ComicsAlliance.com

Super-Handsome Man: A Henry Cavill Primer

Andrew Wheeler — 2013-06-14T10:00:00+00:00

Superman is not a role they give to movie stars. Christopher Reeve was unknown when he took the part. The same was true for Dean Cain, Tom Welling and Brandon Routh; the best any of them could claim is a multi-episode guest spot on a TV show or, in Routh's case, a supporting role on a daytime soap. Though some bigger names have been considered for the role (Nicolas Cage being the most bizarre among them), filmmakers seem to understand that when audiences look at Superman they should see only Superman, and not the actor who plays the part.

Though Henry Cavill is far from a household name, he is in fact the Superman actor with the biggest pre-cape career -- and yet most comic fans probably had little idea who he was when he was cast as the titular Man of Steel. If you're still wondering who Cavill is, where he came from, and whether he's going to be any good in the film that opens today, look no further, friend. You have questions. We have answers.Vitals
Henry William Dalgliesh Cavill, 30, born in Jersey, the fourth of five sons, is the first non-American actor to play Superman on the screen. (A British actor played baby Kal-El in the 1978 Superman: The Movie. We're not counting that.)

Non-American? You said he was born in Jersey
Yes, but not the new one. The old one. Original recipe Jersey is an island off the coast of France. In contrast to New Jersey, Jersey Classic is a posh place full of rich people; the sort of place where a child gets named Henry William Dalgliesh.

So Jersey is near France? But Cavill is English?
Well... You know how people get confused by the England/Britain/UK thing? Brace yourself.
Jersey is a self-governing dependency of the British crown; a parliamentary democracy with its own administrative government. It's one of the last parts of the old French Duchy of Normandy still held by the British crown, and the current Duke of Normandy is Elizabeth II, the Queen of the United Kingdom et cetera. Duke looks like a lady.

Jersey is not part of the United Kingdom. It is not part of Britain. It is certainly not part of England (or France). People from Jersey are typically referred to as Jerseymen and Jerseywomen. Because Jersey is a British crown dependency, many people from Jersey do identify as British, including Cavill. So you can call him British, but never English.

And technically the new Superman is a Jerseyman.

How posh is Henry Cavill?
Oh, quite. He's well-educated upper middle-class posh. Boarding school posh. Rugby posh. Engaged-to-a-show-jumper posh. (They broke up.) He's even army officer posh; his father served in the Royal Navy, one of his brothers is in the army, and another is a major in the Royal Marines. In fact, Major Niki Cavill is a bit hardcore; he was named to the Order of the British Empire for his service leading counter-insurgency efforts against the Taliban in Afghanistan. (Niki is a man's name if you're posh. Niki is also a man's name if you're a Royal Marine.)

Henry considered signing up for the military himself, but Russell Crowe persuaded him to pursue acting.

Russell Crowe? The same Russell Crowe who plays Superman's Kryptonian dad?
Cavill's boarding school played the part of Russell Crowe's son's school in the movie Proof of Life. Cavill, 16 at the time, asked Crowe for career advice. Crowe later sent Cavill a care package that contained sweets, a signed photograph and -- rather cruelly -- a CD of Russell Crowe's music. Cavill told GQ he kept the box intact as a good luck charm, which presumably means he never listened to the CD, which may have made for an awkward reunion on the Man of Steel set.

There are no reports that Kevin "Jonathan Kent" Costner ever sent 16-year-old Henry Cavill anything at all.

What has Henry Cavill been in?
He was 17 when he got his first role, as the apple-cheeked son of Guy Pearce's character in an adaptation of The Count of Monte Cristo, released in 2002. He also played a gardener/lust object/muse in the underrated 2003 British movie I Capture the Castle, and he played posh schoolboys in a handful of British TV shows, including Midsomer Murders, where -- spoiler alert -- he was murdered after a run-in with Walder Frey.

His career low may have been playing a huntsman to Joey Fatone's wolf in a 2006 adaptation of Red Riding Hood. At least, one hopes that was his career low. He also appeared in a direct-to-video Hellraiser sequel and made his first appearance in a comic-book movie as a dashing, swashbuckling cad in Matthew Vaughn's adaptation of Neil Gaiman and Charles Vess' Stardust (which wasn't exactly a comic, but whatever).

Cavill's career during this period was maybe more notable for the roles he didn't get.

All right; what hasn't he been in?
Superman! Cavill was reportedly director McG's choice to play the Man of Steel in his Superman movie, but when McG dropped out, replacement director Bryan Singer cast Brandon Routh instead.

Cavill was also one of the final two in contention to play James Bond in Martin Campbell's Casino Royale. At fifteen years younger than his rival Daniel Craig, his casting would have taken the franchise in a very different direction, but the world was not ready for a movie version of James Bond, Jr.

Cavill was also author Stephanie Meyer's first choice to play Edward Cullen in the Twilight movies, but by the time the movies were made she said he was too old. Too old for Twilight; too young for Bond. Henry Cavill may be one of the only actors in the world grateful for the ageing process.

Fortunately for Cavill, Showtime TV series The Tudors came along and cast him as one of King Henry VIII's frat pack. This led to increased exposure for Henry Cavill, and increased exposure for Henry Cavill's buttocks, because it was that sort of show.

Cavill also landed a small role in Woody Allen's Whatever Works, the lead role in crummy Joel Schumacher Nazi zombie horror movie Town Creek, and the lead in truly awful thriller The Cold Light of Day, which was so bad that it spent a couple of years on a shelf before finally seeing... the cold light of day.

His biggest break before Superman came when arch-visualist Tarsem Singh decided Cavill was handsome enough to play an oiled-up shirtless Greek god in the movie Immortals.

How handsome is he, actually?
If you can't see for yourself, let me make it plain; Henry Cavill is absurdly handsome. Implausibly handsome. He's probably in contention for the title of "most handsome man that ever lived." He's so handsome that the entire entertainment industry has been secretly colluding to try to make him famous so they can put his face on things and sell them. He's handsome.

Now, sure, some people will say, "Pfft, I prefer Benedict Cumberbatch", and that's OK. Weird, but OK. Henry Cavill is not the universal ideal; just the closest thing we have to it. If it weren't for his very slightly bumpy nose he might actually be impossible to look at, but like a Persian rug he has one minor imperfection so as not to offend god.

Actually, he has two imperfections. He dresses terribly. Giant ties, ugly shoes, suits that fit like a balloon. Unless he gets a stylist post-Superman, watching Henry Cavill make fashion faux pas is going to become a new sport for supermarket tabloids.

OK, so he's handsome. Can he act?
He's improving all the time!

Cavill is probably a few years away from an Oscar nomination, because at that level of handsome you don't need to be able to act. But he seems enthusiastic about the work, and he is notably less stiff with each new role. Reviews for Man of Steel have tended to praise his performance.

How's his American accent?
Improving all the time!

Is he a nerd?
Not a comics nerd, but he is a fantasy nerd. He's a fan of Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time novels, and he's so big on Skyrim and World of Warcraft that he famously missed the call from Zack Snyder offering him Man of Steel because he was in the middle of a game. He's also a mythology buff who wanted to study Egyptology at university, which is pretty solidly nerdy.

Is he going to be hugely famous?
Superman actors don't tend to have stellar careers. Christopher Reeve kept working up to and even after the tragic accident that paralyzed him in 1995, but he was never a marquee name outside of the franchise. The same holds true for Cain, Routh and Welling. They all have steady careers, but none of them can get a movie made on the strength of their names. Maybe audiences struggle to adjust to the idea of Superman in other roles, or maybe there's a certain wholesome blankness that filmmakers look for in a Superman actor that they don't value as much elsewhere.

If you've seen Cavill in interviews, you'll know he shares that quality. He seems very pleasant, very charming, and utterly lacking in guile. It's hard to imagine him with, for example, James Bond's steely edge. He's rumoured to be the lead in Guy Ritche's Man From UNCLE adaptation, so audiences may see another side to him there. If that works out for him, he may yet be the first Superman actor to also be a proper movie star.

If not, Henry Cavill can always fall back on being perhaps the most handsome man that ever lived.

Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments

Wolverine & The X-Men's 'Hellfire Saga' Introduces The Super-Villain Hogwarts [Review]

Andrew Wheeler — 2013-06-13T10:00:00+00:00

Filed under: Marvel, Reviews, Opinion

Writer Jason Aaron has carved out his own super-opera on Marvel's Wolverine And The X-Men title, somehow enduring the vicissitudes of crossovers and events and even a line-wide relaunch (that paradoxically left the nineteen-month-old, thirty-one-issue book one of Marvel's longest running titles, and Aaron himself with the distinction of having produced one of the publisher's longest uninterrupted runs by a single writer). And he seems to be having a lot of fun.

The fun continues with this week's issue #31, by Aaron and regular artist Nick Bradsaw. The first part of a five-issue arc titled "The Hellfire Saga," the new issue takes us away from the book's usual setting at the Jean Grey School to its evil counterpart, the Hellfire Academy. With echoes of some of the X-Men's greatest hits, this is a story that seems ready to cement this title's already sterling reputation as the most exuberant in Marvel's current line of mutant comics.

(click to enlarge)

"Hellfire Saga" feels like a big name for an X-Men adventure. It evokes one of the franchise's best-known story lines, "The Dark Phoenix Saga," which also heavily featured the Hellfire Club. Whether this story intends to invite such a lofty comparison is not clear from the first issue, but it does echo the earlier story in showing a powerful "good guy" being lured over to Hellfire.

The good guy in question is Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely's wayward alpha rebel Quentin Quire, a character who has always wobbled on the tightrope between good and evil, so the story is obviously going in a very different direction. The current Hellfire Club is also a radical change from the fetish club Bilderberg Group of yore. Aaron has already established a group of prepubescent over-achieving anti-mutant Hellfire cubs as the main nemeses on the title, and in "The Hellfire Saga" he gives them a whole school to preside over.

Indeed the main thrust of this first part is to introduce readers to the Hellfire Academy, and the creators take great pleasure in debuting their super-villain Hogwarts, staffed by the likes of Mystique, Sabretooth, Sauron, and a version of Husk that will break the hearts of long-time fans of the character who haven't kept up with Aaron's series.

It's here that the book shows least resemblance to Claremont, Byrne and Cockrum's "Dark Phoenix Saga," because while that story was pious in its devotion to the reality of its premise, that has never been Aaron and Bradshaw's approach. Wolverine And The X-Men has long served a dual purpose in the X-Men franchise. On the one hand it's the current in a line of books focusing on younger mutants within the X-Men family (with split focus on Wolverine and the adult faculty to make sure readers don't treat the book as disposable); and on the other it's a farce-heavy comedy book.

If the Marvel Universe is a toy chest, Aaron is a writer who wants to play. How much you enjoy his approach may depend on how you feel about, for example, a giant-nostrilled mutant named Snot, or a teacher challenging students to rip a classmate's teeth out. It's broad stuff, and Aaron is sometimes rough with his toys. Bradshaw seems to relish the chance to create the visual world of the Hellfire Academy -- he has some great visuals to sink his teeth into -- and his rounded lines (inked by Walden Wong) and expressive characters set the comedic tone.

As sagas go, this one doesn't feel epic. The pacing of the issue seems a little uneven; the scale of the story hasn't been convincingly established. One issue in, it feels more like a lark than a saga. But when every cover-billed storyline is presented as the one that will change the Marvel Universe forever, maybe it's OK for a story to call itself a saga and set its ambition at pratfalls and pantomime. The title invites comparison with "The Dark Phoenix Saga," but it doesn't feel like that's the story lurking under the clown make-up.

Wolverine And The X-Men #31 is on sale now digitally and from your local comics shop.

Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments

'Batman: Zero Year' - A New Reader's Reaction To The Dark Knight's Updated Origin

Andrew Wheeler — 2013-06-12T11:00:00+00:00

Filed under: DC, Reviews, Opinion

I'm not a Batman fan. I know that's heretical, especially here at ComicsAlliance, but we preach tolerance here and we practice it too. I'm ambivalent about Batman. I like some stories, dislike others, know enough about the character to know that I hate Christopher Nolan's version, but beyond an appreciation for the character's cultural weight and admiration for his peerless rogues gallery, I don't care enough about the character to read a lot of his comics.

But my editor Andy Khouri thrust Batman #21 by Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo at me and asked me what I thought about it, so let me tell you: Once I worked out what the heck this was, I thought it was a pretty good comic.It did take some head-scratching to work out what this was, though. The issue opens "six years ago," slides to a title page, and then jumps to "five months earlier," and I'm not ashamed to tell you, dear reader; it took me the whole issue to resolve the order of those two time periods. Nested flashbacks; don't do it. (We're counting five months earlier from six years ago, not counting both time-jumps from the hypothetical "now," But you're smart; you would have worked that out on your own. Not like thicko over here who has clearly never read a comic before. There you go, commenters; I've done your job for you.)

Some context for you: I am not a Batman reader, but I'm that guy DC Comics would love to turn into a Batman reader; the guy who knows enough to be a possible sale. I've picked up friends' issues of the recent crossover, and read that one story where the kid died. I have some idea what's going on. What I didn't know is that this is the New 52 version of the Batman origin story, which explains why it's called "Zero Year." It's not a calorie thing.

Do we need another Batman origin story? Well, "need" is a strong word. Is there any benefit to having one, other than the possible financial benefit to the publisher? Many readers would say that Frank Miller and David Mazzucchelli aced the origin in the very book that this story's title echoes, Batman: Year One.

I will buck what I think is popular pundit wisdom to say, yes, there's absolutely a benefit in re-treading that ground. Characters as popular and established as Batman require constant reinvention -- not necessarily on a grand, ground-up scale, but in the small ways that show different voices putting their own shading on the character to serve the changing expectations of the audience. Miller and Mazzuchelli's work is in no way diminished by other creators offering a different spin, and the current Batman creative team of Snyder and Capullo certainly earned the trust of his audience to deserve to take his shot.

But a new take on a character's origin should offer something new. It should frame the story in a way that adds fresh insight or fresh relevance. One chapter in, how is Batman: Zero Year faring on that front?

It feels in part like a Nolanesque approach, grounded as Nolan's movies were in the tension between a prodigal son and the declining city he moved away from. This is Batman pitched to be comprehensible to a moviegoing audience. Yet Zero Year also feels more confident than Nolan's Batman, striking an easier balance between realism and absurdity, and thanks to Greg Capullo it's far more visually compelling than Nolan's shadowy, passionless tableaus.

Capullo's continuing evolution as an artist is impressive, and he seems to have found a storytelling voice that suits him well. There's a touch of the wide-eyed porcelain angel figurine to some of his characters, especially his version of Bruce Wayne, but his layouts are frequently impressive. An action sequence with a truck and a crane works entirely because of the way it's framed.

Working off Snyder's script, Capullo has also created some great scene-setting pages -- the opening pan is striking; a later page reintroducing the city of Gotham provides a compelling beat. That sense of place doesn't always feed through to the backgrounds, though, and I worry that the simple flat colors may kill the tone that Capullo is trying to create. Towards the end of the issue there's a skyline panel that bleeds awkwardly into an interior panel to create a weird impression of Batman holding a walking cane -- and perhaps it's deliberate, but it only creates dissonance. If the composition couldn't be fixed, bolder color choices could have fixed it.

Snyder's story confused me when I thought it was set in current or near-current continuity, though I don't know if other new readers would suffer the same confusion. As the tale of a pre-Batman Bruce Wayne finding his place in the crime-riddled city, it's a promising yarn, much lighter than Miller and Mazzuchelli's Year One. My one reservation is that I would hate to see Snyder over-explain the character, and there are signs of that happening in a redundant six-page back-up by Snyder, co-writer James Tynion IV, Rafael Albuquerque and Dave McCaig. It's a The Fast & The Furious homage that's supposed to fill in another little detail of Bruce Wayne's journey, but it's not a particularly compelling answer to a question that no-one was asking in the first place. ("How did he learn to drive?") It's exactly the sort of finicky over-sharing that turned me off Nolan's Batman. I'm more likely to stick with this story if it leans away from neurotic narrative accounting and more towards laying foundations for the grand zoo of stories that is Batman's Gotham.

The first part of "Zero Year," Batman #21" is on sale now digitally and from your local comics shop.

Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments

Modern Heroics Done Right In Brian Wood And Olivier Coipel's 'X-Men' #1 [Review]

Andrew Wheeler — 2013-06-04T13:00:00+00:00

Filed under: Marvel, Reviews

X-Men. It's a bland title for a comic. No astonishment here; no bid for universal novelty; no claim to the ubiquitous label "uncanny". The new series, headlined by writer Brian Wood and penciller Olivier Coipel, is called only "X-Men", and the simplicity of the title suggests a statement. Other series can fight for who gets to be the flagship of the X-book family, who gets to be the outrageous one, the cute one, the dark one, the gay one. This book will get on with the simple unpretentious business of being X-Men -- a book about a team of adventuring heroes fighting evil. And based on the first issue, it means to deliver on that premise.

Also, PS, it's a book full of women.

But we'll come back to that (because it would be too coy to pretend it isn't worth discussing). The most important detail about Wood and Coipel's X-Men is that it doesn't seem to care what other books you read. It doesn't care what else you do with your time. It wants to sit you down and entertain you for twenty pages, with fast-flowing action and a rich cast of powerful and visually striking characters. It wants to give you excitement, scale and glamour; all the things that superhero books excel at.

X-Men is a book that wants to razzle-dazzle. Perhaps that's why it doesn't quite nail the details. Though verisimilitude is hardly a virtue in superhero fiction, a bacterium that infects machines as the main antagonist seems a stretch even for this medium. The book's key runaway train action scene is beautifully realized by Coipel, co-inker Mark Morales and colorist Laura Martin in each moment, but it is incoherent when taken as a whole. A plot that depends on Jubilee finding a baby and backpacking it from Europe to the US seems to demand the audience's indulgence a touch too brazenly.

The razzle-dazzle is also hampered by tight layouts that don't showcase Coipel at his best. Decompression is the secret bane of action comics because too many big pages kill the pacing that pulse-pounding action demands, but this action scene needed more room to show what it wanted to show. Wood and Coipel are still finding the balance between the former's fondness for intimacy and the latter's gift for spectacle.

So there are imperfections. Yet broadly this is an excellent example of superhero fiction, and it achieves this feat without being a throwback. X-Men is not a pastiche of the Silver Age, or an attempt to emulate past glories. The storytelling is entirely modern. Wood delivers a yarn without winks or derision. Coipel sleekly shows off his talents for contemporary design and confident composition. Though this book is a straggler in the first wave of Marvel NOW titles, it does feel like Marvel now.
And while so much of Marvel NOW seems geared towards world-building and event-planning, it's a blessed relief to find a solidly entertaining team book that's happy to pretend it's the only X-Men book on the shelves. Yet it is not immune to continuity. In fact a large part of the book's charm is its reliance on fan-favorite characters that only need to be loosely sketched to be instantly recognisable. Storm, Rogue, Jubilee, Kitty; these are icons within the X-Men canon, and Wood leans heavily on the audience's affection for these characters.

And yes, these characters are all women. I've written before about the X-Men franchise's unique role in redefining the place of women in superhero fiction. For that reason, there is nothing artificial about an X-Men book with an all-female cast. This is a franchise that places no archaic or reflexive limits on the roles a woman can play. If you need leadership, muscle, guile, ruthlessness, integrity, there are X-Men women who naturally and comfortably occupy those functions.

It is also a construction, of course. The villain and her new host are women; the only students who get panel-time are women; the only named male character with a speaking part is a necessary plot device. Yet it is not forced. No character is pushed into a place they wouldn't naturally be. Wood appears to be making the most of the X-Men's strong bench of female characters just so he can prove that a superhero book can be incidentally and organically all-female. I think that's wonderful.
It remains to be seen whether Wood intends to use this series to explore gender themes (the presence of a newborn baby in the book is conspicuous) or whether the point is to present gender as an irrelevancy to the genre. Either way, such weighty matters may take a back seat to the fun of showing larger-than-life heroes hurling themselves into danger to save the day. That seems to be the book's appeal, and that appeal is tremendous. The X-Men are superheroes, and these are the X-Men.

Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments

Introducing 'SheZow,' The 'Transgender' Superhero Cartoon That Will Destroy America And/Or Entertain Some Children

Andrew Wheeler — 2013-06-03T10:00:00+00:00

Filed under: Television, Video, Animation, Opinion, Culture

The United States of America was expected to meet its sad end this past weekend when The Hub network debuted its new animated children's series SheZow. The Australian/Canadian cartoon, which already debuted in other, less delicate countries without causing social disorder, is about a boy with a superhero secret identity. The shocking twist that almost brought America to its knees is that his superhero secret identity is female.

Brace yourself, America, because it gets worse.No, actually, it doesn't. That's really the whole concept. Created by Obie Scott Wade, SheZow is the story of Guy Hamdon, a young kid who inadvertently takes on the mantle of his late aunt's celebrated superhero alter ego. Some in the media have dubbed it a "transgender" kids' show, because some in the media like to use transgenderism to try to provoke outrage regardless of the social cost, but as it happens SheZow is not about transgenderism at all. Guy is a boy who takes on a female cover identity. He does not become female. He does not identify himself as female. Crucially, he does not want to be female. He is defintively not transgender; he is, in his own words, a dude. He's a dude whose superhero identity has long hair and a skirt. Like Thor.

Having watched the first two episodes of the show, we here at ComicsAlliance can say with confidence that SheZow is not shocking, except perhaps in the quality of its she-based puns. It's a fun, light-hearted superhero comedy that is no more likely to erode the fabric of modern society than Phineas and Ferb, and less likely to do so than the same network's best-known show, insidious socialist brainwashing tool My Little Pony: You Must Submit To Friendship.

The people reflexively criticizing the show without watching it -- both in the media and on the parts of your Facebook wall that you can't escape because it will upset your mother -- have imposed a political narrative on a simple idea. Secret identities lay at the core of much superhero fiction, and some heroes go through greater transformations than others. The simple notion of a male hero with a female alter ego is well within the bounds of the genre -- and of the medium of children's animation. In essence, SheZow is a girl superhero in the same way that Batman is a bat superhero, right down to Batman having a Batmobile and SheZow having a Shehicle. (There really are a lot of she-based puns.)

That's not to say that the show won't find an appreciative audience in kids with non-conformist views on gender. SheZow is predicated on the idea that there is nothing wrong wih being a girl, that a girl can be powerful and heroic and still be "girly." (The show's theme song describes this state of affairs as "livin' the dream.") The message is that Guy is empowered by his female alter ego; he gains from this experience. It's a message that will resonate with kids who might grow up gay, or trans, or in some other way queer or uncertain. Sure, that's got to be frustrating if you're the sort of person who likes to limit a child's opportunities for growth and discovery and maybe drive them towards lives of despair and unrealized potential, but you can't please everybody.

Or, you can't please anybody. The show also has its critics on the pro-social justice side, because SheZow's appearance and affectations are very stereotypically girly. Her costume is pink with leopard print and high heels; her weapons include lipstick and a hairbrush; her powers of super strength, super speed and She-S-P (oh yes) are literally dependent on the lustre of her hair.

It sounds egregious, but the show's concept is dependent on the idea that there is nothing wrong with being a girly girl. SheZow is presumably meant to represent a specific type, and not everyone who might be described by the pronoun "she." Indeed, there wouldn't be much of a hook if Guy's alter ego was a buzzcut tomboy who liked khaki and sports and hated glitter and gender normativity.

The show also serves up a more neutral female presence in Guy's older sister, a smart, wry girl who serves as his mentor and tormentor. The show doesn't work out all its problems in the first two episodes -- my least favorite moment was when Guy's cop dad dismissively referred to SheZow as "SheCow" -- but on balance it seems to want to present a positive message of acceptance.

On paper, a show about a cross-dressing kid does sound radical. In execution, it's very mainstream. Of course, that's exactly how the world moves forward, and that's exactly what certain elements are afraid of. It starts with a slightly cheeky cartoon. It ends with a tribal primate government and the Statue of Liberty laying askew on a beach. Won't somebody think of the children, and quickly teach them all the same small-minded prejudices that made us such perfect saints?

Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments

Avengers Assimilate: Identity Politics in 'Uncanny Avengers'

Andrew Wheeler — 2013-03-29T14:30:00+00:00

Filed under: Marvel, Opinion, Culture

Uncanny Avengers #5 was mostly a strong issue, the best of the series so far, in part because it gave readers the clearest sense of the team's dynamic and purpose, and in part because the guest art from Olivier Coipel was exceptional. Yet there was one part of the issue that didn't hit its mark.

Uncanny Avengers #5 features the formal unveiling of the Avengers Unity Team, the public name of the book's Avengers/X-Men mash-up roster. As part of the big reveal to the press, team leader Havok gave a little speech. And in that little speech he shredded the central thesis of minority identity politics. And that is a problem.

[Click image to enlarge]

The pertinent section of the speech, by series writer Rick Remender, reads as follows: "I don't see myself as born into a mutant cult or religion. Having an X-gene doesn't bond me to anyone. It doesn't define me. In fact, I see the very word "mutant" as divisive. Old thinking that serves to further separate us from our fellow man. We are all humans. Of one tribe. We are defined by our choices, not the makeup of our genes. So please, don't call us mutants. The "m" word represents everything I hate."

One can see the outline of good intentions in that speech. The fight for equality is predicated on the idea that our differences should not divide us. Minorities should not be defined by difference, and equal rights and opportunities should include freedom from the expectation that one will think or act a certain way based on one's minority identity.

On Formspring, Uncanny Avengers editor Tom Brevoort suggested this reading; "I think that the point of Havok's speech is that people aren't all just one thing, and need not be defined by one aspect of who they are." Others have framed the speech in similar terms; "How can anyone argue against someone wanting to be identified as a human being first? It's a message of inclusion." Remender himself said that Havok is "trying to make people stop seeing a 'mutant' and start seeing a 'person.'"

All of which is admirable, but that's not actually the speech Havok gave. Havok's speech makes a huge leap from, "my minority identity doesn't define me" to a rejection of minority identity. Havok is a mutant, but he says the word is divisive and that it represents everything he hates. He asks people not to use it. He is, definitively and explicitly, self-loathing about his identity.

There is an implication in Havok's speech that "mutant" is a slur, "the "m" word," -- which, whether the writer intended for it to or not, very obviously draws parallels to the n-word -- but it's the word mutants use to describe themselves. It can be used pejoratively -- as can "gay", "girl", "black", "Jew" -- but it's still the definitive linguistic presentation of a minority identity.

Even if "mutant" were a slur beyond reclamation, Havok presents no alternative language. The movement away from the terms "negro" and "colored" to identifiers like "African-American" wasn't about rejecting labels. It was about rejecting the labels forced upon you and choosing your own. But when a reporter asks Havok what he wants to be called, he says, "How about Alex?"

The speech leaves us to believe that Havok doesn't want there to be any word that describes his minority identity. He's not saying that he's not just a mutant, but that "mutant" is not among the things he wants to admit to being.

That's not a message of inclusion. That's a message of assimilation. That's a message of erasure.

That's not good policy for any minority group, even a fictional one that exists as metaphor. It's not a position that any credible spokesman for a minority group would advance. Yes, equality means we are not defined by our differences, but it also means that we can embrace and celebrate our differences, and that we are not proscribed from thinking or acting differently. Equality means black is as visible as white, straight is as visible as gay, Muslim is as visible as Christian. No one is defined by their differences, but no one is denied them either -- and no one feels hounded into denying that their differences are part of them, part of what made them.

Visibility is a crucial component of equality. In the week that the U.S. Supreme Court considers whether couples should be denied the rights attendant to marriage because they are the same gender, polls show that a majority of Americans support marriage equality. We would not be here -- and the court would not be considering this question -- if we hadn't seen a massive shift in people's acceptance of gay rights, and that happened because of visibility. More people know someone who identifies as gay or bisexual, even if those people are just people they think they know, like Ellen, Anderson, Kurt, Mitchell, Rachel and Jodi.

We have a word for gay people who don't acknowledge their minority identity. Closeted.

The closet is a poisonous place that does nothing to advance gay rights; it's a place that holds us back from equality. By rejecting his mutant identity, Havok means to build a closet for mutants, or possibly a whole Morlock tunnel. He wants to be seen as no different from other superheroes, even though his experiences make him different.

Speaking of Morlocks; what makes this call for assimilation especially upsetting is that it comes from a character who, in every regard other than his fictional minority status, is emphatically representative of the majority. Remender, an able-bodied straight white man, uses Havok, an able-bodied straight white man, to tell people who don't have his advantages that they should assimilate. He's the majority in minority drag, or as ComicsAlliance Editor-in-Chief Joe Hughes put it, "he's a guy who looks like Matt Damon trying to talk like Chuck D." (Note: that link is NSFW if you aren't wearing headphones.)

Havok is literally the lead Aryan in a team that, when the series first launched, boasted more blond-haired, blue-eyed Aryans than it did women or persons of color. (Havok used to have brown eyes; not anymore.) That makes the speech presumptuous, because Havok can pass.

If he takes off his tights and puts on normal clothes, he's another generically handsome white man, treated as such wherever he goes. His speech doesn't take account of mutants who can't choose not to be defined by their difference. His speech sends Artie and Leech scurrying back into the sewer. That's one of the many problems with assimilation; it only accepts those who are fit to be assimilated.

So the speech doesn't work in a fictional context. Is it fair to say that it also doesn't work in a real context, when mutants are not a real minority?

We hear that argument a lot, the "it's just a story" defense. But that argument does a disservice to the power and importance of fiction, and a writer advancing that position is saying they would rather be a hack than have to worry about the value and meaning of their work. Decades of Marvel stories are built on the established metaphor of mutants as a minority. One can't suddenly pretend it doesn't apply because it's inconvenient. One especially can't ignore it in a book like Uncanny Avengers, which is tacitly about minority visibility, and which launched with a fight with comics' foremost bigot, the Red Skull (though Red Skull's team was more diverse than the heroes).

So is it unfair to draw direct parallels, given that mutants are not an exact fit for any real world minority? Sure, it's unfair if the parallel doesn't resonate. But no one gets to tell an audience when they're allowed to identify parallels between a story that talks about mutants as a minority and their own experiences as a minority, and you'll find that mutants resonate in a lot of different ways. Kids growing up to be something different to their parents? Entire groups treated differently as a class? People being judged for their appearance and not their actions? It's not a thin line. A statement about minority identity resonates directly with all real world minorities. When a character stands up and makes a sweeping statement about identity politics, that's not subtext; that's text.

Havok's speech is disturbing as text, but readers have also criticized it specifically for appearing inconsistent with previous versions of the character, who once berated a teammate by saying, "You make it sound like being a mutant is something to be ashamed of."

It's perhaps a mistake to get too hung up on continuity like that. Writers should be just as free as artists to bring their own interpretations to a character, and readers should be free to accept or reject those versions depending on how it synchs with their interpretation. That's a pragmatic necessity of the form. Havok is one of my favorite characters. I don't like this version of the character, but I accept it as an interpretation. I hope the character's next writer is more in synch with my take.

But there is a fundamental inconsistency here that is more troubling given the character's role as a spokesman. By placing himself at odds with the principle of minority rights, Havok becomes unheroic and unsympathetic, and his beliefs sit at odds with his experiences. In a book that's rooted in integration, we're told that the Marvel civil rights message has shifted from, "Everyone is entitled to be recognized and accepted" to, "I don't mind minorities, but I wish they didn't have to be so in-your-face about it."

All that said, mutants do not have to be approached as a metaphor for minorities. Jason Aaron doesn't touch that theme in his X-Men work, and he still tells great stories. But Remender is seemingly using them as a metaphor in his series, per his recent interview with ComicsAlliance:

The idea of the team is, the Avengers have never helped the Mutants, and the Mutants are the minority in the Marvel Universe.

He went on to say:

There's never been a public team in the Marvel Universe that's dealt with it. It's always been, "The mutants are on their own. Life sucks for them." You've never had this big public Avengers team address the fact that these mutants are minorities, that there's a lot of hate and prejudice directed at them. The Avengers had never done much to combat that. Captain America realizes the mistake and he brings in some X-Men, he brings in Cyclops' brother Alex to lead the team and away we go.

Again, mutants don't have to be approached as a metaphor. But if you're going to do it, you need to make sure you know what you're doing, and if you're someone for whom identity politics is not a personal issue, you have to show special deftness and consideration, especially if you care to be taken seriously by an audience for whom this is very personal. You should probably also have the commitment and maturity to follow through on that conversation.

This was Rick Remender's response to initial criticism of Havok's Uncanny Avengers speech:

That is not an appropriate response from a person who chose, of his own free will, to engage with this topic through his work. This is a subject that matters profoundly, that people think about deeply. There's no room for dilettantes.

