a whole other life as a prose novelist. Her latest books are Within the Flames, the tenth in a series of paranormal romances about shape-shifters, and The Mortal Bone, an urban fantasy novel about a woman whose body is covered with demonic tattoos that come to life. I talked to Marjorie this week about her work in all three genres, and her plans for the near future of the X-Men.

Brigid Alverson: You were writing prose novels before you wrote comics. What sort of adjustments did you have to make to your writing (both style and process) when you moved from one medium to another?

Marjorie Liu: I had two great mentors when I first started: my editor, John Barber, and editorial assistant, Michael Horwitz. Both of them “held my hand” through the process, giving me sample scripts and a lot of wonderful advice. What I found that helped (sometimes, not always) was focusing just on the dialogue. I’d imagine these characters caught in the moment, and write down their conversations. Then, I’d break it into panels.

But yes, it was an adjustment. When I write a novel, I’m responsible for every aspect of storytelling: I have to provide the visuals, all the emotion, through my words. Plus, the story is a lot longer—upward of 100,000 words. Comics are much shorter, and I have a partner-in-crime: the artist, who tells the story through his or her illustrations. It’s such a privilege to participate in that kind of storytelling.

Astonishing X-Men

Alverson: What have you learned along the way—how would you say your current comics are different from your earlier ones?

Liu: That’s hard to say. I’m still terrible at plotting ahead, so maybe nothing has changed!

Alverson: Listening to you describe your prose novels, I got the feeling that there are a lot of parallels between your novels and superhero comics. The types of characters and the action you describe don’t seem that different from superheroes, yet paranormal romance and urban fantasy are perceived as totally different genres from superheroes. As someone who writes in all three genres, how would you compare them?

Liu: Paranormal romances and urban fantasies are seen as totally different genres even from each other (though, in my opinion, there’s quite a bit of overlap), so I’m unsurprised that parallels to superhero comics aren’t typically drawn. The most basic and superficial difference between a paranormal romance and urban fantasy rests within the focus on relationships—in one genre, the relationship between hero and heroine is of paramount importance—while in the other, it’s the personal journey of a singular protagonist that matters most.

In both genres, however, the characters are usually not human, and must learn to deal with immense power (and obligations) that make them total outsiders. For example, the heroes and heroines of my Dirk & Steele paranormal romance series are psychics, mermen, shape-shifters, witches, gargoyles….basically, humans and otherworldly creatures who inhabit our modern day world and struggle to keep their existences secret. Similar to the struggles of some superheroes in comics.

Alverson: How did you first become acquainted with the Marvel universe in general and the X-Men in particular? What do you like about them?

An early appearance by the Marauders

Liu: I became familiar through the X-Men cartoon of the 90′s, which I suspect inspired a lot of kids to take a rather feverish look at the comics. What I loved then, and what I still love, is that strong sense of family that ran through all the stories and relationships. This wasn’t just a team of random superheroes, this was a group of men and women committed to one another despite their dysfunctional relationships, occasional insanities, and the added burden of a world out to get them. Along those same lines, the X-Men were always outsiders, on the fringe. I identified with that.

Alverson: As a novelist you invent your own characters, but when you write for Marvel you are working with pre-existing characters who have their own histories and personalities—and who will continue to exist after you move on. How much control do you have over the Marvel characters you write about, and how have you made them your own?

Liu: As a writer who has a great deal of respect for Marvel’s superheroes, my goal is to stay true to the spirit of who these characters are. If I had decided to give X-23 a bubbly, talkative personality—obsessed with boys and clothes—that would just be odd and wrong. In fact, it would be a slap in the face of all the trauma she’s endured.

On the other hand, I’ve been given tremendous opportunities to make these characters my own. Being allowed to write Black Widow as a young mother was huge, and no one has ever pulled me back from putting a twist on relationships—making Gambit a mentor to X-23, for example, and exploring how that might change them both. That’s the key part, I suppose…that I’ve been able to explore.

Alverson: What about your storytelling style—are there ways in which you consciously depart from the other comics you have read?

Liu: Not consciously, no. I just sit down and write. My storytelling style is continuing to evolve.

Alverson: Now that you are taking over on Astonishing X-Men, which characters are you looking forward to writing about most?

Liu: Every single one of them listed on that roster. If I’m not excited about a particular character, I won’t waste my time on him or her.

X-23

Alverson: Were there any plot threads you didn’t get to in X-23, any stories left untold? And if so, will you be looking for ways to pick them up in Astonishing X-Men?

Liu: Oh, sure. I wanted to follow up with the NYX kids (Kiden, Bobby, etc), and also bring Black Widow into the book as a female mentor to X-23. Those aren’t story-lines that will be making it into Astonishing X-Men, though.

Alverson: Your first story arc will involve The Marauders, who are a pretty bad ass team of villains. Given their history and their power, how do you plan to portray them as menacing while holding back enough to keep the story balanced and interesting?

Liu: That’s difficult to discuss without giving too much away. What I can tell you is that no member of this new X-team will come away unscathed. I’m not talking physical wounds, either. The scars will go deep, and the Marauders will be part of that. On the other hand, the Marauders are not the main focus of the story — and they might not even be the ultimate villains.

Alverson: I’m impressed by the number of books and comics you have written in a relatively short time. What does your work day look like? Do you usually focus on one project at a time, or do you switch between novels and comics when you want a break?

Liu: This has been a particularly crazy month. I’ve had two novels come out—Within the Flames, which follows the adventures of a young pyrokinetic who rescues a beautiful dragon shape-shifter from the witches hunting her—and The Mortal Bone, part of my Hunter Kiss series, about a woman covered in living demonic tattoos that peel off her body at night to form her own army. On top of that, I’ve been writing my next novel, working on the last issue of X-23, and hammering away at Astonishing X-Men. I need to start using a kitchen timer to keep track of my hours!

So, my work day. Basically, I get up early—around first light—eat breakfast, feed the poodle and cats, then sit down and get to work. I usually work on two different projects at once—I’ll write one in the morning, and then switch gears to tackle the second project (novel or comic) after lunch. When I take breaks, I watch television, read, go for walks.

Alverson: As a writer, are you still able to enjoy reading comics for pleasure? If so, which ones do you like?

The Fire King

Liu: It’s completely random. Not long ago I picked up Christian Slade’s Korgi (Vol. 1-3), which is wordless, adorable, and full of flame-breathing dogs, aliens from outer-space, faeries, swamp monsters, and other delights. I love it! I also read Jason Aaron’s Wolverine and the X-Men (because it’s red hot fun), and Bill Willingham’s Fables. Also, recently—Love & Rockets: Poison River by Gilbert Hernandez—breathtaking, brilliant and totally traumatizing.

Alverson: Have you considered adapting your prose work to graphic novel format?

Liu: Yes. Every now and then Kalman Andrasofszky illustrates scenes from the Hunter Kiss series, which is fun because it gives a hint at what the books would look like as graphic novels. You can see two scenes here and here, as well as a sample “cover” he worked on for one of my romance novels, The Fire King.

Alverson: What about doing a creator-owned graphic novel with new characters?

Liu: I would love that. It’s been on my mind for quite some time.

Artist Aviv Or imagines that and a host of other crazy ideas in her ongoing Community/X-Men mash-up over on her website. So far we have Troy/Wolverine, Pierce/Magneto, Annie/Kitty Pryde, Jeff/Cyclops and Gillian/Jean Grey.

Or has several more mash-ups to go through, and we’re excited for who she’ll surprise us with next. Perhaps after this, a 30 Rock/Justice League mash-up with Kenneth Parcell as Superman!

Explorer: The Mystery Boxes

It’s time once again for our monthly trip through Previews looking for cool, new comics. As usual, we’re focusing on graphic novels, collected volumes and first issues so that I don’t have to come up with a new way to say, “ Mouse Guard is still awesome!” every month. And I’ll continue letting Tom and Carla do the heavy lifting in regards to DC and Marvel’s solicitations.

