May the 4th Be With You on FREE COMIC BOOK DAY, 2013!!!
Showing posts with label comic books. Show all posts
Showing posts with label comic books. Show all posts
Thursday, April 18, 2013
Tuesday, July 24, 2012
Being Grant Morrison
(It's a rare thing for me anyway, to have my favorite writer and artist working on the same title. These are fine times to be a comic fan.--jef)
For the better part of the past 20 years, Grant Morrison has
been leading the charge for groundbreaking superhero stores at both DC
and Marvel Comics. However, as 2012 zooms to its possibly Apocalyptic
end, the writer is looking to change up where and how his
counter-cultural ideas will manifest next.
This September, Image Comics will publish its first creator-owned series from the writer – the crime noir/psycheadelic pony/Christmas fable "HAPPY!" with artist Darick Robertson. And to hear Morrison describe it, the book is only the first step in a new set of stories that will see him break off from regular superhero work for the foreseeable future.
Below, Morrison tells CBR News how a cascade of events from the publishing of his superhero manifesto "Supergods" to the plans for the September Las Vegas meeting of the minds called MorrisonCon have all combined to launch him on a new phase of his writing career – one where Batman and Superman will step aside for a new wave of characters, starting with an insipidly cute cartoon horse.
This September, Image Comics will publish its first creator-owned series from the writer – the crime noir/psycheadelic pony/Christmas fable "HAPPY!" with artist Darick Robertson. And to hear Morrison describe it, the book is only the first step in a new set of stories that will see him break off from regular superhero work for the foreseeable future.
Below, Morrison tells CBR News how a cascade of events from the publishing of his superhero manifesto "Supergods" to the plans for the September Las Vegas meeting of the minds called MorrisonCon have all combined to launch him on a new phase of his writing career – one where Batman and Superman will step aside for a new wave of characters, starting with an insipidly cute cartoon horse.
CBR News: Before we get to the books, congratulations on being named a Member of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire! What's that whole experience been like for you?
Grant Morrison: It was absolutely unexpected. I’ve always been treated as a fairly marginal figure round our way, and it was nice to get a little recognition, but I have no idea who put me up for the honor. You have to go through a strict and rigorous check from Buckingham Palace and the government. It was funny to think that all these people had to read some of my wilder stuff in order to pass me for the award. [Laughs] But I was quite touched that I’d been acknowledged at all.
And so did you get to go to Buckingham Palace for a big ceremony?
Not yet. I'll be doing that in the next couple of months, I guess. They do the recipients in batches. The weird thing is that my dad got one of these things back in 1998 for a completely different reason – for his community work. So I've kind of done this before with him. I've been to the Palace before, but I've never been up close with any of the royals. I'm looking forward to seeing what it's all about.
Do you feel more chivalrous? This is supposed to be an honor of chivalry, right?
No, it actually made me feel more evil, I think. [Laughter] I mean, when a howling witch hunt turns up on cue to accuse you of "joining the Establishment" as if you’d signed up for the Secret Society of Super-Villains, what else can you do but cackle and rub your hands together?
I’d love to tell you I’m now qualified to join the Round Table and declare war on Narnia but the truth is, absolutely nothing has changed.
This award has kind of brought around the latest round of attention for you in the mainstream media, the last of which came for Supergods which is just out in paperback. I got the feeling that going out and talking so much with the readership was as much of a process for you as writing the book was. Did you learn anything about the form after all that discussion?
Once you finish these things, it really is like squatting out a bizarre, book-shaped child you've been labored over. [Laughs] Honestly, once I'd wrapped Supergods, I felt like I'd said everything I needed to say about that stuff. Besides wrapping up "Batman Incorporated" and my Superman work right now and "Multiversity" kind of getting done, it felt like a farewell. I love the book, and the paperback edition is even better, with new material and corrections but the ideas were ones I had in my head for a long time and I've kind of moved on to thinking about different areas of interest.
I think a lot of people are surprised that you've remained dedicated to writing superhero comics for this long. Did you always foresee a waning of that work, or did it sneak up on you that "I'm not sure if I need to write anymore superhero stories"?
The idea was always that I'd keep doing it as long as it gave me a lot of pleasure and allowed me to express myself . And it still does, but I can see the end coming closer. I'm coming to the end of long runs and stories I've had planned in my notebooks for years and the stuff I’m developing now is quite different.
The "Action Comics" run concludes with issue #16, "Batman Incorporated" wraps up my take with issue #12, and after that I don’t have any plans for monthly superhero books for a while. "Multiversity" is eight issues and I’m 30-odd pages into a Wonder Woman project but those are finite stories.
I'm not saying that I'll never write superheroes again. It's just that my relationship to them has changed especially after finishing the book and I’m not sure if I want to maintain the same kind of relentless level of production.
Do you think that's come from the process, or has something happened with the proliferation of superheroes in the wider culture that's impacted how you view them?
I think I've kind of worked through everything I’ve ever felt about
these characters. It was a bit like going to the psychiatrist and lying
on the couch for just long enough to realize "What was I thinking?" [Laughs]
I don't know. I know there are plenty of different ways to use them,
but right now I feel like I'm coming to the end of a long intensive
period where I was talking about certain ideas using the language of
superheroes, if that makes any sense. I want to try out some new ideas
and explore the opportunities that keep coming up to write novels and
screenplays.
I think it's safe to say that "HAPPY!" is the first project we're
going to see in the wake of this change. For a while, we'd only seen a
teaser and it was hard to parse what you and Darick Robertson were
working up. Now that the solicits are out, it may be even harder! What's
the genesis of this book? Did you want to do your own version of the
kind of "hitman crime fable" we see so often these days?
I've always wanted to try a crime story. I wanted to do my take on that type of book – the hard-boiled anti-hero and the mafia villains and all that but I never had a strong enough story hook. I was looking for a way to put my own stamp on the genre and it finally clicked with "HAPPY!"
I was ambushed by this track by The Hollies, the '60s band, and it was like the most saccharine, sweetie pie music you can imagine – "Pegasus The Flying Horse." I like quite a few songs from the band’s psychedelic mid-period but this is just a hideous piece of twee. It even has this neighing sound as the last few bars play out! [Laughter] It's so sugary and weird and although it‘s probably about LSD, the lyrics of the middle 8 section bring a weird "pervy uncle" presence to the whole sordid affair. You can look it up on YouTube if you want because I just can't do it justice.
But I was listening to this music and thought, "Imagine the most cynical, fucked up man in the world having to deal with this - with a sickeningly upbeat little cartoon character - each trapped with the other." What would it be like if the Bad Lieutenant teamed up with Pegasus the Flying Horse? By this time, I knew the Happy the Horse would be tiny. And it struck me that I could throw “Christmas story” in with this as well. I've always wanted to have a go at a classic Christmas story like "It's A Wonderful Life" or “A Christmas Carol“ but with characters drawn from the shock headlines of the 21st Century. So this idea seemed to lend itself to that and it gave me a chance to do the kind of wider, symbolic pop cult critique that I like. It just grew from there. Adam Mortimer who’s directing "Sinatoro" is good friends with Darick Robertson and put us in touch. I've met Darick in the past, but we’ve never worked together. I found out that he was free, he loved the idea, we pitched it to Image and now we’re half way through a four-issue series which starts in September. It all came very naturally out of this weird combination of ideas.
Have you ever been to Disneyland and experienced "It's A Small World"?
I've never actually been to Disneyland and probably never will. My parents wanted to take me there when I was younger, but we had no money. So I was cruelly cheated! [Laughs] It just wouldn’t be the same now.
You description of the Hollies song reminds me of how that ride's music repeats over and over again and kind of drills its way into your brain. When you mash those kinds of things up against "heartwarming" stories like "It's A Wonderful Life" it can be tough to separate a positive ideal from an ingratiating experience. Do you see any aesthetic pleasure in something so saccharine?
Well, what excited me was the notion of not necessarily the song...but the story possibilities it suggested. In that sense, there’s definitely aesthetic pleasure in something saccharine but for me the pleasure only comes when you slam that rinky-dink magic kingdom stuff into its opposite and watch it all kick off, particle accelerator style. After doing all these noble super characters for so long "HAPPY!" is like the chains coming off the cellar. It’s bile and loathing, and relentless foul-mouthed scatological dialogue on every page – and Happy the Horse.
I loved the idea of dragging this bright creature into a very
unpleasant world – a creature who is absolutely cheerful and will not
give in. To the point of irritation. He's this indefatigable spark of
positivity, and I'm pitting him against the absolute darkness and
damnation of the world of the story. The tone and setting of the book is
closer to what I was doing back with "The Filth" than anything I’ve
been doing on "Batman." It's a really super noir comic, though I don't
want to explain what Happy is or what he looks like. You'll see that
when the book comes out. But circumstances bring him into this hitman’s
life, and he says, "I need your help to save a kid who's in trouble."