Rick Remender is a talented writer who clearly meant to say something positive. But if he's not able to engage with the topic of minority identity, he needs to leave it out of his work.

(This is not the first time Remender has advanced a hobo urine strategy for dealing with problems, by the way. Last week he tweeted, "If I'm ever a bitter old man fixated on mainstream comic work of my youth I hope God does the right thing and drowns me in cold hobo urine.")

All of this will pass, of course. Havok's bizarre speech struck so many readers as tone-deaf precisely because it is out of step with a culture that is increasingly receptive to minority visibility. Progress comes at a snail's pace, but it is still progress, and future writers will have more sensitivity to identity politics simply because they'll have had more exposure.

One day some other writer will write Havok in a way that is inconsistent with his current characterization. That's the beauty of taking a flexible approach to continuity. When that day comes, we fervently hope we will not find Rick Remender face down in a bath of cold hobo urine.

Additional material by Joe Hughes.

Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Guardians of the Galaxy

Andrew Wheeler — 2013-03-27T11:00:00+00:00

Filed under: Marvel, Humor

Guardians of the Galaxy #1 hits stores today, a new series by Brian Michael Bendis and Steve McNiven that hopes to boost the profile of Marvel's space-faring super-team ahead of next summer's movie release, so that when your non-comics friends ask you, "Who are these Guardians of the Galaxy?", you don't answer, "the who-dians of the what-now?"

But... who are the Guardians of the Galaxy? They're actually talking owls from a series of fantasy novels about... no, sorry, my editor is telling me that is not correct. Let's see... the series tells the story of Jack Frost, Santa Claus, the Sandman and... no, I'm getting another note here, hang on... A talking raccoon and a tree? That can't be right.

If you're feeling a little confused, don't panic! ComicsAlliance is here to tell you everything you need to know about the Gladiators of the Gridiron! And then some.The original Guardians of the Galaxy debuted in 1969 in Marvel Super-Heroes #18, by Arnold Drake and Gene Colan. They were a 31st century team of four men from different worlds who banded forces to fight the Badoon, a race of reptilian aliens named after the sound of a firecracker in a toilet.

Charlie-27 was a space soldier and space pilot (like a soldier and a pilot, but in space) who was permanently stuck in the wrong aspect ratio. Martinex was a genetically engineered Iceman impersonator made out of hard candy. And Yondu was an archer with a head-fin, who once won me a pint when a friend challenged me to name five Marvel characters with names beginning with Y. Thanks, Yondu! All three were the last survivors of races wiped out by the Badoinkadoink.

But the main member, the generic square-jawed human lead, was Earth astronaut Vance Astro. He was placed in suspended animation inside a fancy preservation suit and sent out into the cosmos to find a new world for the human race to colonize, but he woke to find that the human race had already changed its address and sold his stuff. His reward was that he was trapped in his spacesuit, the human equivalent of a vacuum-sealed bag of meat that you're not sure is still good but you're too afraid to open. He overcompensated for all of this by taking the name "Major Victory", because his teammates refused to call him Duke Broseph of the Fistbump.

Vance Astro was also a mutant with psychic blast powers, and he's notable for having a main Marvel Universe counterpart in Marvel Boy of the New Warriors. Yes, this character was in the Guardians and the New Warriors. If he can also get in to the Micronauts, his next macchiato is free.

L-R, top: Yellowjacket, Aleta, Starhawk
Bottom: Yondu, Nikki, Major Victory, Charlie-27, Talon

Later recruits included Starhawk (strident bothersome god-type) and his body-sharing incestuous adopted sister Aleta (wears really deep Vs); Nikki (head permanently on fire), Replica (Skrull), Talon (Thundercat), Firelord (head permanently on fire), and Yellowjacket, a woman with such low self-esteem that she modeled herself on Hank Pym's least celebrated superhero identity.

The Guardians also had a spin-off team brilliantly called Galactic Guardians, which included versions of Wonder Man, Vision, Ghost Rider and Phoenix, because everyone in the 90s was utterly terrified of giving up a new idea in case they needed them later to defect to Image.

Of course, you don't need to know any of this. Not a jot! The original Guardians were a super-team in a possible alternative future; the current Guardians exist in the contemporary Marvel Universe and have literally nothing to do with the previous team!

L-R: Gamora, Rocket Raccoon, Star-Lord, Adam Warlock, Drax, Phyla-Vell

The current Guardians of the Galaxy came into being in 2008 as a continuation of Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning's Annihilation stories exploring the far cosmic reaches of the Marvel Universe. The initial line-up actually shared more in common with the Infinity Watch, Jim Starlin's cosmic team that were the self-appointed keepers of the all-powerful Infinity Gems.

The Infinity Watch and the new Guardians both included the space messiah Adam Warlock, created by Lee and Kirby and Roy Thomas and Gil Kane and known to his friends as Him (oh, Him); Starlin's own Gamora, a woman raised and trained by Thanos to be a living weapon; and Starlin and Mike Friedrich's Drax the Destroyer, of the East Hampton Destroyers. Drax is a normal human trapped in a huge, powerful, massively muscular green body, which is an idea so good I'm amazed no-one thought of it before. Boy, I hope they can pull that off for the movie.

There's no real high concept behind the Guardians of the Galaxy; they're superheroes in space. They guard the galaxy, I guess? They don't guard the universe, because that would mean handing out tacky green rings to swaggering braggarts like some self-important fraternity president. Boring!

The real purpose of the Guardians of the Galaxy under Abnett and Lanning was as a place to showcase some of Marvel's weirdest, grooviest, most Marvel cosmic characters. The outer edges of the Marvel Universe have always offered up an entertaining blend of ambitious New Age intensity and goofball apocalyptic militarism.

Moondragon

Thus the Guardians became the new home for gruff plushie Rocket Raccoon (created by Bill Mantlo and Keith Giffen); sword-wielding badass Marvel kid Phyla-Vell (Peter David, Paul Azaceta); giant sentient tree-thing Groot (Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, Dick Ayers), swashbuckling insectoid actual Micronaut Bug (Bill Mantlo, Michael Golden), wack-a-doodle celestial tree-hugger Mantis (Steve Englehart, Don Heck); Soviet space dog Cosmo (Lanning, Abnett, Wellinton Alves), and Drax's daughter and the team's all-time greatest member: bald bisexual kung fu telepath scientist Moondragon (Bill Everett, Mike Friedrich, George Tuska), a character so great that Moondragon is only her second best code name; her best is Madam MacEvil. The team also found room for a version of Major Victory, and for his fellow Captain America fanboy, Jack Flag.

But the main member, the generic square-jawed human lead, was Earth astronaut Peter Quill, aka Star-Lord. Created by Steve Englehart and Steve Gan, Star-Lord is your basic alpha dog white hat hero dude. He's a space cop, like Hal Jordan, but without all those bothersome fans. His dad is a space emperor named Jason, but obviously that sounds a bit dorky, so they've changed it to "J'son", which is not dorky at all. Oh, and he used to have brown hair, but now he's another Steve Rogers/Hank Pym/Clint Barton blond, and that's... exciting. We don't see male heroes experimenting with their hair much in comics. It's a very valid form of self-expression.

Star-Lord is joined in the new series by Groot, Rocket Raccoon, Gamora and Drax. This is the first time these members have come together in this exact configuration, but the roster is meant to match next year's movie. Presumably some Marvel executives hand-picked this roster for maximum toyetic potential, and they left out Moondragon because putting Space Beyoncé on the team would make Star-Lord look like Space Dave Matthews.

The new roster also features a bonus Iron Man, because every new Marvel team must include one Iron Man, one Wolverine, or an Asgardian assigned at random.

And that is everything you need to know about Guardians of the Galaxy, and a great many things you don't need to know. Now when your friends ask you, "Who are the Guardians of the Galaxy", you can say, "It's the team that's meant to have Moondragon on it." You're welcome.

(And if they ask you to name five Marvel characters with names beginning with Y: Yondu, Yellowjacket, Yellow Claw, Ymir and Yukio.)

Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments

Ex-X: The Noble Tradition of Rage-Quitting the X-Men

Andrew Wheeler — 2013-03-06T13:00:00+00:00

Filed under: Marvel, Humor, Opinion

It's hard to say goodbye. Unless you're an X-Man, in which case it's kind of a hobby. Over the years, the "quitting the X-Men" cover has become a recurring meme for the mutants, usually with the same formula; one character sadly traipsing off-stage on the right, and the team watching mournfully in the background on the left.

Inspired by the Tumblr blog Cyclops Was Right, (with an extra assist from Comic Vine), ComicsAlliance takes a closer look at the fine art of saying goodbye, bub. Who quit, why did they quit, why did they really quit, and how quickly did they come back with their tails between their legs? (Metaphorical tails. Nightcrawler never did one of these covers.)

Quitter: Cyclops

Comic: X-Men #138, "Elegy", by Chris Claremont and John Byrne, October 1980

Given Reason: Dead fiancee. This is the first issue after Jean Grey (or an amazing cosmic simulation) died on the moon, because she was just too much fierce redhead for a race of imperialist alien chicken-people to handle.

Real Reason: Cyclops was kind of a drag, a '60s throwback on a team dominated by cool kids like Wolverine, Storm and Nightcrawler. Frankly, the X-Men were just too sexy now for ol' Pencilbeam, a man so light on interior life that all his belongings fit into a tiny orange kit bag. It's not like he's wearing three sweaters and his big winter coat so he can minimize his hand luggage! (Cyke's lack of complexity is why telepaths are attracted to him. They say they find him "restful".)

Cyke went off to shack up with a sailor named Lee, which sounds interesting, but it turns out Lee was a chick.

Comeback: By amazing coincidence, Cyclops and Lee got washed up on Magneto's island, and if you're going to have run-ins with Magneto anyway, you might as well do it with the X-Men. Cyclops returned to the team in Uncanny X-Men #150, just twelve issues after he quit. And just in time for...

Quitter: Kitty Pryde

Comic: Uncanny X-Men #151, "The X-Men Minus One", by Chris Claremont and Jim Sherman, November 1981

Given Reason: Kitty didn't exactly quit; her parents withdrew her from the school, claiming that having their daughter almost killed by a terrifying mutant menace was not what they signed up for. So they transferred her to a school in Massachussetts run by one Emma Frost. Good job, parents.

Real Reason: Is she really leaving, or is she looking for an excuse to show off her spunky new summer dress? Let's face it, she's only crying because Colossus hasn't offered to carry her heavy suitcase. (But look, Cyclops; a suitcase and a shoulder bag. Kitty actually showed up for her life.)

Comeback: Kitty was back at the school by issue #153. She marked her return by filling the mind of young Illyana Rasputin with nonsense, thus creating a future terrifying mutant menace. Good job, Kitty.

Quitter: Sunspot

Comic: New Mutants #99, "The Beginning of the End, Part Two", by Fabian Nicieza and Rob Liefeld, March 1991

Given Reason: Sunspot left because he was called away on important family business by Gideon, a man with a waistcoat (and yet no shirt), a ponytail (and yet no hair), and a singular moniker (and yet no recording contract). And those are three marks of a man you can trust. That man is probably not a crazy villain who wants to subject you to wacky tests for the sake of a truly awful storyline about immortal mutants that perhaps hasn't entirely been thought out yet.

Real Reason: Cable. That guy is a tool. All the charisma of a direct-to-video '80s action movie, but with the quippy one-liners replaced with extra pockets. Sunspot clearly understood on some level that the awesome series he'd been part of for so long was about to get turned into douchapalooza, so he packed up his kit bag (still bigger than Cyclops's, but apparently filled with helium) and quit. He may also have quit just for being forced to appear in a comic called "The Beginning of the End, Part Two."

Comeback: Sunspot joined X-Force in issue #15, because it turns out Gideon was an even bigger tool than Cable. The experience wasn't a total loss, because it later gave us Reignfire. Mm hmm.

Quitter: Wolverine

Comic: Wolverine #65, "State of Grace", by Larry Hama and Mark Texeira, January 1993

Given Reason: Wolverine felt sad because Silver Fox was dead, and he vaguely recalled that she was his... girlfriend, maybe? Sister? Nemesis? Definitely someone he knew, anyway. Or had heard about. Grade school teacher? Aunt? It'll come to you, Wolverine, it'll come to you.

Real Reason: Wait, hang on, hold up. You can't quit your own book, Wolverine, you big doof. But maybe that's why he's just standing there without any luggage? And really, how can you leave when you never truly felt you belonged to anywhere at all? Wolverine, your artful slouching carries a lesson for us all.

Comeback: Shockingly, Wolverine also appeared in Wolverine #66.

Quitter: Jubilee

Comic: Uncanny X-Men #318, "Moving Day", by Joe Quesada and Joe Madureira, November 1994

Given Reason: Jubilee left behind the dangers of Charles Xavier's school to attend classes at a school in Massachussetts run by one Emma Fros... hey now, wait a minute, didn't we... Oh, no, it's fine, Emma was a good guy at this point, and no-one would ever doubt her allegiance again, because boy would that ever get old in a hurry!

Real Reason: You'll notice that none of the X-Men are actually there to see her off; those guys in the background are just a spectral memory from happier times. Charles Xavier is only there because he's having his afternoon nap. The lesson here is that Jubilee was kind of annoying, and thus she had to go.

But she gets the last laugh, as her backpack is stuffed full of all the mansion's toilet roll.

Comeback: It turns out Jubilee is really great at quitting the X-Men, as she's never officially come back to the team. She ran with Generation X for a while, hung around at her old school, got crucified, lost her powers, became a vampire; typical summer break stuff. She'll be back as a fully fledged X-Man in the new X-Men comic from Brian Wood and Olivier Coipel.

Quitter: Cannonball

Comic: X-Force #44, "Already in Progress", by Jeph Loeb and Adam Pollina, July 1995

Given Reason: Cannonball left X-Force when he got promoted to the actual X-Men, making him the only person to quit on to the team. He brought along a huge kit bag but forgot to pack his personality, so the version of Cannonball that joined the X-Men was an aw-shucks small town rube with none of his years of character development! Whoops!

Real Reason: His thong was chafing. This was the start of Adam Pollina's long and awesome run on X-Force, in which everyone got at least ten times hotter. Except Cannonball, who hit a hotness ceiling, as shown by his embarassing thong.

Comeback: Cannonball hung around as the X-Men's Gomer Pyle for three years, but the lure of the second string was irresistible. Adam Pollina ended his X-Force run at issue #81, making it safe for Cannonball to return in issue #83.

Quitter: Professor X

Comic: X-Men #57, "Man", by Scott Lobdell and Andy Kubert, October 1996

Given Reason: The most unthinkable thing ever to happen to the X-Men on a pretty much routine basis; the loss of Professor X from the very team that carries his vainglorious initial!

This time around it was because of the loss of his powers, and because he had to answer for Onslaught's crimes. These include the whole "Heroes Reborn" universe, so lock him up, I say, and throw away the key!

Real Reason: You see that guy crouching on the floor behind him? Yeah. This was the era when Wolverine was Scooby-Doo. You always know you're going downhill when the guy in the wheelchair rushes away from you.

Comeback: Can Professor X ever actually leave the X-Men? He probably thinks that any group of people in his vicinity is the X-Men. And because he's a telepath with dubious ethical standards, everyone around him probably thinks that too.

Quitters: Warpath, Sunspot, Siryn, Dani Moonstar and Meltdown

Comic: X-Force #70, "Transitions", by John Francis Moore and Adam Pollina, October 1997

Given Reason: The kick-off for John Francis Moore's road trip storyline; X-Force took their act on the road, because you're not their real dad, Cable! Not until the next retcon takes effect, anyway! Oh, those loopy Askani girls!

Real Reason: Once again, it's Sunspot walking out on Cable, and what does that tell you?
Maybe if you'd spent less time on paramilitary urban conflict and a little more time watering the garden of "us," Cable, your man wouldn't keep leaving you! Even when you were at home, were you ever really there, or were you just going through all your pockets and pouches looking for spare bullets? It's not enough, Cable! Sunspot has needs! Sunspot deserves a little romance! Why can't you be more like Shatterstar?

Comeback: X-Force never came back to Cable, so this issue marks the end of the team's formal association with its founder. Except, like a faded rock star, Cable is now out on the road with a new gang that he pretends is the true continuation of his old gang, and the people who were actually in X-Force want nothing to do with him. Tragic.

Quitter: Wolfsbane

Comic: X-Factor #28, "Aftermath", by Peter David and Pablo Raimondi, April 2008

Reason Given: Wolfsbane left X-Factor to join X-Force, the team that Cannonball left to join the X-Men, which is the team that Jubilee left to join Generation X, so if you've ever wondered how the hierarchy works here, it doesn't. Mutants are like country musicians; they just like walking out.

