My original plan for tonight was to catch up on some reviews. But then I remembered that the second series of Black Books was recently released on DVD, so I went out and bought it and spent the evening watching that instead.

It’s a wonderfully misanthropic show about an alcoholic bookstore owner who makes life miserable for his friends and customers. It’s filled with lots of “I wish I could have gotten away with doing that” moments that anyone who ever worked retail can relate to. There was a superbly brilliant bit, which I lack the technology to record and upload to YouTube, violating all kinds of copyright laws, but here’s a short taste of the second series.

So, I was of course reminded of the many British comedy shows I derive stupid amounts of pleasure from, which are inexplicably unavailable on DVD in the U.S. First is Spaced, starring Simon Pegg. You’d think with the success of Shaun of the Dead, the upcoming Hot Fuzz, and the fact that it’s already been shown on U.S. channels that a DVD of the two series would have turned up, but no. Pegg’s series about slacker-ish twentysomethings has yet to receive the wider release in the U.S. that it deserves. It’s a smart, well observed comedy, that still makes room for moments of pure surrealism.

And thinking of Spaced always puts me in mind of Big Train, an earlier sketch comedy show with Pegg which focused almost exclusively on absurdist non-sequiters.

Big Train also deserves special recognition for finally answering the age-old question; what would it have been like if Chairman Mao sang a Roxy Music song.

The Fast Show was another peculiar sketch show. I’m not sure anything on it ever made sense. I was always in tears by the end of an episode, however.

I was sufficiently brainwashed by professors with an interest in post-colonial theory to eventually develop my own interest in cultural productions by members of the southern Asia expatriate and immigrant communities. Goodness Gracious Me was brilliant and incisive political satire disguised cleverly as a sketch show. The cast mined their own communities for material, and a frequent focus was on the sexism of their culture, but they were just as quick to exploit the racism of British society for a laugh as well. I’ve seen enough similarly boorish behavior (“What do you mean you don’t have anything with beef in it? What kind of restaurant is this?”) in Indian restaurants in America to appreciate the joke in this sketch.

And we’ll close on an ethnic/gay joke.

Prompted by News about Civil War, and Digressing Into “What Marvel Did to Pete.”

So, Marvel’s been managing to get some press for an upcoming product. I can speak from some experience with working in comics retail that, unsurprisingly, the timing of this is unhelpful for retailers. The hope in getting coverage for Civil War in the New York Times is that people who aren’t comic book fans will be intrigued by the coverage and seek it out. The problem, naturally, is that these folks are going to look for the book now, not three months from now. And Marvel is unlikely to get regular coverage until the book comes out, because now it’s old news.

And, what, exactly, does Marvel think is going to get new readers to check this out?
The report also gave one of the clearest pictures yet of how the Civil War ball gets rolling, explaining: The story opens with a reckless fight between a novice group of heroes (filming a reality television show) and a cadre of villains. The battle becomes quite literally explosive, killing some of the superheroes and many innocent bystanders. That crystallizes a government movement to register all super-powered beings as living weapons of mass destruction. The subsequent Registration Act will divide the heroes into two camps, one led by Captain America, the other by Iron Man. Along the way, Marvel will unveil its version of Guantánamo Bay, enemy combatants, embedded reporters and more. The question at the heart of the series is a fundamental one: “Would you give up your civil liberties to feel safer in the world?”

Civil War writer Mark Millar: “Before the civil war, the Marvel universe was a certain way. After the civil war, the heroes are employed by the government. Some people refuse to do it,” he said, “and those guys are performing an illegal act by doing so.”

I don’t know about anyone else, but “deft subtlety” isn’t what I think of when I consider Mark Millar’s work. I also really don’t see him as having any kind of coherent political view in his writings. His Ultimates, for example, can’t seem to decide whether it’s a celebration or a satire of jingoistic nationalism and paranoid fascism. And the less said about Chosen or Wanted the better. And so, the impression I get from this is that, all protests to the contrary, what Civil War is going to consist of is lots and lots of heavy-handed political allegory. That Marvel, being Marvel, will very quickly back away from. And, when I stop to think about it, it’s an incredibly cynical marketing move on Marvel’s part. Over the last few years, much of Marvel’s output seems to have developed an ever so slight impression of right-wing political leaning. But, tellingly, it’s never really struck me as a sincere political impression.

