The First Column

File in the If No One Likes You than You've Got No One But Yourself to Blame: Not long ago at a convention a fan thought it the height of wit to try and publicly humiliate Rob Liefeld.  Now everyone knows Mr. Liefeld isn't the most  highly regarded artist in the comic community, but there is still a limit to what's right and what's not.  The so-called Fan filmed his public insult and posted it on his blog.  If he thought it was going to make him a “hero” to Liefeld bashers it back fired.  People that would never have thought to defend Rob before leapt to his defense.  It was a pretty jerky act and the fan comes off as a complete tool.  So here Mr. Liefeld has all this good will on his side now and what does he do with it.  Pisses it away in the wind.  Recently, after Paul Levitz was removed from his job of Publisher at DC (still Comics and not Entertainment yet) Rob throws a party to celebrate the fact.  Yes, Mr. Levitz was old school and may have been the reason for some things you didn't like at DC but he also helped save the comic industry and helped create the direct market and guided DC for quite a few years and from what I understand a gentleman to the end.  Which is more than can be said for some.

What is this and who are you?:  This is a column of reviews and facts and gossip and whatever else we have lying around here.  And who the heck am I?  What do I bring to the party?  Well, I make a great chex-mix.  But seriously...over the years I've dabbled in comic book writing.  Back in the days when dinosaurs roamed the earth, or before the advent of Image Comics, I could be found with my name in some Indy Comics.  Black and White was being thrown against the wall and a lot of stuff was sticking and there were a dozen or more color comic companies grabbing at the rungs below Marvel and DC.  And there were a bunch of us with our noses pressed against the glass, looking for a way to get in...me, Ron Wilber, Dave Garcia, Sam Kieth (yes that Sam Kieth), Terry Pavlet and a bunch of others.  So I'm going to regale you my thoughts on what's going on in comics, reviews, what I've heard. 

So Let's Throw In At Least One Review:  Upfront I'm going to admit something not cool.  I don't like zombies.  Don't like the movies, don't like the books, don't like the comics.  And zombies are like the second coolest monster at the moment, right after vampires, but without all the psycho sexuality of the vampire.  So when The Walking Dead first came out from Image Comics, I ignored it.  It wasn't hard, like I said; not a big fan of the zombies, not a big fan of Image and never heard of the writer Robert Kirkman.  The guy working the counter at the comic book store I was frequenting at that time convinced me I should give this comic a try.  This was around issue six or so, the first trade had just come out.  I'm always looking for new books to read, and he had recently turned me on to Ex Machina, so I was inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt. 

Let's just say that I'm extremely glad that he did.  I read that one issue, went back and picked up the trade and have been happily buying every single issue since.  Nowadays, most fan boys have heard of Robert Kirkman, heck, he's even a partner at Image now, the first to be so honored since the original group that formed the company.  Kirkman built his fame slowly and the old fashioned way, one issue at a time, month after month.  He's had a few hiccups along the way, but mainly has stayed the course.  The Walking Dead is fast approaching issue seventy.  How many comics, Marvel or DC much less the other publishers, can say that?

Not to take anything away from the artist on the comic but this is a writer's book.  What made me like this comic enough to pick up future issues and go back for the trades is the writing.  Yes, it's a zombie comic, but not really.  Most people think the title refers to the zombies in the comic, but as Rick (as close to a main character as this series has) points out after a few dozen issues it's the humans that have survived that are the real Walking Dead. 

You can go entire issues and not run across a zombie in the comic, but the menace of the zombies is never far from the surface.  The more recent storyline shows that while zombies might be the evil the humans are facing, sometimes other humans are even worse. 

I realize that I haven't really described the series or the characters.  Basically, it's a group of survivors that are trying to live in a world now inhabited by zombies.  Pretty much your basic late night horror flick retreads, but in Kirkman's hands it is so much more.  No character is safe, even the closest as it gets to a main character Rick could get it, with Kirkman you just never know.  He's killed other characters that you would have thought safe. 

Over the run of five dozens plus issues there have been a few dips here and there in quality but none so dangerous that I've ever thought of giving up the comic.  This is one of the best comic books being published today and if all you read are super heroes you owe it to yourself to give this comic a chance.  More so than a lot of other comics that aren't super heroes that I'll end up talking up and raving over in the future, this is one comic book that I think a lot of super hero fans will like. 

That's A Wrap For The First Installment: Like the famous pigs says “th-th-that's all, folks!” for this week.  Come back for another fun filled round next week.

The High Cost of Death

I've been walkin' through the middle of nowhere, Tryin' to get to heaven before they close the door:

We're cheating ourselves.