Real Reason: You'll notice this is an unorthodox rear-view take on the formula. Wolfsbane clearly didn't mean to leave at all, because look, she's walking the wrong way. Hey, Wolfsbane! We're over here! Yoo-hoo! Wolsfbane! WOLFSBANE!

Comeback: Wolfsbane returned to the team in issue #200, which sounds like a long leave of absence until you remember that Marvel doesn't believe in the sanctity of math, and issue #200 is actually issue #51.

_________

The quitting-the-team meme shows up in a few other places. It's been referenced in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Gen 13 and Noble Causes, among others. But it belongs to the X-Men. It's even appeared on covers for future X-Men (GeNext #1) and alternative X-Men (Ultimate X-Men #80), plus an unused Greg Land cover for Uncanny X-Men #515.

So the message here is clear and undeniable. The X-Men are a bunch of quitters, and it's all Cyclops's fault. Also, mutants really love kit bags.

Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments

Mutant Women of Earth: How Chris Claremont Reinvented the Female Superhero

Andrew Wheeler — 2013-02-19T11:00:00+00:00

Filed under: Marvel, Opinion

This April Brian Wood and Olivier Coipel launch a new X-Men title with a roster of Jubilee, Kitty Pryde, Psylocke, Rachel Grey, Rogue and Storm. That the team is all-female is unusual for a series that isn't defined along gender-lines. What makes the roster extraordinary is that it's an all-star line-up. These are first draft X-Men, and the book could easily have added more top picks -- Dazzler, Emma Frost, Jean Grey, Magik, Mystique -- and still been all-female.

It's hard to think of any other superhero team with such a strong bench of women, and it's especially hard to think of another team where so many female characters rose to prominence within the team itself. What these characters have in common is no mystery; they were all written by Chris Claremont, the man whose name is synonymous with "strong female characters.""Strong female characters" is a phrase with rather a mixed reputation in comics today. Viewed retrospectively through the filter of comics' "bad girl" phase of the 1990s, which introduced a slate of violent characters whose power was only exceeded by their state of undress, it feels too much like a justification for bad behavior. Publishers could be as sleazy and exploitative as they liked so long as the character was "tough," as opposed to submissive. The concept has been ably mocked by cartoonists Carly Monardo, Kate Beaton and Meredith Gran, and reclaimed by Brennan Lee Mulligan and Molly Osterag in the webcomic Strong Female Protagonist.

Yet when used to describe Claremont's characters the phrase "strong female character" acknowledged a sincere shift in the portrayal of women away from limited, stereotypically feminine roles towards allowing women to fulfill any role in a story, up to and including carrying it.

When Claremont came on as X-Men writer with issue #94 in 1975 he inherited a series with rather old-fashioned roots. Jean Grey may be the X-Men's First Lady, but as originally conceived she was nothing special. She was a mild, vulnerable, lovestruck girl who used telekinesis to move people or objects out of the way rather than to fight her foes. While the boys faced death traps in the Danger Room, Jean's sessions involved moving books with her mind.

Jean gets abducted.

Also known as "Marvel Girl," Jean was a love interest, a conscience, and an occasional damsel-in-distress. She wasn't a leader, a brawler, a joker or a troublemaker, because female characters weren't typically cast in these roles. As a woman on a team, her job was to be the woman on the team. They only needed one.

The X-Men launched during the golden age of the superteam. Between 1958 and 1964, DC Comics and Marvel launched the Legion of Super-Heroes, the Justice League, the Fantastic Four, the Avengers, the Doom Patrol, the X-Men and the Teen Titans. One thing these teams had in common was that they each debuted with only one woman on the roster. Even that was a step-up from teams like the original Justice Society of America and the Seven Soldiers of Victory, which didn't have any.

Jean grew in confidence and ability over X-Men's original 66-issue run -- in the final issue she held back the Hulk -- and she was even joined by a second woman, Lorna Dane (later dubbed Polaris), shortly before the end. Yet if the series had ended there, there would have been nothing remarkable about the X-Men's contribution to the depiction of women in comics.

The X-Men returned from almost five years in reprints with Giant-Sized X-Men #1 by writer Len Wein and artist Dave Cockrum. This one-shot radically reinvented the team with an international cast that included the first major black female superhero.

Storm was designed to stand out from previous super-women, and not only by dint of her race. She also had long white hair and strange oval irises, and arguably the most formidable power set in the new team. From the start, her weather-control powers allowed her to summon raging winds and lightning strikes. She was a heavyweight who had been worshiped as a goddess, and there was never any question of her using her powers only to defend or evade. She wasn't introduced as a damsel, and she wasn't introduced as a love interest.

Chris Claremont did not create or design Storm, but he put the character at the core of the X-Men throughout his epic 17-year-run, starting with his first issue (and Storm's second appearance), X-Men #94. Indeed, the only other character to have such a consistent presence during his tenure was Wolverine. These two were the only characters that readers would always follow even during their sabbaticals from the team.

Claremont also put Storm in charge of the team. She first claimed the role in 1980, but she memorably won the title from Cyclops in combat in 1986, and without her powers. In what may have been a watershed moment for the maturing genre, the contemporary black woman in the punky mohawk and leathers snatched the crown from the old school '60s boy scout in his stuffy body-sock uniform. Indeed, Storm's iconic '80s punk look was a physical manifestation of the character's complexity.

And while Claremont made Storm the X-Men's leading lady, he did not neglect her predecessor. Jean Grey was also a major project for Claremont. Though Jean initially left the team, by Claremont's eighth issue he had given her a major power boost and laid the groundwork for one of the biggest stories in superhero comics history. In X-Men #101, Marvel Girl became Phoenix. In X-Men #129-138, Phoenix became Dark Phoenix.

"The Dark Phoenix Saga" was an ambitious story about power and sacrifice, and it had a woman -- the X-Men's original vulnerable girl -- at the center of it. Though the story did not end well for Jean, her sacrifice gave the story its substance. Claremont took the archetypal team girl and made her the star of one of the most important works in superhero fiction.

The team introduced in Giant-Sized X-Men #1 was actually less balanced than the original one-in-five team -- just one woman in a team of eight -- and though Claremont tweaked the numbers by writing out Sunfire, Thunderbird, and eventually Banshee, and by giving Jean an on-and-off spot on the team, the death of Jean Grey would have once again given the X-Men one woman on a team of five. Fortunately, Claremont had a plan. In the very first issue of "The Dark Phoenix Saga," Claremont introduced a new character who would serve as Jean's de facto replacement.

Kitty Pryde was the first new hero Chris Claremont and artist John Byrne created for the X-Men. She made her debut in X-Men #129 in January 1980, in the same issue that introduced Emma Frost, just one issue before the debut of Dazzler. Kitty's arrival was radical. Although Kitty could be seen as a throwback to Jean's original role as the teen ingenue with defensive powers, she served a different purpose. She was an observer, a kid in a world of adults, and that made her the audience identification character and the center of the series. Readers were reintroduced to the X-Men through her eyes, and even her romance with Colossus was more about her experience than his.

By making his first new X-Man a girl, Claremont established a team of four men and two women. He also set a precedent that he would follow for much of his run. Kitty was the first of five women Claremont added to the team over the course of seven years. (The only male character added during the same period was Magneto, who served as Xavier's replacement as headmaster.)

Rogue, created by Claremont and Michael Golden in 1981, joined the team in 1983, giving the team four men and three women. Rachel Summers (later Grey), created by Claremont, Byrne and John Romita, Jr. and introduced in "Days of Future Past" in 1981, became the fourth woman on the team when she joined in 1985, albeit for a tenure of barely more than a year.

Psylocke, created by Claremont and Herb Trimpe way back in 1976, joined the team in 1986, effectively replacing the injured Kitty. And Dazzler, originally conceived as a multimedia project in partnership with a record label, joined the X-Men in 1987, bringing the team back up to four women. Longshot joined the team near-simultaneously, creating the gender-balanced roster of four men and four women that endured through most of Claremont's "Australia era."

None of these women were the hero's girlfriends. None of them were the designated damsels. None of them were weak or meek, and none of them were derivative versions of male characters (a trope that the X-Men has mostly avoided with the exceptions of X-23, Lady Mastermind and Polaris). Each woman had a different story to tell, and none of them could have stood in place of any of the others. Rogue was a wayward teen dealing with isolation and anger. Rachel was an abuse victim lashing out at the world. Dazzler was a former star perennially trying to recover her identity out of the spotlight. Psylocke sought to reconcile her inner toughness with her outer frailty.

Psylocke's storyline made some sense of her eventual emergence as a '90s bad girl, though the result was still transparently exploitative. There was often a sexual element to Claremont's portrayal of women, and Psylocke's Jim Lee-designed ninja swimsuit was one manifestation of it. Rachel's studded red leather bodysuit and the Hellfire Club's corsets, crops and thongs were even more obvious evocations of Claremont's thematic interest in sado-masochism and subjugation.

Yet there was complexity to Claremont's approach to sexuality; his women were not all of one sexual type, and they did not represent one experience. Virginity meant something quite different for Kitty and for Rogue. Psylocke was determined to claim ownership of her body. Storm was as liberated as any of the libertine villains that the X-Men went up against. Emma Frost even argued, in a Classic X-Men #128 vignette by Claremont and John Bolton, that her style of dress was a form of personal empowerment.

Claremont's interest in female characters was obviously the work of a man with a sexual interest in women. That doesn't diminish his contributions as a writer of female characters. If his primary interest was prurience he would only need one woman on the page (or maybe two).

Claremont not only substantially swelled the ranks of Marvel's female heroes, he also filled his supporting cast with characters like Moira MacTaggart, Lilandra Neramani, Stevie Hunter, Jessica Drew, Carol Danvers, Callisto and Maddy Pryor, and he continued his commitment to female characters in his other mutant team books. In 1982, Claremont and Bob McLeod established the New Mutants, a new class of teen mutants with an initial cast of two men -- Sunspot and Cannonball -- and three women -- Karma, Wolsfbane and Mirage. He added one boy, Cypher, one ostensibly male alien robot, Warlock, and two more girls, Magik and Magma. Under Claremont, the New Mutants was dominated by its women.

In 1987 Claremont created Excalibur with Alan Davis; another team of two men -- Captain Britain and Nightcrawler -- and three women -- Kitty, Rachel and Meggan. The friendship between Rachel and Kitty was the core of the book.

Claremont left the X-Men books in 1991, but not before adding one more woman to the team. Ten years after Kitty Pryde was his first recruit, another teen girl with a very different attitude became the last of his original run. Jubilation Lee was not a quiet observer with passive powers. As brash and obnoxious as the decade that followed, she hitched her wagon to Wolverine and threw herself into trouble. Claremont wrote Jubilee for less than two-dozen issues, but he made sure readers knew who she was, and she was again very different in character to all the women who came before her.

After Claremont, things changed. New Mutants became the ultra-macho X-Force, and the next four new female characters added to the X-Men were Revanche, Cecilia Reyes, Marrow and Stacy-X. None of them made an indelible mark. Other new members were graduates or transfers from other corners of the X-Men's world, many of them Claremont creations; Moonstar, Sage, Emma Frost, Mystique, Magik, Hepzibah, Karma. Claremont's own return to the X-Men in 2001 introduced new characters like Lifeguard, Lady Mastermind and Omega Sentinel, but the seeds of these characters were planted in less fertile ground.

And yet the X-Men still have a reputation for strong female characters more than two decades after the end of Claremont's initial run, and for a generation of creators brought up loving Claremont's stories the idea of creating a classroom of characters where men outnumber women four-to-one should seem inconceivable. The waves of new students at the Westchester School in the last 13 years have borne that out, and characters like Pixie, Armor, Dust, X-23, Hope, Idie and Warbird have emerged as the potential next generation of X-Men stars.

They have some work to do to become as fundamental to the X-Men as Claremont's "strong female characters." Storm and Kitty Pryde are not the X-Men's equivalent of Scarlet Witch and Wasp. They're the X-Men's equivalent of Captain America and Iron Man. (Cyclops is the X-Men's Wasp, and also the X-Men's WASP.) Claremont's work on these characters, and on Jean Grey and Emma Frost, on Dazzler, Rogue, and Psylocke, on Rachel Summers, Dani Moonstar, Magik and Jubilee, are the very foundation of the modern X-Men. Because Claremont made these characters complex and compelling, and because he did not limit the sort of stories they could be used to tell, the women of the X-Men are the X-Men.

Before Claremont, female superheroes were typified by Jean Grey. After Claremont, female superheroes could be the Phoenix. Female superheroes could be anything.

Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments

ComicsAlliance Presents The 50 Sexiest Male Characters in Comics

Andrew Wheeler — 2013-02-14T13:00:00+00:00

Filed under: Humor, Opinion, Culture

It's Valentine's Day! What better way to celebrate love than by ogling some fine-looking fellas?

We know what you're thinking. "This is lowbrow stuff, beneath the lofty ambitions of clever old ComicsAlliance, and hey, where are all the hot chicks?" But we do this not because it is easy, but because it is hard. Comics provide such a rich vein of female objectification that female character's ranks on the Comic Buyer's Guide's 100 Sexiest Women in Comics list is treated as important information on Wikipedia. So we're providing a little balance.

We've consulted with friends and experts, with readers on Twitter and Tumblr, and we've put together our own list of the sexiest male characters in comics. If you want a list of sexy ladies, some other site will probably have one for you soon. We're not going to do that. We're here to check out some dudes.Disclaimer: You probably won't agree with this list, because it's a list on the internet. That's fine. If you want to make your own list, do so with our love. We think that would be great. Let's start a conversation about sexy guys in comics.

Second disclaimer: This is all about comic book characters, not characters from movies, TV shows, anime or games. We know Tom Hiddleston is delightful, but Tom Hiddleston is not in the comics. You're right, he should be, but he isn't. We apologize for all of your feels.

And now, ComicsAlliance presents: The 50 Sexiest Male Characters in Comics.

50. Roy Harper
(Red Hood & The Outlaws, etc. DC)
Created by Mort Weisinger, Paul Norris
Illustration by Kenneth Rocafort

New 52 redesigns aren't always an improvement, but giving Roy his missing arm back was a welcome move, because the lad has biceps we don't want to lose - especially now he's rocking some ink. Is the baseball cap a little douchey? Maybe. Isn't that part of Roy's appeal?

49. Bigby Wolf
(Fables, DC/Vertigo)
Created by Bill Willingham, Lan Medina
Illustration by Daniel Dos Santos

In a world of charming princes and fairy tale romance, it's the growling wolfman who gets our attention. Bigby Wolf is an nice bit of ruff.

48. Gray Fullbuster
(Fairy Tail, Kodansha)
Created by Hiro Mashima
Illustration by Stryler

There's nothing frosty about Fairy Tail's ice mage. A chronic exhibitionist, he's all about gratuitous shirtlessness and flashing his perfect abs. Ten points to Gryffindor!

47. Skarrow
(Courtney Crumrin, Oni Press)
Created by Ted Naifeh
Illustration by Ted Naifeh

A sweet-natured puppyish prince of the fey with a slightly sinister appearance and the most soulful eyes you ever saw. Even withdrawn little Courtney Crumrin let her heart get bruised by Skarrow.

46. Bruce Wayne
(Detective Comics, etc. DC)
Created by Bill Finger, Bob Kane
Illustration by Tony Daniel

Batman is a scary eunuch, but when he puts on a tux and pretends to be socially capable billionaire playboy Bruce Wayne he gets a little James Bond swagger and does a convincing impression of a stud.

45. Rei Kashino
(Mars, Kodansha)
Created by Fuyumi Soryo
Illustration by Croftman93

This angelic fellow is what a tortured, dangerous, playboy speed demon biker looks like in Japanese romance manga. The word you're looking for is dreamy.

44. Havok/Alex Summers
(X-Factor, etc. Marvel)
Created by Arnold Drake, Don Heck, Neal Adams
Illustration by Tom Raney

The rock 'n roll alternative to brother Cyclops' easy listening. Havok has the power of a sun wrapped up in tight pants and a surly mutant James Dean attitude.

43. Casanova Quinn
(Casanova, Icon/Marvel)
Created by Matt Fraction, Gabriel Bá, Fábio Moon
Illustration by Fábio Moon

Nick Fury by way of Mick Jagger, back in the days when Nick and Mick were inventing sexy.