Cue pedo-Santa. Three days to Christmas with a new twist every day. I
poured everything I know about making comics into this and I‘m really
pleased with it. It’s a crude, sensationalistic, trashy piece of work
but it runs like a death machine.
What's it been like to work with Darick? I get the feeling that he's done so much long form work on creator-owned comics, but he's often overshadowed because he's working with Warren Ellis or Garth Ennis or whomever. What does he bring of his own to make this series uniquely what it is?
That's exactly it. Once I started to see the series' pages come in and saw how he'd designed the Happy the Horse character...I mean, it's like a special effect what he's done with this little...thing. It's quite amazing. And he’s set against this sleazy world of New York in the bleak midwinter, and there’s snow falling and filthy slush in the gutters, and everyone's fucked up, and everyone else is a bastard. Darick really captures the grime and the violence, which I knew he could do, having seen the stuff he did with Garth Ennis and Warren Ellis but I had no idea how brilliantly he’d render Happy. What I like most about the work is that it’s all very personal. It’s not airbrushed and light boxed. It's old school art with big Indian ink shadows and zip-a-tones. It's really very hand-drawn looking, and that totally suits the visceral nature of the action.
You are one of a number of guys who after years of working for DC and Marvel are packing up and moving over to do a project at Image. Of course, you were just talking about a bit of a personal sea change for what you want to do, but there does seem to be a lot of guys flocking to that publisher right now. Do you feel a part of that wave of creator-owned sentiment?
The majority of my creator-owned stuff is published at Vertigo but I’ve been putting out creator-owned stuff through all kinds of publishers since the late '70s and I still own everything from "Captain Clyde" and "Abraxas" to "St. Swithin’s Day," "The New Adventures of Hitler" and "Bible John" all the way up to the more recent stuff with Liquid. I've always put out my own books in tandem with the DC Universe trademark stuff I like to do, like "JLA" or "Batman," so in some ways this is business as usual for me. But there's definitely some kind of centrifugal movement away from the mainstream toward new and more personal, expressive, creator-owned stuff, and I think it's partly because cinema has appropriated so much of the stuff we’ve been doing in comics for the last thirty years. Movie superheroes finally look better than their comic book counterparts. And creative people are more informed and want to own their ideas, and to be able to protect them or profit from them. The audience has developed a fresh appetite for new characters and stories which is driving a shift toward those kinds of stories again. Writers and artists are experimenting again. The future’s back and you could feel the floodgates opening at Image this year, in particular. It seems like everybody’s got something new coming out.
So yeah I'm happy to join the bandwagon if only it’s to remind people I’ve been riding it for decades!
"Happy!" Seemed right for Image. Karen [Berger of Vertigo] doesn't like stuff that puts children under threat and this book definitely does that. Robert [Kirkman] and Eric [Stephenson] at Image have been great and I've agreed to do some more stuff with them. I have a few ideas brewing after "HAPPY!" It's good to feel a little afraid – to try a different company and a different way of working and get familiar with different strategies of publishing. I have more Vertigo stuff planned too so I definitely feel the pull more strongly toward the creator-owned end of the spectrum and that seems to be the general consensus. I just read Ed Brubaker talking about his farewell to trademark superheroes and moving on to concentrate on developing his own stuff. So something's going on. Migratory patterns are changing. The superhero monthlies can always use new blood anyway.
MorrisonCon is coming in a few months time. Ron Richards and James Sime brought this idea to you, but as I understand it, you dove right in. What does that opportunity to have an entire weekend of discussion and art provide to you that you haven't had before?
The idea for MorrisonCon came from James Sime and his partner Kirsten Baldock and from Ron Richards. They had this idea of doing something less like a comic convention and more of an event like a music festival where you paid to hang around backstage with the acts and everyone stayed in the same hotel in Vegas.
I saw the opportunity to stage one of those weird, life-changing events where the boss takes you out and you go hunt each other in the woods. [Laughs]. I saw the potential for a kind of Happening, as they used to say. A chance to rewire heads and get some creative sparks flying.
They asked if I’d lend my name to it and I did but I should say - if only to answer critics who’ve accused me of profiteering - that I don’t make a single cent out of this. I’m doing it for free because it seems like a brilliant idea. I wish it wasn't called MorrisonCon though because Robert Kirkman will be there, and he's like 100 times bigger than me! [Laughs] Is it too late to call it KirkmanCon and shift some more tickets? Who doesn’t want to sit around the Hard Rock Hotel in Las Vegas talking to the creator of "The Walking Dead" about why we love the dearly departed?
MorrisonCon lands in Las Vegas on September 28.
We're going to have high-level anything-goes panel discussions
and we're asking all the writers and artists to do something a bit
different like perform eerie candle-lit readings or draw you hung-over
at breakfast. You know, Darick Robertson will chase the blues away with
guitar and vocals. I’m doing a new spoken word piece channeling Mr. Mojo
Risin’, the Egyptian Gods and Howard Hughes with new music by Gerard
Way. Stuff like that. We have surprise guests from film, TV and the
alternative arts. Some of the most fertile minds in and on the fringes
of the comics business will be hanging around talking about where our
art form stands, and what happens next, now that we’ve conquered the
world. Multimedia opens up whole new ways of creating comics that could
involve, music and performance and art, so we’re bringing comics people
together with film-makers, photographers, musicians, models, directors
and visionaries to talk mad talk and light up the Strip.
One of the interesting things about the change in comics culture over the past ten years is that you no longer have to be centrally located in New York or London or what have you. Now you can exist wherever and collaborate via e-mail. Do you feel like there's a qualitative difference to getting together in the same physical space as a collaborator?
Oh yeah! I haven’t written an e-mail since 2005, and I can’t find the time or inclination to maintain a web presence or keep my Twitter account fed with trivia. I hardly ever talk to my collaborators aside from personal notes in the scripts, so it’s always great to catch up with them in person.
I wish I could be more like Warren Ellis, and have a commanding internet presence but I can never think of anything to say online. I waste days perfecting a few lines of an e-mail or tweet It’s pointless. For me nothing is faster, sexier and more rewarding than communicating with people in person. God knows, it’s a shocking idea, but we've been doing it for thousands of years! I kind of like all the gestures and hesitations and flashing eyes that bring a conversation to life. I've never met Jonathan Hickman, and I‘ll never write him an e-mail, for instance, but meeting him in Vegas to talk about science and futurism in comics and whatever – that's very exciting.
And everybody, including the people who've bought tickets, will all be hanging out in the same space and talking about this stuff that excites us all. Friendships will be made. Lives will be changed. It’s a unique one-off event and if you miss it you miss it forever.
The mainstream press has kind of presented this as an alternative to Comic-Con, which I wonder if that misses the point a bit.
It's nice of them to have us in the same sentence, but Comic-Con is a mega-event and we’re what’s known as "boutique" – in fact we‘re more like a drawer in a small dressing table at the back of the boutique. [Laughs] This is intimate in a way Comic-Con could never be. MorrisonCon an alternative in the sense that it’s pretty much the opposite of Comic-Con. We're not even trying to operate in that space, but it was nice of them to compare us.
Grant Morrison: It was absolutely unexpected. I’ve always been treated as a fairly marginal figure round our way, and it was nice to get a little recognition, but I have no idea who put me up for the honor. You have to go through a strict and rigorous check from Buckingham Palace and the government. It was funny to think that all these people had to read some of my wilder stuff in order to pass me for the award. [Laughs] But I was quite touched that I’d been acknowledged at all.
Not yet. I'll be doing that in the next couple of months, I guess. They do the recipients in batches. The weird thing is that my dad got one of these things back in 1998 for a completely different reason – for his community work. So I've kind of done this before with him. I've been to the Palace before, but I've never been up close with any of the royals. I'm looking forward to seeing what it's all about.
Do you feel more chivalrous? This is supposed to be an honor of chivalry, right?
No, it actually made me feel more evil, I think. [Laughter] I mean, when a howling witch hunt turns up on cue to accuse you of "joining the Establishment" as if you’d signed up for the Secret Society of Super-Villains, what else can you do but cackle and rub your hands together?
I’d love to tell you I’m now qualified to join the Round Table and declare war on Narnia but the truth is, absolutely nothing has changed.
This award has kind of brought around the latest round of attention for you in the mainstream media, the last of which came for Supergods which is just out in paperback. I got the feeling that going out and talking so much with the readership was as much of a process for you as writing the book was. Did you learn anything about the form after all that discussion?
