What's that listed under Best Comics-Related Periodical/Journalism? Is that the first issue of Comic Foundry? An issue which includes none other than my first published fiction story? Why, I believe it is! Congrats to Tim Leong and Laura Hudson, of course. They deserve a good lion share of the credit. But I like to think that my contribution to the magazine helped bring it the acclaim of the Eisner committee.
In that case I now proclaim myself The Eisner-nominated Ian Brill. Okay, maybe it should be The Eisner-nominated Ian Brill*. That's still something, right?
Now, to rub it in people's face and be called a dick by those people as soon as I've left the room. Truly, that will be the greatest honor of all.
Hey everyone I'm still here. My new job just requires so much time that I can only really blog in the late hours of Friday or Sunday. When I do find the time my brain often feels so fried that I have little to communicate.
I did find time to catch up a little on the NYCC coverage. What struck me was actually a small bit of news. The fact that it's small news is what interested me so much. Here you have a Marvel comics panel with three prose authors and it's treated as no big deal. If this was 2002 there would at least be five minutes on NPR. I don't want to leave out Dwayne Swierczynski, but the idea that Jonathan Lethem and Orson Scott Card, two of the biggest authors in publishing, can just be part of the Marvel Bullpen right alongside Bryan Hitch is a real sign of the times.
I wondered whom could have predicted such a thing but really, it's not that strange. Julius Schwartz was a literary agent before becoming an editor. Ray Bradbury and Harlan Ellison were involved with comics for a long time. But when Ellison writes "The Brute That Shouted Love at the Heart of the World" for The Incredible Hulk in 1971 that was a chance for fans to jump up and down and go "see, we're real literature now!" When Lethem, a certified genius by the people at the MacArthur Foundation, talks about Omega the Unknown it's treated as hardly different than Brian Bendis talking about what's coming up with The Avengers or whatever. Maybe that's kind of cool. Permanent Link: 8:36 PM |
0 comments
Well, here I am. In one of the last places in America where we actually produce something that can be sold in the great global market. You can outsource everything but creativity apparently.
I'm here for a dream job but to attain it I had to leave a dream city. As is life. Stay tuned, you'll understand all about this big change soon enough. Permanent Link: 9:12 PM |
0 comments
That's NumberWang!
Jesse Thorn talks to David Mitchell of That Mitchell and Webb Look, the BBC sketch show that features everyone's favorite quiz show: NumberWang!
I have hard time dealing with the fact that the world's population is so stratified that some are eating mud and others are getting passionate about the sentences we are meant to believe a man in a green cloak chooses to speak.
Say anything you want on the Internet, that's your right. I just wish people were more mindful of the fact that they find themselves in the top 5% of the world simply by having enough electricity being pumped into their house so they can use the Internet in the first place. I'm disappointed when I see people who have so much comfort - when so many don't - only for those same people to lose their perspective on reality due living in such abundance.
If it's not combined with action constantly fretting about the state of humanity isn't much better than complaining about whatever Green Lantern's up to. I just wish people would take in a larger view of the world and find some balance in what they communicate. Permanent Link: 8:56 PM |
0 comments
News from across the pond
Head of Formula One Racing found in Nazi orgy. Those Europeans really do it better than us, don't they? Elliot Spitzer is found with one - one! - prostitute and it's all you hear about for a week. This guy has fucking Nazi orgies!
In a way it's sort of comforting to know old rich White men do this kind of thing. Because it's the kind of thing you just assume they do anyway, am I right? Permanent Link: 9:45 AM |
0 comments
Tuesday, April 08, 2008
A quick thought, probably a dumb one
While reading Laura Hudson's article on Marvel's viral marketing I thought of something. It's cool to see Marvel branching out and everything. I just wish that instead of using these innovations, innovations for Marvel that is, to sell a book that is going to be a blockbuster no matter what they could use this strategy towards marketing lower selling titles.
I know that's somewhat wishful thinking on my behalf. If someone at the promotions department is going to pitch new ways to sell comics it might as well be in the service of a sure fire hit. To attach these new ideas to a slower seller might be too much for some in the company to swallow. But with MySpace videos you can reach a whole different audience. I would rather those people be sold X-Men: First Class than Secret Invasion.
