Thursday, January 25, 2007

January 25th's Meanwhile in Las Vegas...

This week's LVW column features reviews of The Sweeter Side of R. Crumb (a title I never tire of typing), Mitsukazu Mihara's highly recommended manga Haunted House, and Marvel Adventures Spider-Man Vol. 5: Monsters on the Prowl.

Elsewhere in the blogosphere...

— Donewaiting.com and U Weekly sponsored Stephen Slaybaugh and Kevin Elliott's Bands to Watch 2007 (Jesus, that's a mouthfull) included one local band with a comic book connection, The Black Canary. You can listen to an MP3 and find more info on them here.

—I believe the Best Shots Crew can now officilly claim the crown of Absolute Last "Best of 2006" List To Be Posted on the Internet, with our list making it to Newsarama.com this week. Our Christmas trees are all still up, too.

—I have no idea what this image is all about—and apparently no one this side of Phil Jimenez does—but iI do know it frightens me. At the very least, it means another big DC crossover/event series. At the most, it means the returning, expanded multiverse (inculding the Kingdom Come-iverse and Earth-Pirate), which means more continuity question marks on top of the ones that haven't been resolved since the last crisis.

—In blogging about the anniversarry of Roe v. Wade, Ragnell offers up another good argument for why Milestone's Icon series should be collected in trade paperback form, like, stat!

This is the funniest thing I've read in a comic book in a good long time. Eddie Berganza can't possibly be that clueless, can he? If so, I have a couple of suggestions for him to consider: Hiring an artist with at least a rudimentary grasp of anatomy capable of drawing Supergirl like a real human being (this means no more Turner or Churchill); a costume redesign that includes lengthening her skirt so she's a little less half-naked and replacing her halter top for an actual shirt (and requiring her to wear a bra at least until she's 18 and a superwoman); and maybe, just maybe, think about hiring a female writer who's actually been a teenage girl at some point to write Supergirl. Oh, and most importantly, fewer panels like this



and more panels like this





(That first one is form Michael Turner's Superman/Batman story arc, "The Supergirl From Krypton." The second one is from Dean Trippe's website.)

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

Re: Supergirl

If I was working at DC, I wouldn't be asking women to check out a title that exemplifies the worst male-centric stereotypes in comics. I've found the portrayal of Supergirl in Legion of Super-Heroes a little less, well, pervy.

Re: DC's next big one

Judging from the CBR and Newsarama messageboards, everyone's going over this thing like it's a clue in the Davinci Code.

Everything in the illustration seems pretty deliberate in what they signify: the Statue of Liberty; little devices that could be phantom zone projectors, New Gods tech or Legion flight rings; characters from several contiuities (and yet no JSA or Tangent characters); the corpses from the significant Infinite Crisis/52 arcs; the poses which suggest tension and sorrow from some of them.

Phil Jiminez drew the hell out of this, and its far more intriguing (and likely to be on time) than Civil War and it's myriad specials. What it all adds up to (52!) is anyone's guess... Nice bit of marketing.

Anonymous said...

And just why is Superman crying like some cheese-eating emo boy? Even Mary Marvel is keeping it together. Mary. Freakin'. Marvel.

Man up Clark.

Anonymous said...

I don't read anything with Supergirl in it, but I'm gonna have to support anything that gets more half-naked teenage girls in comics. Call me a perv if you like, but I don't have enough blood in my head to hear you.

Caleb said...

Good point, 2S. There better be some corpses of his loved ones floating in the sky above that picture to explain his bawling, or else he and Mary Marvel should trade names so that she goes by "Super Marvel" and he goes by "Mary Man"

Harris, I suffered through six issues of the new Supergirl in SUPERMAN/BATMAN and the first five issues of the SUPERGIRL solo title, and I assure you, there is a wrong way and a right way to get half-naked teenage girls into comics.

Anonymous said...

I definitely agree in that THIS is the way you tease an event. A lot of CW's bigger events were overhyped and overanalyzed before the stuff even came out. But here, just a picture and a sentance, and that's it.

So if the multiverses are back in play, I would put money on seeing the original Supergirl again. 52 multiverses, you think? Or 5 universes warring against 2 leaving three?

Anonymous said...

By its nature, a multi-verse is infinite possibility. I don't think "52" is how many other worlds are out there in DC. I am stumped on the significance of "52". I also don't get why Marvel brought Captain Marvel back, but at least DC's mystery is intentionally messing with continuity.

Caleb said...

My best guess so far is that 52 refers to the number of "earths" in the multiverse--Big enough to account for the half-dozen or so historical Earths (-1, -2, -X, -S, etc.) and leave room to grow and include Elseworlds they like, like 52 and apparently Earth-Pirate.

But it doesn't make much sense at this point, unless there's a difference between alternate dimensions and Earths that I've never understood (I bet it wouldn't take too long to count up 100 DC alternate universes).

That's why I'm hoping the next "Crisis" is a Morriso-written one. I remember back around the time he and Waid were introducing the concept of Hypertime, he said no one really got it yet, and it may take him writing a crisis-type story entitled "Professor Morrison Explains It All" to make it clear (hopefully he's come up with a better title in the past decade)

Anonymous said...

Dean Trippe's Supergirl illustration is so good that I want to cry. I would KILL to have a Supergirl series with art like that.

Remember Batgirl: Year One? I would love to see Supergirl done with that level of quality art and writing.