A few whiles back I did a list of “reasons I will love comics forever,” which were mostly awesome panels. I haven’t had a lot of those lately; there just aren’t as many moments in comics these days that make me sit up and go “yeeeEEAAAAAAH!” I don’t know if it’s because they’ve changed or because I have. Possibly it’s both. Aging, whether it be you or an artform, can suck in this regard.

But that having been said, I absolutely adore this bit from Prince of Power #4, a scene that is so totally comics that it really couldn’t have originated anywhere else:

1.) FanExpo is growing so fast it’s honestly hard to believe. Five years ago this was just another shitty corp-con where James Marsters was the headliner. This year? Stan Lee. Nimoy and Shatner. Full editorial presence from DC and Marvel (and promises from both that next year FanExpo will have full portfolio review as per San Diego and New York). A horde of others besides. Don’t get me wrong: in many ways FanExpo is still a shitty corp-con. (And certainly not on par for awesomeoness value with the Toronto Comic Arts Festival, of course.) But it’s one that’s exploding. If it keeps growing at this rate, in two years or so it’ll be the second biggest con on the continent after San Diego; it’s already certainly bigger than anything else other than possibly New York.

2.) Of course, it would be really nice if the con organizers would act like they know they have a rapidly exploding convention on their hands, as opposed to, and I am just saying, a bunch of irresponsible idiots. Last year’s FanExpo had major crowding issues in the larger, southern half of the Metro Toronto Convention Centre, so bad that they had to stop selling tickets. This year FanExpo couldn’t get the southern building for the con and, instead of purchasing the reservation from the organization which bought it (something other major cons have done in the past), settled for the smaller northern building. The main hall of the northern building is about half the size of the southern building. When they reached building capacity on Saturday (which happened at around noon), they didn’t tell anybody but let people exit (because there isn’t anywhere worthwhile inside the con to get good) and then didn’t let them back in. If the FanExpo organizers don’t get their heads out of their asses and make sure to get both buildings next year, they’ll have overcrowding issues that’ll probably make this year look wonderful in comparison.

3.) That having been said, the gaming area – off to one side, treated like the idiot stepchild of the nerd community – was full but pleasantly so. Justin Mohareb worked his ass off to provide a solid little gaming convention tacked onto the enormous behemoth groaning beneath its own weight that is FanExpo. It was a lovely experience, especially since I was volunteering and therefore did not have to pay for stuff. Well, if I had wanted to eat breakfast with James Marsters, that would have been extra. But I do not think eggs and bacon become better when you eat them with Spike.

4.) Because I was mostly not doing stuff other than helping people play board games, I didn’t do much con stuff. I generally never do. I made an exception this time and went to the DC Comics “how to get into comics” seminar, which was originally supposed to be Joey DeCavileri’s gig but ended up being Dan Didio’s instead. I want to make something clear before I go any further: whatever my beliefs about Didio’s creative tendencies as an editor, I’m a professional and I know a professional when I see one, and Didio was the consumnate professional. He was polite, honest, friendly, and tried to be as supportive of the attendees as possible without failing to be realistic.

5.) Which is important to note because I didn’t really go to the panel to learn how to get into comics, because frankly I did the research on that years ago and know the score. I went because I wanted to see the competition – this is perhaps not the nicest of reasons, but it’s the truth. The good news, from my perspective, is that a lot of people in that room aren’t interested in writing except on their terms, which is stupid: you have to start compromising to write professionally practically from the first word. You have to cut back against your own indulgences. Somebody commented a while back that one page in Al’Rashad contained the first sentence they considered “Birdian,” and that was entirely on purpose from my perspective; I know my tics better than anybody and I know when not to use them.

6.) A pause from this discussion about writing to say that I saw more people dressed up as the Doctor at this con than I have ever seen anywhere, which is good because the Doctor is a good costume: you get to wear nice clothes and most of them are relatively easy to put together. Only the Third Doctor (lace shirt and archaic jacket), Fifth (cricketer’s dress) and especially Sixth (ugly what-the-hell coat plus whiteboy afro) are a bit hard to manage. Heck, you can convert your Harry Potter costume into a Fourth Doctor easily enough: just don’t put on the glasses and fake scar, and cram jellybabies in your pocket.