As readers we're cheating ourselves.  In comics death is treated as a plot gimmick and not the milestone it should be treated as.

When was the last time you believed that anyone in comics that supposedly died was really dead?  Give DC credit, at least when Batman died they didn't even pretend that he was really dead for good.  Marvel tried to get everyone to buy into Captain America's death, trying to convince us that Bucky was the new Captain America.  But we knew that eventually Steve Rogers would be back in the red, white and blue.  (And please don't tell me that even with Steve back Bucky is still going to be Cap.  We'll see for how long.)

We all know at the end of the storyline when the Big Bad is blown up that somehow the Evil will return to harangue our hero in the future.  That's an expected cliché of the comic book story.  When Dr. Doom is blown up we know he'll be back.  I'm not talking that as real death.  That's comic book death and it's really not supposed to trick us.

I'm talking about the death in comics that is supposed to be true and final.  Death should move us.  Death should make us feel.  Death should make us cry.  And good fiction can do that to us, it can move us, make us feel, make us cry. 

Even the supporting character that dies will probably be back.  No one that dies in comics is safe from coming back.  It used to be said that the only two deaths in comics that would never change were Bucky and Uncle Ben.  Well Bucky is back.  I don't think Uncle Ben has come back, but I could be wrong, I haven't been keeping up with Spider-man. 

I really feel that taking the element of true death out of a comic has hurt the writer's ability to make you feel that ultimate sense of loss.  He can bring you to the brink, but you're not going to take that plunge over into the abyss, because you know it's not true. 

It doesn't have to be like that.  Look at Buffy the Vampire Slayer.  The TV show, not the comic.  Now Buffy was a show that dealt with the supernatural, so you would think that here for sure you would never believe a character could really be dead.  For goodness sake there were vampires and ghosts and all sorts of demon things on this show, so how could dead be dead?  But imagine how you felt when Tara was killed.  You believed it.  You hoped that they might find some way to bring her back, that she couldn't really be dead.  She was one of the good guys.  She was Willow's girlfriend.  But she was dead.  And it made the fiction of the show a little more believable. 

Once more going to Buffy we look at what is arguably considered one of its best shows, “The Body.”  This was the show where the vampires and ghosts and other supernatural thingies took a backseat to the storyline.  Buffy comes home and finds her Mother, Joyce on the floor of the living room.  She was dead.  And Buffy with all her powers could do nothing to save her.  She didn't die from some monster or spell, she died from a normal everyday medical condition.  Watch that show and I dare you not to be moved.  I dare you not to feel a few tears.  But how powerful would it be if you knew that death wasn't real in the Buffyverse and that in a few episodes Joyce would be back.   You might feel something, but I can promise you that the emotions you would feel wouldn't be as strong.

So in comics when you see that person die you always have the thought in the back of your mind that it isn't going to last.  Sooner or later that dead person will be back.  So how much emotion do you want to invest in their death scene?

I was a late comer to the Television show NCIS.  Whenever I'd go up to Tennessee my Mom would be watching it.  It's becoming one of those shows like MASH or Law and Order that seems to be on some channel almost any hour of the day.  USA Network runs marathons of it every week.  But I really never paid attention to it while I was up there.  I'd see part of a show, part of another show.  I didn't know the characters, the situations or anything about the show and it always bothered me that for a show with Navy in its title none of the characters seemed to be in said Navy.  Still I have to admit that I was intrigued by what I saw.  The characters were interesting. 

I started to watch it when I'd come home.  I set the DVR to record it on USA.  After watching half a dozen episodes I was hooked.  I am not a fan of the other forensics cop shows, the CSI franchise.  I've watched some of them and to be honest, really really do not like them.  I find the characters tedious, the stories terrible and cannot watch them.  But NCIS I was enjoying.  I goggled NCIS and discovered that the agents were civilians, they weren't supposed to be in the Navy.  They were investigating the Navy, not part of it. 

And the characters.  Leroy Jethro Gibbs.  Such a great name for a character.  The name just by itself tells you something of his past life.  That he was from a small town.  The rest of the team; Tony, Tim, Kate, Ducky and of course Abby.  Abby became my favorite character. 

I went out and bought the first two seasons on DVD.  I still hadn't seen a lot of the shows and the ones I had seen were out of order.  I knew somewhere in the run of six seasons Kate was replaced by Ziva, but why I didn't know.

So there I was watching the shows.  The first season cemented my feelings for the show.  I was really enjoying it.  For a show that that doesn't focus on the characters' private lives you actually learned a good bit, a little at a time.  I was becoming attached to these characters.  The second season just continued my fascination with the show and its characters.  Towards the end of the second season it was looking like there might be something more between Kate and Tony, like they might be heading into a romantic relationship.  Than at the end of the second season, in the final episode, Kate was killed.