See, one of the things I’ve noticed over the years is that super-hero fans, by and large, tend to lean towards the right in their politics. Often quite unreflectively. (And that is not a political slam on anyone. By the same token, I’ve noticed that indie/alt/art comics fans tend to subscribe to knee-jerk liberal politics. If you want a slam, here you go: in my experience comic book fans of all stripes, by and large, don’t put much thought into anything other than comic books.) And Marvel is well aware of that. They also know that most media outlets, by their very nature as corporate entities, tend to have a slight right-wing slant as well. And the feeling I get off the way Marvel presents many of their projects in the outside media is “Hey, going to the right seems to sell. Let’s do that.”

Now, I’m not particularly a Marvel fan. I never have been. But Pete is. He’s a die-hard Marvel fan. He loves the Marvel U. Pete likes Cable for God’s sake! And the only Marvel books he gets anymore are the Ultimate titles and the “teen hero” books like Runaways, Young Avengers and Spider-Girl. Because in between this pandering to a crowd Marvel seems to want and the relentless over-the-top hype of everything Marvel does lately, they’ve completely turned him off the Marvel U.

This is only a problem for me in the sense that all of Marvel’s recent cross-over and big event stories have been uniformly awful. But Pete still holds enough fondness for the characters that he wants to know what happened. The compromise we’ve worked out is that he gets the trades. Which means I read the trades, so that Pete will have someone to talk to about them.
Which means I’m, of my own free will, reading terrible, terrible comics that offend me on a political and aesthetic level.

I’m going out of town for a few days. To Las Vegas, in fact. For a family reunion.

Which, in my family’s case, means twenty to thirty of my relatives spread out at about a dozen different casinos grunting noncomitally at each other if they happen to see one another in passing.

And I don’t gamble. Because I actually understand how statistical probabilities work. And Pete has a concert, so he can’t go, so I can’t do the whole gay Vegas thing. And I won’t have my own car, so I can’t get off the strip and explore the rest of the town. I might try and scrape together the money to go see Avenue Q, but that’s about it.

But the important thing is: I expect you all to behave while I’m gone. The last thing I want to do is come back on Tuesday and find out that several blood feueds have broken out because of what Kevin said about Green Lantern, or because the hive-mind has suddenly decided that Kurt Busiek is the anti-Christ.

Or, in other words, for the love of God, don’t act like comic book fans for at least one weekend!

All I can think is: “Now is ze time on Sprockets vhen ve dance!”

michael chiklis shirtless
jake shears naked
brandon routh’s package
ken ryker
john tristram
tom of finland
kid chris
wildcat
force of july
beetle bailey
ice skating panty shots
women in thighboots
crocodiles and internal reproduction
john barrowman
stanislav ivaneski
sniper kitten
anne rice inappropriate books
is jason statham gay (God, I hope so…)
double entendres
nanny dickering
supergirl tied up
zak spears
sarcastic awards
schadenfreude
katy manning naked
illuminanti
jake gyllenhaal slash
always remember

So, with tongue planted firmly in cheek, we begin:

100-Web-based comics. Access to a digital camera, a scanner or Photoshop doesn’t make you a comedic genius.

99-Boxes from Diamond that only have one small item in them.

98-Bad decompressed storytelling. Good decompressed storytelling is a thing of wonder and beauty, but we’re rapidly approaching the point where we may need to have writers pass some kind of test before they’re allowed to use the technique. “Because six issues fit so nicely into a trade paper-back” is not an acceptable reason to use the method.

97-Being asked by a customer whether or not a comic that’s really bad is any good or not. Which should I listen to: my inner critic or my inner merchant?

96-“If comics were only cheaper/printed on lousy paper more people would read them.” No, more people would read comics if more comics were any damn good. Price and paper quality don’t even enter into the equation. In fact the ugly truth of the matter is that the low price point of comics is what’s keeping them out of many venues.

95-Advertising a book with the promise of killing off a character. Because there’s no such thing as bad writers who have run out of ways to increase dramatic tension, just bad characters who aren’t interesting or popular enough to make people care about them.

94-“Kids don’t read comics.” Yes they do. They just don’t want to read the same comics that their grand-parents read.

93-While we’re on the subject, the vast majority of Golden Age comics. They just weren’t that good.

92-Marvel’s reprint policy. It’s feast or famine with them these days. Stuff we could really use doesn’t get reprinted, but stuff they want fans to think is a hot seller gets reprinted over and over again in dozens of different formats, regardless of whether or not there’s any actual demand for it. And saying that you’re going back to press because the book “sold out,” when you only print to order in the first place, is at best disingenuous.

91-Variant covers. They were a neat idea the first time. Now they’re just a way to prop up sales.

