I’ve never before bought anything Alan Moore has written and thought, “wow, that was a waste of my money.”

So I guess that’s a new experience!

Enter TWO COMICS GEEKS.

Each GEEK opens up a copy of All-Star Batman and Robin #1. They begin reading.

GEEK ONE: This beginning is…
GEEK TWO: Shit?
GEEK ONE: Would Frank Miller and Jim Lee combined make shit?
GEEK TWO: Surely this cannot be shit.
GEEK ONE: Perhaps we should read some more, to make sure of whether or not it is shit.

They put down issue number one and pick up issue number two.

GEEK ONE: This is starting to look very much like shit.
GEEK TWO: I concur with your declaration of shit.
GEEK ONE: Perhaps this shit is just a slow start, though?
GEEK TWO: I’m willing to give this shit a little more time.

They put down issue number two and pick up issue number three.

GEEK ONE: …wow, this really is shit.
GEEK TWO: I am amazed at how shit this is.
GEEK ONE: Black Canary is Irish? What the fuck is up with that shit?
GEEK TWO: Wow, Frank Miller’s rerunning his Superman versus Batman story again? That is some serious shit there.

They put down issue number three and pick up issue number four.

GEEK ONE: Holy shit, look at this triple gatefold foldout page of the Batcave!
GEEK TWO: Shit yes.
GEEK ONE: On the other hand, Batman just dumped Robin in the cave to die. What the shit?
GEEK TWO: I wonder if this is shit on purpose.

They put down issue number four and pick up issue number five.

GEEK ONE: Shit, Superman made out with Wonder Woman.
GEEK TWO: That’s total shit. Frank Miller has to know this is total shit. Right?
GEEK ONE: I’m starting to agree with you. This is some purposeful shit right here.
GEEK TWO: This is glorious shit.

They put down issue number five and pick up issue number six.

GEEK ONE: Shit yes! This shit is a parody!
GEEK TWO: Frank Miller is feeding us shit and making us love it!
GEEK ONE: I love reading shit!
GEEK TWO: This is classic shit right here!

They put down issue number six and pick up issue number seven.

GEEK ONE: This is some genius shit.
GEEK TWO: This is shit dialed up to eleven!
GEEK ONE: This is seriously postmodernist shit!
GEEK TWO: This is shit as critical commentary on the form itself!

They put down issue number seven anjd pick up issue number eight.

GEEK ONE: …you know, I appreciate that this shit is clever, but…
GEEK TWO: …in the end, no matter how crazy this shit is, it’s still shit.
GEEK ONE: Why am I buying this shit again?
GEEK TWO: Isn’t there less obvious shit we could be buying?

Exeunt.

To all those complaining about the shitty “Mephisto makes Peter give up his marriage to save Aunt May with devil-magic” storyline currently going on in Amazing Spider-Man – look, this one is so easy to fix it’s almost redundant to mention it, and by “fix” I don’t mean just retconning it away, but instead making it work on a larger scale.

Ready? Because it’s really easy.

continue reading "Geez, do I gotta fix everything?"

Click on the image for a larger version.

When they get around to making a Scott Pilgrim movie, they should use “Happy Boys and Girls” by Aqua for the trailer music.

You know I’m not wrong about this.

(It would also work for a live-action Ranma 1/2 movie.)

If you want to read one of the most startlingly bullshit interviews I have seen in ages, go here and read Marvel publisher Dan Buckley’s comments on their new online initiative and illegal downloading.

It’s almost infuriating. The level at which Buckley flatly refuses to engage perfectly valid questions and concerns about Marvel’s digital model is just insane. A perfectly fair comparison to Rhapsody is mentioned, and Buckley says “no, it’s not like that” without even bothering to explain why. (The answer, incidentally, as to why Marvel’s online comic movement isn’t quite like Rhapsody is that culturally we’re used to paying to listen to music we don’t own, but we’re not used to paying for books we don’t own and want to read. Of course, that particular difference is one that actually makes Marvel’s digital position worse rather than better.)

