Category Archives: Comic Books/Graphic Novels

Books/Literature, Comic Books/Graphic Novels

Alan Moore Q & A on Goodreads…

I’ve had this site on my tablet computer for a while now and figured it was time to share.

Alan Moore, one of the most talented and influential -and controversial- comic book writers perhaps ever, opened up a Q & A session over at Goodreads.  The questions were plentiful though a few of his replies were obviously cut and pasted.  Still, a fascinating read:

https://www.goodreads.com/author/3961.Alan_Moore/questions

I remain a great admirer and equally frustrated/annoyed fan of Mr. Moore’s.  There is no doubt the work he produced, particularly for DC comics in the 1980’s, was like nothing that came before it.  His work on Swamp Thing and Watchmen alone would lift anyone’s reputation to the stratosphere.  He also was responsible for the excellent V for Vendetta, Marvel/MiracleMan, D.R. & Quinch (a hilarious series, proving he could do comedy as deftly as horror/action/drama), and “Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow”, a “last” Silver age Superman story.

On the negative side, he was also the writer behind The Killing Joke, a beautifully drawn -by Brian Bolland- Batman graphic novel whose story was…not all that good, IMHO.  In fact, the story was sadistic and needlessly grim.  Of course, there are those who would argue that point with me.

Soon after the release of Watchmen Alan Moore grew furious with DC comics and left them, never to return.  Based on the Q & A his negative feelings haven’t diminished one bit.  My understanding of the situation, based on interviews Mr. Moore has given over the years, involved the rights to Watchmen.  Though I’m probably oversimplifying things (Alan Moore alone knows how much more is involved), the original contract with Mr. Moore stated the rights to the series would revert back to him as soon as the book was out of print.  However, because the series was so successful DC was able to retain the rights to it and have done so since its initial 12 issue run was completed in the late 1980’s.

While I sympathize with Mr. Moore, a part of me is greatly troubled by what I can only call his hypocrisy regarding creative ownership.

As I have mentioned in the past, the Watchmen series was originally supposed to feature the Charlton Heroes that DC had at the time just acquired.  Because of the nature of the story Mr. Moore was telling, it was felt that rather than use these characters he should come up with pastiches and use them.  Thus the Charlton heroes…

…became the Watchmen.

In his time at DC, Mr. Moore had little problems using other people’s creations to tell his stories.  Yet he gets hung up on the concept of creative ownership even when some of his most famous stories involved characters he either didn’t come up with (Batman, Superman, Swamp Thing, etc.) or came up with thinly veiled pastiches of the same (Watchmen).  After leaving DC comics one of his higher profile works was Supreme, a tissue-thin “homage” (I would call it a rip off) of Superman…

Yeah…

Mr. Moore would follow this up with such series as League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (which used copyright free characters such as Alan Quatermain, Dorian Gray, etc. etc.), Promethea (which was a Wonder Woman type), and Tom Strong (a Doc Savage/Pulp type hero).

I’d be the last to blast Mr. Moore’s writing talents but it bothers me that his best known post DC works (there are others, I’m not forgetting them) have largely involved either using copyright free characters or thinly veiled versions of other, more famous characters.

And still he’s angry with DC for retaining their copyright on Watchmen?

Regardless, the Q & A is interesting if you want to get into the mind of Mr. Moore.

Comic Books/Graphic Novels

Superman’s new secret identity

Don’t quite know why, but of late DC Comics has been trying to modernize/revitalize/re-work many of their superhero concepts.

Perhaps the editors/writers/artists felt that some of these older concepts had become stale with the passage of years and felt it was time to upset the cart a little and see what happens.  It may also be that the for the most part successful re-working of various characters on the many DC TV shows have also inspired a desire to do the same in print.

Which leads us to the above.  In case you haven’t been following Superman comics of late, one of the big things that was recently

…SPOILERS FOLLOW!…

YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!!!

…was have Superman’s secret identity of Clark Kent be revealed to the world at large (by Lois Lane, no less!) and the fallout of this revelation.