90-“Ameri”-manga.

89-The very idea of comic book “ages.”

88-The thought that I might have anything whatsoever in common with a member of HEAT.

87-The continuing attempts by comics publishers to duplicate the success of Johnny the Homicidal Maniac.

86-Comics publishers that pretend that death in comics is permanent or significant.

85-That comics fans still fall for it every time a marginally popular character is killed.

84-“Batman is considered to be an urban legend.”

83-That English translations of Ralf Koenig comics are hard to come by.

82-That the most posistive portrayal of gay characters in comics is in Japanese books about androgynous little boys.

81-Skip week events.

80-That a serious take on Zorak was actually published outside of fan fiction.

79-Thirty years of lesbian innuendo and “lingerie=evil” in X-Men comics.

78-Being asked when late books are going to ship.

77-Being asked when cancelled books are going to ship.

76-“That” smell. You know the one I’m talking about.

75-Via Mike: When customers who only speak in a mumble get annoyed with you for not understanding what they’re saying.

74-Autobiographical comics. If I wanted to know more about the lives of neurotic people I’d spend more time with my relatives.

73-Customers who call every day asking if we have an item in stock, but never actually come in to buy it.

72-Customers who call in every day asking if we have an item in stock, and when they finally do come in after calling every day for several weeks, get pissed because we sold it to someone else.

71-Barry Blair’s disturbingly androgynous figure work.

70-“Rock of Ages didn’t make any sense.” Always from customers who never seem to have any problems differentiating which alternate timelines various X-Men characters come from.

69-“How much is this baseball card worth?”
We don’t deal in baseball cards.
“Oh, well how much is this baseball card worth then?”

68-Strangers in Paradise

67-People who think that “comic book store” means “free baby-sitting service.”

66-“Comics were better when I was a kid.” No, they weren’t. You just think they were because you were a kid, and as such, had lousy taste.

65-Having to explain to someone who brought their “really good” comics into the store to try to sell them to us why the condition of a book is important.

64-Having to try to explain why the condition of a book is important over the phone.

63-“Do you have any good ninja comics.” You may think I’m kidding, but honest-to-God, I was just asked this the other day.

62-People who come in looking for tattoo designs. Take it from the guy with ink; if you’re going to have an image permanently scarred into your flesh, you’re going to want it to be something you really want to look at every day for the rest of your life. Strolling around a comic book store in the hopes that you find an image that takes your fancy is a one-way ticket to tattoo remorse.

61-People who claim to be Sam Keith fans who say, once I show them his latest work, “But this doesn’t have Wolverine in it!”

60-Customers who buy supplies and “know what they need,” refusing to let me help them make sure that they’re getting exactly what they want to get and need to get, in light of our “no returns” policy on collector supplies…

59-…Because they invariably return the next day complaining that it’s somehow my fault that they bought magazine boards to use with current comic bags.

58-“But it must be out, I saw it on the internet.”

57-Hearing all these sentences on a daily basis.

56-“Off-brand” 70s horror magazines.

55-“The danger room is angry.”

54-The Sin City trailer. Yes, I realize I’m in the minority on this one.

53-That everyone has jumped on this “Superman is a prick” band-wagon, thus making it very difficult for me to make fun of old Superman comics without it looking like I’m jumping on too.

52-Comic books based on toys that outlive the toys they’re based on.

51-Comic books based on video-games.

50-Comics with zombies in them.

49-Thor, even if Garth Ennis is writing the book.

48-Iron Man, even if Warren Ellis is writing the book.

47-Complaints about changes to the ethnicity of comic book characters in film adaptations.

46-Complaints about changes in film adaptations of comics in general.

45-The casual homophobia and misogyny of comic book fans.

44-That Mike Sterling has successfully conned all those people who read his site into thinking that he’s a nice guy. None of you know just how big a jerk he really is. Oh, the stories I could tell.

43-That film-makers have this uncanny knack for making movies based on comics by Alan Moore, and yet not one of them has understood the source material at all.

42-“I’m an artist and I’m looking for reference material.” Because what this always means is “I’m looking for something that’s easy to trace.”

41-“How much is this going to be worth?”

40-Trying to convince people that, no, really, tech stocks are probably a better investment than comic books.

39-Trying to do this to people I’m positive have a garage full of pogs and Beanie Babies.

38-Parents who think nothing of spending $50 on a Yu-Gi-Oh card but balk at the idea of paying $2.25 for a Teen Titans Go comic.