And, of course, Marvel’s strategy towards illegal downloading is kept deliberately vague. Questions as to how the torrent model that exists – which is blatantly superior to Marvel’s in a large variety of ways for the consumer – will be dealt with are left unanswered, except to say that Marvel is going to be taking its cues from how the music industry has handled illegal downloading, which is like taking tips from a caveman on how to beat Gary Kasparov in a game of chess.

But it gets worse! Explaining the choice of initial selection and how new comics will be added each week, Buckley says: “This will include providing marketing support for our publishing and entertainment initiatives…”

No shit. Here is the list of comics currently available via Marvel’s digital delivery system. The majority of these comics can be summed up as follows:

1.) Failed miniseries and ongoings which didn’t particularly impact the market and which have no serious sales value (Gambit, District X, Jubilee, Doc Samson, et cetera), including whole runs of series that you can now get at remaindered bookstores (Spider-Man’s Tangled Web).

2.) One-shots not easily collected in trade format or elsewhere (Civil War: Choosing Sides, for example).

3.) …and first issues of things Marvel wants you to buy in trade or single issues (Moon Knight, Civil War, Runaways, Captain America, Immortal Iron Fist, Annihilation, et cetera). For longer-running titles, Marvel’s pretty blatant about this, giving you the chance to read the first issue in each trade.

There is a name for small teaser portions. It is called advertising. This is what Marvel’s entire digital initiative amounts to: you are encouraged to pay money to buy the real comics. They’re not even particularly shy about it, because when you read the first issue of any given comic that you’ve paid to read, they remind you to buy the collection.

Granted, Marvel’s strategy is to use the digital model to encourage new readers. That’s fine. I am down with encouraging new readers. But last I checked, not many people were horribly encouraged by the prospect of paying to read the same fucking comic twice.

And of course there’s a model they could have used. Amazon’s putting it out there right now with their Kindle reader: “you buy the book for a very low price, and anytime you need to download it from us, we let you.” It’s a fantastic model for a publisher to adopt, because it essentially lends control of a person’s library to the publisher. (I’m of two minds about it, personally, but there’s no question that it would be good for Marvel.) Use some proprietary software to keep illegal trading of the comics to a minimum and Marvel could be raking in bucketloads.

Sweet Jesus, how is it possible for a company to fuck up this badly?

Very quietly, just before Thanksgiving so nobody would notice, Marvel and DC sent cease-and-desist letters to zcultfm.com. For those of you who do not know, zcultfm is – or, rather, was – the comic book torrents site, with an immense library of torrents, many of which even worked.

It is also how I have first read most of the new comics published over the last three years. Every single comic parody I’ve done had its origins in DCP scans. (I have a scanner, but it’s not a very good one.) For those wondering, I generally delete most of my downloaded comics after a single read. With the exception of Legion of Super-Heroes, I have not purchased a single issue of a comic book since about 2002 or so.

So I must be a downloading leech, only costing DC and Marvel money. Right?

Well, let me put it this way. This is most of my collection of trade paperbacks and comic hardcovers.

Now, the top right shelf actually doesn’t really have any comics on it, it’s just books that mostly fit in that space nicely, so ignore that shelf, but the rest, pretty much all trade collections of comics and the occasional original hardcover.Now here is my collection again, except that this time, everything I’ve bought as a result of reading the issues first after downloading them (almost always from zcult) and giving them a try? Is highlighted.

My, that’s a lot of highlighting. And since the resolution is a little low, let me just point out that the vast, vast majority of the highlighted content gets published by – wait for it – DC and Marvel.zcultfm – along with scans_daily, which more or less exists as a fan community for the downloads propogated mainly by zcult and Demonoid (also recently shut down) is responsible for me buying the hardcover of The Immortal Iron Fist. It’s responsible for me buying NextWave and the Garth Ennis Punisher and the JMS/JRJr Amazing Spider-Man and the Milligan/Allred X-Force (and then X-Statix) and Runaways and the Brubaker Captain America and getting me finally turned on to the Fantastic Four.