42. Larry B. Max
(IR$, Le Lombard/Cinebook)
Created by Stephen Desberg, Bernard Vrancken
Illustration by Bernard Vrancken

No-one likes the taxman, but they don't usually look like Larry Max, the unlikely star of bande dessinee series IR$. Yes, it's a book about a special agent who hunts Nazis for the Internal Revenue Service. And he does it all with icy blue eyes, cool tailored suits and a riviera tan.

41. Wolverine
(Wolverine, etc. Marvel)
Created by Roy Thomas, Len Wein, John Romita Sr, Herb Trimpe
Illustration by Mike Choi

A feral knuckle of muscle and fur with a bad haircut. But having the right attitude is sexy, and Wolverine is 100% adamantium-laced attitude.

40. John Blacksad
(Blacksad, Dargaud/Dark Horse)
Created by Juan Diaz Canales, Juanjo Guarnido
Illustration by Juanjo Guarnido

He's the archetypal worn-down grizzled private eye, with all the gruff world-weary sex appeal that implies. Sure, he's also an anthopomorphic cat. It's comics. You're allowed to get a little freaky.

39. L. Lawliet
(Death Note, Shueisha/viz)
Created by Tsugumi Ohba, Takeshi Obata
Illustration by Nao Tukiji

Speaking of freaky, the youthful detective of Death Note is the weird, spooky antithesis to Light Yagami, the book's pretty and psychotic leading man. The tension between the two made them both popular, but sinister L takes the edge because, well, he's not a serial killer.

38. Lucifer Morningstar
(Lucifer, etc. DC/Vertigo)
Created by Neil Gaiman, Mike Dringenberg
Illustration by Christopher Moeller

Not that being bad isn't sometimes hot, and Lucifer has a reputation for being pretty bad. He's the most beautiful of the angels; the most brilliant of the devils. It's a seductive combination.

37. Deacon
(Artifice, yaoi911.com)
Created by Alex Woolfson, Winona Nelson
Illustration by Winona Nelson

Can a robot learn to love? Can a really hot robot learn to love? That's a question explored by Alex Woolfson's yaoi romance webcomic, with the added bonus of the buffest fully operational fleshbot you ever saw.

36. Genjo Sanzo
(Saiyuki, G-Fantasy)
Created by Kazuya Minekura
Illustration by Curiousping

Saiyuka was one of the first manga to introduce North American audiences to kick-ass-and-pretty bishonen action heroes. Sanzo is a cocky gunslinger with too many vices to list. Smoldering is one of his virtues.

35. Superboy/Conner Kent
(Teen Titans, DC)
Created by Karl Kessel, Tom Grummett
Illustration by Francis Manapul

Sure, Superman is admirable, and sure, Clark Kent fills out a suit, but Supes is a little lacking in the raw sexual energy and tight black t-shirt departments. That's where Conner Kent comes in. Who knew that Gap basics could make for such a compelling superhero costume?

34. Guts
(Berserk, Hakusencha/Dark Horse)
Created by Kentaro Miura
Illustration by Wyv

The scarred and savage Black Swordsman is the buffest and baddest of the big barbarian boys. And you know what they say about a man with an unfeasibly large sword. Good grip. Strong shoulders.

33. Black Panther/T'Challa
(Black Panther, etc. Marvel)
Created by Stan Lee, Jack Kirby
Illustration by Scot Eaton

Now he's back on the market T'Challa is surely at the top of every eligible bachelor list in the Marvel U. Not only is he ridiculously handsome, he's also the smartest of the great fighters, the toughest of the big brains, and an actual honest-to-goodness king (usually). Also, we're fairly sure his whole country vibrates.

32. Sodam Yat
(Green Lantern Corps, etc. DC)
Created by Alan Moore, Kevin O'Neill
Illustration by Patrick Gleason

Some people like Hal. Some people like Kyle. Some people like John. We like the broad-shouldered jarhead of the Green Lantern Corps, the man so damn hot they called him Sodam Yat.

31. Andrew Bennett
(I, Vampire, etc. DC)
Created by JM DeMatteis, Tom Sutton
Illustration by Andrea Sorrentino

Sexy vampires aren't a fad. They will always be with us, no matter how whiny some of them can be. Andrew Bennett is thankfully not the whiny type. He's a fine chunk of toothy alabaster in a form-fitting sweater (or, frequently, out of it).

30. John Constantine
(Hellblazer, etc. DC Vertigo)
Created by Alan Moore, Steve Bissette, Jamie Delano
Illustration by Felipe Massefara

Vertgo's trickster magician is a terrible person to fall for judging by all his past relationships, though those people aren't around to warn you away, and even knowing he's bad for you may be no defense against John Constantine's wily charms.

29. Shatterstar/Gaveedra Seven
(X-Factor, etc. Marvel)
Created by Fabian Nicieza, Rob Liefeld
Illustration by Morita Tsubaki

As originally conceived, Shatterstar wasn't a sexy character. All mullet and no personality. It took Peter David's reinvention to uncover his charm, and a new look from Valentine De Landro and David Yardin to make him dashing. His relationship with Rictor and his sexual curiosity have cemented his place as a character fans can appreciate as both a lover and a fighter!

28. Manta-Man
(Manta-Man, mantamancomics.com)
Created by Chad Sell
Illustration by Chad Sell

In the weird, wild world of Chad Sell's superhero pastiche Manta-Man, sex is a good thing, and being sexy is a great thing, and Manta-Man - a man who turns into a manta ray and tickles his girlfriend's fancy in either form - is a rare and welcome example of a superdude who's meant to be eye candy. (But we're not so hot for the manta ray.)

27. Hawkeye/Clint Barton
(Hawkeye, etc. Marvel)
Created by Stan Lee, Don Heck
Illustration by David Aja

Every superhero is someone's crush, but Hawkeye didn't really rise above the Aquamen and the Captains America until his recent upgrade at the hands of Matt Fraction and David Aja. Now the second-string Avenger has found his true hotness as a slightly slovenly sweatpants-wearing beer-swilling blue collar Joe with a goofy insouciance and, of course, the body of a world class athlete.

26. Thugboy
(Empowered, Dark Horse)
Created by Adam Warren
Illustration by Adam Warren

Adam Warren is known for the gorgeous pin-up gals in Empowered, but Emp's ripped boyfriend Thugboy gets his share of attention too, and while Emp gets the boys hot and bothered, Thugboy is the boy who gets her hot and bothered. We absolutely see why.

25. Priapus
(Priapus, Mentaiko)
Created by Mentaiko
Illustration by Mentaiko

Mentaiko is a creator of gay erotic doujinshi (self-published comics) in Japan, and Priapus is the breakout star of two of the artist's recent works. Priapus is a sleazy demon stud sent by Zeus to unleash the world's gayness one sordid encounter at a time. You absolutely should not Google it at work.

24. Heath Huston
(Fear Agent, Dark Horse)
Created by Rick Remender, Tony Moore, Jerome Opena
Illustration by Tony Moore

A hapless rugged rockabilly spaceman who just about scrapes his way from one adventure to the next. Heath Huston is old school macho with a good heart and a great jawline.

23. Red Hood/Jason Todd
(Batman, etc. DC)
Created by Gerry Conway, Don Newton
Illustration by Kenneth Rocafort

Can there be a bigger rebel than the black sheep of the Bat family? Jason Todd should ditch the shiny Skittle mask and let the whole world see his beautiful sullen sneer.

22. Colossus/Piotr Rasputin
(Uncanny X-Men, etc. Marvel)
Created by Len Wein, Dave Cockrum
Illustration by Rick Leonardi

Petey Pureheart, the X-Men's knight in shining armor, is a fine serving of premium beefcake. The soul of a hero. The body of an unusually sexy hood ornament.

21. Cain
(Starfighter, starfightercomic.com)
Created by HamletMachine
Illustration by HamletMachine

In HamletMachine's explicit dom/sub sci-fi webcomic, Cain is the quintessential jackass in black leather. And he owns it. And he knows it.

20. Roranoa Zoro
(One Piece, Shueisha/Viz)
Created by Eiichiro Oda
Illustration by Ikemura

One swordsman, three swords, infinite swag. Zoro offers more swash than most other men can buckle.

19. Nightcrawler/Kurt Wagner
(Uncanny X-Men, etc. Marvel)
Created by Len Wein, Dave Cockrum
Illustration by Kevin Wada

On the subject of swashbucklers; heroes don't come more dashing than the indigo elf of the X-Men. He looks like a devil. He smiles like a devil. He probably dances like one too.

18. Alucard
(Hellsing, Shonen Gahosha/Dark Horse)
Created by Kouta Hirano

The king of the sexy vampires. Because everyone loves a dapperly dressed, diabolically dangerous Dracula in a floppy red fedora.

17. Midnighter
(The Authority, etc. DC/Wildstorm)
Created by Warren Ellis, Bryan Hitch
Illustration by Chris Sprouse

He's rugged, he's macho, and his entire wardrobe consists of black leather. Remember when Midnighter was happily married and didn't have a spike on his chin? Someone needs to slap the walls of the DC universe to bring this sexy back.

16. Namor the Sub-Mariner
(Namor, etc. Marvel)
Created by Bill Everett
Illustration by Olivier Coipel

Comics' all-time greatest sexy-and-he-knows-it arrogant jackass. Slippery when wet, and you know he's always wet.

15. The Will
(Saga, Image)
Created by Brian K. Vaughan, Fiona Staples
Illustration by Fiona Staples

A cynical world-weary mercenary with deeply held principles and an awesome cape, The Will appears to be the archetypal decent man in an indecent world. He also appears to spend a lot of time in the gym. Where there's The Will, there's the way-hey!

14. Grimmjow Jaegerjaquez
(Bleach, Shueisha/Viz)
Created by Tite Kubo
Illustration by Nakaji

There are a lot of demons, devils and vampires on this list. Among the demonic "hollows" of Bleach, Grimmjow must be the star. It's probably his svelte figure, or his cool hair, or his kooky jawline mask, or his lustful appetite for destruction.

13. Kake
(Kake, Tom of Finland)
Created by Tom of Finland
Illustration by Tom of Finland

Kake is delicious. The sexually voracious leatherman star of Tom of Finland's vintage gay comics is an icon of 20th century erotica, and the key to his appeal was his grinning bonhommie. So of course the whole thing was illegal.

12. Manifold/Eden Fesi
(Secret Avengers, etc. Marvel)
Created by Jonathan Hickman, Stefano Caselli
Illustration by Stefano Caselli

He's the new guy on the block, the hero who wanted to be a rock star. Eden Fesi brings some lead guitar sizzle to his new gig, and we're expecting great things from him as an Avenger. It's just a shame he started wearing a proper costume.

11. Sebastian Michaelis
(Black Butler, Square Enix/Yen Press)
Created by Yana Toboso

The top-ranking demon in our list is the one with the tailcoat and the white gloves. There's a special kind of hotness that comes with a full tea service.

10. Boy
(Kill Your Boyfriend, DC/Vertigo)
Created by Grant Morrison, Philip Bond
Illustration by Philip Bond

In a story about youthful nihilism, the unnamed Boy represents sexual self-discovery and reckless rebellion. He's every bad boyfriend you almost threw everything away for, and every terrible choice you secretly don't regret at all.

09. Catman/Thomas Blake
(Secret Six, etc. DC)
Created by Bill Finger, Jim Mooney
Illustration by Dale Eaglesham

Unlike Catwoman, Catman manages to be sexy without chiropractic intervention. He's also never done the deed with Batman on a rooftop. That comic would probably be pretty popular, but we think he'd be happier with Deadshot.

08. Jaeger Ayers
(Finder, Lightspeed/Dark Horse)
Created by Carla Speed McNeil
Illustration by Carla Speed McNeil

The scrappy hero of Carla Speed McNeil's early Finder stories is our small press pin-up of choice. He's all about effortless charm, knowing smirks, and sleeveless tanks that flash a little chest hair.

07. The Scorpion
(The Scorpion, Dargaud/Cinebooks)
Created by Stephen Desberg, Enrico Marini
Illustration by Enrico Marini

An 18th century treasure hunter waging war on corrupt church officials, the Scorpion is a great fighter, a world class lover, and he has knee-length leather boots and a ruffled pirate shirt. What's not to love?

06. Daken
(Dark Wolverine, etc. Marvel)
Created by Daniel Way, Steve Dillon
Illustration by Giuseppe Camuncoli

Ah, Daken. Dark Wolverine if you're nasty. Bad boys don't come much meaner than Wolverine's devious mohawk-sporting tattooed kid. But we'll forgive a lot for a guy who really knows how to wear a suit.

05. Axis
(Teahouse, teahousecomic.com)
Created by Emirain
Illustration by Emirain

Axis is a loudmouth rentboy who thinks he knows everything. He's hot when he's trying to prove it; he's hotter when he's learning he's wrong. Teahouse is a delightfully dirty series, and Axis is the tomcat of the Teahouse.

04. Gambit/Remy LeBeau
(Uncanny X-Men, etc. Marvel)
Created by Chris Claremont, Jim Lee
Illustration by Vincent Vernacatola

Terrible accent. Awful costume. Weird eyes. Yet the charming Cajun thief is still one of the most attractive guys in comics. And, OK, maybe we like the terrible accent just a little bit. Mon chere.

03. Amal Chakravarthy
(Less Than Epic Adventures of T.J. and Amal, tjandamal.com)
Created by E.K. Weaver
Illustration by E.K. Weaver

E.K. Weaver's road trip across America shows two guys discovering the depth of a serendipitous connection. It's not hard to see why mercurial T.J. falls for sweet-hearted (but crazy hot) Amal. Motel-hopping with this guy would be an excellent way to waste a summer.

02. Marvel Boy/Noh-Varr
(Young Avengers, etc. Marvel)
Created by Grant Morrison, J.G. Jones
Illustration by J.G. Jones

Noh-Varr was designed to be sexy. That happens a lot with superheroes, but usually only the women. We're delighted to see him get back to his roots in Young Avengers. He's an other-dimensional rebel punk with pretty lips and snake hips. He's meant to fight Skrulls in his underwear. (How the Skrulls got in his underwear is a question for another day.)

01. Nightwing/Dick Grayson
(Nightwing, etc. DC)
Created by Bob Kane, Bill Finger, Jerry Robinson
Illustration by Jem Allman

The original Boy Wonder turned into quite the leading man. He has the nicest hair, the slickest costumes, and the best backside in comics, plus a weird propensity for accidental villainous bondage. Long before Noh-Varr, Nightwing was the male superhero who was written as sexy when most of the other guys were still boy scouts at a bikini convention. When it comes to sexy guys in comics, it always comes back to... let's call him Richard.

Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments

What The Flock: Stuart Immonen On The Story Behind That Deadpool Bird Cover [Interview]

Andrew Wheeler — 2013-02-07T12:00:00+00:00

Filed under: Marvel, Interviews, Art, Culture

Uncanny X-Men returns next week with a new #1 from Brian Michael Bendis and Chris Bachalo - and a very unusual variant cover from artist Stuart Immonen.

The "Deadpool 53 State Birds" cover is Marvel's tongue-in-cheek response to DC's 52 state flag variant covers for Justice League of America #1. It's a fun and funny image, but it's also beautifully composed and full of character. Immonen draws birds like a man who knows his birds. And it turns out, Stuart Immonen knows his birds.

ComicsAlliance talked to Immonen to find out how the cover came to be, and to learn a little about his passion for birding.

[Click image to enlarge]

Comics Alliance: How did this extraordinary cover come to be?

Stuart Immonen: Like most good things in my working life, I found out about it in an email from editor Nick Lowe, this one with the subject line: BIZARRE COVER OFFER. Nick told me that Marvel wanted to use Deadpool to send up a certain variant cover program of the Distinguished Competition. Marvel had -- for reasons not passed on to me -- settled on the idea of Deadpool surrounded by all the state birds, and Nick, knowing that I had a hobby interest in birding, thought I might go for it and of course he was right.

It took a few days for me to get some other things out of the way before I could start; before I had sketched a line, the brief had changed; when it became evident that there were only 30 or so birds in the list, Nick asked if I would be up to adding enough species to get it up to 53, so as to out-do the competition by one. Still, I said yes.

CA: How was it trying to fit all those birds into one cover?

SI: I've had worse assignments. Usually, editors ask to see at least a couple of sketches for covers, since they play such an important role in the marketing of any title, but for this I gambled on just one pose since it took so much more time to plan out which birds were going to fit and where.

