EVERYTHING BUT IMAGINARY #174: THE NEWS FROM SAN DIEGO I FELT LIKE WRITING ABOUT

[Blake Petit]

So the San Diego ComicCon is over for another year, and we got a slew of major announcements, as always. DC Comics is working on a line of direct-to-DVD animated movies. Adam Hughes is going to write and draw All Star Wonder Woman. A “lost” Stan Lee/Jack Kirby issue of Fantastic Four is in the works, ready to dazzle fans of one of the greatest comic book runs of all time. And Robert Kirkman is taking aim at Todd McFarlane.

Cool.

Now those of us not lucky enough to have actually been in San Diego spent the whole weekend glued to our computers, waiting for convention reports at a dozen websites, but I’ve got something you won’t see on any of those sites: the Everything But Imaginary perspective. So here, for you, we’ve got my thoughts on the big news from San Diego 2006.

Let’s start with DC’s new movies. This shouldn’t be too big a surprise, as Marvel comics launched their own animated line earlier this year with an Ultimate Avengers film, and if there’s one truism in comics it’s that if one of the Big Two has a good idea, the other will find a way to do their own version of it. Being more of a DC fan, of course, I’m more excited about these movies… plus I was somewhat unimpressed with Ultimate Avengers. Oh, the writing was fine, but the animation was pretty sub-par, in my opinion, the sort of thing you got in a bad 80s cartoon. DC’s got a major advantage with this – they’re working with Warner Brothers animation, the same studio that gave us animated series featuring Batman, Superman, the Teen Titans and the Justice League. Even when they’ve turned out a sub-par product (like the recent Superman: Brainiac Attacks DVD movie), the animation itself has been good.

Plus, unlike Marvel, DC is mining their greatest stories for their films. The three movies announced to launch the line are Darwyn Cooke’s much-lauded New Frontier, Superman/Doomsday, and the classic story New Teen Titans: The Judas Contract, and the original creators of the stories have a hand in their animated versions as well. Supposedly Kingdom Come was discussed for the first wave, but they decided to go with New Frontier instead – so I’m going to keep my fingers crossed and hope they put that epic story on the small screen in the next wave of films.

Next up is the news that a Fantastic Four special is in the works featuring a “lost” issue by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby. According to editor Tom Breevort, Lee and Kirby had a falling-out when working on the issue that was due to be published as Fantastic Four #102. It was the last straw in an already-strained relationship, and Kirby wound up leaving Marvel and going to DC, where he began work on his Fourth World/New Gods family of titles. Lee wound up using some of the pages as a flashback sequence in Fantastic Four #108, but the story was never published as originally intended.

Now that Marvel has entered into a relationship with the Kirby estate (resulting in the upcoming Galactic Bounty Hunters series), Brevoort is working with Stan Lee to rewrite the script, and the final version will include a reprint of FF #108, but the decision has not yet been made as to who will ink the book or how it will be processed – if they’ll go for an old-fashioned look or unleash a modern finish on it. I kind of hope for the latter – a debate has recently popped up at Comixtreme about Kirby’s art in relation to modern popular artists, and I for one am very interested in seeing how modern inking and coloring techniques would work with the greatest penciler ever to work in comic books.

DC’s “All Star” line will continue next year with All Star Wonder Woman, written and drawn by Adam Hughes. This, to me, is great news. The All Star line has been hit and miss. All Star Batman and Robin, the Boy Wonder, has really pretty artwork by Jim Lee. The writing by Frank Miller, though… well, there’s only so many ways one can say that the man no longer has the grasp on Batman he once did, and I already used them all up on The Dark Knight Strikes Again. All Star Superman is considerably better – I like Grant Morrison’s take, which is essentially what he thinks the Silver Age Superman would be like today. Frank Quietly’s art doesn’t blow me away, but it’s all right. I’d be happier if he didn’t draw the cape as only coming down to Superman’s butt, but other than that I’m more or less satisfied.

But Hughes on Wonder Woman – now this, to me, is a perfect marriage. Hughes does beautiful women better than almost anyone working in comics (and Frank Cho is exclusive to Marvel right now). Plus, he had a long and highly satisfying run as the Wonder Woman cover artist – there can be no doubt that this is going to be a beautiful book, visually. His writing isn’t as well-known, but I’ve been happy with his previous efforts – the highly-entertaining Superman/Gen 13 crossover, for instance. If he can be as good at the keyboard as he is at the drafting table, this may well be the best “All Star” title yet.

Then there’s the worst-kept secret in comics, finally made official: the new writers of Action Comics will be the team of Geoff Johns and director Richard Donner. My God, this has me excited. Johns is arguably the best superhero writer working in comics today. Richard Donner, his friend and mentor, was the director of the first (and most of the second) Superman feature film starring Christopher Reeve. Combining Donner’s grasp on the character with Johns knowledge of his place in the DC Universe and comic book storytelling… my goodness. Whoever came up with the idea of putting these two together is going to go down in the history books with the first guy to drop a chocolate bar in a jar of peanut butter and that lost Italian genius who first poured marinara sauce over Chinese noodles. With Kurt Busiek already kicking butt on Superman, I don’t remember the last time it’s been this good to be a Superman fan.