DC? It’s responsible for me buying All Star Superman and Seven Soldiers of Victory and Fables (all of it) and Y The Last Man (all of it) and The Losers (all of it) and Pride of Baghdad and War Stories (which I never would have even known existed were it not for a Garth Ennis megatorrent I downloaded mostly to reread the issues of Hitman I sold in anticipation of collecting the trade paperbacks which were halted mid-run – and incidentally, DC, fuck you very much for that) and Light Brigade and Formerly Known As The Justice League and Gotham Central.

Oh, and if any smaller/indie publisher feels like getting in a snit, I’ll tack on Queen and Country and .303 and the Busiek Conan and The Five Fists Of Science and… well, I could go on.

Comic downloads transformed me from being a guy who bought one comic book per month and the very occasional graphic novel or trade collection, and into a guy who buys two to four trades a month (and sometimes more). I wasn’t going to go back to investing in single issues, because single issues are a terrible value for money and a horrible pain in the ass to store and I can’t lend them out easily when I tell somebody “hey, you should totally read this.” And if you go to zcult and read the postings from the fanboys there, it’s quite obvious that I represent the norm for comic downloaders, despite the fact that our doing so irritates Dan Slott terribly. (PS: Dan Slott, She-Hulk is on my trade to-buy list, although right now I’m steadily working my way through the Bendis/Maleev Daredevil books.)

And the important thing to note here is that DC and Marvel, unlike the incredibly backward music companies they’re trying to imitate here with their painfully stupid legal action, do not have a realistic competing model to offer. Marvel’s pay-for-comic service, despite my kind words previously, has a clunky interface, is slow, doesn’t display the comic work as well as a basic .cbr or .cbz file, doesn’t have a good selection… with a lot of improvements it could be a realistic model, but since I wrote my approving post, everything I’ve heard indicates that Marvel considers their currently mediocre-at-best offering to be a finished, final-stage product, which only earns them a “what the fuck?”

I mean, at least the record companies, when they shut down Oink, could point to iTunes and say “look, we offer mp3s for sale for money, please use that.” And despite the fact that iTunes is kind of a ripoff, at least it’s an option. DC and Marvel don’t even have that. If I want to read the old Roy Thomas Infinity, Inc. run, or the original Speedball ongoing, I have three options: 1.) Wait around for them to collect it in trade, 2.) Spend a small fortune on back issues I don’t want to store in the first place, or 3.) Download the comics torrents. Quick, which one do you think I’m going to pick?

How sad is this?

What’s worse is that they’re just antagonizing people to no good end, because everybody knows how torrent filesharing works now. Here’s the short version:

MAJOR MEDIA COMPANY: Hey, you! You’re downloading the product I made without paying money! Stop that at once!
INDIVIDUAL DOWNLOADERS: Uh, no.
COMPANY: Oh, that’s how it is, is it? Well, I’m going to shut down your torrent-sharing website!
DOWNLOADERS: Fine. We’ll just go over to a different site which will take you three to six months to find out about and shut down.
(Repeat until heat-death of universe or The Rapture, whichever comes first.)

I simply can’t stress enough how shortsighted, how ignorant, how goddamned lunkheaded DC and Marvel are being right now. They aren’t just shooting themselves in the foot like other media companies; they’re shooting themselves in the head. Internet downloading and the word-of-mouth generated by it has been quietly driving their business for the last couple of years now and they want to kill it. It’s just staggering.

Alan Moore and Kevin O’Neill’s The League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen: The Black Dossier has been hailed in some quarters as a masterpiece, in others as Alan Moore’s worst excesses all combined into a single dense volume. I’m not sure yet where I stand on this axis, but a few things about the book puzzled me.