7.) Also a good costume: Deadpool. This is because no matter how terrible your Deadpool costume is, people love Deadpool and will say “hey! Deadpool!” at you. If you are very fat and dress up as Deadpool, people might even not call you “Fatpool.”

8.) But I digress back to my original point. Of course, there were the usual band of “my question is HOW DARE YOU SIR” types, but Didio shut them down quite excellently by being both respectful and saying over and over again that their issues weren’t the point of the seminar. The point of the seminar was how to get work for DC in any of the major disciplines. He stressed the often low-paying nature of the gig frequently because he wanted to be honest; he explained to people, patiently, what editors looked for in art submissions multiple times. He said, straight-up, that writers looking to get work at the big two have to basically steal somebody else’s job, which means the bar is higher. Much higher. And of course people got offended by this, because people are stupid.

9.) Writing isn’t a zero-sum game, of course. But publishing, to an extent, is. That’s how things go: there isn’t enough paying work for everybody who wants to get paid to get paid, and if you don’t know that, grow up. Didio was patient with the people who didn’t understand that, as he was patient with the dreamers who want to change the business or grow the field. Dreams like that are great, but they don’t get you hired.

10.) And he was patient with the people who obviously didn’t understand the point of a pitch. Multiple people tried to debate Didio when he brought up “the gun pitch.” I’d heard about the gun pitch before (from Paul Levitz, actually, years ago). The gun pitch is “I want to tell the story of the gun that killed Batman’s parents.” And Didio explained that the problem with the pitch is that it’s not a Batman story, which is of course obviously true: if you’re telling the story of the gun that killed Batman’s parents, it ends when the Waynes get shot, which means it could be a story about any old gun.

11.) The debaters didn’t get it, of course. “Well, I’d like to read a story about the gun that killed Batman’s parents.” But the point of getting hired in any freelance industry is not “I can do this well,” because lots of people can do that. It’s “I can make your life easier if you give me work.” Pitching the gun story doesn’t make anybody’s life easier, because you’re not gonna give that story to somebody you don’t already know and trust.

12.) Another aside: the shopping at this con was miserably bad. When people are essentially paying a premium to get in the door to buy stuff, there should be, and I am just suggesting this, something resembling a sale price. If I can get it significantly cheaper at Amazon, your sale price is probably not very good. This goes for guy selling the Justin Bieber standups too. Especially the guy selling the Justin Bieber standups.

13.) One more thing: if you want to argue with Dan Didio about the gun pitch, it’s really easy. The trick is to make it a Batman story. You can do it in one sentence.

14. “Somebody is killing people with the gun that killed Batman’s parents.” That one’s for free.

LazyCustomizer:

I’d like to read your opinion of how the Penguin would fit in the Nolan Batman films, and whether you believe Nolan’s determination not to use the Penguin is wise or closing himself off from a potentially interesting story.

Yes and no.

On the one hand, I share Tim O’ Neil’s opinion that the Penguin is one of Batman’s best villains (although I would personally give pre-eminence to the Riddler, but ultimately “best Batman villain” always comes down to what aspect of Batman you like best, and I like Batman best as a detective) simply because the Penguin isn’t crazy; he’s just a straight-up crook. That might not be as otherworldly and scary as the usual Arkham gang of horrors, but it can make for a great villain because the Penguin is just a bastard, plain and simple. No stupid self-destructive plots, no monologuing, no movie-style villain tropes. The Penguin would make a great villain in a Nolan Batman movie…

…except he probably wouldn’t. Because all of the things that the Penguin isn’t are what’s mostly expected out of a Batman movie now: the Bat-villain in a movie has to be crazy-go-nuts because it has becomes received wisdom that Batman’s Enemies Are Crazy. This goes for the comics too, of course; it’s one of the reasons Penguin has generally dropped down the ranks over the past two decades, demoted to basically being a mob boss. But it’s even moreso in the movies, where Nolan is especially interested in the dark theatricality of Batman and his enemies. Nolan’s Scarecrow is obviously insane long before he ever gets dosed with his own fear chemicals; his Ra’s Al Ghul is a weird blend of totalitarian and guerrilla. Part of what makes the new cycle of Batman films tick is that the films explicitly say that the only sane response to this insanity is a different type of insanity. But the Penguin isn’t insane. He’s just a criminal; nothing more than another version of Carmine Falcone, who gets shoved out of the plot halfway through Batman Begins.