Once you finish these things, it really is like squatting out a bizarre, book-shaped child you've been labored over. [Laughs] Honestly, once I'd wrapped Supergods, I felt like I'd said everything I needed to say about that stuff. Besides wrapping up "Batman Incorporated" and my Superman work right now and "Multiversity" kind of getting done, it felt like a farewell. I love the book, and the paperback edition is even better, with new material and corrections but the ideas were ones I had in my head for a long time and I've kind of moved on to thinking about different areas of interest.
I think a lot of people are surprised that you've remained dedicated to writing superhero comics for this long. Did you always foresee a waning of that work, or did it sneak up on you that "I'm not sure if I need to write anymore superhero stories"?
The idea was always that I'd keep doing it as long as it gave me a lot of pleasure and allowed me to express myself . And it still does, but I can see the end coming closer. I'm coming to the end of long runs and stories I've had planned in my notebooks for years and the stuff I’m developing now is quite different.
The "Action Comics" run concludes with issue #16, "Batman Incorporated" wraps up my take with issue #12, and after that I don’t have any plans for monthly superhero books for a while. "Multiversity" is eight issues and I’m 30-odd pages into a Wonder Woman project but those are finite stories.
I'm not saying that I'll never write superheroes again. It's just that my relationship to them has changed especially after finishing the book and I’m not sure if I want to maintain the same kind of relentless level of production.
Do you think that's come from the process, or has something happened with the proliferation of superheroes in the wider culture that's impacted how you view them?
I think I've kind of worked through everything I’ve ever felt about
these characters. It was a bit like going to the psychiatrist and lying
on the couch for just long enough to realize "What was I thinking?" [Laughs]
I don't know. I know there are plenty of different ways to use them,
but right now I feel like I'm coming to the end of a long intensive
period where I was talking about certain ideas using the language of
superheroes, if that makes any sense. I want to try out some new ideas
and explore the opportunities that keep coming up to write novels and
screenplays.I've always wanted to try a crime story. I wanted to do my take on that type of book – the hard-boiled anti-hero and the mafia villains and all that but I never had a strong enough story hook. I was looking for a way to put my own stamp on the genre and it finally clicked with "HAPPY!"
I was ambushed by this track by The Hollies, the '60s band, and it was like the most saccharine, sweetie pie music you can imagine – "Pegasus The Flying Horse." I like quite a few songs from the band’s psychedelic mid-period but this is just a hideous piece of twee. It even has this neighing sound as the last few bars play out! [Laughter] It's so sugary and weird and although it‘s probably about LSD, the lyrics of the middle 8 section bring a weird "pervy uncle" presence to the whole sordid affair. You can look it up on YouTube if you want because I just can't do it justice.
But I was listening to this music and thought, "Imagine the most cynical, fucked up man in the world having to deal with this - with a sickeningly upbeat little cartoon character - each trapped with the other." What would it be like if the Bad Lieutenant teamed up with Pegasus the Flying Horse? By this time, I knew the Happy the Horse would be tiny. And it struck me that I could throw “Christmas story” in with this as well. I've always wanted to have a go at a classic Christmas story like "It's A Wonderful Life" or “A Christmas Carol“ but with characters drawn from the shock headlines of the 21st Century. So this idea seemed to lend itself to that and it gave me a chance to do the kind of wider, symbolic pop cult critique that I like. It just grew from there. Adam Mortimer who’s directing "Sinatoro" is good friends with Darick Robertson and put us in touch. I've met Darick in the past, but we’ve never worked together. I found out that he was free, he loved the idea, we pitched it to Image and now we’re half way through a four-issue series which starts in September. It all came very naturally out of this weird combination of ideas.
Have you ever been to Disneyland and experienced "It's A Small World"?
I've never actually been to Disneyland and probably never will. My parents wanted to take me there when I was younger, but we had no money. So I was cruelly cheated! [Laughs] It just wouldn’t be the same now.
You description of the Hollies song reminds me of how that ride's music repeats over and over again and kind of drills its way into your brain. When you mash those kinds of things up against "heartwarming" stories like "It's A Wonderful Life" it can be tough to separate a positive ideal from an ingratiating experience. Do you see any aesthetic pleasure in something so saccharine?
Well, what excited me was the notion of not necessarily the song...but the story possibilities it suggested. In that sense, there’s definitely aesthetic pleasure in something saccharine but for me the pleasure only comes when you slam that rinky-dink magic kingdom stuff into its opposite and watch it all kick off, particle accelerator style. After doing all these noble super characters for so long "HAPPY!" is like the chains coming off the cellar. It’s bile and loathing, and relentless foul-mouthed scatological dialogue on every page – and Happy the Horse.
EXCLUSIVE: Art from "Happy!" #1 by Darick Robertson
I loved the idea of dragging this bright creature into a very
unpleasant world – a creature who is absolutely cheerful and will not
give in. To the point of irritation. He's this indefatigable spark of
positivity, and I'm pitting him against the absolute darkness and
damnation of the world of the story. The tone and setting of the book is
closer to what I was doing back with "The Filth" than anything I’ve
been doing on "Batman." It's a really super noir comic, though I don't
want to explain what Happy is or what he looks like. You'll see that
when the book comes out. But circumstances bring him into this hitman’s
life, and he says, "I need your help to save a kid who's in trouble."
Cue pedo-Santa. Three days to Christmas with a new twist every day. I
poured everything I know about making comics into this and I‘m really
pleased with it. It’s a crude, sensationalistic, trashy piece of work
but it runs like a death machine.What's it been like to work with Darick? I get the feeling that he's done so much long form work on creator-owned comics, but he's often overshadowed because he's working with Warren Ellis or Garth Ennis or whomever. What does he bring of his own to make this series uniquely what it is?
That's exactly it. Once I started to see the series' pages come in and saw how he'd designed the Happy the Horse character...I mean, it's like a special effect what he's done with this little...thing. It's quite amazing. And he’s set against this sleazy world of New York in the bleak midwinter, and there’s snow falling and filthy slush in the gutters, and everyone's fucked up, and everyone else is a bastard. Darick really captures the grime and the violence, which I knew he could do, having seen the stuff he did with Garth Ennis and Warren Ellis but I had no idea how brilliantly he’d render Happy. What I like most about the work is that it’s all very personal. It’s not airbrushed and light boxed. It's old school art with big Indian ink shadows and zip-a-tones. It's really very hand-drawn looking, and that totally suits the visceral nature of the action.
You are one of a number of guys who after years of working for DC and Marvel are packing up and moving over to do a project at Image. Of course, you were just talking about a bit of a personal sea change for what you want to do, but there does seem to be a lot of guys flocking to that publisher right now. Do you feel a part of that wave of creator-owned sentiment?
The majority of my creator-owned stuff is published at Vertigo but I’ve been putting out creator-owned stuff through all kinds of publishers since the late '70s and I still own everything from "Captain Clyde" and "Abraxas" to "St. Swithin’s Day," "The New Adventures of Hitler" and "Bible John" all the way up to the more recent stuff with Liquid. I've always put out my own books in tandem with the DC Universe trademark stuff I like to do, like "JLA" or "Batman," so in some ways this is business as usual for me. But there's definitely some kind of centrifugal movement away from the mainstream toward new and more personal, expressive, creator-owned stuff, and I think it's partly because cinema has appropriated so much of the stuff we’ve been doing in comics for the last thirty years. Movie superheroes finally look better than their comic book counterparts. And creative people are more informed and want to own their ideas, and to be able to protect them or profit from them. The audience has developed a fresh appetite for new characters and stories which is driving a shift toward those kinds of stories again. Writers and artists are experimenting again. The future’s back and you could feel the floodgates opening at Image this year, in particular. It seems like everybody’s got something new coming out.
So yeah I'm happy to join the bandwagon if only it’s to remind people I’ve been riding it for decades!
"Happy!" Seemed right for Image. Karen [Berger of Vertigo] doesn't like stuff that puts children under threat and this book definitely does that. Robert [Kirkman] and Eric [Stephenson] at Image have been great and I've agreed to do some more stuff with them. I have a few ideas brewing after "HAPPY!" It's good to feel a little afraid – to try a different company and a different way of working and get familiar with different strategies of publishing. I have more Vertigo stuff planned too so I definitely feel the pull more strongly toward the creator-owned end of the spectrum and that seems to be the general consensus. I just read Ed Brubaker talking about his farewell to trademark superheroes and moving on to concentrate on developing his own stuff. So something's going on. Migratory patterns are changing. The superhero monthlies can always use new blood anyway.