Once I got to the final stages, it was no trouble at all, and in fact, I enjoyed the challenge of shoehorning them into every corner. There are a couple of big ones, like Brown Pelican, which had to go to the back, like the tall kids in class photos. Small birds were easier to cram in, clinging to the underside of his arms or perched along his sword edge.

Perhaps the biggest hurdle for me was trying to get the comparative sizes at least close to correct. I can identify quite a few species by sight and I know big birds from small ones, but you don't usually see them in mixed flocks (not like this, anyway), so proportions were tricky in some cases, and there were a couple that in hindsight, I could have improved.

CA: As a Canadian, how much research did you have to do to familiarize yourself with American state birds?

SI: I'm pretty familiar with the pantheon of wild North American birds and for the most part, migratory species don't acknowledge political borders, but prior to this job, I couldn't have told you which bird had been designated Official State Bird for which state.

But if there's anything the internet is good for, it's lists of things. That being said, people are fallible, and you have to be diligent about weeding out inaccuracies. Also, as a pretty-up-to-date citizen scientist, species names that I know as current are not universally used. So for example, 50states.com lists Eastern Goldfinch as the state bird of Iowa and New Jersey and the Willow Goldfinch as the state bird of Washington. I had never heard of either of these birds, but quickly found out that they were both the same common species, American Goldfinch.

Least Bittern

The same site also names Alabama's state bird as the Yellowhammer, a bird I only knew from Europe and Africa. Then I found out from Wikipedia that Yellowhammer is one of about 100 colloquial names (along with "Harry-wicket", "Heigh-ho" and "Yarrup") for Northern Flicker, a type of North American woodpecker.

I also ran into some frustrations with the couple of domesticated birds on the list. Birdwatching really doesn't include recording sightings of chickens, so there were obviously some gaps in my knowledge.

Some in the list are very similar to each other in appearance as well; the Wood Thrush and the Hermit Thrush are not readily differentiated by the casual observer. It really fell to colorist Morry Hollowell to separate the subtleties.

Red-Tailed Hawk

CA: Some states have two birds; some states share the same bird. How did you get to 53?

SI: We knew we'd come up short from the beginning, so the plan was to include a load of random birds, maybe even some extinct ones, plus the official birds of Puerto Rico, Washington DC and Guam. The problem turned out to be that a lot of the exotic birds Nick suggested were big, and there wasn't quite enough room, so I put in some smaller ones I liked instead.

And, yes, some states have a "game" state bird and a "wild" state bird and some are the same as others. The Northern Cardinal is the state bird for Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, North Carolina, Ohio, Virginia and West Virginia, which I just don't get. There are more than 700 species found in North America... it's not like there's no choice.

CA: Any favorites?

SI: Sure, I like a Mountain Bluebird as much as the next person. They're a bit rare here in the East, so it's kind of an exotic species for me.

CA: Would you call yourself a bird fan? An enthusiast? A bird-watcher, birder, twitcher?

SI: Well, these terms have different meanings, not only from each other, but one person's interpretation is different from the next. Birder, I suppose, is the least problematic.

Marsh Wren

CA: What is it about birds that appeals to you?

SI: I got into birding for all the wrong reasons. I've always had a passing interest in nature, and could tell a Robin from a Blue Jay, but was never an enthusiast as such.

Then, about six years ago, we were moving from a house to an apartment and needed to downsize some non-essentials, like collections of toys and books and comics and CDs. At around the same time, I'd received a book by Dan Koeppel called To See Every Bird On Earth, which I found really compelling. I still had the collector mentality, but no longer had a place to put a collection. Keeping a list of seen species seemed to slot in just about perfectly.

There are other benefits, of course. I get to explore all kinds of unusual places when I travel for work, and there's a robust network of people I've met who are enthusiastic and knowledgeable and friendly (but not all, and that's interesting too). I get to learn something new all the time, not just about birds, but about weather and places and seasons, too. I log my observations with eBird.org, a database managed in part by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and Audubon, so it feels like it's a worthwhile endeavor.

Finally, I get to explore a creative aspect by taking photographs of birds I see. It fires a completely different part of my brain than drawing and I enjoy the challenge of working with a subject I can't control.

Sandhill Cranes

CA: Do you have a proudest sighting?

SI: I haven't thought about it, honestly. But there was the time Kathryn and I were in Texas and we drove out to the Village Creek Drying Beds in Arlington early one morning. I had a list of birds I thought I might see and one by one, we found them all. They were all new sightings for me, birds that generally don't make it up to Canada. It was a really thrilling experience in a place I suspect most locals don't even know exists.

Unfortunately, I dropped the rental car keys while concentrating on birds, and even though we were surrounded by residential neighborhoods, when that Texas sun starts to come up and you're hunting for a dull thumb-sized object in tall grass, you start to get a little desperate. I found it, though -- probably my best sighting that day.

Uncanny X-Men #1 will be available February 13th at your local comic shop, and digitally via Comixology. Stuart Immonen's "Deadpool 53 State Birds" cover is a limited edition variant. Contact your local comics retailer for details.

Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments

New Power Generation: Talking Sex, Music and 'Young Avengers' with Kieron Gillen & Jamie McKelvie

Andrew Wheeler — 2013-01-23T11:00:00+00:00

Filed under: Marvel, Interviews, News

In 2005, as part of an overhaul of Marvel's Avengers line in the wake of Avengers Disassembled, writer Allan Heinberg and artist Jim Cheung launched Young Avengers, a new title with a cast of kid heroes inspired by established characters. The series -- and its central gay teen couple, Wiccan and Hulkling -- earned a passionate following, and despite an erratic release schedule the creative team was able to tell the story they wanted to tell, wrapping up last year in Avengers: Children's Crusade.

Now the Avengers line is getting another overhaul as part of Marvel NOW, and Marvel hopes the time is right for a new Young Avengers title with a new creative team. ComicsAlliance invited writer Kieron Gillen and artist Jamie McKelvie to a chat room (because that's how the kids did it in our day) to talk about their Young Avengers roster, the Young Avengers fans, and bringing sexy back.

You've been invited to this chat room!

ComicsAlliance: I should say up front that this won't be the most objective interview I've ever conducted, because (a) I've known you both for many years, and (b) I'm very excited about Young Avengers, because it fits squarely into several of my areas of interest: gay characters, men being sexy, and women being more than just sexy.

Jamie McKelvie: These are all good things. Well, except for knowing us for years, for which I can only apologize.

CA: I'm going to start with the gay characters, because I couldn't really start anywhere else. So, chaps; is there a burdensome sense of responsibility in taking on such a well-loved gay teen couple?

Kieron Gillen: Burdensome is a little strong, I suspect. That's the sort of thing you have to try and work your way around -- if you end up thinking just about what the characters mean to people you end up taking your eye off what the characters mean in-and-of-themselves, which is primarily as characters. They need to live, if you see what I mean.

CA: My sense is that these characters have built a following by actually not being on the page very much, because the previous Young Avengers runs came out so slowly.

KG: I'd agree with that. It's allowed the fan-base to live inside them.

JM: I think that's true -- in the absence of new material the fans have built up a host of fan fictions, fan art, etc.

CA: And fans are very invested in their happiness, and there's not much story potential in happiness. You have an obligation to tell stories. So do you feel like you have to thread the needle there? How do you keep the fan-base happy?

JM: I think trying to create a story purely intended to do what you think would "keep the fan-base happy" would be a big mistake. As you say, it doesn't have story potential. You have to instead try to focus on the characters and tell a good story with them. And hope people come along for the ride. I think they will.

KG: You can't over-worry about it, not least because it'd kill it stone dead. If people want to see Wiccan and Hulkling happy forever, they should make a statue of them kissing or something.

CA: They absolutely should! That would sell like hot boys kissing.

KG: HOT HOT HOT.

JM: Yes, but it would be very boring spread over a year's worth of issues. Though I could just cut and paste.

CA: Speaking of kissing; it took seven years for Wiccan and Hulkling to share their first kiss, but you have it happening in your first issue. Are we going to see a lot more affection? Is there a PDA quota you're going to try to hit?

JM: From my POV, I'm treating them like I would any other couple in a comic. So when they're sat together, one might have his arm round the other when they're talking, they'll touch; when they're kissing, their lips will totally be touching.

KG: The intimacy is the thing. The kiss in the first issue is great... but the next panel, when they're acting like that to each other? That's where it's real. That's what Jamie brings to the page.

CA: Has there been any guidance from Marvel on what they consider "appropriate?"

JM: No. We're all on the same level, pretty much unspoken.

KG: We've never bumped into any problems with the sexuality of the characters.

CA: To go back to the fans; I'm sure you're aware that some have looked at the preview pages and said the boys look "too gay" or "too effeminate," which I find a heartbreaking sentiment coming from fans of these particular characters, but I understand the fear of stereotypes. What are your feelings on whether or not the characters should "look gay?"

JM: Firstly, yes, I don't like the implication that "too gay" would be negative anyway. But really I think that's coming from people who aren't familiar with our work. I like to focus on clothing, body language, and so on, which may come as a surprise to people who are used to a more stoic kind of superhero art (which isn't to criticize; it's just different to what I do). That's very important to what I draw -- if you can look at a page without dialogue and roughly intuit what is going on, I feel I've succeeded.

CA: On the subject of the look of the characters. Jamie, you clearly care about keeping the cast contemporary. Where do you take inspiration from in order to get that right?

JM: Music, fashion blogs, all sorts. I put together a style folder for each character. Every time I see an outfit that fits how I see them, I put it in the folder. Film and TV dress for character; I think comics should too. Character A shouldn't wear what Character B would.

CA: I love Miss America's costume, which I assume is her actual costume? It's very original.

JM: It's one of her costumes. I see her as having themed clothes rather than a specific costume. She's going to have a few across the series. It's in keeping with her character, I think: down to earth, no mess, all punching. She really does punch people a lot.

CA: I just hope hoodies don't become the new bomber jackets. I don't want to see all the X-Men and all the Avengers in hoodies. You can't put Thor in a hoodie.

McKelvie: I can do what I like. I gave Rogue an asymmetrical haircut

CA: Madness. Speaking of Miss America; she's de facto a patriot hero, but is Miss America a patriot?

KG: I want to say something like, "That's a good question," then lean back from the table. Not that we're around a table, but you get the idea. Miss America is shamelessly mysterious, basically. The true extents of her motivations are deduced rather than outwardly stated. I mean, she's called Miss America because she's called America. I love that. What we can see is that she's a particularly brutal idealist. Does that make her a patriot? Maybe. I suppose the question has to be "what of?"

CA: So you can't tell me what America, the nation, means to America, the Miss?

KG: Basically, yeah.

JM: *pulls a mysterious face *

CA: FINE THEN! Let's talk about Kate Bishop. She's the only one in two books (Young Avengers and Hawkeye, by Matt Fraction and David Aja), so who controls her destiny? Do you have to fight Matt Fraction for her honor?

JM: From an art point of view, David and I actually working really closely. We've been sharing art back and forth, re: Kate.

Long pause

JM: I think Kieron is eating a HobNob.

CA: He can't multi-task? I ate a cake.

JM: He's a comics writer. He can barely type.

(click to enlarge)

KG: There's no honor between Matt Fraction and me. Or Jamie and me, evidently. Basically, [Kate's] primarily mine. We've talked about where her status quo ends up at issue #5, and that defines what she can or can't do in Hawkeye.

CA: UH-OH! Sounds... status quo-changing!

KG: But bar the organization areas, we're both on the same page with her. We have a similar vision for her vibe.

CA: So what's her vibe?

KG: Hah. Well, I wrote an essay on that particular one. Fiercely independent, probably the most sensible member of the team. (Certainly more sensible than Clint.) Rich, but oddly down to earth with it. Into living life.

CA: Is she the team leader? Or is that sort of thinking prosaic and old-fashioned?

KG: Yeah, we're not that sort of team that has someone who's the de facto leader, any more than your social group has a leader. The leader is a social construct. If they do have one, it may be Loki. He's the one who got them together, after all. However, if he tries to be the leader, it doesn't necessarily assume everyone else follows.

JM: Me, I see Billy and Teddy as leads, but that's very different to team leader.

CA: Loki seems like a terrible person to have as the leader.

JM: We love terrible decisions.

CA: This version of Loki doesn't seem to have anyone's interests at heart but his own. Is that fair to say?

KG: What Loki's up to is the other main mystery. Anyone who's come from JIM (Journey Into Mystery) obviously has a bunch of preconceptions (which aren't wrong), but this is a clean start. I want someone to be able to join the book and just see "kid who looks like Loki" and go with that. As in, NO-ONE IN THEIR RIGHT MIND SHOULD TRUST HIM. But yes, Loki is clearly the problem if he's guiding them. Unless he's not. Unless he is. It's confusing. I'd agree with Jamie, though -- Loki may aspire to be a "leader," but Billy and Teddy are leads, at least for the first arc.

(click to enlarge)

CA: Are you writing him as Kid Loki, Old Loki, or someone else? I think readers want to like Kid Loki, but knowing that he's Old Loki might make that difficult. Isn't he a creepy old dude pretending to be a kid, just without the internet?

KG: Well, if we're going to go deep into JIM continuity, he's not strictly speaking Old Loki in Kid Loki's body. He's what Old Loki "backed up" as Ikol in Kid Loki's body. But, to return to a line I've used a few times, things are different for gods. One of my ideas that ran through JIM that the gods are fundamentally different than humans. Humans are real in the [Marvel Universe]. Gods are made of stories. In a real way, things are different for gods. So, even JIM readers should have a, "What does it actually mean?" about Kid Loki. And newcomers? Well, you'll get intro-ed to it when I need to. For now, you can take Kid Loki as he is on the page.

CA: If gods are made of stories, doesn't that make you, the writer, some sort of uber-god?

KG: That's certainly one way of looking at it. [Grant] Morrison's way, really. Though if I define gods as creatures made out of stories, I'm not a god. I'm the demiurge, probably. What interests me for once is less the meta ("because all the characters are stories, etc, etc") and more trying to deal with that as a genuine piece of existential horror, that some of the characters are fundamentally laboring under a different experiences than others. Gods can do certain things and can't do certain others. It just interests me. Worth noting that it's less to the fore than in JIM. At least to begin with.

CA: OK, let's talk Marvel Boy. And I want to thank you for bringing his sexy back. I was a big fan of JG Jones' original version of the character and less excited by what happened to him later.

KG: We're all about the sexy, us. Basically, when he was cut free from the Avengers, it struck me as a good direction to take him. Get in touch with the James Dean, but alloy it with his experiences. He's tried to do things properly, and that just bit him on the ass.

Also, sexy. Sexy is important.

(click to enlarge)

CA: But no more bike shorts for Noh-Varr?

KG: That's on Jamie!

JM: I've said it before, but David Bowie is my touchstone for Noh-Varr. I want to draw on his otherwordly sexiness. He's a bit too old for shorts now.

CA: Tsch. But he'll take his shirt off a lot, right?

JM: Of course.

CA: Is he still called Marvel Boy? One of your tracks for him on your profile (on Tumblr) was the seminal Bros classic "Drop the Boy," but presumably you can't just call him "Marvel?"

KG: Yes, [he's still Marvel Boy]. Or at least that's what other people call him. He's more ambivalent on being called Marvel Boy. He'd rather be Noh-Varr. Hence, "Drop The Boy." To put your mind at rest, Andrew, his pants are very tight.

CA: We don't have a lot of sexy men who are deliberately sexy in comics. It's very important.

JM: We've long had a problem in comics where the women are "sexy" (in a sexist fashion) and the men aren't. Time to redress the balance. And there's a big difference between sexist and sexy.

KG: No matter what Spinal Tap think. I mean, that opening with Kate does objectify Marvel Boy. It's Kate's perspective. It's all about that gaze. Before the Skrulls attack, we're on the bed with her. The chunk of that whole scene is about her response to him, so we can do that. However, this is all in service of story. It's not just, "Ass shot, now" We think we can make comics sexier.

JM: I think we're very keen on it being a sex-positive comic in that sense.

CA: And I like that when he's dancing in his underwear he doesn't seem to have a sense of, "I am being sexy," but there's also no insecurity, no, "this is silly."

KG: That's it entirely. And silly and human is sexy. Being comfortable in your own skin is sexy.

(click to enlarge)

CA: Does it come up at all that you have two Kree on your team? That there's a relationship of sorts there? (Hulkling is half-Kree; Marvel Boy is full Kree.)

KG: The fact they're both Kree is certainly in the mix. I'm actually getting in touch with the specifics of Noh-Varr's Kree-ness. But I do like the fact they're both there. And it's particularly relevant regarding those Skrulls who turned up. They're basically the equivalent of the Skrull Kill Krew for Kree. Except not with the abbreviation, obv.