Also, please feel free to play along in the comments. Tell me what I missed that you’re looking forward to or – if you’re a comics creator – mention your own stuff.

Amulet

Explorer: The Mystery Boxes - With the Flight anthologies done, the all-ages version, Flight Explorer has morphed into this. I expect it to be as lovely as its predecessors and especially like the Mystery Box theme.

Archie

Jinx – J Torres and Rick Burchett’s graphic novel aimed at tween girls.

Kevin Keller, Volume 1 and Kevin Keller #1 – Archie collects the first appearances and mini-series of their major, gay character and also launches his ongoing series.

Ardden

Flash Gordon: Vengeance of Ming – The third volume in Ardden’s Flash Gordon series.

Ferals

Avatar

Ferals #1 – David Lapham writes werewolves.

Atmospherics, Color Edition – Warren Ellis and Ken Meyer’s re-mastered and newly painted story about a woman who’s either a disturbed witness to a UFO attack or a heroin-using serial killer.

Bongo

Simpsons Illustrated #1 – Bongo launches a Best Of series collecting material from various Simpsons titles.

Boom!

Steed and Mrs. Peel #1 – Reprinting Grant Morrison and Ian Gibson’s 1990 Eclipse Comics story of the other Avengers.

Peanuts #1 – Kicking off the regular, monthly series with new stories as well as reprints of Schulz’s Sunday strips.

Campfire

Jungle Book - Campfire’s artwork can often be perfunctory, but I like the whimsy of Amit Tayal’s cover for this one.

Cartoon Books

Bone: Quest for the Spark, Book 2 – The second installment in Tom Sniegoski’s series of novels set in Jeff Smith’s world (with illustrations by Smith himself).

Lobster Johnson: The Burning Hand

Dark Horse

Lobster Johnson: The Burning Hand #1 – Mike Mignola’s pulp hero returns for a five-issue mini-series.

The Monstermen and Other Scary Stories - I love Gary Gianni’s linework anyway, but I especially dug his Corpus Monstrum/Monstermen stories that appeared for a while as back-up features in Hellboy comics. This volume features Gianni’s tuxedo-wearing, medieval knight fighting zombie cowboys, squid pirates, abominable snowmen, and mustachioed skulls.

Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic – War #1 – I’m pretty much done with the Star Wars Expanded Universe, but if you’re not or are curious about it, Dark Horse is billing this as a major jump-on point to the part that covers the ancient period of the Star Wars galaxy.

Compleat Terminal City - All fourteen issues of Dean Motter and Michael Lark’s retro-scifi/noir series.

Mighty Samson: Judgment - Probably as close as we’re going to get to a Thundarr the Barbarian comic.

King Conan: The Phoenix on the Sword #1 – This four-issue mini-series adapts Robert E Howard’s first Conan story.

Dark Horse Presents #8 – Features a BPRD eulogy for Hellboy and a new Tarzan story.

DC

Justice League #5 – Looks like the team’s finally together.

Frankenstein vs. OMAC

Frankenstein: Agent of SHADE #5 and OMAC #5 – As a faithful reader of Jeff Lemire’s Frankenstein, I”m actually kind of excited that this will give me some motivation to check out OMAC, which I’m hearing good things about.

Xombi - The biggest casualty (for me, anyway) of the New 52 gets its collection.

Drawn and Quarterly

Goliath - The David and Goliath story told from Goliath’s viewpoint through the filter of corporate bureaucracy and presented in a lovely, minimalist style.

Dynamite

The Lone Ranger #1 – I tried Dynamite’s first Lone Ranger series, was disappointed that it wanted to stretch the familiar origin story into a multi-issue arc, and immediately dropped it. Assuming that won’t be the case this time – and noticing that it’s written by Ande Parks, whose writing I’ve enjoyed very much on other things – I’m up for another try.

First Second

Olympians, Volume 4: Hades, Lord of the Dead – The latest in George O’Connor’s wonderfully exciting and insightful review of the the most important characters from Greek mythology. Hades has always been a favorite of mine, so I’m especially looking forward to this one.

Silence of Our Friends - “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.” Edmund Burke is supposed to have originated that quote, but it was driven home for me by Vicente Amorim’s 2008 film, Good about good Germans who were too afraid of the Nazis to assist their Jewish neighbors in WWII. But even that gave me some comfortable, historical and geographical distance from the people and events it was talking about. I expect that Silence of Our Friends, about the civil rights movement in the ’60s, will hit even closer to home.

The Sincerest Form of Parody

Fantagraphics

The Sincerest Form of Parody: The Best 1950s MAD-Inspired Satirical Comics - I can’t decided if I’m more interested in the historical context of what folks were parodying in the ’50s or just looking at some cool Jack Davis and Kirby art that I’ve never seen before.

Hermes

The Phantom: The Complete Sundays, Volume 1: 1939-1943 – I like daily strips too, but Sunday comics are the best.

Humanoids

Whispers in the Walls – Guillermo del Toro’s co-writer from The Devil’s Backbone goes solo on this tale of horror at a Czechoslovakian children’s hospital in the late ’40s.

IDW

Infestation 2 #1 – Since I’m not a zombie fan, I passed up the first Infestation even while I was loving the idea of connecting all those weird, incongruous universes. This time around it’s Lovecraftian demons, which is not only a more appealing concept to me personally; it also makes a lot of sense from a dimension-crossing standpoint. That something exists tying 30 Days of Night and Dungeons and Dragons together with Transformers and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles gives me all the joy I’ll ever need.

Danger Girl: The Danger-Sized Treasury Edition - I’ve been wanting to check out Danger Girl for a while now. This collects the first three stories to get me started.

Danger Girl: Revolver

Danger Girl: Revolver #1 – And here’s the new story.

Womanthology: Heroic - The controversial Kickstarter sensation comes to life.

Doctor Who #13 – Occasionally I have to break my rule about only mentioning new series. Josh Fialkov’s taking over Doctor Who for four issues to put the Doctor in 1941 Casablanca is one of those occasions. It starts here.

Steve Canyon, Volume 1: 1947-1948 - I read these stories when Checker published them and was eager for more. Unfortunately, Checker quit, but now Milton Caniff’s globe-trotting pilot is at IDW in a great-looking hardcover.

Image

Fatale #1 – Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips’ supernatural noir comic has everyone’s mouths watering, including mine. I’d buy it for the “Beauty” cover alone, though the “Beast” one looks cool too.

Prophet #21 – Two of my favorite artists, Brandon Graham and Simon Roy are collaborating on this, with a cover by Marian Churchland. That’s the exact opposite team of whatever I expected from a continuation of a Rob Liefeld book. Seriously: good on Liefeld. I’m also impressed that he’s not just starting the numbering over again with #1. Seems like that would be the obvious thing, especially with the book going in such a new direction, creatively, but it’s because it’s surprising and counter-intuitive that I like it. And it’s not even like he’s cashing in on a milestone issue-number. If my calculations are correct, he’s counting two mini-series (one, ten-issues; the other, nine), a one-shot, and an annual to get to 21. If this is what we can expect from the new Extreme, and apparently it is, my interest is piqued.

Whispers #1 – I find the Luna Brothers interesting enough that a new, supernatural thriller by one of them gets a check-out.

The Intrepids

The Intrepids, Volume 1 - Teens vs mad scientists (and a cyborg bear).

Marvel

Scarlet Spider #1 – The latest spin-off for the Spider-Man franchise.

Amazing Spider-Man #677 and Daredevil #8 – I like a couple of things about this crossover. First, like DC’s Frankenstein/OMAC one, it’s pretty unobtrusive. Second, Mark Waid’s writing both parts of it.

Alpha Flight #8 – SOB! I’ll miss you, Alpha Flight!

Wolverine and X-Men Alpha and Omega #1 – I’d usually feel ungenerous towards a mini-series spin-off of a comic that’s only four issues old, but Brian Wood is writing it and that bears looking into.