MorrisonCon is coming in a few months time. Ron Richards and James Sime brought this idea to you, but as I understand it, you dove right in. What does that opportunity to have an entire weekend of discussion and art provide to you that you haven't had before?
The idea for MorrisonCon came from James Sime and his partner Kirsten Baldock and from Ron Richards. They had this idea of doing something less like a comic convention and more of an event like a music festival where you paid to hang around backstage with the acts and everyone stayed in the same hotel in Vegas.
I saw the opportunity to stage one of those weird, life-changing events where the boss takes you out and you go hunt each other in the woods. [Laughs]. I saw the potential for a kind of Happening, as they used to say. A chance to rewire heads and get some creative sparks flying.
They asked if I’d lend my name to it and I did but I should say - if only to answer critics who’ve accused me of profiteering - that I don’t make a single cent out of this. I’m doing it for free because it seems like a brilliant idea. I wish it wasn't called MorrisonCon though because Robert Kirkman will be there, and he's like 100 times bigger than me! [Laughs] Is it too late to call it KirkmanCon and shift some more tickets? Who doesn’t want to sit around the Hard Rock Hotel in Las Vegas talking to the creator of "The Walking Dead" about why we love the dearly departed?
MorrisonCon lands in Las Vegas on September 28.
We're going to have high-level anything-goes panel discussions
and we're asking all the writers and artists to do something a bit
different like perform eerie candle-lit readings or draw you hung-over
at breakfast. You know, Darick Robertson will chase the blues away with
guitar and vocals. I’m doing a new spoken word piece channeling Mr. Mojo
Risin’, the Egyptian Gods and Howard Hughes with new music by Gerard
Way. Stuff like that. We have surprise guests from film, TV and the
alternative arts. Some of the most fertile minds in and on the fringes
of the comics business will be hanging around talking about where our
art form stands, and what happens next, now that we’ve conquered the
world. Multimedia opens up whole new ways of creating comics that could
involve, music and performance and art, so we’re bringing comics people
together with film-makers, photographers, musicians, models, directors
and visionaries to talk mad talk and light up the Strip.One of the interesting things about the change in comics culture over the past ten years is that you no longer have to be centrally located in New York or London or what have you. Now you can exist wherever and collaborate via e-mail. Do you feel like there's a qualitative difference to getting together in the same physical space as a collaborator?
Oh yeah! I haven’t written an e-mail since 2005, and I can’t find the time or inclination to maintain a web presence or keep my Twitter account fed with trivia. I hardly ever talk to my collaborators aside from personal notes in the scripts, so it’s always great to catch up with them in person.
I wish I could be more like Warren Ellis, and have a commanding internet presence but I can never think of anything to say online. I waste days perfecting a few lines of an e-mail or tweet It’s pointless. For me nothing is faster, sexier and more rewarding than communicating with people in person. God knows, it’s a shocking idea, but we've been doing it for thousands of years! I kind of like all the gestures and hesitations and flashing eyes that bring a conversation to life. I've never met Jonathan Hickman, and I‘ll never write him an e-mail, for instance, but meeting him in Vegas to talk about science and futurism in comics and whatever – that's very exciting.
And everybody, including the people who've bought tickets, will all be hanging out in the same space and talking about this stuff that excites us all. Friendships will be made. Lives will be changed. It’s a unique one-off event and if you miss it you miss it forever.
The mainstream press has kind of presented this as an alternative to Comic-Con, which I wonder if that misses the point a bit.
It's nice of them to have us in the same sentence, but Comic-Con is a mega-event and we’re what’s known as "boutique" – in fact we‘re more like a drawer in a small dressing table at the back of the boutique. [Laughs] This is intimate in a way Comic-Con could never be. MorrisonCon an alternative in the sense that it’s pretty much the opposite of Comic-Con. We're not even trying to operate in that space, but it was nice of them to compare us.
Monday, June 18, 2012
Thursday, May 3, 2012
Thursday, April 12, 2012
Saturday, December 10, 2011
Thursday, October 20, 2011
Wednesday, September 28, 2011
The Nightly News - Infographics
by Jonathan Hickman ©2007 Pronea & Image Comics
The infographics above came from the comic. The data they contain is accurate, for the most part--though some of the conclusions are obviously opinion and/or part of the story.
The TV graphic is one I made.
Thursday, September 1, 2011
Guy Fawkes = Time Warner
It seems every time an Anonymous protester buys and wears the Guy Fawkes mask made famous by the rogue anarchist in the film V for Vendetta, massive corporate conglomerate Time-Warner - which owns the rights to the image - makes a buck or so. Oops.
Monday, August 29, 2011
Morrissey as superhero: Smiths songs are transformed into comics
US publisher hopes to create a series of comic-book stories based on songs by Morrissey and Johnny Marr
The Smiths' songs as comics – in pictures
Sean Michaels
guardian.co.uk,
Unite and Take Over re-imagines Smiths songs as comic strips. Photograph: Jason Pedersen
What if the Smiths' songs were comics? An American publisher is taking that idea to the printing-press, organising a new anthology that transforms songs such as Girlfriend in a Coma and How Soon Is Now? into comic-book stories. Each tune will unspool as a four-to-eight-page comic strip, with the whole thing published in November.
Unite and Take Over: Comic Stories Inspired by the Smiths is the brainchild of Shawn Demumbrum, a Phoenix, Arizona comics geek who clearly likes his Batman with a dash of melancholy. Instead of imagining Morrissey and Johnny Marr as vinyl-wielding superheroes who seek out happiness and, er, destroy it, the Smiths' influence on Unite and Take Over is subtle. "What's the story that plays in your head when you listen to your favourite Smiths songs?" he explains in a promotional video. The book's authors use these songs as "an inspiration, a jumping-off point, a theme or a mood".
In an email to the Guardian, he added: "As a teen in the 80s, one of my favourite soundtracks was the Pretty in Pink soundtrack. While training for cross country, I played the cassette over and over on my Walkman as I ran. There was always something about the Smiths' Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want. It tapped into my teenage psyche, a combination of loneliness and yet hopeful optimism, that only Morrissey's vocals seem to capture."
Demumbrum is funding the project on the crowdsourcing website Kickstarter, hoping to raise $3,000 (£1,841) toward printing costs and ISBN codes, as well as to license song lyrics from the Smiths themselves. He has already gathered 13 writer/artist teams, each of whom will take on a different Smiths classic. Although the anthology lacks any major names, most of the contributors are indie comics veterans, including Christian Vilaire, Henry Barajas, Jeff Pina and Shelby Robertson. The finished product, which will run to at least 72 illustrated pages, is due out at the upcoming Tucson Comic-Con.
Friday, May 20, 2011
Comic Books as a Path to Prison Reform: An Interview With Activist Lois Ahrens
"Comic books place an individual's experience in a political context by describing how the prison system is built on racism, sexism, and economic inequality," Ahrens says.
By , Angola 3 News
Posted on May 20, 2011
Lois Ahrens is the Founder/Director of The Real Cost of Prisons Project (RCPP) and has been an activist/organizer for more than 40 years. First started in 2001, RCPP brings together justice activists, artists, justice policy researchers and people directly experiencing the impact of mass incarceration to work together to end the U.S. prison nation. RCPP created workshops, a website that includes sections of writing and ‘comix’ by prisoners, a daily news blog focused on mass incarceration and three comic books that were first created in 2005: Prisoners Town: Paying the Price, by artist Kevin Pyle and writer Craig Gilmore; Prisoners of the War on Drugs, by artist Sabrina Jones and writers Ellen Miller-Mack and Lois Ahrens; and Prisoners of a Hard Life: Women and Their Children by artist Susan Willmarth and writers Ellen Miller-Mack and Lois Ahrens.
Hundreds of organizations around the country use the comix in workshops, outreach and organizing. 135,000 have been printed, while over 115,000 have been sent, free of charge, to organizations and thousands of people held in prisons and jails. Due to lack of funding, Prison Town is now out of print and Prisoners of A Hard Life will soon be as well. Prisoners of the War on Drugs is still available. Print-ready versions of all three are available to view and download here.
In 2008, the three comix were published in an anthology, edited by Ahrens, entitled The Real Cost of Prisons Comix, (PM Press, 2008). Through the RCPP, Ahrens has been fortunate to have built an extensive correspondence with prisoners, which has grown into working relationships and friendships. In Massachusetts where she lives, Ahrens is involved in working to stop the state from charging $5/day jail fees to convicted prisoners and those held "pretrial." She is also working to stop new "3 Strikes" legislation from being passed.