Let me repeat that.  Kate was killed.  I can't tell you the surprise I felt while watching that episode.  I guess I was lucky that I hadn't stumbled across that fact before I watched the show, especially since it was already four or five years old.  But I had no idea what was going to happen.  I remember sitting there thinking this can't be right.  They can't be killing her.  She was going to get together with Tony.  There were too many story possibilities for her.

But she was dead.  And the next season explored the consequences of her death.  It looked at the reactions the other characters had because of her death.  It introduced a new character to replace her, but the acceptance of Ziva didn't come quickly to all the  members of the team who were still grieving over the loss of Kate.  In essence it dealt with death and its consequences. 

If this was a comic, with the show being in the seventh season, Kate would have returned.  The reasons could be many, she could be back as a good guy or more than likely she'd have returned as a villain, convinced that her death was the fault of Gibbs and his team and wanting revenge.  And it would have cheapened her death.  All the emotions I had as a viewer watching her die and the aftermath of her death would have felt cheap and hollow.  The investment I had in the character and the mourning I experienced over her loss would have been for nothing.  Even if I missed Kate and wished she was still with the show I knew her loss had made a difference in the show and by making me believe in the characters and the show for an hour whenever I watched it it had made a difference in me.

This is exactly what we as comic readers are being denied.  We can see someone die, but do we ever truly believe that the death is real?  As soon as the issue is read and the comic put to the side the message boards are going to be full of questioning the death or when will the character come back  from the dead, things that aren't important and not accepting the death and whatever happens next. 

Knowing that a character can actually die makes you read or watch whatever series you are involved in with a different light also.  Knowing that any character (yes, I know that even with Kate's death the odds of Gibb's character being killed were very slim, but there was the possibility and with the other characters you really didn't know) might die makes you believe in the show a bit more.  Any fiction wants you to invest in its world and for the amount of time you're visiting it wants you to believe in it.  I'm not saying you have to believe in people that can fly and whatever, but for the time you're in that fictional world you have to believe.  You have to be willing to put aside what you know might not be true but believe in what the creator of that piece of fiction has created.  And to believe the world has to be consistent with what the creator has created.  Everytime something happens in this make believe world that makes you pause and question it is a chance for you to cease believing and to pull you from the story.

Knowing a character can really die in this world you're reading or watching helps you to invest in the world, helps you to believe a little stronger.  When you don't believe the character dies and there is a death and your first thought is how or when will the character return, you've just been pulled from that world a bit and you're not quite believing as much. 

Watching NCIS I am always worried that another character might die.  And they have.  From semi regular supporting characters to other leads, some characters have died.  It's made me believe in the characters that are alive even more.  When I read the death of a comic book character, as much as I enjoyed the death of Captain America, part of me was questioning the death, wondering when he'd be back, how'd he be back, too many questions for me to fully believe in the death and to pull me from the storyline and the belief that I had invested into that comic that I had been willing to give it. 

There's no real summing up here.  We all know that nothing is really going to change, as far as death is concerned in comics.  It's a shame, death could actually bring a certain life to comics, give the readers a chance to experience true feelings of the death of a character and what it means.  But don't blame just the creators, we as readers are just as guilty.  We're the ones that demand the return of a character before his four color remains are even buried.  We're the ones that start trying to come up with explanations of how the character survived their death.  We're the ones that don't want to accept death as part of life.  And thus we're the ones that will always read the death of a character and be pulled from that fictional world and be reminded a bit at that point in the story that we're just reading a story and of course it's not true and the link between us as a reader and the creator of the story will be broken just a bit.

Who Writes The Watchmen

There's eyes behind the mirrors in empty places: 

Bleeding Cool has reported that DC plans on taking full advantage of the Watchmen universe.  So you know what that means?  A Minutemen comic.  And who among you doubts that there'll be something starring Rorschach.

For those few who are unfamiliar with the comic Watchmen was created by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons.  Moore was coming off a celebrated run on Swamp Thing and DC was looking for a new project for the writer to work on.  Originally Moore was going to take the newly purchased Charlton Comic Heroes and create a new world for the characters.  Somewhere along the line the decision was made that, maybe, the Charlton Heroes (Captain Atom, Blue Beetle, Question, etc.) wasn't exactly right for this story.  Perhaps when someone at DC realized what Moore was planning and than realized how much money was tied up in the Charlton characters.

So Moore and Gibbons created new characters for their story.  So Captain Atom became Dr. Manhattan.  Blue Beetle became Nite Owl.  And Question became Rorschach.