X-Men Legacy #260.1 – Christos Gage takes over from Mike Carey. I’m sad to see Carey go, but intrigued to see what Gage has planned. I hear good things about his Avengers Academy.

Daredevil by Mark Waid, Volume 1 - Waid and Paolo Rivera’s critically acclaimed run for trade-waiters.

Moonstone

The Big Book of Kolchak: The Night Stalker – Collects the first seven, long-out-of-print Moonstone Kolchak stories.

Oni

Possessions, Volume 3: Better House Trap - Sadly, it’s only recently that Ray Fawkes’ name has been on my radar. Now that it is, I want to check out his slapstick series about a possessed little girl trying to escape the loving, nurturing environment of the haunted house that traps her.

Wasteland

Wasteland #33 – Oni is celebrating Antony Johnston’s post-apocalyptic series’ going monthly with a $1 kick-off issue. I’ve fallen extremely behind in reading it, but it was one of my favorite comics at the time I decided to trade-wait it.

The Avalon Chronicles, Volume 1: Once in a Blue Moon – I’m a sucker for stories about young people who get transported to magical worlds where they discover things about themselves. Especially ones as nicely drawn as this one.

Papercutz

Monster Mess - Lewis Trondheim’s story of two kids who discover their ability to bring monsters to life (and have them fight each other) just by drawing them.

Putnam

Fangbone! Third-Grade Barbarian, Volumes 1 and 2 - It’s a cute enough concept, but Michael Rex’s art and Fangbone’s deadly serious expression on the covers are what sells it.

Russ Cochran

Sunday Funnies #1 – This is kind of brilliant. I’ll just let the publisher describe it:  ” A monthly, 32-page, full-size comic section containing historic Sunday pages from as far back as 1895, and including favorites such as Gasoline Alley, Little Nemo, Krazy Kat, and many other classic Sunday pages that you’ve probably never seen before. Each issue … will be a full-size 22″x16″ comic section, containing full page Sunday comics in full color. These pages are coming from the archives of Ohio State University, which, thanks to Bill Blackbeard, has the largest and most comprehensive collection of Sunday comics in existence. The retail price will be $10 and I will be selling subscriptions, 12 monthly issues for $100.” Should go well next to Wednesday Comics collections.

Bettie Page in Danger

SHH

Bettie Page in Danger #1 – Even more brilliant. A fumetti using real Bettie Page photos to tell a story about the pin-up queen’s career fighting zombies, mad scientists, and other naked ladies.

SLG

Sparko – This sounds a little like Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere with the Thames replacing London’s Underground. I don’t mean to make that sound like a bad thing. Coming from SLG and including a murder mystery, goth goblins, and a pickpocket named Belle, I trust that it’s not.

Tor

Girl Genius Omnibus, Volume 1: Agatha Awakens – The Hugo-winning, steampunk webcomic gets the deluxe hardcover treatment.

And that’s it for me. What did I miss?

Using the popular crowd-funding website Kickstarter, the documentary producers Sequart Research & Literary Organization and Respect Films are asking for $3,500 in fan support to make the film happen. Director Patrick Meaney spoke with Claremont as well as many of his chief collaborators such as Art Adams to get the inside-baseball perspective on the the writer and his definitive work.

If the funding is met and the film does well, the producers hope this will be the first in a series of Comics In Focus documentaries looking at the major moments in comics history.

So far over $400 of the $3,500 has been raised with 28 days to go, with excellent prizes for those that donate $10 or more.

Uncanny X-Men #1

Uncanny X-Men returned this past Wednesday with a new #1, just two weeks after the previous run ended. Written by Kieron Gillen with art by Carlos Pacheco, Cam Smith and Frank D’Armata, the story revolves around Cyclops and his post-Schism “Extinction Team” of Storm, Hope and a bunch of folks who couldn’t participate in a game of “raise your hand if you’ve never gone through a stage that others characterized as ‘mainly super villain.’” The book features a more serious tone and mission for the team than their back-in-Westchester friends appearing in Wolverine and the X-Men, as well as the villainy of Mr. Sinister and cameos by most of the other “Team Cyclops” mutant characters who decided to stay on the West Coast.

So what did folks think of this issue? Here’s a sampling of reviews on Uncanny X-Men #1:

Ron Richards, iFanboy: “Uncanny X-Men #1 is everything that Wolverine & The X-Men #1 was not, and I mean that in absolutely good way.  Where Aaron delivered a whimsical, comedic at times, fresh new start for Wolverine and the mutants at the new school in Westchester, Gillen’s representation in Uncanny X-Men #1 is a serious, more adult world that these mutants live in. And that’s exactly how it should be.”

Chris Sims, ComicsAlliance: “[Gillen] goes right into this world where the sheer madness of a guy made of metal getting crazy magic powers that turn him into an even tougher guy made of metal is ‘business as usual,’ a world where a constant series of increasingly ludicrous changes is just the way things are, and puts the focus onto someone who’s been trying since he was a teenager to figure out a way to control it all. That alone is what twists this into being a great first issue — it actually introduces the X-Men as they are, with the important stuff playing out on the page while the rest of the noisy clamor of the franchise happens in the background.”

Poet Mase, IGN: “One of Uncanny X-Men #1‘s high points can be found in Gillen’s characterizations. The book’s cast, even those given little face time like Namor (who speaks in a total of four panels), feel like distinct and tremendously interesting individuals. This shouldn’t come as a surprise to those familiar with Gillen, as it’s probably his greatest strength as a writer, but it struck me as particularly effective here. Carlos Pacheco does a lot to heighten this effect, especially when bringing the duality and desperation of a character like Colossus to the page. Through little more than posture and Gillen’s sparse dialog, Pacheco perfectly conveys the conflict and crushing weight of Colossus’ raw power and his desire to be a kind person. The threads involving Emma Frost are tight and enticing as well, bubbling steadily as the story progresses.”

Chad Nevett, Comic Book Resources: “Carlos Pacheco has flirted with a full-time return to the X-books, producing the Point One issue of Uncanny X-Men earlier this year as well as the first issue of X-Men: Schism. He’s a good fit with Gillen’s writing, providing a clean and clear artistic vision of the group. His art, combined with Frank D’Armata’s colors, makes the team look a little futuristic — modern, bright and shiny. D’Armata’s coloring isn’t as overbearing as it sometimes is as the colorist seems to have a good understanding of how to complement Pacheco’s pencils best. When the issue turns to action, Pacheco’s art really shines. He’s always been a great superhero action artist and Gillen plays to his strengths well.”

Dean Stell, Weekly Comic Book Review: “Emma Frost with stringy hair? I don’t think so. And there are a few places where the storytelling is just sub-par, like when a lady gets her neck snapped the only indication of the snapping is the word ‘SNAP’ since her head isn’t twisted or anything. This isn’t an art disaster, but after the masterpiece that Chris Bachalo gave us last week on Wolverine and the X-Men this was a really a so-so effort. There’s nothing to please folks who are seriously into comic sequential art fans. It’s like the X-group is too content to have ‘average’ art. The coloring wasn’t doing this issue any favors either. Too much of that digitally highlighted stuff for me.”

David Pepose, Newsarama: “But I think the big problem with this book isn’t so much Gillen’s fault, or that Cyclops and his ‘Extinction Team’ isn’t a smart idea — it’s just that years of other people’s storytelling choices are finally coming home to roost. It doesn’t matter if Gillen recently told an awesome issue of Colossus becoming the Juggernaut if the character really hasn’t gotten any other room to breathe and endear himself to readers since, well, Astonishing X-Men. Storm is another kind of glaring example — for much of the past decade she’s really been shuffled to the background of the X-books and seen mostly a Black Panther supporting character, so it’s really hard now to root for her and understand her potential as one of the big guns in Cyclops’s arsenal. And whereas Jason Aaron was able to pull some real surprises into his lineup, like the teenage Brood or Kid Gladiator, we’ve seen all of Gillen’s team before, and there’s no wild card to stir up the pot, to really get you excited and invested in this team.”