By , Angola 3 News
Posted on May 20, 2011
Lois Ahrens is the Founder/Director of The Real Cost of Prisons Project (RCPP) and has been an activist/organizer for more than 40 years. First started in 2001, RCPP brings together justice activists, artists, justice policy researchers and people directly experiencing the impact of mass incarceration to work together to end the U.S. prison nation. RCPP created workshops, a website that includes sections of writing and ‘comix’ by prisoners, a daily news blog focused on mass incarceration and three comic books that were first created in 2005: Prisoners Town: Paying the Price, by artist Kevin Pyle and writer Craig Gilmore; Prisoners of the War on Drugs, by artist Sabrina Jones and writers Ellen Miller-Mack and Lois Ahrens; and Prisoners of a Hard Life: Women and Their Children by artist Susan Willmarth and writers Ellen Miller-Mack and Lois Ahrens.
Hundreds of organizations around the country use the comix in workshops, outreach and organizing. 135,000 have been printed, while over 115,000 have been sent, free of charge, to organizations and thousands of people held in prisons and jails. Due to lack of funding, Prison Town is now out of print and Prisoners of A Hard Life will soon be as well. Prisoners of the War on Drugs is still available. Print-ready versions of all three are available to view and download here.
In 2008, the three comix were published in an anthology, edited by Ahrens, entitled The Real Cost of Prisons Comix, (PM Press, 2008). Through the RCPP, Ahrens has been fortunate to have built an extensive correspondence with prisoners, which has grown into working relationships and friendships. In Massachusetts where she lives, Ahrens is involved in working to stop the state from charging $5/day jail fees to convicted prisoners and those held "pretrial." She is also working to stop new "3 Strikes" legislation from being passed.
Angola 3 News: Who is your target audience and what is the message that you are communicating with the comix?
Lois Ahrens: The comic books were created to communicate complex ideas in language that could be easily understood despite the fact that they are filled with information, research, analysis and a glossary. We wanted them to look and feel like comic books since people are not intimidated by comic books.
Initially, my goal was to create useful materials for organizers working to challenge and change punitive and destructive drug policies, activists opposing the building of new prisons and jails, as well as educators, and health workers. After publishing the comic books, we realized that prisoners were extremely interested. Comic books have been sent to prisoners every day since April 2005, with many requesting that comics be sent to family members and other prisoners.
The comic books place an individual’s experience in a political context by describing how the prison system is built on racism, sexism, and economic inequality. They include alternatives to the current reality so that readers can strategize and act to make change no matter where they are. The goal of the comic books is to politicize.
A3N: Have you ever had problems from prison authorities when sending comic books to prisoners?
LA: Yes. I think of this as the “tyranny of the mail room.” Often an individual working in a mail room sends the comic books back. Generally, I have found county jails are the worst in turning back comic books. For prisoners who are in “administrative segregation” there are often rules against receiving materials. Because the Real Cost of Prisons is the publisher of the comic books, usually, after a phone call, or an appeal letter, comic books do get in. Since comic books have been sent to prisoners in every state, I always cite many examples of other prisons within that system where they have been accepted. I appeal every refusal.
Interestingly, women’s prisons are more apt to return comic books; however, once I write and say that a prison for men in that state has accepted them, they do get in.
A3N: In your 2008 book The Real Cost of Prisons Comix you wrote that “every year from 1947 through the beginning of the 1970s, approximately 200,000 people were incarcerated in the US. Today, there are more than 2.3 million men and women incarcerated [now 2.4 million], with more than 5 million more on parole and probation.” Subsequently, the US has become the world’s #1 jailer. According to the International Center for Prison Studies at King's College London, only China, with 1,620,000 prisoners, and the Russian Federation, with 819,200 prisoners, have a total prison population that is remotely close to the US.
Furthermore, with 751 out of 100,000 people, and one out of every 100 adults in prison or jail, the US also has the highest incarceration rate in the world. The Russian Federation is second with 577 per 100,000 and China is 116th with 120 per 100,000. How do you explain this astonishing level of mass imprisonment in the US during the last 40 years? What are the forces behind this and why have they employed this particular strategy?
LA: In the workshops we first developed, in our trainings, and in the comic books, we wanted to create a bigger picture about how we came to this place. To do this, I think we need to understand how Ronald Reagan and the neo-liberal agenda came to power in 1980 by using covert and overt racist messages fabricating the myth of the welfare queen, capitalizing on fears of affirmative action, tearing away at the gains made in civil rights movement---specifically voting rights—while fostering alarm about rampant crime.
The racist sub-text of the neo-liberal political agenda succeeded in creating acceptance of mass incarceration while simultaneously creating the laws and industries to police, prosecute, cage and control millions of people—almost all poor people and people of color.
Neo-liberal policies have been in place for more than thirty years. As a result many people are not aware that our current political and economic situation is not the result of a natural course of events, but rather, of a systemically created ideology that has pervaded every aspect of our daily lives. Deregulation and globalization have caused: the loss of U.S. manufacturing by outsourcing; corporate agriculture and the disappearance of the family farm; reduction of protections for workers; huge decreases in number of unionized workers; privatization of hospitals, water, education, prisons, and the military; drastic cuts in public spending for welfare, public schools, public transportation, housing, and job training. These policies have created huge disparities in wealth.
Democrats and Republicans capitalized on this “perfect storm”. They ran and won on “tough on crime” platforms and passed legislation that has resulted in one in 31 people now under the thumb of the criminal justice system.
A3N: The corporate media’s support for the prison system has ranged from stoking public fears by over-reporting crime, to portraying prisoners as pampered and over-privileged. The comic books, therefore, provide an important counter-narrative. A major focus of the comic books has been the so-called “war on drugs.” Why do you feel that this issue is so important?
LA: Of the more than 2.4 million people imprisoned, more than one million are African Americans. Almost 5 million men and women are on probation and parole, a disproportionate number due to the “war on drugs.” (According to a Pew Report in March 2009, “One in 11 African-Americans are under correctional control, one in 27 Latinos, and one in 45 white people are in prison, jail, or under correctional supervision.”)
The war on drugs includes aggressive policing, centralized data bases for people stopped and frisked for no cause, surveillance cameras in streets and buildings, police or security in schools, and SWAT teams for communities as small as 25,000, and long and punitive mandatory sentences.
From its inception, African-Americans and their communities were the primary target of the war on drugs. In terms of drug use: African Americans constitute 13% of the nation’s monthly drug users, 37% of drug possession arrests, 56% of drug possession convictions, and 74% of those sentenced to prison for drug possession.
There are mandatory sentences for drug convictions and disproportionate sentencing for crack vs. powder cocaine. After years of organizing against this, the sentencing disparity between crack and powder cocaine has changed from 100 to 1 to 18 to 1, with no retroactivity for those already convicted under the old law. 80% of people sentenced to crack cocaine charges are African American.
A3N: What have been the consequences of this mass incarceration, fueled by the war on drugs?
LA: The consequences for individuals, families and communities are huge, cumulative, and long-lasting. According to Dina Rose and Todd Clear, in African American communities where 15 to 20% of adults are incarcerated community stability is undermined, resulting in more crime instead of less crime, especially when aggressive policing is added. In addition to less safety, what are the effects of removing the earning and spending power of so many who are incarcerated? What are the long term costs of the disruption of the family as both an economic and emotional unit?
There are other costs and consequences of the punitive legislation especially directed at people with felony drug convictions---read African Americans---that prevent them from creating a sustainable life once they leave prison. These include, for some, a ban on higher education and vocational training, as well as a ban on receiving Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) if convicted of possessing or selling drugs, although some states have opted out. Legislation in 1996 and 1998 also prevented people with felony drug convictions and their families from federally subsidized housing, serving to increase homelessness and make family reunification much more difficult—for women especially. For women who are incarcerated, there is always the possibility of losing custody of their children.
A3N: How has the corporate media presented the war on drugs? Strategically speaking, how do you think activists can best confront this and work to publicly discredit the war on drugs?
LA: The media has portrayed the war on drugs as a fantasy of good vs. evil. There is little or no acknowledgement of the truth about who is targeted and why, of the system’s cruelty and destructiveness, nor of its lasting consequences to people’s lives, the evisceration of communities, and the bankrupting of governments. Only now, with huge state budget deficits, have some states begun to look at what 40 years of these policies have created; not because they think they are unconscionable, but because they are no longer financial sustainable. If they could find a way to continue to finance the bloated prisons and jails, I don’t think they would be looking for alternatives.
Despite this, I do think there is a small opening now to look at the catastrophic “war on drugs.” Michelle Alexander, in her book The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Color Blindness, details how in many ways, the war on drugs has created a more potent, strangulating and oppressive system than the old Jim Crow.