Besides, how do you do a “realistic” Penguin? What makes the Penguin a good comic character are those explicitly comicky bits: the trick umbrellas, the monocle and top hat, the birds as weapons. That’s all stuff that won’t fit in a Nolan film; without it, all you’ve got is a pretty bog-standard deformed criminal. Danny Devito’s Penguin in Batman Returns was great (and Returns is far and away the best of the 90s cycle of Batman movies: the best action, the best acting, and the only one that doesn’t feel tremendously dated now) precisely because in addition to being a nasty piece of work he also went in for all the crazy gimmicks. But all that won’t fit in a Nolanverse film, because if you don’t start out crazy in the Nolanverse, there’s no good reason to play dress-up.

Last Sunday’s episode of For Better or For Worse presents an interesting paradox: the punchline involved John, the husband,writing on a dollar bill, but Canada (where the strip is set) did away with dollar bills in favour of coins in 1987. FBOFW true believers will, of course, remember that creator Lynn Johnston re-booted the strip in 2008; the presence of the dollar bill, though, implies more than a simple reboot, and leads to the suspicion that the 2007 period in which several different timelines appeared simultaneously in the strip was not a simple narrative device but actually reflected some untold crisis in the universe of the strip. Based on the available evidence, we can say that last Sunday’s punchline reflects one of the following possibilities:

• The new continuity takes place in a universe where the world changes more slowly, so that dollar bills are still in use; we can call this the Earth-2 version.
• The new continuity is meant to be a darker, edgier version of the original, and thus is set in the United States; call this Ultimate For Better or For Worse.
• Last Sunday’s punchline was a “rogue joke” that somehow survived the annihilation of the previous timeline. As time goes on, the implications of the paradox it embodies will wreak havoc on continuity and on causality itself, leading to a crossover event in which multiple versions of each character appear and Farley the dog sacrifices himself to save all of the universes.
• Due to the commercial success of the strip, Johnston has as little familiarity with small denominations as George H.W. Bush had with barcode scanners.

It’s not bad, not by any stretch. Really, it’s quite entertaining. Michael Cera actually pushes a bit beyond his comfortable familiar box (not a lot, but a bit); all of the performances are clever and fun, the gags all work even if a few are groaners (“bi-furious” still makes me wince), the action is decent, and most of the plot chunks that were removed from the comic (Stills’ coming out, for example) aren’t really necessary to drive the movie.

But – I know it’s a cliche to say “the book was better,” but, well, the books were better. The books form a story about the often painful transition to adulthood; although elements of that are still in the script, it almost seems perfunctory, in a “hey [character], I was totally a douche but now we’re cool right” sense. You kind of wonder if the seemingly inevitable director’s cut will focus on that more.

Also, losing the Honest Ed’s chase battle sequence is heresy.

Two things happened to me recently that dovetailed in an odd way: first, I broke my arm in a bicycle accident; second, I picked up volumes 1-6 of Marvel’s Essential X-Men books for a very reasonable price. The upshot of the first event was that I had to have a metal plate and screws attached to hold the broken bone together, with the result that when I travel by air (as I do fairly often for my job) I now have to budget an extra half-hour or so at the airport to explain that, yes, it’s the metal plate in my arm that’s setting off the metal detector. Because I am a smartass, it immediately occurred to me that if I were a suicide bomber what I really ought to do is get a sympathetic doctor to implant a bomb in my arm in such a way that it looked like an orthopedic plate; then I could have a good laugh with the security people, get on the plane and blow it up at my leisure. (I had a similar thought back when they were hunting Saddam Hussein and there was a story about a guy in southern Iraq who was always being mistaken for him; what Hussein should have done, I thought, was pretend to be that guy — “Yeah, I get that all the time.”)