Now, it appears that Superman will take on a new secret identity…

Superman’s Getting A Brand New Secret Identity

How long will these changes last?  Who knows.  In the past when DC or Marvel made “big” changes to their well established characters they would inevitably return them to a semblance of what they were before (for example, they “killed” Superman and kept him dead for a while before bringing him back.  They turned Hal Jordan/Green Lantern evil and he did some truly ghastly things, including mass murder, before he too was apparently killed off.  He returned and the villainous stuff was explained away.  Over at Marvel, they killed off Steve Rogers/Captain America and he returned as well.  Etc. Etc.)

I can’t help but wonder if today’s changes, however, might be longer term.  There is no doubt that comic book fiction is far different today than what I remember from my own childhood and the writers/editors of today may be in a more experimental mood than before.

Doesn’t mean they won’t eventually bring things back to the status quo, though!

Comic Books/Graphic Novels, General

This ‘n that…

Couple of interesting articles worth reading, both found on io9:

First up, Remembering the Mysterious “Vela Incident” 36 Years Later.

I must have missed this intriguing news when it originally came out, but the “Vela Incident” involves a U.S. satellite back in 1979 detecting an explosion in the southern Indian Ocean which may have been a secret test of a nuclear weapon.  If this was the case, which nation tested the nuclear device?  Was it a nuclear device?

The mystery continues!

Next up, Appeals Court Rules the Batmobile is Copyright Protected.

The article linked to above, written by James Whitbrook, concerns DC Comic’s lawsuit against Mark Towle, a man who ran the “Gotham Garage” and specialized in making replicas of cars from movies and TV but who specialty, according to the article, were replicas of the 1966 Batman TV show Batmobile…

…as well as the 1989 Tim Burton directed Batman movie Batmobile…

In a decision that didn’t surprise me all that much, the court asserted that DC Comics does indeed have a copyright over the Batmobile and Mr. Towle was violating that copyright by producing -and making money off of- these vehicles.

I urge you to read the article if only to read the legal wording justifying why DC Comics is entitled to claim the copyright on the vehicle despite the fact that there have been many varieties of Batmobiles over the years.

Interesting stuff!

Books/Literature, Comic Books/Graphic Novels, General, Movies, Music

On Creation…

A couple of days ago in the blog post Crediting Bill Finger I stated Mr. Finger, while very much deserving of finally being acknowledged as a co-creator of Batman, isn’t the only one that should be credited.  I pointed out that Shadow author extraordinaire Walter B. Gibson also might deserve some credit as Mr. Finger and company, when they wrote the very first Batman story which appeared in Detective Comics #27 essentially made a comic book adaptation of one of Mr. Gibson’s Shadow stories.  While this was one (and the most obvious) of the Gibson written Shadow stories that clearly influenced Mr. Finger, I nonetheless feel I came off waaaay too glib in my posting and for that I apologize.

The fact is that while the very early Batman stories may have cribbed certain ideas (and even complete stories) from The Shadow works by Mr. Gibson, the Batman character and his world quickly moved off into other very fascinating and often unique directions.  While Mr. Gibson and some of his Shadow novels were an inspiration at the start of the Batman series, so too were other works and, again, Batman would go off into its own unique direction and for that Mr. Finger richly deserves the lion’s share of the credit for what he did.

I suppose the above should clue you in on the fact that I’m incredibly fascinated with artistic creation(s) and the credit deserved for them.

Perhaps one of the most interesting of the “creator” issues, to me, is that regarding author Alan Moore and arguably his most recognized creation, Watchmen.