I agree with her and think this framework can re-energize people who took part in the Civil Rights and Black Empowerment movements of the 1960’s and millions who did not. I believe that what is important about her book is that she articulates the convergence of economic, legal, legislative, governmental policies and political forces which led to the mass incarceration of African Americans.
To overturn these policies and the beliefs on which they were built, we must understand the complexities of why and how they have been put in place. Then we can build the new and strong movement we need now.
A3N: Alongside the printed comic books, how do you use the RCPP?
LA: Early on, we developed a website and a little after that a news blog. Together, every day they receive a minimum of 2000 unique visitors. The website is filled with new research, links to hundreds of organizations, and the comic books. A few years ago I began adding political writing and comix by prisoners. This is now a big part of the website. People inside and outside the country are now using the comix and essays in other publications, which is how I had hoped it would work.
As the website has developed, so has a list-serve that keeps me connected to hundreds of organizers, as well as the media and family members of prisoners.
A3N: Of the many news stories featured on the website in the last couple years, could you tell us about a few important stories that you think were the most under-reported and/or misreported by the corporate media?
LA: There are thousands of stories because the true story about prisons is almost completely missing from not only the corporate media, but the left media as well.
First, there is almost no coverage at all about the growth of solitary confinement in the U.S. The best website for this is Solitary Watch and the RCPP website and blog publishes writing and comix from prisoners in solitary.
Second, there are a number of stories involving prisoners organizing, notably the Georgia Prisoners strike and the hunger strike in Lucasville, Ohio. There are a number of stories posted on the RCPP blog. The Human Rights Coalition (PA) is working to bridge the divide between outside and inside organizing (see The Movement).
Third includes "How prisons and jails are becoming debtors prisons," “Criminal Justice Debt: A Barrier to Reentry” by the Brennan Center, and “In For a Penny: The Rise of America's New Debtors' Prisons” by the ACLU .
Finally, the excellent work by The National Advocates for Pregnant Women, whose groundbreaking work brings together issues of women, reproductive rights, criminal justice, and racism.
A3N: Besides the website, how else has the RCPP evolved since the first comic book was published?
LA: The RCPP has evolved greatly since its beginning in 2000. When I started, I barely knew anyone in prison. That began to change once we started conducting our workshops and created a Train the Trainers program which involved many people who had been incarcerated.
Then, the comic books started flying out the door and the daily stacks of letters began arriving. Reading thousands of letters and beginning long-lasting correspondence-relationships with many prisoners, my focus shifted to their efforts to connect and remain a part of the world outside of prison. I saw how the longer someone’s sentence is, the more difficult it becomes to maintain connections—especially after a loved one has passed away.
Because of my daily connections with prisoners, I have become much more involved in conditions of confinement, sentences of life without the possibility of parole, the lengthening of sentences, the parole process or lack of it, and the non-use of compassionate release—even in states where it is policy.
I am constantly aware of the daily cruelties and indignities that men and women endure at the hands of others. I witness how so many people (against circumstances designed to dehumanize and crush their body and mind) manage to overcome and create lives of meaning to themselves and others.
A3N: What do you focus most of your energy on these days?
LA: In addition to sending out comic books, answering mail, and updating the website, I spend some part of everyday attempting to track down research, contacts, and other information for a large number of prisoners who are writers, researchers and activists/organizers.
In Massachusetts, where I am located, I have led an effort to stop the jails from charging fees to prisoners who are convicted and “pre-sentenced.” We are now waiting for a report that will hopefully recommend against these outrageous fees. I am engaged in various efforts to stop “three strikes” legislation from being law in MA. I regularly write and speak to classes and organizations about what is going on all around them, if they will allow themselves to look.
A3N: In your opinion, what are the best forms of practical action that those of us living outside the prison walls can do to help to improve present conditions for those incarcerated, and to challenge the broader criminal “justice” system, with abolition as the long-term goal?
LA: As abolitionists we must find smaller and larger steps along the way to stay engaged and connected to activists inside and out. There’s a lot of work to do:
--Connect to prisoners via books through bars projects and pen pal programs.
--Create true community-based alternatives programs that are not affiliated with sheriff’s departments and other law enforcement, for people with non-violent convictions to stay at home, connected to family and communities, and not go to jail.
--Create bail reform programs so that jails are not debtors prisons- examples include unsecured appearance bonds, setting lower amounts of bail and lowering bail based on the circumstances of someone’s life. For example, do they have children they are taking care of? Do they have a job that will be jeopardized? Many people plead guilty and then end up jail because they know they can’t make bail.
--Create affirmative action campaigns for people with criminal records, based on models of other affirmative action categories, to begin a conversation with employers about the need for second chances. Expand the campaign to housing fairness.
--Talk about the growth of solitary confinement in the U.S. People will be disbelieving but Solitary Watch is a great resource for information and activism.
--Work to expand parole, rather than restricting it! Attend parole hearings and write letters in behalf of people seeking parole
--Communicate with your governor to reinstate commutation. Most governors no longer commute sentences, although this used to be standard practice. Actively support people seeing commutation through letter writing campaigns and public events.
--Work to end the unnecessary and costly systems designed to send parolees back to prison based on minor violations. Strategically speaking, right now with state budget deficits, is a good time to focus attention on this.
--Challenge the drug laws that criminalize addiction and work with “harm reductionists” to provide needle exchange, safe injection sites, community education.
--Decriminalize sex work by joining forces with organizations of sex workers and make public the harassment from the police suffered by sex workers.
--Work with organizations such as Families Against Mandatory Minimums nationally and in your state to end mandatory minimum drug sentences.
--Begin a conversation with state legislators on the extreme length of sentences, not only for people convicted of non-violent offenses, but for those convicted of violent offenses as well. The new report by the Justice Policy Institute, "Finding Direction: Expanding Criminal Justice Options by Considering Policies of Other Nations,” provides models of what other countries are doing.
--Model the successful organizing strategies and legislation in NY State to end the shackling of women in labor and childbirth.
--Join with family groups and others organizing to end “life without the possibility of parole.” Introduce parole review for everyone beginning at 15 years.
--Make compassionate release real for states where it is already a law. Work with faith-based groups and involve faith-based communities in organizing for compassionate release.
--Work with Families to Amend California's Three Strikes (FACTS) and other organizations to end three strikes and habitual offender sentences.
--Join forces with community-based mental health and addiction treatment centers to advocate for money needed for treatment in communities, rather than jails and prisons filled with people suffering from untreated mental illness and no drug treatment. Drug addiction is a mental illness.
--Question the propaganda about who is criminal and the unchanging nature of people who have committed crimes and how they are portrayed in the media.
--Finally, each of us must fight racism wherever we find it. Fighting racism is a blow to mass incarceration.
A3N: How can our readers support your work?
LA: Your readers can support the work of the RCPP by becoming actively engaged in any areas I suggest in the previous answer. People need to know that they can spend a few hours a week and it can have political meaning.
They can financially support effective grassroots organizations that receive no funding or little funding, including of course, the Real Cost of Prisons Project. Our total yearly budget is approximately $4,000 which provides postage, envelopes and maintaining the website. You can make a donation here.
Mostly, I believe people need to wake-up and get engaged wherever they live in whatever they find most compelling. The fact that there is so much to do is not a reason to do nothing.
Saturday, April 30, 2011
Superman threatens to renounce U.S. citizenship
By Reuters
Friday, April 29th, 2011
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Superman, citizen of the world?
The Man of Steel, in the latest issue of Action Comics which hit newsstands on Wednesday, said he intends to renounce his U.S. citizenship in a speech before the United Nations.
"I'm tired of having my actions construed as instruments of U.S. policy," Superman said in a short story in the issue, Action Comics No. 900 from the Time Warner Inc unit DC Comics.
In the comic, Superman never actually renounces his citizenship, he only talks about his plans to do that.
But conservative commentators reacted with disgust to the new storyline, given that the fictional superhero has long proclaimed he stood for "Truth, Justice and the American way."
In a blog post at The Weekly Standard, senior writer Jonathan Last questioned Superman's beliefs, now that he seems to have rejected the United States.
"Does he believe in British interventionism or Swiss neutrality?" Last wrote. "You see where I'm going with this: If Superman doesn't believe in America, then he doesn't believe in anything."
The new plot twist for Superman comes as the superhero visitor from a distant planet, who was raised by a Kansas farmer and his wife, looks to take on a more global mission for his battle against evil.
"The world's too small. Too connected," Superman said in the comic book.
Superman, who was first introduced in the 1938, has a long association with the United States. But Joe Shuster, the artist who helped create the character with writer Jerry Siegel, was born in Canada.