– I realize that Moore’s taste for literary tomfoolery is well-known at this point, but I thought the grown man on page 56 clearly buttfucking a stuffed bear and referred to both as “Christopher” and “Robin” was fairly over-the-top. Yes, Alan Moore, we know, Victorian children’s literature is rife with sexual innuendo, blah blah Freud blah blah blah, we got it, okay? Christ, wasn’t three hundred pages of a Dorothy/Alice/Wendy tantric threeway in Lost Girls enough already?

– Likewise unsubtle was the photograph of Dan Didio on page 104 with a big handlebar moustache drawn on it and a crudely drawn word balloon saying “I like felching.” Really, was that necessary? I mean, it was kind of a stretch to suggest that Mina and Quartermain considered it “important evidence.”

– I know Moore enjoys references to other literary works, but including Anna Livia Plurabelle from Finnegans Wake is either Alan Moore bragging that he is the only person on the planet to have actually read Finnegans Wake all the way through and know what the fuck it is about, or alternately Alan Moore lying about same, and I could have done without either.

– That having been said, I’m willing to bet that in Finnegans Wake, Anna Livia Plurabelle does not have sex with a mutant donkey space invader.

– The addition of The Outrageous Hitler-Man to the team smacks of smartassedness, as his only superpower is “the power to enrage.” Also, I’m not sure where the hell Moore is going to pretend that The Outrageous Hitler-Man’s literary roots lie, although I understand Jess Nevins claims that The OH-M is actually a seventeenth-century Welsh folktale. Of course, Jess Nevins also claims that Alan Moore doesn’t send him kickbacks, so, you know. Grain of salt.

– I’m still not sure why page 81 was edible.

– Everybody has already said their piece about the three-dimensional portion of the book, and I think the idea was clever and well-executed. Except for the one panel where a figure looking suspiciously like Alan Moore points at you and says “now YOU are part of the League, by proxy of imagination!” Honestly. Just sell fake membership cards like everybody else.

– Does Allan Quatermain have to speak in Victorian English all the way through the book? Towards the end of the book, when the setting is the 1960s, he starts to sound irritatingly like Mr. Burns. The reference to the Beatles “not being true vaudevillians” seemed kind of forced.

– I don’t have much criticism for Kevin O’Neill, who is rightfully acclaimed as a genius sort of artist. I didn’t even mind the pornographic woodcuts he kept hiding in the background, presumably at Moore’s insistence. However, I draw the line at hidden pictures of Twiki from the old Buck Rogers TV show.

– The first letter of every page in the book spells “Fuck you, Grant Morrison. Yeah, you heard me, fuck you, Mister “God of All Comics.” I’m the man, not you. I’m the guy who’s won actual literary awards. All you’ve done is some rubbish non-linear narrative and rewritten some crap Superman stories from the Sixties. I fucking ended the Superman story, right? “Whatever Happened To The Man Of Tomorrow?” I did that in a day and a half while I was high on coke. You heard me, you Scottish twat. Let’s see some Hollywood producer rape YOUR work and turn it into shitty movies designed to lull people into a catatonic consumerist sleep.” I can’t help but think this is rude, even if it is horribly hard to find.

– Finally, although I understand the meaning is obviously one that’s supposed to be ironic, having a page labeled “How To Kill The Dreaded Nee-Gro” is just in poor taste, okay?

Other than that, though? Pretty good.

Okay, so it was sold out everywhere I looked. Come on, I’m probably pretty close.

Namely, “liberals can beat people up too, so long as they are bad people.”

He be spiny like an Agave Cactus, he be the painbringer, he be Bahlactus.

Well, Marvel Comics dropped the hammer, and the interblogs are abuzz over their fancy announcement of offering comics online. And rightly so, considering this is something many of us – certainly including me – have agitated for for quite some time.