Martin Gray, Too Dangerous for a Girl: “I can see the more hardcore X-Men fans loving this book. It’s very well crafted, includes fan favourite characters and continues the ‘nobody like us, everybody hates us, think we’ll go and eat worms’ storyline of the last 20 years or so. I’ll certainly give it an issue or two more, see where it goes. But I suspect I’ll be packing my bags and moving the Jean Grey School for Higher Learning full-time. At least until the X-Men become a group of heroes again.”

Susie Cagle

Legal | Susie Cagle, the cartoonist covering Occupy Oakland who was tear-gassed last month, was arrested early Thursday morning during the protests in Oakland. According to her father, cartoonist Daryl Cagle, Susie was being held at Santa Rita Jail in Alameda County, Calif. and was charged with unlawful assembly, even though she was there covering the event and had a press badge. Update: According to her Twitter account, Susie Cagle is out of jail and was charged with a misdemeanor, “present at raid.” [Fishbowl LA]

Legal | Tom Spurgeon offers more details on comic artist Steve Rude’s Halloween altercation, which led to the Nexus creator’s arrest that same night. According to Rude’s wife by way of Spurgeon, Rude was in costume handing out Halloween candy to kids trick-or-treating when his neighbors’ dogs began barking. Rude threw rocks at the neighbors’ fence, which led to a confrontation with them. Rude tore the neighbor’s shirt and pushed him, leading to the assault charges. Rude suffered physical abuse during the arrest and in jail before posting bail. [The Comics Reporter]

Rex Ogle

Publishing | DC Comics Assistant Editor Rex Ogle has reportedly left the publisher for a position at Scholastic. Ogle, who joined DC in 2008, worked on such titles as Blue Beetle, Justice League International and Justice League Dark, and wrote the recent Flashpoint: The World of Flashpoint miniseries. His departure follows that of Associate Editor Janelle Asselin, who left DC in late September for a job at Disney’s magazine division. [Bleeding Cool]

Digital | Jhonen Vasquez is preparing Johnny the Homicidal Maniac for its debut in digital form in January and notes that some fans have complained he’s making minor corrections to his original work: “I get what they’re saying, but it seems too weird to me to think that fixing typos, mistakes that were made not creatively, but simply on a grammatical level, changes the overall vibe or message of the book (be kind to others or stab them). Like I said, I get it, but I think the reaction is a bit…reactionary. I even made a joke about it in the announcement in the form of a George Lucas joke, but it went over some heads and those heads be upset about me adding Yodas into scenes where there weren’t Yodas before.” [Mindspill]

Uncanny X-Men #1

Creators | Kieron Gillen discusses working on the recently relaunched Uncanny X-Men, as well as his career as a video game journalist: “As a working creator there’s a limitation… You don’t want to pick fights, but there’s stuff where if you start doing critical theory, it becomes picking fights. So that’s what I kind of miss. I still do bits of games criticism. I do little bits of music journalism. Give me another 12 hours in the day and I’d still be doing it. I’m very into to the contextualization of culture. I talk to my own critics not to say, “You’ve got my view wrong!” but to generally say thank you. I’m always very pleased when I see someone hammer out 10,000 words on something I wrote… Being a journalist for as long as I was — you write a review, post it, and within hours you have 800 people calling you a c*nt just for having an opinion and giving something an 8/10 rather than a 9/10. And that makes you tough.” [ComicsAlliance]

Creators | Writer Joe Keatinge talks abut his other comic series announced at the New York Comic Con, Hell Yeah “I know where it will eventually end, but my hope is to not get there for a very, very long time. The way I look at is I know where the series will begin and where it will end. I have this all mapped out, but I’m giving Andre and I the freedom to go where we want. Maybe we’ll take short detours. Maybe we’ll go on entirely different path. That said, Hell Yeah is the direct result of almost thirty years of comics passion put into one book. I could write it for just about forever. A big goal of the book was to start something in the superhero genre, a genre in which I believe all others can exist, and go as far away from that as possible as well as exploring what other potential it has.” [iFanboy]

Oh Phoenix Force, we know you...

As most of you CBRians know, Marvel’s solicitations for January 2012 came out last Friday, so our look forward into the past is a little delayed. On the bright side, the first of 2012′s books seem like something that deserve a few more days reflection. After all, 2012 is the year it all comes together! You guys, there’s going to be an Avengers movie. A real, live action, big budget, A-list star Avengers movie! All Marvel’s rather crazy Hollywood ideas are paying off next summer and, with a little hard work, the House of Ideas could come to a beautiful fruition.

So while our celebratory May month is still off in the distance, the recently hung Chrismas decorations let me know that January is just around the corner. Can we get an idea of what next year will look like, through the first books to roll out at the start of the year? Let’s just read along and find out, shall we?

Alright, I’ve got some good news and bad news, and I’ll be honest: “brave” and “bold” are not words I’d use to describe January’s line-up. The Avengers, while obviously the focus of mainstream media in this blockbuster year, should be giving us something different. They should be at least “Road-to-Wrestlemania”-ing their way to the big movie.   By reading books now, we should get a sense of build-up to what May will be like. We had a bajillion Thor comics last year as we got close to the Thor film, showing different aspects of the God of Thunder; Captain America spread his patriotic heroism throughout several one-shots, miniseries and collections well before July, so that by the movie’s debut, there would be a plethora of material for movie-goers to feast upon. So far, January is starting out pretty slow. Yeah, you’ve got your Secrets, your Academies, your New, and Adjectiveless … there are plenty of types of Avengers out there, but what are they all doing?

For example, Avengers Annual #1 brings back the Revengers, returning to let the reader debate whether or not being a strong force in the world makes you a target.  The same idea seems to apply to X-Sanction, albeit with a different creative team and Cable. In Avengers #21, the team battles “the combined forces of Hydra, AIM, the Hand and H.A.M.M.E.R. under the leadership of Norman Osborne.”

Since Disassembled, the message is clear: DO NOT BE AN AVENGER. It’s all conjecture at this point, but January starts with the target squarely on the Avenger’s head rather than leading to a major threat or event (we’ll get to the Phoenix in a moment). They seem to be less “Avenging” and more “Defending,” but that’s a whole different book. If anything, it looks like the same holding pattern we’ve seen before, through seasonal restarts.

More of the X-Men will be inching their way toward box office gold as Cable will return from the grave to annihilate Earth’s Mightiest Heroes and Wakandan queen Storm will be joining the Avengers and our pal, the Scarlet Witch, will finally be returning to mainstream continuity with an official game change across both teams. You know, you got your people will live, people will die, nothing will ever be the blah blah blah. Considering the big IT’S COMING teaser shot shown at recent conventions, let’s figure that if the Avengers or X-Men are going to fight something huge in that yearly big event kind of way, it’s coming from the cosmic entity known as the Pheonix Force, and Hope and Wanda are probably involved.

The rest of the X-Men have forgone ramping up for a big change and are instead hauling out the past to settle the Regenesis in a little bit. Remember, just in the month of January, the Phalanx return in an Uncanny X-Men one-shot, the Jean Grey School of Empty Graves will be in full swing in Wolverine & the X-Men, there will be a preview of the new Age of Apocalypse book in Uncanny X-Force, goddammit the Magneto clone Joseph is returning in the Magneto: Not a Hero mini-series, Exodus (really?) will show up in X-Men: Legacy, Havok and Polaris come back to X-Factor and oh yeah, the big looming threat is the Phoenix force.

It’s a lot of old ideas. Again, three months from now, maybe we’ll be hankering for a little slice of the ’90s (Joseph? Really??) but looking forward, I can’t say I can see a brave or bold future on the horizon. In fact, right now my big horizon line is May, not January, so maybe my eyesight’s gone a little funny.