And critics have described Superman's life story as a metaphor for the immigrant experience, because he is an alien.
DC Comics co-publishers Jim Lee and Dan DiDio seemed to downplay their landmark superhero character's latest declaration, in a joint statement.
"In a short story in Action Comics 900, Superman announces his intention to put a global focus on his never ending battle, but he remains, as always, committed to his adopted home and his roots as a Kansas farm boy from Smallville," they said.
Friday, April 29th, 2011
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Superman, citizen of the world?
The Man of Steel, in the latest issue of Action Comics which hit newsstands on Wednesday, said he intends to renounce his U.S. citizenship in a speech before the United Nations.
"I'm tired of having my actions construed as instruments of U.S. policy," Superman said in a short story in the issue, Action Comics No. 900 from the Time Warner Inc unit DC Comics.
In the comic, Superman never actually renounces his citizenship, he only talks about his plans to do that.
But conservative commentators reacted with disgust to the new storyline, given that the fictional superhero has long proclaimed he stood for "Truth, Justice and the American way."
In a blog post at The Weekly Standard, senior writer Jonathan Last questioned Superman's beliefs, now that he seems to have rejected the United States.
"Does he believe in British interventionism or Swiss neutrality?" Last wrote. "You see where I'm going with this: If Superman doesn't believe in America, then he doesn't believe in anything."
The new plot twist for Superman comes as the superhero visitor from a distant planet, who was raised by a Kansas farmer and his wife, looks to take on a more global mission for his battle against evil.
"The world's too small. Too connected," Superman said in the comic book.
Superman, who was first introduced in the 1938, has a long association with the United States. But Joe Shuster, the artist who helped create the character with writer Jerry Siegel, was born in Canada.
And critics have described Superman's life story as a metaphor for the immigrant experience, because he is an alien.
DC Comics co-publishers Jim Lee and Dan DiDio seemed to downplay their landmark superhero character's latest declaration, in a joint statement.
"In a short story in Action Comics 900, Superman announces his intention to put a global focus on his never ending battle, but he remains, as always, committed to his adopted home and his roots as a Kansas farm boy from Smallville," they said.
Monday, March 21, 2011
The 50 best comic book covers of 2010
The third annual rundown of the best covers of the year features 50 images — oh, okay, 51 — representing the work of some 46 different artists (plus inkers, colorists and designers) from nine publishers.
Returning artists like Chris Bachalo, Dave Johnson, Sean Phillips and Yuko Shimizu are joined on this year’s list by “new” names like Kody Chamberlain, Camilla D’Errico, Amy Reeder and Drew Weing. (You can peruse the previous years’ lists here and here.)
As in the past, I’ve tried to explain the appeal of each entry; some covers get just a sentence, while others receive entire paragraphs. That doesn’t reflect the quality of the image, but merely what I have to say about it.
Note: While last year’s list included five manga covers, this year features none. I’m not sure whether that’s a byproduct of the contraction of the manga market, a sign of a shift in cover quality — among manga or Western comics — or a shortcoming on my part (if it’s the latter, I’ll own up to it; however, after several excursions in search of manga candidates, I found none that I felt qualified as among the 50 best.)
With that out of the way, I present, in alphabetical order, the 50 best covers of 2010:
Frank Quitely already created one iconic cover for this acclaimed series — the image of Superman sitting on a cloud was parodied just last year — and now he’s done it again for the oversized hardcover collection. Some have asserted the halo effect overplays the Superman-as-Christ-figure card, but I think Quitely pulls it off masterfully.
Everything about this tightly cropped image says “attitude,” perfect for the collected adventures of Jim Rugg and Brian Maruca’s blaxploitation-styled hero.
Rafael Albuquerque came up with a great design solution for the covers for the first arc of the Vertigo vampire series, which told two stories set in different eras: the Old West and 1920s Hollywood. Here both eras are represented by the outlaw Skinner Sweet and a blood-smeared door to a dressing room.
One of the industry’s underrated talents, Marcos Martin somehow balances a Silver Age flair and a very modern sensibility in his work. For this image he takes a quintessential 1960s supervillain — Mysterio’s essentially a guy in a cape with a fishbowl on his head — and transforms him into a truly menacing figure.
I love all of Chris Bachalo’s covers for the four-part “Shed” arc, but this one, which essentially puts the reader inside the Lizard’s mouth, is the strongest. I always like it when artists can convey emotion with the eyes of Spider-Man’s costume; here the wall-crawler’s panic seems real as he struggles in the grip of the reptilian tail.
Let’s ignore the controversies surrounding the “One More Day” and “One Moment in Time” storylines and just focus on the beauty of Paolo Rivera’s painting, in which Mary Jane and Spider-Man hold on to each other even as they bleed into the background.
There’s no denying the grandeur of this Alex Ross image, even as it evokes sad memories of the 1986 Challenger disaster.
The severe angle and tight crop combine to make it appear as if Giant-Man is growing before our eyes, becoming too large for the cover. Note the sidewalk cracking beneath his weight.
Mike Mignola shares much of the credit with colorist Dave Stewart for this arresting image of the Captain Ahab-esque Lord Henry Baltimore, who finds Europe infested with vampires in the wake of a plague that ended World War I.
J.H. Williams III continues some of the Art Deco elements from his Detective Comics run, providing Kate Kane with her own graphic identity.
The dramatic angle, the color palette and the title — “Death at Three Million Feet” — combine for a stunning image.
Willow Rosenberg faces a Tibetan goddess of war who’s both fantastic and terrifying in this Jo Chen image.
I have no idea where Rob Guillory drew his inspiration for this vibrant, five-color image of Poyo, the cockfighting champion, but I’m reminded of a Renaissance portrait. Only, y’know, in Technicolor. This may be my favorite cover of 2010.
Two Chew covers, both featuring chickens? Who’d have guessed. This one is a stained and worn menu for Mother Clucker’s, the former fried-chicken chain whose hilarious and demented mascot is a bespectacled hen serving her own leg. The use of Brush Script for the restaurant’s logo is a nice touch.
Sean Phillips has established himself as a master at capturing the visual style of film noir, with its silhouetted figures, low-key light and dark alleyways. Here Tracy Lawless is bathed in shadow and the surreal red glow of the rain-soaked streets of Chinatown, the perfect noir setting.
Designer Nessim Higson uses mixed media to depict a submerged New Orleans — literally, as a city map serves as the background — for a thriller set during the days following Hurricane Katrina.
Gabriel Bá’s cover for the second issue of Daytripper, his Vertigo collaboration with brother Fábio Moon, is beautifully surreal, blurring the boundaries between reality and fantasy.
There’s something beautiful and understated about the play of light and shadow across the girl’s face. Plus there are the minor details, like the bandage on her arm, and the shoes hanging from the power lines.
Cliff Chiang transforms the Dark Knight into a monstrous creature of the night — note the obscured face and claw-like fingers — beneath a full moon that sports the Black Mask’s unsettling image.
There’s a solemn beauty in the repetition of the flag-draped coffins.
I won’t deny that the adorable baby hippo is a big selling point here, but I particularly like the pink hue cast by the umbrella over part of the crowd. And don’t overlook the incorporation of the Image “I” into the comic’s title.
For this horror series set on the Mexico-Arizona border, Michael Lapinski takes the familiar religious symbol of a flaming heart to another, more visceral level by using the actual organ rather than the stylized icon.
Michael Allred makes terrific use of space, burying a terrified Gwen beneath two-thirds of the cover image. The pink lining provides a nice balance to the massive field of black, too.
Although I doubt many readers followed Brandon Graham’s instructions to cut up the cover, I love the playfulness and ingenuity behind the King City game pieces. That the entire image looks like a package you’d find in the toy aisle at the corner market — complete with price sticker — makes it that much better.
The fourth Locke & Key series debuts with a bloody yet strangely beautiful cover that hints at some of the savagery to be found inside. It’s a little disturbing that I’m drawn by the way the blood pools in the animal track.
Skottie Young turns to Soviet propaganda imagery for this issue, in which General Jinjur and her army of amazonian milkmaids storm the gates of Emerald City in an effort to end the reign of the Scarecrow.
In a bit of a departure for the series, Michael Avon Oeming uses just two colors — grays and red — for this ghostly watercolor image of the cryptic Bats of Meave.
With a handful of covers for Morning Glories — I’m thinking of the second, fourth and fifth issues — Rodin Esquejo hit upon an approach that near-perfectly conveys the sense of paranoia that runs through the series. Here, as with those other two issues, he transforms the cover into an enclosed, claustrophobic space, an effect aided by the limited lighting and heavy shadows. I also appreciate the subtle morning glory pattern on the walls.