I know the SI plotline lends itself to these kind of mysteries that viral marketing thrives on. It would be a bit odd if a young girl is complaining about her brother acting crazy and then suddenly Silver Age Warren Worthington III comes flying through the window. And hey, I'm all for Ivan Brandon getting Marvel work. But still, when I see Gerry Gladstone from Midtown Comics say "It's selling like hotcakes" I get a bit irked and say to myself "it would have sold like hotcakes anyway." Ah well, no biggie. Permanent Link: 4:25 PM |
0 comments
You must have been vaccianted with a phonograph needle
Last year CD sales took another hit. Vinyl sales, on the other hand, rose 15%. Chicago public radio show Sound Opinions tackles the appeal of vinyl with Butch Vig (producer of Nevermind and Siamese Dream) and Bob Gendron of High Fidelity Magazine.
I'm happy to see people rediscovering vinyl. When I was in high school I made the conscious choice to listen to albums as opposed to CDs (not that I gave them up entirely). Sure, there was a little bit of pretension in that affectation. But Thousand Oaks had a great used record store and there's a real thrill in going through stacks and stacks of vinyl to find some rare treat. The Pixies' Doolittle and The Rolling Stones Sticky Fingers were two records that got a lot of play in my room. Now that I'm moving to L.A. (talk about burying the lead) I'm thinking of buying one of those record/CD/cassette/radio players that are $99.
I use eMusic and iTunes. I value my iPod when I'm walking around, getting some exercise. But I don't like how small everything has to be. I know there's a post below this about how cool it is that I can embed Naked Lunch onto my blog. But there's a time for YouTube clips and ringtones and there's a time for breaking out all four sides of Electric Ladyland. I care about music beyond trendiness and the enticement of sex, which are the only reason the vast majority of people give any care to music. I care about sound. I think it's time I ordered some licorice pizza. Permanent Link: 10:53 AM |
0 comments
Charlton Heston's best work
Planet of the Apes? Touch of Evil? Ten Commandments? No, this is Heston's greatest work on film:
...where I can embed David Cronenberg's entire Naked Lunch onto my blog. Look:
I don't really expect you to stare at my blog for two hours. The film has ads as well, which sucks. But hey, that means Cronenberg's getting royalties. I'm just happy to be alive right now. Permanent Link: 9:21 PM |
1 comments
I've already written about how much I love Never Not Funny. Instead of spitting out another barrage of verbiage I can post videos of how great Andy Daly's appearance was. Daly's an improv comic who does great work in L.A. at the UCB Theatre.
More sex from perhaps the sexiest comic book blogger ever
I know someone who left a Doctor Who community because he felt the discussions were dominated by slashers and shippers. I can understand his frustrations. But thinking about that combined with my recent thoughts about superheroes and sexuality led me to think how men and women treat fandom differently.
There have always been women in fandom. I remember being at a DC comic panel and a middle-aged women told a story about how she won her kids' respect because they had questions about the Teen Titans (no doubt after watching the Cartoon Network version) and Mom had all the answers from her days of reading the comic. But if you look at old fanzines, letter columns of old comics and the books Fantaco and Amazing Heroes released it's clear that men were taking up most of the space for many years. I'm sure if you polled all the blogs and podcasts out there you'd probably still find a male majority but Internet fandom has created a wider visibility for female geeks than ever before. That really influenced my post I linked to above.
While writing that post it occurred to me that some people might not want to see any sexuality with their superheroes outside of the most conservative version. That's what I do with me free time, create straw man arguments for blog posts I've written. I should probably start take up stamp collecting. But I think that view on superheroes is very male. Even though there's the cliche that guys think of sex all the time what really happens is that men can create these binaries for themselves. This is where I think about sex. This is where I do not. That's how you get the Woody Allen joke about thinking of baseball during sex. If he needs to eke out a few more minutes during the act of love he can think of Willie Mays sliding into third. No parts of the brain that deals with sex are working while watching baseball. For some guys the same can be true of reading superhero comics.
The female brain doesn't process things that black-and-white. Maybe it's because women don't create those binary for themselves, maybe it's because sexuality is put upon women by living under the male gaze, maybe it's both those reasons and a hundred more but when I've seen female fans discuss their favorite franchises the relationship dynamics (which includes sex) is a major topic. It's part of the attraction.