CA: Oh, yes, that would be difficult.

Some fans will be annoyed that you've brought in a new white haired kid and dropped the original white haired kid on the team. I always thought Wiccan's brother Speed was a little too indistinct from Quicksilver to be really interesting, but I know he turns up in a future issue. Do you have a good take on the character?

KG: I think so. There's a few reasons why I decided he would be better moving on. I'll admit partially it was out of the Kaplan-centric nature of the comic. It's not just a Billy solo story. That would make 3/4 of the original young avengers on the team be basically a cluster of plots, which would create more gravity towards those kind of stories.

In terms of team dynamics, he was the irritant. He was the least traditionally nice of them. Frankly, Marvel Boy and Miss America (and Loki for that matter) are a little sharper than the traditional YA. As such, he kind of loses the effectiveness in that role.

And if I did include him, it'd bloat the cast sooner than I like. It'd need to be tight. And, in a real way, I just couldn't see him hanging around for ages. He'd move on. He's a mover-on. He's got things to do! And that's basically where we find him in #6.

CA: And Cassie Lang is currently dead, and you've said Eli Bradley is earmarked by someone else. What about the Kangs? Any plans to dip your toe in that pool? Is there room for Kangs in a Loki book?

KG: As you know, I love Kang. KANG! KANG! KANG! And I did think about him right at the start of YA, but I realized that bringing him in would either undermine or simply replicate what was done in Children's Crusade. The point of CC is that he's on the way to becoming Kang. I do a story that continues that and I'm just repeating it. I do a story about him changing route, and I'm just negating that story. Maybe eventually, but certainly not in the first year. I do love Kang, after all.

CA: You've hinted that we'll be seeing other young heroes and possible additions to the cast in the future. Can you drop any hints?

JM: NO.

CA: :(

KG: I'd rather not say, basically. There's lots of surprises ahead. One of the characters is someone I've had an eye on doing something with for a while now, and thought this could be a great chance. I considered adding them for the first arc, but decided not to, for the same reason I didn't include Tommy -- just too many moving parts.

CA: Are you basically left with anyone Dennis Hopeless doesn't torture and kill in Avengers Arena?

KG: Basically I'm planning on reanimating anyone who is killed in Avengers Arena as zombies, and setting them against my heroes. Zombie Cassie is already a shoe-in, with Kate as ultimate-zombie-hunter. (She's both a zombie and a zombie-hunter. It's very tragic.)

CA: Jamie, do you have new looks in mind for Wiccan, Hulkling and Kate?

JM: It's all about how it works for the story. Hulkling has a new costume as he's out secretly superheroing without Wiccan. Wiccan hasn't been doing any, so he doesn't have a new costume. Yet. Kate just got a new one in Hawkeye, so I'm using that. But beyond costumes, it's been two years. So yes, they will look a bit different.

CA: Are you going to be crossing over? I'm not clear on how Marvel NOW is approaching that. But I want to see Wiccan and Hulkling hang out with Anole, and maybe Pixie. You should put them on your team. Am I writing fanfic now? Anole needs friends. Are you looking up who Anole is?

JM: I know who Anole is. :(

CA: No frowny faces for Anole!

KG: Jamie! Anole was the one who got sick first in Quarantine, man. READ MY COMICS.

JM: I was just feeling sad for his big weird arm.

CA: I like it. I like that he's this Chris Colfer mutant with this one giant jock arm.

KG: We're not currently planning on crossing over. It may change, but hopefully not. There's a possibility to do one later, on #14-15, but that's actually from an idea I had, and something I suggested. And even that's not sure. Basically, where JIM was created to be able to dance around every crossover that was thrown at it, YA is imagined as its own thing, self-sufficient and self-contained.

CA: I want all the gay heroes to go hang out together. Maybe not Daken.

KG: Daken would spoil all the fun.

CA: By the way; are Billy and Teddy actually engaged? It seemed ambiguous at the end of Children's Crusade.

KG: I would say they are, but it's a story I'm not actually exploring. Engagement is "going out" with a bow on it. I'm not doing a marriage story, so it's a less important thing for the story I'm telling.

CA: The other things I wonder about Teddy; is he actually that buff and blond, or is that just how he chooses to look?

JM: I think he subconsciously took that form -- he didn't know he wasn't human until the Super-Skrull turned up. And we're going to be exploring his shape-changing as we go along. I'm interested in it. I'd like to develop it further.

CA: I notice you only have two women on your six-person team, and only one person of color. Thoughts? This is either going to be a really long answer or a really carefully crafted one...

JM: Or he's eating a HobNob.

CA: How many HobNobs can he possibly have there?

JM: How long have you known him?

CA: I don't remember. Suppressed memories.

KG: [The balance of the team is] not ideal, but also a creature of mathematics. I can't use Eli. I'm left with four original Young Avengers, of whom I have to surely include some, yeah? Three men and one woman. I include the only remaining woman and two more white guys (That was another reason not to include Tommy -- it'd have skewed the team even more male). I include Loki as he's the story I want to tell. I add Marvel Boy as Kate needs a romantic interest. I add Miss America. Marvel Boy is about the only one which is even possible to go another way, but I really couldn't think of anyone else in the MU who fit the role.

The male/female ratio isn't that bad, unless you're going to take a hard line on 50:50. I could have expanded the team, but -- as I said -- I don't want to dilute the story. When you've got the medium's most prominent gay love story and it features two white guys, it limits the amount of room you have to maneuver unless you actually are going to lose them. But the member I'm adding down the line is another minority. I'll be happier when we reach that.

CA: Having at least two LGBT characters is certainly a better-than-average nod to diversity. And I say "at least two" because I don't yet know about Miss America, and Noh-Varr is Kree, and they all seem a little bit ambiguous. Or maybe that's just Mar-Vell's family? "No comment"?

KG: No, I'd say exactly. Sexuality is important to the book. And it's important to give space for the characters to explore theirs.

CA: I know you have HobNobs to eat, so I'll make this the last question. Are the Young Avengers going to be a team, or just a group? And if they're a team, are they an Avengers team?

KG: An Avengers team? An official one with membership cards? Well, a bunch of them do already have that, if it matters. I don't think it does. For me, this book is the opposite of the big governmental organization of the mainstream '00s-onwards Avengers book. This is about the ideals -- about a group of people gathered together to stop the problems none of them could deal with apart. It's about being a superhero team. If you can save the world, what other choice do you have? It's hyper-idealistic.

Young Avengers volume one was about that aspiring to be recognized. This is a book that realizes that ultimately you do it for yourself and you don't need the badge.

So yeah, a team and a group. But perhaps more like a band. But I would say that, wouldn't I?

Young Avengers #1 is on sale now in comics shops and digitally via ComiXology.

Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments

Faces of the Beast: The Changing Look of Hank McCoy

Andrew Wheeler — 2013-01-16T12:00:00+00:00

Filed under: Marvel, Humor

In the current arc of All New X-Men, the team's resident big brain Hank McCoy uses his time machine (hey, Henry, could you have mentioned you had that before?) to bring his past self to the present day (in apparent violation of Marvel's own time travel rules, but rules are totally boresville), to brainstorm a cure for his chronic MacGuffinism (a serious medical condition that inspires really smart people to do implausible things that get plots rolling; Reed Richards is suffering a similar affliction). Consequently, the Beast has mutated. Again. Again again.

To mark this latest evolution in the appearance of the modern-day Madonna of mutants, ComicsAlliance looks back at some of the previous faces of Hank McCoy.

Hank McCoy (1963)

Created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, Hank started out as a distinctly '60s preppy kid with more than a hint of ape. He was a bulky, bookish boy who looked mostly human but for his giant hands and feet. As a gifted science student and a star football player, he was half nerd and half jock, and he would often beat himself up about it.

Gray Beast (1972)

Hank used a delicious "extract of mutant" to disguise himself while investigating an evil scientist, and what could be a better disguise than to cover your entire body in thick grey shag? "Say, is that old Hank over there? Oh no, that's a huge and terrifying ape with enormous fangs. Say, Jeannie, do you want to go grab a malted?" This otherwise brilliant ruse had an unfortunate flaw, in that Hank could not actually take the disguise off.

Blue Beast (1972)

This is the look most people think of as "classic" Beast; the blue devil look with hair styled in homage to Wanda Maximoff's terrible hat. This is the look fans want Hank to go back to. If only Hank would go back to this look, no-one would ever complain about change in comics again and everything would be fine. Geez, comics, why are you so mean? Stagnate more already!

Stupid Beast (1987)

For a little while Hank returned to human form, but he contracted a virus, because although he is a doctor, Hank apparently spends a lot of time licking money he finds in the street. The virus simultaneously made Hank stronger and stupider. Like beer! The only cure for Hank's condition was reupholstery, so he blue himself again.

Dark Beast (1995)

Dark Beast is not our world's Hank McCoy, but the evil Hank from the Age of Apocalypse universe. He replaced our Hank for a while and dyed his fur to match, at which point he was presumably Dark Blue Beast.

Fish Beast (1999)

Another other-dimensional Beast. This one was mutated into an amphibian thing with demonic goat legs, because there is an infinite number of universes and sometimes you land in a really silly one.

Sully (2001)

Another other-dimensional Beast. OK, it's not on-the-record, but ever since Disney bought Marvel I'm pretty sure it's in continuity.

Cat Beast (2001)

"Secondary mutation" was the tenuous in-story explanation for Beast's reinvention as a burly Thundercat, but it was really just Grant Morrison marking his territory. The trouble with Cat Beast is that his every change of expression tended to look like a new Cheezburger meme. Vis:

Did John Cassaday invent Grumpy Cat? Yes. Yes he did.

Frasier Beast (2006)

In his first proper appearance in the X-Men movieverse (not counting a fur-free cameo in 2003's X-Men 2) Beast was played by Kelsey Grammer and styled to look a bit like the classic blue ape version and quite a lot like a presidential smurf. Though a genius, Hank still did not know what to do about those tossed salads and scrambled eggs.

Horse Beast (2009)

Hey, Hank! Why the long face?

(There was no in-story explanation for this. It was just... I don't know. Sometimes Thor is a frog, you know?)

Startled Liza Minnelli Kitten Beast (2011)

Beast's second blue movie appearance (pardon the expression) was clearly more influenced by the cat look. And it was so terrible that it probably inspired Marvel editorial to finally get out the spray bottle and chase cat-Beast away.

Bat Beast (2013)

So that brings us up-to-date with Hank McCoy's latest mutation. Bigger, burlier, with wet-look hair that really brings out the pointy teeth and pointier ears. Will the fans who hated the feline look be grateful for Hank's new Mr Hyde-meets-Hulk-meets-Caliban appearance?

Sure. Fans are super flexible about this stuff.

Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments

Best Comic Book Covers Ever (This Year) - 2012 Edition

Andrew Wheeler — 2012-12-31T13:00:00+00:00

Filed under: Art, Opinion

I joined Comics Alliance in January of 2012, and my first pitch out of the gate was for this column. I love cover art. I love the tension between the freedom that covers offer -- you can do almost anything on that canvas -- versus the restrictions of scale and necessity. I wanted the opportunity to not just highlight the best covers, but to talk about what makes them great.

Here at the end of 2012 I've picked out my favorites from the last twelve months. I've kept this list to just one cover per title and just one cover per artist, otherwise you'd be overwhelmed with covers from Fiona Staples and those of The Massive. So here they are: The Best Comic Book Covers Ever (This Year), in no particular order.

Amazing Spider-Man #692 (Marvel), variant covers by Marcos Martin

Marcos Martin produced five monochromatic alternative covers for this book to mark the 50th anniversary of Spider-Man -- one cover for each decade. All five covers were great, but this was my favorite, showcasing what is among Spider-Man's least prestigious stories, the Clone Saga, and elevating it considerably!

Injury #4 (Alternative), cover by Ted May

I've often written about the appeal of dissonant palettes. I think of it as a hallmark of underground comics, which often sought to reject the comforts of insubstantial gloss and present readers with more challenging visuals, but we're increasingly seeing the use of these palettes in the mainstream. Here it is in its natural habitat -- alternative press -- and used to extraordinary effect to create a cover that begs to be explored.

Batman #7 (DC); cover by Greg Capullo

I'm really enjoying Capullo's recent run of Batman covers, which exhibit a compelling but unobtrusive design sense. Capullo has evolved a much more controlled and confident style since his Spawn days, and he produces strong, emphatic superhero covers that put me in mind of a less crazy Chris Bachalo.

Adventure Time: Marceline And The Scream Queens #1 (Boom! Studios), variant cover by Colleen Coover

Now that's a concert poster I'd hang on my wall.

Astonishing X-Men #54 (Marvel), cover by Phil Noto

Phil Noto is one of my favorite portrait artists because he puts so much into the expressions. I also like the way this cover combines the visual signature of Karma's psionic powers with the symbols of the Communist regime that controls the character's home nation of Vietnam. A subtle visual dramatization.

Dark Horse Presents #17 (Dark Horse), cover by Carla Speed McNeil

Carla Speed McNeil achieves a lovely effect here by layering the organic patterns of a tree over the geometry of architecture and nesting her leading man in the middle of it all. This is a representation of a moment, but it's also reminiscent of the graphic beauty of Japanese paper craft.

Batwoman #5 (DC), cover by J.H. Williams III

JH Williams III makes so many interesting choices that other artists are unlikely to touch. This cover, for example, combines dramatic immediacy with narrative complexity. The image is strong and simple, but there's a lot to unpack in the significance of those layered faces.

B.P.R.D. Hell on Earth: Pickens County Horror #2 (Dark Horse); cover by Becky Cloonan

I don't know where Pickens County is, but I never want to go there. This is a deliciously gruesome piece from Becky Cloonan, and I love the bloody fanged mouth, the bright blue eye, and the way the top of the page reads as landscape until your eye travels down to discover the horror.

Daredevil #12 (Marvel); cover by Paolo Rivera

I think one thing Marvel has done very well for years now is find cover artists who want to establish striking aesthetics tailored to the books they work on, far removed from the usual banal language of superhero covers. It doesn't happen across the board, but when it does happen it's very welcome. Paolo Rivera knocks it out of the park with this provocative radar view. Click here for some behind-the-scenes on this image.

Fairest #4 (DC Vertigo); cover by Adam Hughes

I'm smitten with this lavish pastiche of an Orientalist harem painting. I'm so used to Hughes's cheesecake that I didn't immediately recognize this smoldering Lothario as his handiwork.

Creepy Comics #9 (Dark Horse), cover by David Palumbo

Creepy covers should actually be creepy, right? I'd say this does the job quite nicely.

The Stand: Night Has Come #6 (Marvel); cover by Tomm Coker

A strong, sinister and brilliantly realized horror image with cleverly counter-intuitive colors.

Key of Z TPB (Boom); cover by Nathan Fox

The covers for the series had energy and edge, with raw vibrant colors and a touch of wit. This trade cover isn't typical of the style of the series, but it has the same punk aesthetic and looks instantly iconic. I see Nathan Fox as part of an emerging wave of artists embracing a Paul Pope aesthetic with dissonant color schemes and ugly-beautiful composition.

Hellblazer #298 (DC Vertigo), cover by Simon Bisley

I haven't seen the cover to the final issue of Hellblazer yet (issue #300), but I can't imagine a better tombstone for the series than this image, which captures the series' themes of death, magic and trickery and its icons of cigarettes and trenchcoats with definitive wit and style. A great, great image.

Epic Kill #2 (Image), variant cover by Robert Ball

My favorite cover in July. It's either Quentin Tarantino by way of children's illustrator Miroslav Sasek, or it's the kill-craziest crazy quilt I've ever seen. Whatever you call it, I think it's an amazing piece.

X-23 #21 (Marvel); cover by Kalman Andrasofszky

This digitally painted cover for the final issue of X-23 marks a departure from Andrasofszky's usual sinewy style. The result is a gory scene rendered with beautiful softness. It feels like a perfectly iconic Wolverine-esque image to cap the character's solo run.

Adventure Time #9 (Boom), variant cover by Jon Vermilyea

If Basil Wolverton has an heir in the business of brilliant grotesques it may well be the gloriously gory Jon Vermilyea, whose Adventure Time cover is one of the most exquisitely vile images I've ever seen. And this is for (ostensibly) a children's book!