37- The “art” of Alex Ross. Yes, stiffly posed, realistic paintings of people in funny costumes sure are a breathtaking and revolutionary development in art…if you lived in Northern Europe 600 years ago.

36-That there is a sizeable segment of the population that will go to see movies about super-heroes, buy super-hero action figures, play video games about super-heroes, wear clothes with pictures of super-heroes on them and get super-hero logos tattooed on their bodies…but won’t be caught dead reading a comic book.

35-That whenever a talented independent comics creator starts to achieve some success you can literally count the seconds until someone accuses them of being a sell-out.

34-Comic fans who really like Kitty Pryde. No, I mean they really like Kitty Pryde.

33-That Chaos Comics ever existed.

32-That Chaos Comics no longer exists.

31-The Black Racer. Proof that even Jack Kirby could have bad ideas from time to time.

30-That the deification of Jack Kirby has resulted in writers and artists trying to make the Black Racer work in a serious context.

29-When you come into the shop with your Hot Topic pants, “indie band of the moment” t-shirt, studded leather wrist-bands, emo glasses and self-consciously “punk” haircut to buy all the acceptably hip indie and art comics that just got reviewed in whatever pretentious scenester music magazine you read…and pay with a credit card. Oh, wait, I’m sorry. This entry should actually go on my “Signs You’re A Poser” list.

28-Hearing the phrase “It’s not as good as the Jim Lee version” in reference to Jim Aparo’s Batman.

27-Customers who feel the need to ask me questions that are asked on a comics cover, such as “Where is the Justice League?” I don’t know, why don’t you try reading the book!

26-Magazines about comics that have a price-guide in them. Especially if it’s a price-guide for CGC graded comics.

25-The overall state of comics “journalism.” So we’ve got Tom Spurgeon and the occasional piece over at IcV2 for good reporting…and about two dozen sites devoted to reprinting publisher press releases and soft-ball interviews with the creators of the comics talked about in those same press releases.

24-Artists still trying to draw like Jack Kirby.

23-That talented artists made the mistake of taking Ayn Rand seriously.

22-Artists who attempt to make super-hero costumes look “realistic” and “practical.” In other words, I don’t need to see all the seams, buttons and fasteners on the costumes.

21-Comic fans who insist on reading dense, multi-layered works as if they are only surface-level, straight forward superhero comics.

20-The mistaken belief that there is some kind of hierarchy of geekdom. That it is somehow acceptable for Star Wars fans to look down on Star Trek fans, for Trekkies to look down on D&D players, for D&D players to look down on comic fans, and for comic fans to look down on furries. Guess what? You’re all nerds. Deal with it.

19-That there are approximately one million different manga titles being published in English about scrappy young boys hoping to become the best fighter, ninja, samurai or card player around, and an equal number of titles about whiny and neurotic teenage girls who inexplicably have the coolest and most handsome boys in school fall in love with them. No wonder people complain about all manga books looking alike.

18-Via Mike Sterling: Fucking crazy comic book fans. Let me explain. The kind of fan who, as a former co-worker once put it, wouldn’t be the least bit surprised to look up and see the Hulk walking down the street.

17-Comic fans who read interviews with Grant Morrison and get upset with what he says, not realizing that he’s being facetious.

16-Comic books that only exist because Alex Ross wanted to paint the covers.

15-Comic creators who claim that they aren’t being racist just before they make a racist statement.

14-Comic creators who get bent out of shape by comic fans who refer to fictional characters by diminutive nick-names.

13-Comic creators who absolutely refuse to permit their work to grow and evolve, and so are continuing to put out the exact same kind of boring, tired and cliché-ridden work that they were churning out twenty years ago.

12-Ah, the hell with it. The John Byrne Forum.

11-Articles in the more sophisticated comic magazines that read as if they were written by an over-eager grad student with a “Dictionary of Pretentious and Obfuscatory Words” handy.

10- Customers who come into the shop with a list of about two hundred back issues they’re looking for, a list that will require at least two of us to go through several dozen boxes of back-issues, and possibly even a trip into the dread “back room of over-stock” to hunt down those comics…on Wednesday morning. Any other day of the week I’d be more than happy to help people track down that many back issues…but not on the day I’m trying to sort through twenty boxes from Diamond. Not on what is usually our busiest day of the week. And what kills me, what absolutely kills me, is that the only people who do this know that Wednesday is new comics day!

9-Comics creators and publishers who leak information on creators and titles to internet gossip columnists, then complain when leaked information about them and their titles appears in internet gossip columns.

8-Comics creators and publishers who dismiss all on-line conversations about comics as “fifteen fat losers who can’t get girl-friends talking to each other with different screen names.”