Wildstorm announced this weekend that they’ve acquired the rights to the New Line Cinema family of horror properties, including A Nightmare on Elm Street, Friday the 13th and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Nightmare will be an ongoing series written by Chuck Dixon with art by Kevin West. Friday will be by Justin Gray and Jimmy Palmiotti and art by Ryan Sook and Texas will be by Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning with art by Wesley Craig. This announcement took me very much by surprise. As a mild fan of slasher films (although more as cheesy entertainment than as an actual horror film – buckets of blood don’t scare me), I’m glad to see Wildstorm is putting such talented creators on these comic books. On the other hand, I’m confused – just weeks ago Avatar Press put out several comics in their own line of New Line horror comics, including all three of these properties, and I hadn’t heard anything about them losing the license. The amateur detective in me really, really wants to know what went down there.

And finally, my favorite little tidbit from the con came – ironically – from a panel on Todd McFarlane Productions, when Invincible and Walking Dead creator Robert Kirkman popped up and asked McFarlane why he doesn’t put out new comics anymore. McFarlane, so visible in the early 90s as one of the artists who led the exodus from Marvel comics that formed Image in the first place, has spent the last several years focusing on his toy line, games, TV and film properties and so forth, with his comic book work growing more and more sporadic even as his fans asked for more and more comics. (Some people have suggested the confrontation was staged -- personally, I don't think so, but even if it was, it brings up a very important point.)

This is a tricky situation for me, and allow me to explain why. On the one hand, I think McFarlane has the right to work in any medium he so chooses, and I don’t begrudge him for one second for taking the chance to make his fortune with action figures. Furthermore, despite what some fans say, I don’t think he “owes” them any new work if he doesn’t want to put any out. On the other hand, though, it’s comic books that made him a star, comic books that launched his “empire,” such as it is. So while he doesn’t owe his fans any new work, that doesn’t mean that tossing out some new comics once in a while wouldn’t be a good idea. It would engender more loyalty and satisfy the people who got him where he is, and that’s just smart business. Plus he rubbed me the wrong way when he said that if you create a Mickey Mouse, that’s enough and you don’t need to create Donald Duck or Goofy. Todd, buddy... lemme tell ya, Spawn ain’t no Mickey Mouse.

These were the tidbits from San Diego that stuck with me the most. A lot more happened, of course, and feel free to discuss any of it right here, or ask me for my take. That’s the great thing about comic book convention season, after all – there’s always something new to talk about.

Favorite of the Week: July 19, 2006

This is one of those weeks where the favorite just leapt out and seized control from the moment I read it. I’ve been waiting for months, and Brad Meltzer’s Justice League of America #0 didn’t disappoint in the slightest. Before really launching into his story with issue one, Meltzer took this prelude to show the Trinity of the DC Universe – Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman – and showed them in the past, present and future, at the most important moments in the history of the League. He showed what they meant to each other, and what they mean to the world at large, and ironically the “past” segments of the comic showed more about the “New Earth” and how its history has changed than the entire “History of the DC Universe” serial that ran in the back pages of 52. This was a fantastic issue, and I can’t wait to see who will join the big three in the new Justice League of America.

Blake M. Petit is the author of the superhero comedy novel, Other People's Heroes, the suspense novel The Beginner and the weekly “Think About It” humor column at Think About It Central. His new comic, Evertime, is coming soon from Tightlip Entertainment. E-mail him at Blake@comixtreme.com and visit him on the web at Evertime Realms.

[Jim Wright]

About the New Line Cinema thing, maybe someone over at WB noticed how well the Avatar press comics were selling and wondered why a unit of Time Warner is having its comics done by Avatar and not Time Warner owned DC?

[Blake Petit]

Originally Posted by JimYamato

About the New Line Cinema thing, maybe someone over at WB noticed how well the Avatar press comics were selling and wondered why a unit of Time Warner is having its comics done by Avatar and not Time Warner owned DC?

Oooh, now there's an interesting theory. If that's true, I guess this will prove how much of those sales were driven by Avatar's billion variant covers per issue policy.

[Jim Wright]

Seriously, you'd think a company like Time Warner would take advantage of company synergy. Sometimes it looks to me that they go out of their way to not work together.

[DocDoom]

I actually think there IS a market for these properties if they have very good writers (get Kirkman on one of those ASAP!) they can potentially attract the horror fans, the casual comic fans and the hardcore ones...

AGAIN.....

if they are very good stories

[Blake Petit]

Oh, there's absolutely a market -- I know, I'm part of it.

I was just commenting on Avatar's basic business model. They don't really make comics for a reader, they make them for a collector, putting out dozens of variant covers and gimmicks to get people to buy multiple copies. That sort of thing skews the numbers and makes it difficult to gauge exactly how big the audience is.

Wildstorm is doing something that previous license-holders haven't, though -- putting great writers on the comics.