With all the recent changes of the current year and the fallout still left to come, perhaps it’s better that we linger with the toys we have rather than throw them out in anticipation of what’s to come. I know that the Fearless and Battle Scars books will be handling their fair share of Fear Itself fallout and maybe, as much as the X-Men have restructured themselves again, we might want to go back to our roots and see how they fit in with our swanky new teams.

It can’t always be all new and all different. Sometimes, we still have pieces to pick up, ideas to finish, characters to haul out of storage and dust off a little and see if they still work. January seems entrenched in our past as a foundation for all that’s to come in the year and, while certainly not glitzy or glamorous, might be what we need.

Take a look through the solicitations (again) and share your thoughts. Excelsior!

V for Vendetta

One of the more interesting (at least to me) aspect of Occupy Wall Street is that it has its own library, tended to by professional librarians and providing a variety of literature, from serious works of social and economic theory to picture books to keep the kiddies happy. Check the blog for news of authors who have been stopping by and donating their books; the New Yorker even wrote a nice little piece. Libraries are springing up in the other Occupy sites as well, including Boston, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, and Providence.

This sparked a lively discussion on a librarians’ graphic novel discussion group where I lurk. Gan Golan, creator of The Adventures of Unemployed Man, started the discussion:

I visited the libraries at both the Occupy Baltimore (which was tiny) and Occupy Wall St. at Zucotti park in NYC (which was huge) and the good librarians at both places lamented the lack of a strong graphic novels section that showcased comic that were relevant or socially engaged. (The libraries there are very popular, btw).

Golan’s own book, of course is quite appropriate, and the discussion generated a good list of suggestions, including V for Vendetta, Maus, Persepolis, Watchmen, and Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the American Empire. The X-Men were cited for dealing with discrimination. Texas librarian Jesse Ephraim came up with an interesting list that included those and some others:

• Y: The Last Man (gender roles and relations)
• The old Vertigo run of Animal Man (animal abuse, rights, and welfare)
• The 1984-1986 run of The Defenders, when the character “Cloud” was a member (gender identity, sexual orientation, allusions to transsexuality, etc.)
• The old Vertigo run of Swamp Thing (ecology)
• Gaiman’s Sandman series (many different topics and issues through the years)

And lest we be too provincial here, Tarik Shahin’s Al Khan comics about the Egyptian Revolution got the nod, as did Joe Sacco’s nonfiction graphic novels.

What books would you add to the list?

Donations can be sent to:

The UPS Store
Re: Occupy Wall Street
Attn: The People’s Library
118A Fulton St. #205
New York, NY 10038

From the Peoples Library website:

We need books of resistance and people’s history. We need economics and finance books. We need contemporary philosophy and ecology. We especially need non-English books and materials for low literacy readers…. We also need you. Our collection is growing rapidly and we need help organizing it and keeping it orderly. We want to save the time of our readers, but to do that we need help marking, sorting, and shelving materials. We need help building our catalog and writing our history. Our readers are enthusiastic and some of them need help finding the right book. The right book for the right reader is fundamental to successful librarianship, so we need public services folks to come out and conduct reference interviews with people and help them find ‘their’ book. The Library is constantly evolving and changing and we invite you to be a part of it.

The Dare Detectives: The Snow Pea Plot

It’s time once again for our monthly trip through Previews looking for cool, new comics. As usual, we’re focusing on graphic novels, collected volumes, and first issues so that I don’t have to come up with a new way to say, “ Life with Archie is still awesome!” every month. And I’ll continue letting Tom and Carla do the heavy lifting in regards to DC and Marvel’s solicitations.

Also, please feel free to play along in the comments. Tell me what I missed that you’re looking forward to or – if you’re a comics creator – mention your own stuff.

Ape

Richie Rich Gems Winter Special - In addition to their modern-look Richie Rich, Ape has also re-introducied the classic version in both new and reprinted adventures. I missed the solicit for Richie Rich Gems #44 last month (which picked up where the Harvey series left off in 1982), but the series continues with not only the Winter Special, but #45 as well.

Arcana

Dragons vs Dinosaurs - I haven’t had great luck with Arcana’s books in the past, but c’mon. The title alone…

Hero Happy Hour: On the Rocks - This, on the other hand, is no risk at all. I’m a big fan of Dan Taylor and Chris Fason’s superhero bar stories and this is an all-new, 80-page adventure. Not reprints; not even a printed version of the webcomic. It’s all-new and I need it.

Archaia

The Dare Detectives: The Snow Pea Plot Collected Edition – Archaia prepares for their publishing Ben Caldwell’s Dare Detectives: The Kula Kola Caper by re-publishing the first story that was originally put out by Dark Horse.

Andie and the Alien

Archie

Archie #637 – The first installment of the “Archie Meets Kiss” story. Not quite as odd as Archie’s meeting the Punisher, but gettin’ close.

Bliss On Tap

Andie and the Alien - An alternate-history story in which an alien prevented Europeans from colonizing North America and how that affected WWII. That’s a harrowing premise and I’m eager to see how Philip and Brian Phillipson and Alex Niño (the team behind God the Dyslexic Dog) tackle it.

Boom!

Outcast #1 – Undead (but not Zombie) Conan. I can get behind that.

Ice Age: A Mammoth Christmas - And my nine-year-old can get behind this. Just realized it’s written by Caleb Monroe too and that bodes well. I really liked his stuff on Hunter’s Fortune.

Dark Horse

The Strain #1 – Pandemic stories are too scary for me and zombies make me yawn, but this might just hit the sweet spot between the two.

Hellboy, Volume 12: The Storm and the Fury – The Death of Hellboy for trade-waiters.

Star Wars: Agent of the Empire – Iron Eclipse #1 – I don’t remember the last time I was interested in a Star Wars comic, but I’ve always supported the notion of using big, popular settings like that and Star Trek for other genres. James Bond in the Star Wars galaxy sounds kind of awesome just so long as it doesn’t turn into the same Empire vs. Rebels story I’ve already seen too many times.

Ningen's Nightmares

Star Wars Omnibus: A Long Time Ago, Volume 5 - Wrapping up the reprints of Marvel’s 107-issue Star Wars series. I have fond memories of a lot of those comics and have been waiting to read them all back-to-back.

Dark Horse Presents #7 – Another excellent lineup of talent from Neal Adams and Howard Chaykin to Mike Mignola and Eduardo Barreto.

Empowered: Deluxe Edition - Collecting the first three volumes (and some extra material) of the critically-acclaimed superhero spoof.

Ningen’s Nightmares - A warrior-monk fights bounty hunters, a witch, and her demon-samurai with art that reminds me a little of Mike Oeming’s.

DC

Batman Incorporated: Leviathan Strikes #1 – Grant Morrison continues his popular, pre-New 52 Batman Incorporated story in this one-shot.

Ray #1 – Justin Gray, Jimmy Palmiotti, and Jamal Igle bring out the New 52′s Ray and make him fight giant monsters.

Catwoman, Volume 1 - Collecting the first issues of Ed Brubaker and Darwyn Cooke’s much-loved time with the character.

Resurrection Man, Volume 1 - This was a fantastic series and deserving of a collection. It raises the question though: why isn’t there a New 52 Aztek comic?

Dynamite

Lord of the Jungle #1 – It’s been too damn long since we had a Tarzan comic. I just wish they didn’t feel the need to retell the origin story again.

Romeo and Juliet: The War

Voltron #1 – On the other hand, since I know nothing about Voltron (except that it’s about a giant robot, which is really all I need to know), I can do with a re-telling of the origin story on this one. So, yes, I’m a hypocrite.

1821

Romeo and Juliet: The War - Stan Lee turns my least-favorite Shakespeare play into a sci-fi fantasy with cyborgs and genetically enhanced humans. So torn.

Fantagraphics

Young Romance: The Best of Simon and Kirby’s 1940s – 1950s Romance Comics – Not only am I extremely curious from an historical standpoint, but damn it, sometimes you just wanna read about kissing.