7-Comics creators and publishers who get upset by what those “fifteen fat losers” say about them. If you don’t think any comics discussion going on on-line is worth taking seriously, why are you taking it seriously?

6-That the vast majority of on-line comics discussion really doesn’t deserve to be taken seriously after all.

5-The gall of “columnists” for internet comics “news” sites complaining that people who write blogs are “unprofessional.” “People who live in glass houses” and all that.

4-This notion that seems to have gotten into some peoples heads that Alan Moore and Grant Morrison hate super-heroes. If you’ve read their work and come away with that impression, might I respectfully suggest that your reading comprehension isn’t as good as you think it is.

3-That the most visible public face of comics is a magazine that drunken frat boys on spring break find sophomoric.

2-When a reporter for the local free weekly (and boy do you get what you pay for in that paper) described the service in the store as “apathetic” in an article, when Mike and I know for damn certain that every time this person came into the store we went out of our way to help them because they were extremely over-sensitive to comics content.

1-People who are so unrelentingly negative that they don’t have anything better to do with their time than make lists of things that annoy them about comics.

See, this is the precise reason why I try very hard not to take part in these endless, back-and-forth, circling the point but never quite landing arguments/debates between bloggers.

[For the record, I like JSA but it does presuppose you are familiar with several decades worth of DC continuity. Teen Titans is fun, and I think it has the right amount of nostalgia to keep long-term fans happy but not too much to alienate newer readers, and judging by the fact that we still sell tons of copies to kids and people who don't normally read DC books I'd guess that I'm mostly right about that. I do think the tone he has established for Flash is completely wrong for the title and characters. I never read his Avengers because it was the freaking Avengers! Any team with both Iron Man and Thor can't possibly be worth reading about...]

Why are Superman and Batman more interesting when they’re not really Superman and Batman? I think most people commenting on that thread have at least a partial answer. I usually find the characters are more tolerable in one-shots and minis than in ongoing books. In those situations the creators are usually much freer about what they can do with the characters. And when you put the characters in another book entirely you can focus on the essential elements of the characters, emphasizing what makes them interesting and has caused them to last as long as they have. And when you make them an entirely different character you can place even more of an emphasis on “what’s right” with the character. I don’t think it’s impossible to make the characters appealing in their own books, though. I like Superman/Batman quite a bit. It’s an event book, and it’s short on plot, and it really isn’t very good, but it entertains, and it places the characters of Supes and Bats on that same iconic level that they don’t seem to get in their regular books. And God help me, I actually like Austen’s “Superman hits things for twenty pages” approach to the character in Action.

I was asked who I think should play Wildcat if there were ever a movie. Without hesitation I answered Jason Statham. He’s got the right look, build and screen persona to pull off Ted Grant. But, I knew comic fans would object to that casting because Statham is a diver and martial-artist, and thus doesn’t have a heavy-weight boxer physique. Because we all know that the particular fact that Wildcat is a heavy-weight boxer is far more important to the character than the fact that he’s a blue-collar, rough-and-tumble brawler who fights crime. I mentioned this bit of hypothetical casting to another comics fan, and sure enough, first words out of his mouth were: “But he’s not a heavyweight!”

Of course, it was Pete who said that, so I’m not allowed to get too annoyed about it.

For some completely irrational reason, I miss this character. Not the Neil Gaiman version, which was fine, but this version, from DC’s “weird” period in the 70s. And since, with books like Monolith, and the upcoming Manhunter and Bloodhound, DC seems to be moving back to this period thematically, and with Grant Morrison citing this period as an inspiration for his Seven Soldiers of Victory project, I’m naively optimistic of getting her back.

In 1987, Uncanny X-Men #218 was published. It contained a last-page revelation that a Brood space-ship had crashed on Earth, the only surviving witnesses being former X-Men Havok and Polaris.

One year later, in a three-issue story running through Uncanny #s 233-235 the X-Men finally get around to dealing with the threat of the Brood. In typical Claremontian fashion, ominous hints are dropped that “this is not yet over.”

Over the next couple of years the Brood pop up once or twice to harry the X-Men. These appearance usually seem to co-incide with the release of a new film in the Aliens series. I have no idea why…Anyway, in 1998, fully 11 years after the beginning of the story-line in which the Brood arrive on Earth, the X-Men finally deal with the not-at-all-similair-to-the-monsters-in-a-popular-Sigourney-Weaver-movie creatures in a two-part mini-series titled, originally enough, X-Men: The Brood.