Which brings us to the X-Men, because I hadn’t realized until I read from Giant-Size X-Men #1 to around issue 200 all in a row just how much the whole “persecuted mutants” business was Claremont’s idea. (And by the way, how hard is it to imagine that back in the day the Defenders got four Giant-Size specials, while the X-Men only got one?) Sure, the original run had the Sentinels, but their creator was portrayed as a basically crazy guy, not a garden-variety bigot; more to the point, there was little sense in the original comics that the average man on the street was anti-mutant. Nor is that the case in the early issues of Claremont’s run: in their very first adventure they’re called to defend Cheyenne Mountain in place of the Avengers (the general in charge remarks that he doesn’t trust them, but he still lets them go to it) and a few issues later a fairly big deal is made out of just how high Professor X’s security clearance is, the upshot of both being that the X-Men are still very much a part of the establishment. (When Cyclops identifies himself to the general his dialogue could just as easily come from Captain America.) For some time after that the X-Men have pretty generic superhero adventures, encountering demons, aliens and leprechauns (don’t ask; for the love of God, don’t ask) until the storyline that forms the basis of the whole rest of Claremont’s run, the justly famous “Days of Future Past.” (As an aside, Claremont clearly just loved to sound profound by putting antonyms together; for a less successful example, see “Lifedeath.”) Though what most people remember from that story is the scenes of various X-Men being killed, the element that matters most thematically is the introduction of the Mutant Registration Act, which was originally going to be introduced in memory of Senator Kelly, a politician the X-Men failed to save from assassination, but which Kelly was able to introduce himself when they saved him thanks to some handy-dandy time travel. From then on anti-mutant sentiment becomes a predominant motif in the book, with both harmless Professor X and cute-as-a-button Kitty Pryde being “mutant-bashed” and practically every non-mutant character uttering some sort of anti-mutant slur. The Mutant Registration Act stands a symbol of that attitude, with support for it standing as a handy identifier for bigots.

Which brings us back to airport security. Because if you think about it for a moment it becomes clear that something like the Mutant Registration Act would be absolutely necessary. Imagine standing in line at the airport and knowing that some of the people around you might be able to project energy beams, or bend metal, or mind-control the pilot; that they might not be fully able to control their powers; and that these people had a documented history of fighting other people like them in public places. Would you feel confident about getting on a plane? (I’ll bet the airlines were Senator Kelly’s biggest contributors.)

The X-Men series is often described as being a metaphor for the oppression of minorities, but when looked at it this way it becomes clear that the metaphor doesn’t stand up: if superhuman mutants really existed society would have a legitimate reason to fear or at least be wary of them, something that has never been true of any oppressed minority.

But if the metaphor that’s supposed to be at the heart of the series doesn’t work, why has the comic been so successful? Because the X-Men don’t represent oppressed minorities, they represent oppressed teenagers. (This may also explain why comic books about characters who are actually part of oppressed minorities generally fail to sell.) Nobody feels more persecuted than teenagers, especially the nerdy, white, middle-class teenagers who have traditionally been the main audience for comics. In the hyper-dramatic world of the teenager, breaking up with your girlfriend (or, more likely, being turned down for a date) has the same emotional impact as your fiancee being disintegrated on the Moon, and being hunted by giant robots is exactly equivalent to being told to buy something or get out.

A device that threatens to warp our very fabric of reality! Whatever can we do?

Clearly, all that is needed is a right proper canine headbutt from Rex the motherfucking Wonder Dog.

The movie “The Legend of Bagger Vance” popped into my head this morning. (And you think you have problems…) Thinking about it reminded me about how back when it came out, there was a big debate ovSer the movie’s use of the “magical negro” stereotype. I remember agreeing with the people who pointed this out, but not without some reservations…after all, I pointed out, if George Lucas had cast Sidney Poitier as Obi-Wan Kenobi instead of Sir Alec Guinness, would he have automatically become a magical negro even though the script hadn’t changed?