Now I know in this post I'm coming off as the Dr. Kinsey of Comic-Con. I really have no certification to go on and on about how men and women's brains are different. But I have taken my fair share of human sexuality classes. I've been on the frontlines of a certain brand of female fandom covering Yaoi Con two years in a row. I like to think I'm a fairly observant person and I'm just airing my findings.
Getting back to the example I used to start this post off, I sympathize with the dude who is tired of post after post where photos of The Doctor and Rose or The Doctor and Captain Jack or The Doctor and K-9 are staring at each other longingly. But if the rise of a female presence in fandom has proven anything it's that female fans can be as annoying male ones. It's not going to save fandom or anything. Most female fans will take their enthusiasm to irritating extremes exactly like most male fans do.
Sometimes I yearn for those essays that would appear in the back issues of Amazing Heroes and The Comics Journal I've read (we're talking mid '80s, where American Flagg! and Jon Sable: Freelance would bring out rousing arguments). Now I see Livejournal communities where joking about Robin and Aqualad hooking up earns you 100 approving comments (believe it or not when I started this post I told myself I wouldn't paint with a broad brush. We see how long I stuck to that commitment). That's not the fault of female fans. That's how the Internet has changed the nature of discussions. I do get nostalgic for the days when well thought out arguments were found on printed pages everyone with any smarts paid attention to. That doesn't mean I want to see a similarly male dominated fan culture. I just wish there were more female voices during those days, back before the floodgates opened and the noise drowned out the signal.
There is nothing in me that wants to go in there and do new music. How are you going to deliver it? How are you going to get paid for it if people can just get it for free?
...
The record industry doesn't have a f---ing clue how to make money. It's only their fault for letting foxes get into the henhouse and then wondering why there's no eggs or chickens. Every little college kid, every freshly-scrubbed little kid's face should have been sued off the face of the earth. They should have taken their houses and cars and nipped it right there in the beginning. Those kids are putting 100,000 to a million people out of work. How can you pick on them? They've got freckles. That's a crook. He may as well be wearing a bandit's mask.
This post explains Legion of Super-Heroes fandom for the past three decades
So since I'm making myself reacquainted with the whole X-franchise (in a few months I'll read eight issues of the 90's X-Force in a row and lose my grasp on reality) I decide to check up on an old Comics Journal interview Chris Claremont a.k.a. The 'Mont did. He sounded a bit irked that readers were always looking for romantic and sexual subtext in character interactions. The interview was from 1979 or 1980. Even then you could see the avalanche of slash and shippers fans the stories would inspire.
I'm certainly sympathetic to Claremont not wanting his writing to be misinterpreted. But I see superheroes this way: these are gorgeous people defined by their physicality. In the books that means they're always fighting, with villains or each other. Between the pages the other side of the equation has to realize itself. These people have to be having mind-blowing sex. I don't want this to appear on the page in any graphic detail. I have no interest in seeking out the aforementioned slash fiction so readily available in this day and age. But, to echo certain observations Michael Chabon made in The New Yorker recently, sexuality oozes from these characters. That's especially true for Marvel's Merry Mutants. Claremont had to know, it certainly seemed to inform his later work in the books, that the lives these characters lead lends itself to a certain seductive libertine spirit.
I was thinking about this reading New Avengers #39. It was a good depiction of "superhero sexuality." A Skrull invasion plotline is bookended by the romantic adventures of deaf ninja Echo. She and Wolverine review their past affair in the book's beginning. By the book's end the lady and Hawkeye have started something new. As a whole the book explains the psychology behind this. These people are constantly in danger of getting killed. Right now they don't know, as Marvel's publicity department loves to tells us, whom they can trust (at least I subscribe to the rules of grammar). You think the latter fact would put the kibosh on the knocking of boots but its the former that supersedes all. There's a go for broke feeling with these people. Some more than others. That's why for those of us who follow long form superhero storytelling we're going to imagine a bond between the characters greater than what can and really should be shown.
Admit it, if you repelled Galactus from the planet you wouldn't be so pumped you'd fuck the first thing that said "hello" to you? Please. Permanent Link: 6:17 PM |
1 comments