Back in the 1980’s author Alan Moore became a superstar writer, and deservedly so, for his work on Marvel (later Miracle) Man, V for Vendetta, and Swamp Thing.  Watchmen would come at the tail end of his association with DC Comics in the form of the 12 issue limited series.  Watchmen explored the dark side of what the world would be like with Superheroes.  It was subsequently made into a film…

It was because of what followed after the release of this series that Mr. Moore had a major falling out with DC Comics and left the publisher never to return.  My understanding of the situation, based on interviews Mr. Moore gave after the fact, was when he and DC Comics came to an agreement about publishing Watchmen the contract specified that once the series was out of print, something which Mr. Moore expected to happen rather quickly, the rights of this series would revert to Mr. Moore and artist Dave Gibbons.  However, Watchmen proved an incredible success and DC has been able to keep reprinting it since its first publication in 1986.  I’ve read there were other issues which caused Mr. Moore’s ire as well regarding royalties, but I don’t know enough about them to comment.  Suffice to say Mr. Moore’s anger toward DC stemmed to a large degree over the fact that he lost control of Watchmen when he thought it would come to him soon after the initial publication.

When Mr. Moore left DC Comics in 1989 it was with considerable rancor and, as an author I could sympathize with his desire to control his own works.

But we’re talking about creative credits here and this is where certain facts rear their heads.

To begin, Mr. Moore originally conceived Watchmen as a story which would feature the various Charlton superheroes that DC Comics had at that time acquired.  Below is an image of those various Charlton Characters.  From upper left and moving clockwise you’ve got The Blue Beetle, Captain Atom, Nightshade, The Question, The Peacemaker, and Peter Cannon/Thunderbolt.

And here we have the principle cast of Watchmen.  From left and moving clockwise, you have Ozymandias (Peter Cannon), Silk Specter (Nightshade), Doctor Manhattan (Captain Atom), Nite Owl (The Blue Beetle), Rorschach (The Question), and The Comedian (Peacemaker).

Mr. Moore’s concept for a Charlton based Watchmen proved difficult for DC Comics to accept as the story was self-contained and ended in such a way it would be difficult to re-use the recently bought characters in any other way.

Therefore Mr. Moore modified the established Charlton characters into these “new” characters and the series was greenlighted and published.

Mr. Moore’s story, unquestionably, was “his” concept, a darker take on what would happen in the real world if Superheroes existed.  He had already begun that process with Marvel (Miracle) Man and Watchmen was the culmination of that theme (I’ll ignore the climax of the book and its too-striking resemblance to the Outer Limits episode The Architects of Fear because it is my suspicion this might have been nothing more than an innocent coincidence).

The facts tell us that while Mr. Moore is clearly the creator and writer of the Watchmen story, every one of the characters he used within them were thinly veiled versions of other authors/artists creations.  Which makes me wonder: Should the creators of the various Charlton heroes which were the basis of the Watchmen characters not be entitled to some kind of recognition -and perhaps even monetary compensation- for the characters they created and Mr. Moore essentially appropriated?

Further, because the project was initiated because DC Comics purchased the Charlton characters and those were the ones that provided the impetus to Mr. Moore’s story, don’t the people behind that purchase also deserve some credit for bringing these characters to Mr. Moore’s attention and use?

I suppose what I’m trying to say is that sometimes –sometimes– creative credit is a harder thing to assign than it at first seems.

 

Books/Literature, Comic Books/Graphic Novels

Crediting Bill Finger…

This fascinating bit of news appeared over the weekend:

DC Will Finally Credit Bill Finger As Co-Creator of Batman

For those who don’t know about this, since Batman’s first appearance way back in Detective Comics #27 released in 1939 and until today the “sole” creator of Batman has been listed as Bob Kane but most people who followed the character/creation knew that many, if not most, of Batman’s concepts were created by the series’ writer, Bill Finger.

To be fair, Bob Kane was the artist and person who thought up the idea of a “Bat-Man”.  But the concept he originally conceived of was radically changed to what we are more familiar with in the hands of the series’ writer, Mr. Finger.

Ty Templeton offered an amusing take on the Bob Kane Batman which gives you an idea where it went from his initial concept:

People have blasted the late Mr. Kane for taking credit for everything Batman related and snubbing all others.  It wasn’t until well after Mr. Finger died in 1974 that Mr. Kane finally copped to the fact that Mr. Finger should have been given a lot more credit for the creation/concepts behind the Batman character.