Which, in turn, reminded me of “women in refrigerators”. The list is well-known by now among comics fans, as are some of the excuses different writers have come up with for its existence. But the fact is, the most common one (“Hey, it’s not like men have it easy either!”) is actually sorta kinda true…Steve Trevor bit the big one a couple of times, the Vision was gruesomely dismembered and revived as a pale imitation of himself in order to put a little conflict into the Scarlet Witch’s story arc, the first couple of guys who even thought about dating Ms Marvel bit it, and let’s not even get into the whole Terry Long thing. (Husband and son both bit it there…)

But that’s the thing: Only an idiot would actually try to use these as arguments against the prevalence of racism and sexism in popular culture. Even though you can say, legitimately, that the “magical negro” is simply a mentor archetype that happens to be black, and even though you can say, legitimately, that a “woman in (a) refrigerator” is simply a supporting character that gets bumped off in order to provide a little drama for the main character who happens to be female, we can all recognize that there’s still something skeezy about it all. (Well, most of us can. I know all the enlightened, wise readers here can.) So what is it? Why is it not okay?

The answer is that there are so few other roles for these characters to take that the supporting roles become disproportionate representations of the characters in popular culture. Or, to put that a little less fancy, it’s not that there are lots of black “wise mentor” characters, it’s that there are so few black heroes getting mentored. It’s not that there are so many women in comics who die, it’s that there are so few who get to go off and avenge the deaths. These things are symptoms of a far deeper, more fundamental problem in pop culture, namely a dearth of protagonists who aren’t white guys. Nobody thinks to cast a black guy in the Luke Skywalker role; he’s relegated to the Obi-Wan (or more accurately, Mace Windu) part. We’ve reached a plateau in bringing diversity into our cult fiction, where characters outside the white male “standard” are included, but almost never in a leading role. Until that changes, you’ll continue to see the same stereotypes. Because they’re not stereotypes, they’re archetypes….but they’re the only archetypes women and minorities are allowed to inhabit.

BEST WRITER: Jason Aaron, “SCALPED”, Vertigo/DC Comics. I thought Blackest Night was a joyless, boring slog and Irredeemable isn’t much better. (Of course, at least Geoff Johns isn’t complaining about superheroes being dark and joyless while writing a dark, joyless superhero book, so he’s still ahead of Waid right now.) Diary of a Wimpy Kid isn’t my thing, although I think it’s decent work. That leaves The Walking Dead as Aaron’s sole competition for Best Writer, and although Robert Kirkman does good, steady work that cumulatively knocks your socks off over a pace of years, over any single year it’s just a good, solid comic. Aaron gets my nod, although it’s as much for Ghost Rider as it is for Scalped. Should have been nominated: Fred van Lente.

BEST ARTIST: JH Williams III, “DETECTIVE COMICS”, DC Comics. It’s hard to pick between Frank Quitely and Williams, but Batman and Robin, while a beautiful comic, isn’t even in the top ten things Quitely’s done in the last decade. What Williams did in his Batwoman arcs on Detective was simply staggering in so many ways: beautiful, original, workmanlike… you need more adjectives. Should have been nominated: Steve Dillon.

BEST CARTOONIST: David Mazzucchelli, “ASTERIOS POLYP”, Pantheon. I never get the point of this category, which exists seemingly only to make sure that Seth doesn’t have to compete with Jim Lee. Anyway, Mazzucchelli’s got this one in a walk, and that comes in an exceptional year: George Sprott is my favorite thing Seth’s ever done, Darwyn Cooke on Parker is Darwyn Cooke being Darwyn Cooke, and Roger Langridge’s Muppet Show comics are things of pure joy. But they don’t stand up against Asterios Polyp. Should have been nominated: Art Baltazar.

BEST LETTERER: David Mazzucchelli, “ASTERIOS POLYP”, Pantheon. Everybody else nominated does really great stuff, but I always judge this by the Todd Klein rule, which is “does the lettering transcend mere workmanship to become art in and of itself,” and only Mazzucchelli qualifies for me; his work on Polyp was just goddamned graceful. There’s no other word for it. Should have been nominated: Did Todd Klein do anything this year?

BEST INKER: Klaus Janson, “AMAZING SPIDER-MAN”, Marvel Comics. Klaus Janson will always get my vote whenever he gets nominated. His inks are brutal, awesome violence.

BEST COLORIST: Steve Hamaker, “BONE: CROWN OF HORNS”, Graphix. I can’t begin to imagine how difficult it must be to colorize Bone, a work so intrinsically black and white that colors applied inartfully would only serve to destroy the overall integrity of the work. Hamaker does it so brilliantly that you could almost forget that the black-and-white version ever existed. Laura Martin’s gorgeous recoloring work on The Rocketeer is a close second and I had to decide this one over time.