To say Watchmen was a success is an understatement.  It became the benchmark for the genre.  After the twelve issues were published the series was collected in a single volume. 

And that's when things became interesting.  The contracts between DC and the creators were not the standard ones between talent and corporate for that time.  I have no idea of the details but from what has been reported the rights to Watchmen were to revert to Moore and Gibbons once the book went out of print.  I would imagine that the two creators  thought this a fairly decent deal since up to that time no comic book collection had stayed in constant publication.

Until Watchmen.  The series has stayed in print continuously since its initial publication.  And Moore and Gibbons have only been able to stand to the side and watch what DC decides to do with their work. 

DC decided to do a movie of the comic.  It's not exactly a secret that Moore was not a fan of the movie version of his work.  What was somewhat surprising is that there were no movie versions of the comic, no spin-offs or prequels or one of the usual thousand and one comics you see when a movie is coming out.  It seems that even though DC wasn't going to let control of the comic out of their hands, the publisher of the company at that time, Paul Levitz was inclined to let the comic speak for itself and was willing to honor Moore and Gibbons' vision and not add to it with additional comics.

I been in a jail when all my mail showed That a man can't give his address out to bad company:

Things have changed in the last few months.  As we've mentioned before Mr. Levitz is no longer in charge of DC.  And word is that those in charge now are more than eager to add pages to the world of Watchmen.  Dan Didio has supposedly been talking about new projects for the Watchmen universe.  Now this was back when Didio was just the editor of the company, now he is a co-publisher.  But that could be a new wrinkle.  He's the co-publisher, as is there is another publisher.  And that publisher is Jim Lee.

Jim Lee owned Wildstorm Studios, the company that managed to lure Alan Moore back into writing super hero comics some years back with the creation of the ABC Comics line.  Lee was even instrumental in keeping Moore working on his ABC Comics after Wildstorm was sold to DC, when Moore had publicly stated he would never work with DC Comics again.  So we have Lee on one side, obviously once willing to side with Moore and Didio on the other side wanting to publish more comics based on Moore's creations when it's pretty evident that Moore won't be happy about.   Which side will he be on this time?  Will it be enough to cause a rift between the two newly minted co-publishers or would one side be willing to lay their feelings to the side? 

Publication of new comics based on Watchmen also bring up questions of the morality of such an act.  DC owns the title and the characters, but Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons created it for the story they told and intended it to end there.  Would a writer or artist be willing to take on such a job knowing the history?  Well, there's always someone out there willing to write or draw something if they get paid, regardless of if it's right or wrong.  And we're not saying that such writers or artists would be wrong. 

Isn't Spider-man and Batman still going after the original creators left the comic?   Moore and Gibbons knew the history of the industry, they knew what they were signing, they weren't kids, so why is DC the bad guys here?  Moore and Gibbons believed that the comic would be published by DC for a few years and than once it went out of print would revert to them, at the time that was probably a pretty good bet, so it could be said that DC led them on. 

As you can see a good point could be made from either side.  I think one reason no one has wanted to add to the Watchmen canon so far is because of how highly regarded the comic is held.  For goodness sake, it was named one of the 100 best NOVELS of all time by TIME magazine.  Not graphic novels, but novels, you know those things that don't have pictures to tell their story.  Who wants to take a chance to screw with that? 

And as a writer or artist who wants to be known as the guy or girl that messed with Moore and Gibbons' creation.   You know, no matter how good it is, it isn't going to be Watchmen.  Plus you're going to be known as anti-creator, not much more than a hack, willing to take a job even though you know you shouldn't.  I'm not saying that's true.  Heck, if I was offered the job would I be willing to turn it down?  (As if there's even the slightest chance that will happen.)  I'd have to say I seriously doubt it, so believe me I'm not casting any dispersions on anyone here. 

Even though this isn't a creator owned comic, in the minds and thoughts of a lot of people it's often forgotten that the comic is owned by DC Entertainment.  Any artist or writer taking the job of continuing the adventures of the characters from Watchmen are going to be viewed as opposing Alan Moore's wishes.  Normally this wouldn't be that big a deal, most creators aren't that worried about what other creators think about such things, but this is Alan Moore we're talking about.  Moore is held in his own special place as far as most creators are concerned.

It would probably help if DC gets Dave Gibbons involved with the project.  But what does Mr. Gibbons think of the idea of continuing the Watchmen's legacy?  I don't remember him being opposed to the movie and he has continued to work in mainstream comics, so he may have no problems with the concept. 

So if DC does decide to go ahead with this it will be interesting to see who is willing to give it a try.