So, I’m happy to hear that Mr. Finger is getting credit where it is due…

…however…

I’m not trying to be a smart-ass here, but the character of Batman also owes a considerable debt to the works of Walter B. Gibson.  Mr. Gibson was an insanely proficient writer (it was said he could write up to 10,000 words a day) who wrote most of The Shadow pulp novels released from 1931 to 1949.

He was also the man who came up with many concepts which were subsequently cribbed (for those who don’t want to play nice, “stolen”) by Bill Finger and re-used in the Batman comics.  In fact, the very first Batman story, the one published in that 27th issue of Detective Comics mentioned above, was pretty much a scene for scene comic book adaptation of the Shadow story “Partners in Peril”, only with Batman sub-ing for The Shadow.

But don’t take my word for it.  Check it out for yourself:

http://www.shadowsanctum.com/pulps/shadow9.html

I believe the reprint book is still available for a reasonable price via Amazon.  Happy hunting!

Shadow9

Comic Books/Graphic Novels, Movies

The possibility for a Hellboy 3…

…appears pretty murky:

Hellboy 3 is a Little Beyond Kickstarter

The essence of this article, for those who don’t want to click and read it (but you should if you’re interested!) is that director Guillermo Del Toro was asked about the possibility of a Hellboy 3 movie and he stated:

“The hard fact is that the movie’s going to need about $120 million and there’s nobody knocking down our doors to give it to us. It’s a little beyond Kickstarter. It would be great to complete the trilogy. But in a way I don’t see the world—the industry—supporting that idea. But you know, Ron is no spring chicken, so we’d better get to it before Hellboy has to do everything from a Barcalounger.”

You know, I like Guillermo Del Toro even though I may not be the biggest fan of his films.  Going into them, you can always expect some great visuals even if at times the stories he presents peter out (I recall being especially frustrated with Blade II which started so damn well and, IMHO, then just ran out of gas 2/3rds of the way through).

I feel his best film remains Mimic, a genuinely creepy horror story involving mutant cockroaches.  Despite some flaws, including studio interference, I love that film.  I also love the Hellboy comic books by Mike Mignola and company.  While the original Mignola written/drawn ones are my favorites, he’s brought in a stable of interesting artists and has maintained the series relatively well.

But the Hellboy movies?  Again, visually stunning and Ron Perlman is absolutely perfect as Hellboy…but the films themselves have left me a little flat.  In some ways, they’re not unlike Blade II in that respect and could have used stronger stories.

And yet after having said all that, I still wouldn’t mind seeing a third Hellboy film by the same cast and crew, provided they can get the money to make it.

I love the character of Hellboy so much that I’d love to see him again in another, hopefully better, adventure.

Perhaps the third time will be the charm?

Books/Literature, Comic Books/Graphic Novels, Movies

Why Superheroes Don’t Kill…

An interesting article by Jacob Brogan for Slate Magazine (you can read it here) briefly goes into the history of violence in comic books and why it is that those comic book Superheroes often have a code against killing.

Specifically he mentions one of the more notorious Batman stories of the past, “The Giants of Hugo Strange” which appeared nearly 75 years ago in Batman #1.

He notes that the grim goings on in the story (Batman has no qualms whatsoever in killing Hugo Strange’s oddball monsters) were received with concerned notes from parents and that the editors behind the scenes of the book ordered writer/co-creator Bill Finger to ease up on the violence following that story.

What is fascinating to me is how this may well have changed -for the better- the whole idea of superheroes, something Mr. Brogan goes into as well.  Even as a very young comic book reader I always admired the fact that heroes fought for good against at times very vicious villains but never descended to their level.

The Joker could and did kill, but Batman would never take him out.  Arrest him, imprison him, even rough him up, but never kill.

So too it was with Superman, though in his very, very early stories he also engaged in some roughhousing and possible murder as well.

So ingrained was the idea that heroes didn’t kill that one of the most startling things I experienced very early on as a child was the very first episode of the Six Million Dollar Man TV series (as opposed to the films released just before) entitled Population Zero.