For the curious, in this series we are told exactly how much time has passed in the Marvel Universe since the Brood first came to earth. About one year. Yes, that’s right, “The Fall of the Mutants”, “Inferno”, “Acts of Vengeance”, “X-Tinction Agenda”, “The Muir Island Saga”, “X-Cutioner’s Song”, “Fatal Attractions” and about a dozen or so other cross-overs all took place within a one-year period.

And people wonder why it took Grant Morrison basically scrubbing every-thing that came before and starting fresh to get me to read X-Men comics again.

So, Morrison’s reason for taking the X-Men out of costume was that people were comfortable with the super-hero paradigm and that if the X-Men looked like something people trusted, they would in turn trust the X-Men. But that didn’t work, and so it was neccessary to look like something new. Whedon’s explanation for putting the X-Men back into costume was that “people trust super-heroes, if we look like super-heroes they’ll trust us to.” Uhm…did Whedon even bother to read Morrison’s run? Cause it sounds to me that the reason for putting them back into costume is the same logic that took them out of costume.

Someone really needs to get the message across to John Byrne that’s it’s not things like the Incredibles that cause the public at large to not take super-hero comics seriously. It’s the super-hero comics themselves, and their defenders, that are causing super-hero comics to not be taken seriously.

I keep thinking about this thing with Marvel and retailers. I keep getting stuck on not trying to say the same things about Marvel’s policies and how they are good for Marvel but bad for comics retailers that everyone and their brother has already said. What really bothers me are incidents where Joe Quesada brags about how great Marvel’s sales are. But Marvel’s sales are only that good because their primary customers, the retailers, are buying more Marvel comics than they really want to because Marvel won’t reprint or over-print books, forcing retailers to not just order as many copies as they can reasonably expect to sell during a one month standard sales period, but to order as many copies as they think they can sell for all time. It’s a system that inflates Marvel’s sales. Speaking from personal experience, it’s almost unheard of for us to sell out of a Marvel book. But we sell out of books by every other publisher all the time. On the flip side of that equation is the trade program. We do very brisk business in trades by every major and most of the minor publishers. Marvel trades, with the notable exception of the Ultimate line, sit on the shelves and collect dust. Marvel super-hero fans, as a general rule, simply will not buy trades. It’s not in their nature. They’d rather spend money on back-issues, which are usually priced well above cover price, than buy a trade containing the same issues that often costs less than cover on those issues. It’s baffling.

I also am less than enthusiastic about Marvel and DC’s plans to reprint some of their material in digest/manga format. It seems like a plan doomed to failure. What they’re counting on is the “looks like manga=sells like managa” phenomenon. What they’re forgetting is that their work, while it may look superficially like manga, doesn’t “feel like” manga. Oni’s digest sized books, on the other hand, “feel like” manga. And anecdotal evidence suggests that Oni’s digests do “sell like” manga. But Oni doesn’t publish garish super-hero comics cynically formatted to resemble Tokyopop books. That’s the crucial difference, I think.

And this leads me to something that not-to-be-trusted scoundrel Mike and I have discussed before. People seem willing to buy something if it “looks like” something they’re already comfortable with. DC has a big back-log of material that is appropriate for children, and has the added benefit of actually being good, in their long defunct humor titles such as Three Mousketeers, Fox and the Crow, Sugar and Spike and Captain Carrot, and the like. People are comfortable with illustrated material for children being published in the “picture book” format. The tabloid and European album formats are so close to the picture book format as to be nigh indistinguishable. Would DC’s children’s comics back-log, we wonder, sell in an over-sized format?

Oh, and Dirk Deppey’s first full issue as editor is not the “middle-ground” comics magazine people seem to want. Not yet. I thought Tom Spurgeon’s review of the Ait/PlanetLar books was very poorly done. It felt, a couple of times, that he had personal grudges against some of the creators that clouded the reviews, and the over-all tone still reeked of the intellectual snobbery that turns most people off of TCJ. And the less said about the unintentionally funny X-Statix review the better. As for the rest of the magazine…the fixation on French cartoonists has rapidly become tres boring. The news articles have some meat to them, but I don’t really want news from a monthly comic magazine. Sites like Newsarama, as problematic as they are as news sources, have pretty much made the concept of a comics news magazine moot. Work still needs to be done on the reveiws section. Too many pieces still read like clever grad students slumming in the comics commentary pool instead of working on their thesis. Nothing in Mark Waid’s Fantastic Four run should require references to post-modern theory in order to communicate a point in a review.