Things about their model are good and others are not. They’re only dipping their toe in the pool right now (2,500 comics is a drop in the pond, and “twenty new issues every week” doesn’t even cover a week’s worth of new releases). That makes sense considering how bold a move this is, but it’s disappointing to see such a small initial offering being treated as a holy-shit big deal. Wisely, it looks like Marvel will be offering a portion of the content for free in the first-hit-is-always-free method.

And the reader? Yeah, it could be awesome, but I’m not big on a web-based Flash app for something of this nature. I understand that Marvel probably doesn’t want to go big with their own downloadable application expressly for browsing comics stored at a central database – at least not yet – but again, it’s a case of “I understand their caution; it’s just irritating” because this sort of move is now long overdue for the Big Two. (And heck, Dark Horse and Image too, although they don’t have the capital required to really do this on their own. If Marvel is smart, as soon as is possible they’ll be offering other companies the opportunity to E-publish their comics on Marvel’s comic database.) It’s a shame, though, because I was hoping that when this happened, there’d be an option for e-reader tablets.

But the most important element of this model, the one that was absolutely key for it to be a going concern, was pricing. And in this respect, Marvel has done exactly the right thing by offering a relatively cheap subscription model for access to the database. Ten bucks a month for unlimited access, five if you go longterm? That’s a book and a half per month. If they get, say, a mere five thousand subscribers (and five thousand is a very conservative number for initial signups for this service, I think), that’s fifty thousand dollars a month in revenue, which is more than Marvel takes home from most of their individual mid-sales-range comics.

I know people wanted “iTunes for comics,” but reasonably that just wasn’t likely at a price people were willing to pay and would likely require some sort of at least minor protection (a la iTunes) preventing people from easily trading comics online amongst themselves. And, once that was in place, Marvel would also have to figure out a way from killing the secondary market entirely (and likely with it a large number of comics stores).

Bottom line? The service is priced right once the library expands, it can be expanded as Marvel sees fit, and the technical issues (such as comics availability and browser interface) can be tinkered with easily enough when necessary. It’s not quite a slam dunk, but I don’t think this ends up being anything but a winner for Marvel in the long run.

People kept emailing me asking me when I was going to do another comic parody, and my answer was always the same. “When the time is right, grasshopper.”

World War Hulk? No. Firstly, it was actually good; secondly, it doesn’t have a lot of clunky expository dialogue and adding it would just be clumsy. Amazons Attack? Closer, but again, not nearly enough dialogue, and although it was profoundly stupid it wasn’t stupid in the right sort of ambitious way, but instead stupid in the way that, say, Larry The Cable Guy is stupid. Countdown? Well, it’s certainly a bad comic, but nothing really happens in any given issue; I can’t just write twenty-two pages of dicking around because DC has already done that for me. Any given issue of Wolverine: Origins? I considered it, but really. Wolverine isn’t that much fun for me to write. (It’s why I went with the “bub snikt snikt bub” joke in the first place.)

It seemed hopeless. But then DC went and did me a favour by publishing a comic both arrogantly ambitious and flagrantly ill-thought out. They published Death Of The New Gods, and I was thankful.

Thumbnails behind the cut, of course.

continue reading "It’s All Been Done Before (But So What?)"

Bahlactus nasty.

In case you haven’t noticed, thanks to the help of Stefan Rivet: the remix of Teen Titans #44 is now up on the site.

To those of you who have asked me if I’m ever going to do another comics remix, the answer is: yes, and I’m about halfway done one right now actually, but my schedule is a lot busier than it used to be. I’m hoping to have it up next week, but no guarantees.

The brilliant and original XKCD is currently trailing the hackish, never-ever-even-remotely-funny (and often disturbingly sexist) Day By Day in the 2007 Weblog Awards by about 400 votes, and this cannot be borne.

Go now, and vote for XKCD. Vote every day. Tell everybody else to vote as well. Because a comic strip that is actually funny should win the damn award.

(For those wondering, Penny Arcade isn’t even close.)