Flannery O’Connor Cartoons - Growing up in the South like I did, Flannery O’Connor’s short stories were required reading. I had no idea she made comics too.

First Second

Mush! Sled Dogs with Issues - Sled dog soap opera! That’s so crazy it just might work.

Hermes

The Phantom: The Complete Series – The King Years – I really can’t seem to get enough Phantom.

The Hero Initiative

Justice League of America 100 Project - Great artists drawing great characters for an even greater cause.

Madman: 20th Anniversary Monster!

Humanoids

Before the Incal: Classic Collection – One of these days I’m going to get around to finally reading Alejandro Jodorowsky and Moebius’ The Incal and when I do, I’m going to include this prequel.

Muse – Terry Dodson draws the story of a beautiful (it’s Dodson; how could she not be?) governess to a mysterious family.

IDW

Memorial #1 – Magic shops are great settings for stories, but I rarely read one that lives up to my hopes for it. Maybe this one about an amnesiac girl (another favorite concept of mine, Starfire notwithstanding) will do the trick.

Magic: The Gathering #1 – I still get a little angry over the concept of a game where the advantage goes to the person most willing to spend a bunch of money on it (yeah, I’m looking at you too, baseball), but the art on the Magic cards did a great job of suggesting a cohesive world, even if I didn’t understand anything about it as I was playing. I’m hoping that this series can flesh out that suggestion while also telling a good story.

Curious Cases of Sherlock Holmes – I’m a big fan of Gary Reed and Guy Davis’ alternate universe Holmes in Honour Among Punks, so I’m pretty excited by the prospect of Reed’s doing a comics anthology of the “real” Holmes teaming up with and/or fighting Dr. Jekyll, the Phantom of the Opera, Oscar Wilde, and Toulouse Lautrec.

Image

Madman: 20th Anniversary Monster! - Madman’s already cool. He doesn’t need Peter Bagge, Kyle Baker, Peter Milligan, Darwyn  Cooke, Dean Haspiel, Los Bros Hernandez, Erik Larsen, David Mack, Mike Oeming, Paul Pope, Eric Powell, Frank Quitely, Steven T Seagle, Jeff Smith, Craig Thompson, Matt Wagner, and others to make him cooler. But he’s got them anyway.

Polly and the Pirates, Volume 2: Mystery of the Dragonfish

Last Battle - Dan Brereton does the art on this Rome vs barbarians one-shot.

Marvel

Defenders #1 – I wish this had Green She-Hulk in it instead of Red (and also that it had Valkyrie and maybe Hellcat), but it’s still a revival that’s past due.

X-Club #1 – The X-Men’s Science Team was always a cool idea and deserves a shot at its own series, but I’m kind of scratching my head over why Beast isn’t in this. Apparently it’s Second-Guess Marvel Team Lineups day.

Moonstone

Captain Action: The Complete Adventures – Including both Fabian Nicieza and Steven Grant’s runs on the series. Over 400 pages for less than $30. I’ll take that Action. (Sorry.)

NBM

Inner Sanctum – I don’t think I’ve ever listened to a single episode of Inner Sanctum, but I always get a thrill of recognition when I hear the title thanks to Bill Cosby’s name-dropping it in his “Chicken Heart” story. Anyway, if you’re going to do a horror anthology, you could do much, much worse than have it inspired by Inner Sanctum and completely created by Ernie Colón.

Oni

Polly and the Pirates, Volume 2: Mystery of the Dragonfish – Have I only been waiting six years for this? Feels like sixty. Volume 1 was wonderful and I can’t fault Ted Naifeh for only writing this one when he got someone as awesome as Robbi Rodriguez to take his place on the art. The preview pages look amazing.

Spontaneous – The mini-series that combines Spontaneous Human Combustion with conspiracy theory gets its collection.

Th3rd World

The Intrepid Escapegoat – Guys, it’s a paranormal-investigating escape artist who’s a goat. You’re welcome.

Titan

The Complete Flash Gordon Library, Volume 1: On the Planet Mongo – I’m still not sure I understand the difference between this volume and IDW’s (except that IDW’s also includes Alex Raymond’s Jungle Jim comics), but I’m mentioning it just in case there is a difference that I don’t figure out until later. Seriously though: if someone knows, please explain it to me.

That’s it for me. What did I miss?

Are you just hitting your teen years and realizing that your body’s going through some weird changes? Then chances are…you’re a mutant!

Charles Xavier is here to help with The “What’s Happening to My Body?” Book for Mutants. The four-page pamphlet is full of useful advice, Frequently Asked Questions, and even helpful tips for parents who are dealing with a mutant child. Head over to College Humor to check it out. You don’t have to be alone anymore.

Stan Lee

Legal | Stan Lee’s Guardian Project, introduced last year at New York Comic Con, has sparked a lawsuit from a Hollywood manager who claims he was cut out of the venture, which transformed National Hockey League mascots into superheroes.

In the lawsuit, filed last week in Los Angeles Superior Court, Adam Asherson contends the project, now co-owned by NBC Universal, dates back to 2003, when he was introduced to the idea by fellow manager Anthony Chargin and Chargin’s client Jake Shapiro. Asherson, who had a relationship with Lee, says he suggested the legendary comics writer would be the “perfect” partner for the endeavor. They pitched Lee on the project, called Defenders, which focused on the National Football League, with plans to expand to Major League Baseball, the National Basketball Association and the NHL. For unspecified reasons, the NFL deal never came together. However, six years later The Guardian Project emerged with the involvement of Chargin, Shapiro and Lee — but without Asherson.

Asherson claims Guardian Media Entertainment, SLG Entertainment, Chargin and Shapiro have breach an oral joint-venture agreement, committed promissory estoppel and fraud, and breach fiduciary duties by leaving him out of the NHL agreement. [Hollywood, Esq.]

DC Comics

Publishing | Time Warner is planning to launch an evaluation of its “office footprint in the New York metropolitan area and develop a long-range plan to meet our future needs,” an undertaking that leads Glenn Hauman to wonder whether DC Entertainment’s publishing division could end up following the rest of the company to the swanky new headquarters in Burbank, Calif. [Deadline, ComicMix]

Creators | Pádraig Ó Méalóid talks at length with Kevin O’Neill about The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Century: 1969, Marshall Law and much more. [The Forbidden Planet International Blog]

Creators | Kate Beaton continues her whirlwind media tour for the Hark! A Vagrant! collection with a stop at National Public Radio. [NPR]

Comics | Ethan Kaye looks at “10 Bizarre DC/Marvel Parallels,” from the Doom Patrol and the X-Men to Winter Soldier and Red Hood to Millennium and Secret Invasion. [Topless Robot]

Check out Diamond’s release list or ComicList, and tell us what you’re getting in our comments field.

Brilliant

Graeme McMillan

It is, thankfully, the last week of September which means that, if I had $15, I only have one more week of new launches from DC to pick out potential favorites, Sophie’s Choice-style. This week: Aquaman #1, Flash #1, Fury of Firestorm, The Nuclear Men #1, Justice League Dark #1 and Superman #1 make the cut (All DC, all $2.99 each).

If I had the chance to add some more money to take that total to $30, I’d go for some Marvel books: Brian Michael Bendis gets well-represented with Ultimate Comics Spider-Man #2 ($3.99); New Avengers #16.1 ($2.99), his “new readers jump on” issue with art by Neal Adams; and Brilliant #1 ($3.99), his new creator-owned book with Mark Bagley. Here’s hoping I’m in a suitably Bendis-y mood when I read all of these ones.

Splurgewise, it has to be Habibi (Pantheon, $35), Craig Thompson’s new graphic novel. I know a few people who’ve had a chance to read it already, and everyone has made it sound like a large leap ahead from Blankets, and something almost worth the many-year wait it’s been since his breakthrough last book. I’m really looking forward to this one.