In that episode, which owed a great deal of (ahem) credit to the book and movie The Andromeda Strain, an entire small rural town appears to have been killed off.  Steve Austin, the Bionic Man, is sent to investigate and he dons a space suit and walks into the town.  Everyone appears to have died simultaneously, their bodies littered all over the place.  But then, they awaken, seemingly all normal.

It turns out a master villain has knocked them all out with a sound wave weapon, one that can be calibrated, like the Star Trek phasers, to kill.

As the episode goes on, Steve Austin is captured and the evil scientist, it turns out, is well aware of the bionic project.  His sound wave project was declined funding by the government in favor of the bionic project.  He is delighted in having captured Steve Austin and imprisons him in a large meat freezer, noting that his bionic parts will freeze and he’ll die there while the villain uses his weapon to kill those who are pursuing him.

Steve Austin gets away, and in one of the most exciting climaxes of any TV show I had seen up to that point, rips a metal post from the ground and hurls it at the bad guy’s van.  It hits the van and the whole thing, including all the villains, blows up.  All the villains die in the explosion.

To say the least, I was shocked by this ending.

Steve Austin had killed instead of apprehended the bad guys!  He knew they were using power from the power lines around the area to fuel their device.  He could have taken them out and rendered their weapon useless.  Instead, he ends the threat there.

Completely.

It seemed the late 60’s/early 70’s were a time when the idea of what made a hero a hero was being tested.  You had Clint Eastwood in the Spaghetti Westerns and, afterwards, as Dirty Harry.  These roles provided a new template of what made a “hero”.  In this case, especially concerning Dirty Harry, our hero pushed the limits in decidedly shocking (at the time) ways.  So too in comic books you had villains who were more vicious and, as the decade of the 70’s moved on, heroes that would kill (Wolverine being a prime example).

In the 1980’s movies took several steps forward and suddenly you had heroes that killed villains by the scores.  Included in this mix were characters like Rambo.

Today, the state of the hero is in transition.  In Batman Begins, a film I happened to like quite a bit, I was more than a little irritated by the ultimate resolution between Batman and Ra’s Al Gul.  When Batman has Gul helpless in the train at the end of the film, he SHOULD have taken him from the train before it crashed and jailed him, instead of using the silly “I don’t kill, I just choose to not save you” idiocity.  By choosing to do nothing, he has very much made a choice and Gul dies in the wreck, a victim of Batman’s chosen inaction.

In the recent Superman and first Avengers film we deal with the destructive effects of a fight between gods yet both films try to sanitize the ultimate results of these destructive fights vis a vis the civilians caught in between.  While the Man of Steel film was rightly called out for showing destruction that should have resulted in scores of casualties, fewer fans called out essentially the same thing shown in Avengers.

The point is that the concept of the superhero is an evolving one.  The first comic book superheroes were influenced by Doc Savage and The Shadow, two of the greatest pulp creations.  These characters, especially The Shadow, who were not at all adverse to killing off their current villain problem.  Superheroes underwent a drastic change to where they did not kill and were always on the side of truth and justice, yet that changed as mentioned above.

Where do we go from here?

We’ll have to wait and see.

Comic Books/Graphic Novels, Movies

Superhero costumes in film…

…could it be the porn parodies do a better job of translating superhero costumes to the screen?

See for yourself:

http://moviepilot.com/posts/2015/04/08/nsfw-parody-costumes-that-are-better-than-the-movies-2843418

The only problem with the article is that they assume anyone who reads it already knows what the comic book characters look like on the page and therefore can judge which version, porn parody or movie version, more adheres to the original comic book look of said character.

So, for those not so familiar with the comic book versions, these two of six of the examples stuck me as where the porn parody versions more closely adhered to the original comic book looks:

First up, Scarlet Witch, as presented in the comic books:

Scarlet Witch in porn (left) versus the way she’s presented (right) in the upcoming Avengers movie…

Rogue, as presented in the comic books…

And in porno (left) versus in the X-Men movies (right)…

As I said before, these two, to my eyes, were the clearest examples of the six presented showing that the porn parody versions honored the original “look” of the characters more than the “legitimate” film versions!