Eric Canete’s illustration is just rippling with tension and energy — I mean, it’s Luke Cage fighting three tigers! Plus, the colors are lovely.
Massimo Carnevale and Brian Wood are an incredible pairing, delivering gorgeously painted and smartly designed covers for issue after issue of the celebrated Viking drama. Their collaboration has produced distinctive looks, and logo treatments, for each arc. Such is the case with the cover for Northlanders #35, the first issue of the two-part “Girl in the Ice” story, with its subdued, even washed-out colors — in stark contrast to the intense hues of the previous “Metal” arc — and the haunting image of the woman beneath the ice.
Darwyn Cooke’s stylish cover for his adaptation of the third novel in Donald Westlake’s Parker series conveys both a sense of menace and, appropriately enough, ’60s-era flair.
Ben Templesmith works so often in bloody horror, with titles like 30 Days of Night and Welcome to Hoxford, and gritty crime, with Fell and Choker, that it’s easy to overlook his occasional foray into the … well, sensual. Sure, it’s outlandishly sensual — it’s a robot with a glowing heart in its breast! — but still. The best part of the image, though, is the dragon tattoo that snakes up her leg and arm before winding its way off her body.
Dave Johnson demonstrated why he’s a perennial favorite with the covers for the six-issue “Bullseye” arc, which sported a unifying graphic element — the bullseye, naturally — that never felt repetitious. The cover for the first part of the storyline, which imaginatively positions a minuscule, and seemingly unsuspecting, Frank Castle between the target and Bullseye’s oversized blade, is easily my favorite.
Jock pays homage to Philip Castle’s poster for the 1987 war film Full Metal Jacket for this one-off issue centering on a Vietnam War veteran turned heroin smuggler.
For such a dark story, that’s an awfully adorable Catman “Voodoo doll.” Plus, just look at that little tree frog!
Skottie Young has had a dynamite couple of years with covers for the Marvel Adventures line, several Oz books and now this one, for the fourth issue of Marvel’s adaptation of the Jane Austen novel. The entire image is gorgeous — the composition, the color — but I could stare endlessly at the wheat field.
The limited palette and gold highlights on the waves help to lend the cover to Drew Weing’s debut graphic novel a gorgeous dream-like quality.
José Ladrönn channels the spirit (pardon the pun) of Will Eisner without resorting to mimicry. Additionally, the water and drainpipe are beautifully rendered.
Rafael Grampa’s superheroes are as savage and full of fury as the brutal truckers of his celebrated Mesmo Delivery. And how incredible is it that Wolverine wears shorts and elbow pads while Thor sports Spandex shorts and high-top sneakers?
Rafael Albuquerque captures a mischievous (even devilish) and confident side of Conner Kent in this unusual, and unusually colored, cover for the first issue of Superboy’s new series.
I love the depiction of Bizzarogirl as the fractured-mirror image of Supergirl. (Or is it the other way around?) It’s wonderfully conceived and executed.
I confess that I haven’t been following Jeff Lemire’s Vertigo series, so I have no idea how the paint-by-number effect relates to this issue. But it’s a pretty ingenious idea that evokes a sense of nostalgia — paint-by-number kits were wildly popular for several decades — while opening up the image to a range of interpretations.
Kody Chamberlain’s logo for this crime miniseries is among my recent favorites — too many books rely on standard, if slightly tweaked, fonts — but here it takes a backseat to coloring and composition. The blood-soaked hand in the foreground leads the eye to the approaching detectives and draws the reader into the story. It makes me want to pick up the comic, to find out what happens — exactly what a cover should do.
John Cassaday produced covers in 2010 for such titles as DC’s Superman, Marvel’s Shadowland and Dynamite Entertainment’s Green Hornet, but this one for the late, lamented S.W.O.R.D. stands out the most. The image of Lockheed, Marvel’s purple-skinned alien dragon and Kitty Pryde’s frequent companion, menacingly brandishing a pair of guns is as unexpected as it is delightfully absurd.
Michael Dahan crafts a suitably disturbing image for this dark graphic novel about a rogue neuropathologist who isolates the root of evil in the recesses of the human brain.
Nate Watson cleverly references classic Western cinematography, simulating the pan of the camera from Woody’s face to the glistening badge and then back again.
The majority of Dave Johnson’s covers for the Unknown Soldier were bloody and violent, but Issue 22 stands out for its beauty — even with the skulls in the center of the flowers.
Yuko Shimizu’s covers for the acclaimed Vertigo series are among the most consistent, and consistently good, being published today. For this issue, involving the launch of the new Tommy Taylor book in London, Shimizu toys with scale to create an appropriately unreal cityscape with an enormous Tom Taylor at its center.
I “cheated” two years ago by including two issues in one entry, and now I’m doing it again with the stunning hardcover and softcover collections for Viking: The Long Cold Fire. It’s to their credit that artist Nic Klein and design Tom Muller opted for an extremely modern look for what’s essentially a ninth-century crime story. It’s an unconventional approach that grabs even those readers with an aversion to period drama.
For a miniseries about a zombie outbreak in the late 1920s, Nate Powell creates a dynamic cover that captures both the horror elements of the situation and the energy of the Golden Age of Radio.
Returning artists like Chris Bachalo, Dave Johnson, Sean Phillips and Yuko Shimizu are joined on this year’s list by “new” names like Kody Chamberlain, Camilla D’Errico, Amy Reeder and Drew Weing. (You can peruse the previous years’ lists here and here.)
As in the past, I’ve tried to explain the appeal of each entry; some covers get just a sentence, while others receive entire paragraphs. That doesn’t reflect the quality of the image, but merely what I have to say about it.
Note: While last year’s list included five manga covers, this year features none. I’m not sure whether that’s a byproduct of the contraction of the manga market, a sign of a shift in cover quality — among manga or Western comics — or a shortcoming on my part (if it’s the latter, I’ll own up to it; however, after several excursions in search of manga candidates, I found none that I felt qualified as among the 50 best.)
With that out of the way, I present, in alphabetical order, the 50 best covers of 2010:
Absolute All-Star Superman, by Frank Quitely
Afrodisiac, by Jim Rugg
American Vampire #2, by Rafael Albuquerque
The Amazing Spider-Man #618, by Marcos Martin
The Amazing Spider-Man #633, by Chris Bachalo
The Amazing Spider-Man #641, by Paolo Rivera
Astro City: The Dark Age Book 4 #4, by Alex Ross
Avengers Academy #7, by Ed McGuinness
Baltimore: The Plague Ships #1, by Mike Mignola
Batwoman #0, by J.H. Williams III
Batman Beyond #2, by Dustin Nguyen
Buffy the Vampire Slayer #31, by Jo Chen
Chew #12 (Comic-Con exclusive cover), by Rob Guillory
Chew #16, by Rob Guillory
Criminal: The Sinners #4, by Sean Phillips
Dark Rain: A New Orleans Story, by Nessim Higson
Daytripper #2, by Gabriel Ba
Demo 2 #5, by Becky Cloonan
Detective Comics #864, by Cliff Chiang
DMZ #54, by J.P. Leon
Elephantmen #29, by Camilla D'Errico
Feeding Ground #2, by Michael Lapinski
iZombie #5, by Michael Allred
King City #9, by Brandon Graham
Locke & Key: Keys to the Kingdom #1, by Gabriel Rodriguez
The Marvelous Land of Oz #3, by Skottie Young
The Mice Templar: Destiny #6, by Michael Avon Oeming
Morning Glories #4, by Rodin Esquejo
The New Avengers: Luke Cage #2, by Eric Canete
Northlanders #35, by Massimo Carnevale
Parker: The Outfit, by Darwyn Cooke
Popgun, Vol. 4, by Ben Templesmith
Punisher MAX #6, by Dave Johnson
Scalped #38, by Jock
Secret Six #21, by Daniel Luvisi
Sense & Sensibility #4, by Skottie Young
Set to Sea, by Drew Weing
The Spirit #1, by Ladronn
Strange Tales II #1, by Rafael Grampa
Superboy #1, by Rafael Albuquerque
Supergirl #55, by Amy Reeder and Richard Friend
Sweet Tooth #12, by Jeff Lemire
Sweets #2, by Kody Chamberlain
S.W.O.R.D. #3, by John Cassaday
Syndrome, by Michael Dahan
Toy Story #5, by Nate Watson
Unknown Soldier #22, by Dave Johnson
The Unwritten #13, by Yuko Shimizu
Viking: The Long Cold Fire (hardcover), by Nic Klein and Tom Muller
Viking: The Long Cold Fire (softcover), by Nic Klein and Tom Muller
We Will Bury You #2, by Nate Powell
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