Habibi

Chris Mautner

If I had $15:

There’s a lot of good, big-name books out this week, starting with the fourth volume of Love and Rockets ($14.99). Rumor has it that Xaime Hernandez’s contributions to this issue are even more exemplary and emotionally devastating than in Vol. 3, which seems almost impossible, but I’m eager to find out either way.

If I had $30:

I’d at least take a look at Kinky and Cosey, a South Park-esque gag strip from NBM, authored by one Nix, about whom I know nothing, but the online samples intrigue me.

Splurge:

Graeme already mentioned Habibi – I’m only a third of the way through it now, so I can’t really comment on the book yet. Frank Miller’s Holy Terror is also out this week ($29.99), but David Brothers’ review has put me off on purchasing the book, at least for now. That leaves either Matthew Thurber’s delightfully surreal saga 1-800-MICE ($22.95), Marc Bell’s equally strange and charming Pure Pajamas (an odds and sods collection of various comic work) ($22.95) or Brian Ralph’s first-person zombie apocalypse tale, Daybreak ($24.95). All are really worth getting, it’s just a question of which to buy first.

Holy Terror

Chris Arrant

Fifteen dollars in my pocket, and I’d still only have room for one of this week’s New 52 from DC: Flash #1 (DC, $2.99). Francis Manapul is a big-time artist, and seeing DC giving him the reins as writer-and-artist is an interesting play that I want to see work. Next up would be another #1, but not from DC: Brilliant #1 (Marvel/Icon, $3.95). It’s good to see Bendis doing more creator-owned work, and bringing in Mark Bagley is a novel idea, especially considering Bagley’s style is synonymous with super-heroes; I think the only non-super-hero book he did was The Pulse back in the day. Next up would be two installments of ongoing Marvel epics: Wolverine #16 (Marvel, $3.99) and FF #9 (Marvel, $2.99). Aaron threw me for a loop revealing a new brood of kids for Logan, and meanwhile FF is turning into the book I’ve always wanted for Marvel: smart-ass kids in over their head. Somehow, I think Kirby would get a kick out of this, too.

If I had $30, I’d double back and bet it all on DC with five #1s: Superman #1 (DC, $2.99) for George Perez; Voodoo #1 (DC, $2.99) for Sam Basri’s art (despite Voodoo being my least favorite Wildcat); All-Star Western #1 (DC, $3.99) for, well, everything and everyone involved; Aquaman #1 (DC, $2.99) to see this Hail Mary pass of revitalizing this guy; and then Blackhawks #1 (DC, $2.99) because I’ve been pining for years they bring this team back in a meaningful way.

If I could splurge, I’d still be in a jam, as there’s two big graphic novels I want to get this week. I’d have to choose Frank Miller’s Holy Terror (Legendary, $29.99) over Habibi just because of how curious I am to see what Miller is doing here. For Habibi, I’d put it on my pull list and swing back next week.

Superman

Michael May

If I had $15, I’d split it between DC, Marvel and a smaller publisher. From DC I’m extremely curious about Superman #1 ($2.99) to see how Lois Lane is handled beyond the couple of pages we’ve already seen. I love the idea of team of magicians using the Justice League name, especially one where Zatanna and John Constantine get to interact on a regular basis, so I’m all in for Justice League Dark #1 ($2.99).  From Marvel, I’d grab Spider-Island: Deadly Hands of Kung Fu #2 ($2.99) because Shang Chi, and X-Men Legacy #256 ($2.99), because I’m enjoying being reminded how good Mike Carey is for that book. Finally, I’d grab Moonstone’s That Man Flint #0 ($1.99) for some groovy super-spy action. Casanova‘s already scratching that itch too, but I’ve got room for more.

If I had $30, I’d quickly add the more expensive All-Star Western #1 ($3.99), which only got left off my $15 list because I couldn’t afford it. I’ve been wanting to jump on to Gray and Palmiotti’s Jonah Hex for a long time and that Moritat art looks very cool. Then I’d also get I, Vampire #1 ($2.99) because I like Josh Fialkov’s stuff. I wasn’t thrilled with Warren Ellis’ first issue on Secret Avengers, but I’m willing to give it another shot, so I’d also grab #17 ($3.99). I’d top off the pile with Abe Sapien: The Devil Does Not Jest #1 ($3.50) because Abe’s awesome.

There’s way too much to splurge on this week. I can’t not mention Habibi, but there’s also a new collection of All-New Batman: The Brave and the Bold ($12.99), Archaia’s Weird Western The Grave Doug Freshley ($19.95), and that Kamandi Omnibus ($49.99). If I had to pick one thing though, I’d support Marvel’s reprinting John Byrne’s Alpha Flight by buying Alpha Flight Classic, Volume 2 ($29.99). Any effort to get those stories out of my closet and onto my bookshelf is extremely welcome.

X-Men: Schism - it's kind of like this

The sad truth is that comics aren’t real. While mankind may have actual mutations (and some of them are super cool), none of them really warrants a special school or a uniform. Fighting for acceptance and tolerance thankfully doesn’t come by fighting giant robots designed to kill you. And, I hate to say it, but declaring yourself a sovereign nation off the coast of San Fransisco takes more than just an OK from the mayor’s office. So there is no way for the X-Men to be real, and therefore we can’t hold them to a truly “realistic” point of view.

At the same time, however, we do need to be able to relate to these guys, and that’s something the X-Men do nicely with a theme of social justice, teenage angst and the ever-vigilant battle of acceptance. Recently, these basic concepts have been taken in much more broad of a sense than, say, when they first started. Characters have grown up, loved and lost, tried to sustain families, and had their numbers physically shrink and dwindle. And then Apocalypse drove a giant floating sphinx over their house. In ever-escalating stories, the base concept of the X-Men was devoured for bigger and more dramatic concepts. In today’s comic market, it’s hard to keep our interests, and some days you have to try something new on top of something else new to keep things fresh and exciting.

Then again, going back to basics doesn’t hurt either, and X-Men: Schism seems to be on its way into familiar territory. A clear example of how the world hates and fears mutants, Sentinel proliferation as a nice metaphor for our own nuclear-weapons issues, old villains returning with new faces and a clear motivation that is nothing but evil — this is starting to feel like the comics I used to read, just revved up with a new engine and a new coat of paint. Hope and her crew are a great way to keep close to heart the “youth against the world” sentiment of the X-Men as they fight for the future.

Everything seems to be right on track … so why is Wolverine out of his canucklehead mind?!

(WARNING: Spoilers ahead for X-Men: Schism #4, so grab your copy and read along!)

Here’s the basics: A huge super-Sentinel bomb thing is headed for its single-minded destination: Utopia. Nearly everyone who’s ever fought a Sentinel before is either off in another part of the world or out of commission. Cyclops, back in the “Prelude to Schism” books, decided and told everyone that Utopia would be where they drew their line in the sand, and he plans on defending their island. Calling out for as many X-Men as he can get, Hope and her crew, plus Rockslide, Anole and Dust, show up and want to fight as X-Men. The music swells, we all feel entirely inspired and ready for the battle to come when Wolverine arrives like a big wet noodle and demands they retreat.

X-Men: Schism #4

This is where things fall apart. Cyclops is ready to lead these teenagers into battle with this crazy mega-Sentinel bomb thing and do what it takes to hold their ground. Wolverine, on the other hand, refuses to see more children die under their watch and wants everyone off the island so badly he’s willing to blow up the whole place. They fight. The Sentinel looms over them and we have to wait for Issue 5 for the stunning conclusion.

Seems kind of weird, doesn’t it? I mean, isn’t Wolverine the “fight and/or die!” kind of guy while Cyclops is the traditionally more reserved character? Logan was not but six pages ago ready to lunge at this huge mega-Sentinel monster thing claws first. It blasted him back into the Pacific Ocean — but when has that stopped him before? Besides, if he’s so concerned about putting kids in harm’s way, well … Kitty Pryde and Jubilee might have a different view of things. Wolverine’s stance isn’t even tactically sound; where are they going to run? There are Sentinels everywhere, and this giant mega-Sentinel monster thing came out of a suitcase and built itself from surrounding material. It’s a pretty fantastic weapon, and I’m certain the people who made that wouldn’t just build one and call it a day.