Books/Literature, Comic Books/Graphic Novels, Computers/Electronics, General, Movies, Music, TV

A sign of the times…

Perhaps one of the best known/watched TV shows today is HBO’s Game of Thrones.  This past weekend, as they are wont to do, HBO offered a “free” weekend of viewing for those who don’t have the cable station as a way to give them the premiere of this season’s Game of Thrones (it aired Sunday).  Of course, the free “taste” of the fifth season of this show is intended to get people to, hopefully, subscribe to HBO.

But even before that first episode aired came news that the first FIVE episodes of the fifth season had already leaked and were available to be downloaded at various pirate websites:

http://gizmodo.com/nearly-half-of-game-of-thrones-season-5-just-leaked-1697305966

As I said in the heading, this is unfortunately very much a sign of the times.  If you have anything that is popular and desirable, be it music, movies, books, and, yes, TV shows, chances are good you’ll find pirate copies of them available online.

And that’s too bad.

While shows like Game of Thrones no doubt earn their investment dollars many times over, the fact is that not all works of art and their creators/investors are as fortunate.  Piracy, even in small amounts, hurts the bottom line.  While there may be those who illegally download something and later on legally pay for the same product, there will always be some percentage of these people who get material illegally and for free and do not bother to pursue it any other way.

One of the great concerns I have today is that artistic creations have become dangerously devalued.  There are great and powerful industries out there that create wonderful machines that allow you to see and experience artistic works (smartphones, computers, tablets, etc.) and as consumers we’re willing to pay sometimes big money to have the latest of these items…yet the things the machines allow us to see/hear -from music to movies to books- are for the most part unprotected.

You have the latest iPhone or iPad or Samsung or HP computer, etc. etc. and with them you can go to assorted websites and illegally download a movie/music/book/etc. you want to see.  Sometimes, this movie/song/book hasn’t yet been formally released!

The end result, I fear, is that the ease with which people can get these items creates a sense the act of creating them didn’t involve much actual work.  I’ve noted before the weird (to me) idea that authors “shit out” their books in their free time while and during the rest of the hours in the day pursue a life of fun and leisure.  This concept has been exacerbated by TV shows such as Murder She Wrote and, more recently, Castle.

I fear this idea is permeating other creative fields.  Coming up with a song/album?  Come on, how hard can that be?  Drawing a 22 page comic book?  Shouldn’t take more than a day, right?  Writing a story?  Can’t take much more to create it than it does to read it.

Even worse, there are those who know creating such works takes time and effort and they just don’t care.

If I work somewhere -from a Wall Street office to a McDonalds- eight hours a day for two weeks, at the end of this time I expect to get a check for my work.  With artistic creations, you may do the very same time and work just as hard and for just as long…and your hard work can then be taken from you, posted online, and whatever monies you might have made are now subject to that loss.

I’m not saying anything anyone out there shouldn’t know already.

Piracy is, at least as of now, a sad reality of life.  Perhaps in time there will be a way to more securely protect your artistic works so that they don’t end up pirated online.

Or perhaps there will never be a way of doing this.

Regardless, the irony is that the people who will ultimately be hurt by this are the consumers.  The Beatles took years to practice their trade and be properly paid for their work until they were able to create some truly memorable songs and albums.

Somewhere out there might be a band that, with time, might have become just as good as them, but they make no money from their music because it simply doesn’t sell as much as it is pirated.  Unlike John, Paul, George, and Ringo, the members of this band eventually have to break apart…they simply cannot sustain themselves.

And we, the public, will never get to hear what this band might have made.

Or see what this director could have created.

Or this writer.

Or this artist.

Comic Books/Graphic Novels, Movies

The Flash directed by…Ingmar Bergman?!

Absolutely hilarious “trailer” for a Ingmar Bergman directed Flash show/movie.  If you don’t know who The Flash is, he’s DC Comic’s fastest man alive, a superhero capable of running faster than anyone…

…and in the hands of “Ingmar Bergman”, he becomes rather…moody:

Btw, found this video at:

http://groupthink.jezebel.com/the-flash-directed-by-1690110714