BEST COVER ARTIST: Frank Quitely, “BATMAN AND ROBIN”, DC Comics. Another duel to the death between Quitely and JH Williams III, but this round Quitely walks away with the prize; his covers on Batman and Robin manage to both feel like traditional superhero covers and new-wave Morrisonia at the same time. A narrow victory, though, considering how great Williams’ covers were on Detective.

BEST NEW TALENT: Not voting; I haven’t read any of them except Chew and Power Out, and the former doesn’t impress me as much as it does other people (cute idea, but I’m far from sold thus far), and the latter is promising but in progress. So no vote.

BEST NEW SERIES: “BATMAN AND ROBIN”, DC Comics. Even with Grant Morrison more and more getting away from writing stories and getting more involved with long metaplots which don’t seem to go anywhere – and I know people can argue about this for hours at a time so let’s not start another round – this is still the most vital comic on the stands; it’s just got juice to it, you know? The two Vertigo entries are also both really strong and I had to think about it before passing them over. Also, I have no idea why Irredeemable keeps getting all these nominations because it’s not very good. Should have been nominated: The Muppet Show.

BEST CONTINUING OR LIMITED SERIES: “THE WALKING DEAD”, Image Comics. Remember what I said before about how Kirkman’s real strength is simple tenacity? That’s why I vote for him here. Should have been nominated: Incredible Hercules.

BEST ORIGINAL GRAPHIC PUBLICATION FOR YOUNGER READERS: “THE MUPPET SHOW COMIC BOOK”, BOOM! Studios. I am biased. Sue me.

BEST ANTHOLOGY: “FLIGHT # 6″, Villard. I love the Flight collections, each and every one. They’re gorgeous comics and I always find new things to like in every collection, which is why they always get my vote.

BEST ORIGINAL GRAPHIC ALBUM: “GEORGE SPROTT (1894-1975)”, by Seth, Drawn and Quarterly. After losing out to Asterios Polyp in previous categories, why do I give the nod to Seth now? Because Polyp has a horrible, horrible ending. It’s just that simple: the ending is so annoying it cuts the enjoyment value of the book in half. Seth does not do that to you with George Sprott. So he gets my vote.

BEST SYNDICATED STRIP OR PANEL: “PEARLS BEFORE SWINE”, by Stephan Pastis, United Feature Syndicate. Every year it seems like this is just a list of comics people don’t actively despise, and the list gets shorter every year as the Comics Curmudgeon has ever more targets. Pearls is my favorite; it wins.

BEST DOMESTIC REPRINT PROJECT: “THE ROCKETEER: THE COMPLETE ADVENTURES”, by Dave Stevens; edited by Scott Dunbier, IDW. Gorgeously recolored as previously mentioned, but now all the Rocketeer stuff is in one book. The only way this could be any better is if it had a slip pocket on the inside cover to hold the DVD of the (deeply enjoyable) movie.

BEST ONLINE COMICS WORK: “HARK! A VAGRANT”, by Kate Beaton, http://harkavagrant.com. Nothing else even comes close. Sadly, Scott Kurtz is campaigning to win the award on the basis that, I dunno, it’s his turn or something. Go vote for Kate Beaton instead! She can actually write a punchline!

SPECIAL AWARD FOR HUMOR IN COMICS: Evan Dorkin and Jill Thompson, “BEASTS OF BURDEN”, Dark Horse Books. Not so much because it’s hilarious (it’s fun, but Muppet Show is funnier), but because I can’t not vote for Evan Dorkin and Jill Thompson working together at least once.

BEST SINGLE ISSUE OR STORY: “JONAH HEX #50″, written by Jimmy Palmiotti and Justin Gray, artwork by Darwyn Cooke, DC Comics. Putting this lovely single issue up against the likes of book-length projects like George Sprott, Asterios Polyp and Parker just seems criminally unfair; a single issue isn’t a full book and shouldn’t be judged on the same merit, just as a short story shouldn’t compete against a novel. This gets my vote out of rebellion. And because it was a really great comic.