Even worse for his point of view is that Hope and pals want to be there. They volunteered, and knew what they were getting into. Sure, a lot of these kids are untried, but there are three former New X-Men with them and they’ve survived one of the bloodiest class years in Xavier’s school history. Hope herself was trained by Cable and should know a lot about unbeatable odds. Idie Okonkwo was given a doll in the first issue of X-Men: Schism as Wolverine tries to give her something more age-appropriate than a mutant refugee nation. She has no connection to the doll, nor any connection to the more happy times of the first class of X-Men. Despite her obvious troubles and fear of herself, she tells him that she’s made peace with who she is. Not the most ringing endorsement from a girl who thinks she’s a monster, but certainly the acceptance of someone learning how this all is played. It’s like she’s read some old X-Men comics.

X-Men: Schism #2

But then again, how does she refer to herself? A monster. It’s one thing for Hope to want to be gung-ho and charge into the face of battle, it’s another thing to allow it. Did I mention that Dust, Anole and Rockslide came from one of the bloodiest school years at the school? I am honestly not sure there has been any attempts at education since they left Westchester. This started as a “Gifted and Talented” school, a way to help mutants not only learn how to use their powers but to do some good with them, to learn how to cope with being feared and hated, not to just kick and explode. The X-Men are falling further and further behind their original goals, and the one in charge is the one to blame. Wolverine’s motivation is to save kids, it’s really hard to argue against that.

So is this really the final straw between Wolverine and Cyclops, resulting in a wedge being driven between the X-Men themselves? Or, let’s face it, has this always been the wedge driven through the X-Men when a wedge needs driving? Let me put it this way: When has Wolverine ever been the big-picture guy? He’s the best there is at what he does and that involves stabbing, not delegating the needs of an entire nation. He’ll fight to the bitter end but if the fight’s unwinnable, Logan will find a way to survive until there’s nothing left. Scott Summers, on the other hand, has had nothing but the big picture to look at since he joined the X-Men. He’s the leader of the X-Men, from when it was just five awkward kids to when its roster is bursting with new mutants. Xavier taught him that from the beginning, along with a core foundation of idealism. The idea that we can make the world a better place together, so standing one’s ground doesn’t seem that far-fetched. Not to mention he’s got hope on his side, in both the upper- and lowercase- forms.

Issue 5 will most likely change the face of the X-Men comics are we know it, which is also a very familiar and debatably welcome sight to mutant-kind. I hope we survive the experience.

Justice League

Sales charts | Dollar sales of comics sold through Diamond Comic Distributors were up more than 15 percent in August, while graphic novel dollar sales rose by more than 31 percent when compared to the year-ago period. ICv2 puts the gains in perspective, noting that comic sales were down 17 percent in August 2010 and graphic novel sales were down 21 percent. August 2010 also had four ship weeks compared to August 2011′s five. DC Comics topped the August charts with Justice League #1, followed by Flashpoint #5, Fear Itself #5, Flashpoint #4 and Ultimate Comics Fallout #4. Serenity Better Days and Other Stories from Dark Horse was the no. 1 graphic novel for August. John Jackson Miller offers commentary as well as a look at the best-selling comics of this century, a list that will include Justice League #1. [ICv2, Comichron]

Comics | The Centers for Disease Control has awarded a roughly $145,000 contract to Terminus Media to create motion comics to educate young people about HIV. The comics will be offered on “internet-capable platforms” including desktop computers, laptop computers, video gaming systems, wireless phones and tablet computers. [Politico, Via]

Doonesbury

Comic strips | The Chicago Tribune has pulled this week’s Doonesbury comic strips from its pages because “they do not meet our standards of fairness,” according to Editor Gerould W. Kern. The strips in question reference allegations in The Rogue: Searching for the Real Sarah Palin by Joe McGinniss, which comes out Sept. 20. Geoff Brown, associate managing editor of the entertainment section, says on the paper’s blog that he book is not yet available for verification or review by the Chicago Tribune. “To be sure, Doonesbury is a satirical cartoon, but the remarks are serious enough that we cannot publish the strip without more information, context and a response from Palin,” Brown wrote. [Trib Nation]

Publishers | Patrick Gavin profiles Bluewater Productions, which has found a niche publishing comic-book biographies of political figures ranging from Sarah Palin and Hilary Clinton to Ronald Reagan and Al Franken. The biography of First Lady Michelle Obama reportedly has sold more than 130,000 copies. “She competes with Justin Bieber just a little bit,” says Bluewater President Darren Davis. “They’re neck and neck.” [Politico]

Comics | Johanna Draper Carlson takes a look at some recent changes in the Life With Archie magazine, which has dual storylines in which Archie marries Veronica and Betty, respectively. With the 12th issue, she sees cheaper paper stock and the disappearance of both ads and celebrity features. [Comics Worth Reading]

Creators | The industry continues to remember Sparkplug publisher Dylan Williams, who passed away this weekend. Drawn and Quarterly’s Tom Devlin, AdHouse Books publisher Chris Pitzer, Godland artist Tom Scioli, King-Cat creator John Porcellino, The Daily Cross Hatch’s Brian Heater and our own Matt Seneca and Sean T. Collins remember Williams, while Tom Spurgeon has a collection of more posts and memories from around the internet. [The Comics Reporter]

Heroes for Hope

Creators | Former Marvel Editor-in-Chief Jim Shooter recounts the creation of X-Men: Heroes for Hope, a “jam” benefit comic that featured the work of Chris Claremont, Stephen King, Jim Starlin, Bernie Wrightson, George Martin, Alan Moore and many other creators. He also notes how the original proposed benefactors of the project, Oxfam America, wanted nothing to do with the comic after seeing it. [Jim Shooter]

Creators | Entertainment Weekly writer Jeff Jensen discusses his Dark Horse graphic novel The Green River Killer: A True Detective Story, which chronicles the search by his father, King County Sheriff’s Det. Tom Jensen, for serial killer Gary Ridgway. [Seattle Weekly]

Creators | Michael Auger discusses Magic Bullet, the Washington, D.C. area all-comics newspaper created by the artist group DC Conspiracy that debuted at the Small Press Expo this past weekend. [The Gazette]

Conventions | Johanna Draper Carlson reports on this past weekend’s Small Press Expo. [Comics Worth Reading]

Commentary | David Brothers looks at the various “tics” of comic writers in general and Scott Snyder in particular. [4thletter]

Commentary | Tucker Stone continues his look at Darko Macan’s Cable stories, this time focusing on the Soldier X comics. [Factual Opinion]

Retailers | The prize for the oddest and most painful customer loyalty program goes to AlleyCat Comics in Chicago — make 50 purchases, punch a store employee in the gut. [Chicago Tribune]

Daredevil: Season One

Marvel has released previews of Daredevil: Season One and X-Men: Season One, part of the first wave of its recently announced line of graphic novels the features modern creators retelling classic superhero stories.

“We’re hoping to introduce folks who have never read any of these characters to these characters in this format, and also provide an interesting and illuminating story for people who have read a lot of Fantastic Four and Daredevil,” Tom Brevoort, Marvel’s senior vice president of publishing, said last month. “If you want to dip your toe in the water and find out the essence of what Marvel is all about, here is a nice place for you to start in big, sizable, meaty chunks.”

X-Men: Season One, by Dennis Hopeless and Jamie McKelvie, will debut in March, followed by Daredevil: Season One, by Antony Johnston and Wellington Alves, in April. Check out a page from each graphic novel below, and visit Comic Book Resources for the full previews of Daredevil: Season One and X-Men: Season One.

Daredevil: Season One

X-Men: Season One