Elric: The Balance Lost #10 (Boom); cover by Dan Panosian

There are no rules about which covers I pick. I don't look for a publisher or an artist or a character. I just choose the covers that I really like. If I know the story that might help me grasp the significance of a cover, but it shouldn't be strictly necessary. This Elric cover is a perfect example; I've never read an Elric book in my life. I couldn't tell you the first thing about the series. But this is a cover that makes me want to know more. This is a cover that sparks my imagination and stirs my love of art.

Scalped #59 (DC Vertigo); cover by Jock

I haven't seen many covers bolder than this simple painted-in-oils-style image of a blazing fire. The orange glow consumes the cover, and the burning building is almost a footnote. That's a confident approach.

G.I. Joe #19 (IDW), variant cover by James Biggie

This simple black and white "rock poster" variant is a hugely appealing exploitation of a simple, familiar character design.

Fables #115 (DC Vertigo); cover by João Ruas

There can't be many tougher gigs in comics than being the guy who took over cover duty from James Jean, but João Ruas does stunning work. This cover cleverly evokes Alice in Wonderland with an extra dose of creepy. It's a piece that proves he's fully on top of the job.

Wonder Woman #7 (DC); cover by Cliff Chiang

Chiang's cover plays on the iconic nature of its familiar lead character to create a glorious Soviet poster moment (with a starburst that feels unabashedly American).

And finally...

These are my favorite covers from the artists that I think consistently led the field in 2012. These are the best of the best.

American Vampire #29 (DC Vertigo), variant cover by Dave Johnson

A splash of red and a wonderful use of reflection to add depth, dimension and detail. Maybe this is just my perception, but I feel like it's rare for Dave Johnson to do a cover that's entirely in the scene rather than on a conspicuously constructed "stage." He does that amazingly well, but I like this a whole lot too.

The Lone Ranger #1 (Dynamite), by Francesco Francavilla

A sincere and evocative portrait of an iconic character. The Lone Ranger isn't hugely relevant to modern audiences, but this cover almost fooled me into thinking that he is.

The Massive #3 (Dark Horse), variant cover by Rafael Grampá

Rafael Grampá has a spooky gift for color and composition. Many of his variant covers for The Massive have made my list this year. They're too compelling to overlook, and I would hang any one of them on my wall.

The Unwritten #44 (DC Vertigo), cover by Yuko Shimizu

This stunning piece of mythology-making was surely Shimizu's best piece this year, and she certainly wasn't slacking in 2012.

Hawkeye #3 (Marvel), cover by David Aja

I considered skipping superhero covers the month this came out, as there weren't many good ones, but this cover convinced me of my folly. Wonderful design.

Saga #4 (Image); cover by Fiona Staples

I think this is my favourite Fiona Staples cover yet. Just perfect execution.

Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments

Best Comic Book Covers Ever (These Months) - November/December 2012

Andrew Wheeler — 2012-12-19T12:00:00+00:00

Filed under: Art, Opinion

A great comic book cover is both an advertisement and a work of art. It is both a statement and an invitation. Sometimes a great cover conveys character, sometimes mood, sometimes moment. Great covers can pastiche the classics or pay tribute to the past, or they can strive to show us something new. Great covers always show us a glimpse of somewhere else, on a canvas no bigger than a window pane. In Best Comic Book Covers Ever (This Month), we look back at some of the most eye-catching, original and exceptional covers of the month that was.

I'm late for November and early for December, but I've decided to combine the two months to leave the way clear for next week's review of the year -- and because November was a bit rubbish for covers. We see out 2012 with some brilliant horror, a touch of greatness, and what may be the go-to color scheme of the year: black, white and red.

American Vampire #33 (DC Vertigo), cover by Rafael Albuquerque

Have I mentioned the striking appeal of black, white and red covers before? Oh, only every month. This time I have a veritable feast of black, white and red, starting with this lovely, starkly emotional piece from Rafael Albuquerque. Red is the color of blood and viscera; here it represents the raw pain of memory evoked by music. The cover surely would not have worked so well in any other color combination.

Hawkeye #6 (Marvel), cover by David Aja

The red here is part of David Aja's overall design scheme for the series, which began with a purple phase and moved in to a red phase with a set of covers that largely evoke sex and violence. Here red gives us a striking mood for a hero shot that's a long way from the generic standard.

Thunderbolts #1 (Marvel), cover by Julian Totino Tedesco

A cover artist friend was recently telling me how important the "team shot" cover is as a sales device. Quite simply, readers don't remember who is in a book if you don't lay it out for them once in a while. For the first issue of a team book it's basically essential -- but that doesn't mean it needs to be boring or obvious. Tedesco has done a great job here of making a hugely unlikely team look like they belong together.

The Victories #5 (Dark Horse), cover by Michael Avon Oeming

One more black, white and red cover, and the red has a lot of work to do here; it shapes the figure, provides a power signature, leads the eye, evokes blood and violence, and draws together the disparate elements of the figure and the handprint. Superbly deft work.

Bleach Vol. 52 (Viz), cover by Tite Kubo

Black, white and beige? There's red here as well, of course (and a whole bushel of mid-tones), but I wish I could find Bleach covers without the garish cover furniture, because Tite Kubo consistently creates my favorite manga covers; cool, composed and distinctive.

GI Joe #19 (IDW), variant cover by James Biggie

All right, enough red; this simple black and white cover is easily one of my favorites this week. This "rock poster" variant is a hugely appealing exploitation of a simple, familiar character design.

Avengers Arena #1 (Marvel), variant cover by Skottie Young

Skottie Young has been a busy man with his "young" variants for the Marvel NOW line. I've picked this one as my favorite. It can't be easy to make the morbid premise of Avengers Arena seem charming, but Young has done a fine, funny, subversive job of it here.

Green Hornet #32 (Dynamite), cover by Phil Hester

It's all about shapes with Phil Hester. He's a master at throwing shapes.

The Sixth Gun #27 (Oni), cover by Brian Hurtt

An argument could be made that covers should only be assessed with all the indicia in place, but that's not my priority. I generally prefer to see the art unencumbered. However, Sixth Gun is a series that consciously and consistently builds its covers around the logo, and I think this example works particularly well. The dynamism, scale and color palette are all enhanced rather than weighed down by the logo. (The barcode, on the other hand, is not an aesthetic triumph.)

Iron or, The War After (Archaia), cover art by SM Vidaurri

A cover that nicely evokes the classic style of embossed hardbacks from the Victorian first golden age of children's literature. It's an apt choice for a book that uses comics to explore a similarly old-fashioned (in the best way) fantasy setting in lavish, gorgeous style.

Deadpool #2 (Marvel), cover by Geof Darrow

It was tough to decide which of the two fantastic animal variants I liked more for this issue of Deadpool. The Gurihiru cover is a winner as well, but Darrow has the edge. Maybe it's the flamingo on the elephant's tusk? Or the bear spittle?

All-New X-Men #1 (Marvel), variant cover by Paolo Rivera

I'm still skeptical about All-New X-Men's "retro meets modern" concept, but this cover may have sold me on the idea. This is a really well executed character portrait from Rivera, and it appeals to my fan instincts in a way that makes me want to explore the story.

Batman #15 (DC), cover by Greg Capullo

On the subject of horror and dark humor; Capullo pulls off a simple but brilliant trick here, placing Joker's face and Joker's... "face" at different angles to create a memorable first impression and a disquieting second impression. But this isn't the most striking detached face image you'll see this month. Oh no. That award goes to...

Colder #1 (Dark Horse), cover by Juan Ferreyra

When I look at this cover part of me wants to stand up and applaud, and part of me wants to have a long sit down and a stiff drink. This is easily one of the most horrific comic book cover I've ever seen. Utterly distressing, but unexpectedly compelling. I want to look away, but I keep coming back. And shivering. Well done, Juan Ferreyra, you evil genius.

Sharaz-De (Archaia), cover by Sergio Toppi

And if you need a mental palate cleanser after that, who better than the late great master of composition, Sergio Toppi? I am unspeakably happy that Archaia has brought some of his work into print in English, because Toppi belongs in my personal all-time top five great comic artists. This cover should give you some idea why that is. He carved beauty out of every page he drew.

The Unwritten #44 (DC Vertigo), cover by Yuko Shimizu

If your palate still doesn't feel quite clean, here's another work of majestic beauty to help you along. This stunning piece of mythology-making may be one of Shimizu's best pieces this year, and she certainly wasn't slacking in 2012.

Fables #123 (DC Vertigo), cover by Joao Ruas

Speaking of mythology; I'm so far behind on Fables that I can only guess at what I'm seeing here, but it feels like a Northern European take on Guillermo Del Toro's Pan's Labyrinth monsters. Norns and Valkyries, maybe? It's certainly beautifully composed, and enticing enough to make me want to catch up on the series.

Uncanny Avengers #2 (Marvel), variant cover by Milo Manara

Oh, Milo Manara. You're certainly a fella who knows what he likes. But you do it so well that I find I like it too.

Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments

Mark Waid and Leinil Yu's 'Indestructible Hulk': The Strongest #1 There Is? [Review]

Andrew Wheeler — 2012-11-21T15:00:00+00:00

Filed under: Marvel, Reviews, Opinion

First issues are a challenge that the superhero comics industry still struggles to get right, which is weird when you consider just how many of these things they put out. It's as if a collective decision was made to misinterpret the old adage, "every issue is somebody's first," to mean that first issues should read like they're any other issues.

Through the experience of DC's New 52 and now Marvel NOW, whereby both publishers relaunched most if not all of their superhero lines from issue #1, I've been trying to understand why this might be. First issues should establish character, establish status quo, establish threat and establish change, and that too often feels like a barely remembered skill. My best theory is that the great pressure of issue #1 to justify its existence by being different and earning an audience leads makers to jettison the obvious for fear that it's too pedestrian and place all emphasis on establishing themselves. And maybe that's why Mark Waid, a writer who perhaps feels less pressure than most to prove himself, gets it so right with Indestructible Hulk #1.

Indestructible Hulk #1 is an introduction that works. It establishes character, status quo, threat and change in twenty pages, and does so in a way that also provides continuity for readers of past incarnations of the Hulk and for people who only know the character from the movies. It's always slightly unclear if anyone actually comes to comics from movies, but if they do they will have no trouble reconciling this book with the events of the Avengers movie. And in the unlikely event that you've never encountered the character at all, Waid and artist Leinil Francis Yu tell you what you need to know -- who the Hulk is, what he's capable of, and what his place is in the Marvel universe -- in basically one panel on page two.

The game-changing pitch for this series is that Hulk's alter ego, brilliant but tortured big brain scientist Bruce Banner, has decided to stop trying to cure his condition (turning into a giant green inhumanly strong rage monster) and regard it as a chronic but manageable condition instead. He'll place both of his selves at SHIELD's disposal, which will allow Banner to rededicate his genius to solving other problems rather than wrestling with his own, and will give SHIELD a Hulk. It's a smart direction for the character, a reconciliation that opens up new storytelling possibilities without reducing either Hulk or Banner. That's the change that makes this a story worth exploring.

As for the threat, the back half of this issue gives us a very apt bad guy in the form of brainiac Fantastic Four villain The Mad Thinker, who is here to let us know that this is a book about deranged science at its most brazenly bombastic.

But of course that's not the real threat in a Hulk book. Hulk is the threat in a Hulk book. That point is well made in this issue's showcase opening diner scene, which sees SHIELD director Maria Hill sit down with Banner with all the enthusiasm of a woman petting the proverbial long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs. The tick of a clock serves to remind us that Banner is a ticking bomb while a series of potentially Hulk-triggering events occur around him (the best being his own explosion of jealousy at peer and rival Tony Stark).

The diner scene is a delight, not just for its pace and tension, but for the way Yu presents the hustle and crush of the ordinary world around Hill and Banner. Sure, they're the innocents that need to be protected, but they're also potential collateral damage, oblivious to the carnage that could tear through their lives at any second, and Yu has a gift for capturing the humanity and diversity of the world.

But Yu also excels in the jerky frenzy of the battle scenes. Yu can fill a page with action without losing the thread, and that's a rare pleasure. His Hulk has all the sinew and scale you expect, but Yu doesn't let him eat the frame so he can take shortcuts with the scenery. There are no shortcuts here, and the result places the reader right in the middle of the fight.

Indestructible Hulk #1 is easily one of the strongest debuts I've seen from Marvel NOW, perhaps only challenged by Jason Aaron and Esad Ribic's Thor: God of Thunder #1. The secret to its success is twofold. First, they did the job that a #1 requires. They introduced us to this world. And second, they're really very good at their jobs. That's a compelling reason to come back for #2.

(click to enlarge)

Indestructible Hulk #1 is on sale now in your local comics shops and digitally from comiXology.

Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments

Women At War: Marvel Announces New All-Female 'Fearless Defenders' Book

Andrew Wheeler — 2012-11-08T17:30:00+00:00

Filed under: Marvel, News, Opinion

During the ReEvolution panel at New York Comic-Con, Marvel editor-in-chief Axel Alonso hinted at plans for a couple of new female-led comics, one of which he promised would be a "kick-ass team book." Today Marvel formally unveiled that book; Fearless Defenders, by Cullen Bunn (Sixth Gun) and Will Sliney (Star Wars: The Clone Wars).

All-female team books have always been a slightly awkward proposition. Putting several female characters together in one book can smack of both tokenism -- "here are those females you wanted" -- and ghettoization -- "we've put them all over here so they won't get in the way." It's a problem DC's Birds of Prey historically addressed by keeping the characters' association loose. But as that book's passionate audience proves, there's something undeniably appealing about a team of powerful independent women coming together to right wrongs in a setting where most teams are dominated by men. Thankfully for his all-female team, Cullen Bunn has come up with a justification that sounds totally organic and rather brilliant.In an interview with Newsarama, Bunn explained that the new series emerged from his work on the character Valkyrie in the Fear Itself spin-off The Fearless. Valkyrie is the last incarnate member of the Valkyior, the Asgardian warrior goddesses who serve as Odin's shield bearers. As Bunn explained it, "The basic idea of the book is that Valkyrie is choosing a new team of Valkyrior, and she's been asked to choose all these women from the heroes of Midgard, instead of from Asgard." Midgard means earth, which means female superheroes. In essence this is a book about mortal women stepping up to fill a vacuum left by goddesses, and that strikes me as a pretty awesome idea.

Valkyrie's first recruit, and her co-lead in the series, is one of Marvel's most underrated heroes: kung fu cyborg and Blaxploitation detective Misty Knight. Knight is basically the greatest Marvel character to never get her due, so I'm thrilled to see her on this book. The only other member that Bunn has thus far revealed is Danielle Moonstar of the New Mutants. This former mutant is a fan favorite who has similarly struggled to find a place in the Marvel Universe (despite the fact that she should really be the next Captain America), but she's an obvious fit for this book given that she has previously served as a Midgardian Valkyrior, and is basically now a Valkyrior reservist.

The rest of the roster is a mystery that will be revealed as the series progresses, but presumably any female hero who is currently unaccounted for in the Marvel NOW line-up must be a contender, and some characters may pull double-duty on other titles. Bunn has explicitly not ruled out She-Hulk. Fearless Defenders seems to be rooted more in the events of Fear Itself than in any previous incarnation of The Defenders, but Valkyrie was a member of that team so it's plausible we might see a return for former teammates such as Hellcat, Namorita, Moondragon and Wasp.

Fearless Defenders joins a line-up of female-led books at Marvel that also includes Captain Marvel, Red She-Hulk and Journey Into Mystery, plus female-dominated team books FF and Uncanny X-Force. Judging from Alonso's NYCC comments, there is at least one more female-led Marvel NOW book yet to be announced, which would bring their total to seven titles in the main Marvel line. It's a welcome improvement, moving the company closer to catching up with rival DC, which has nine female-led ongoing series in its main line with Wonder Woman, Batwoman, Batgirl, Catwoman, Birds of Prey, Supergirl, World's Finest, Sword of Sorcery and the recently announced Katana.

Fearless Defenders launches in February 2013. You can read more about the series at Marvel.com.

Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments

Best Comic Book Covers Ever (This Month) - October 2012

Andrew Wheeler — 2012-11-06T13:00:00+00:00

Filed under: Art, Opinion, Culture

A great comic book cover is both an advertisement and a work of art. It is both a statement and an invitation. Sometimes a great cover conveys character, sometimes mood, sometimes moment. Great covers can pastiche the classics or pay tribute to the past, or they can strive to show us something new. Great covers always show us a glimpse of somewhere else, on a canvas no bigger than a window pane. In Best Comic Book Covers Ever (This Month), we look back at some of the most eye-catching, original and exceptional covers of the month that was.

October was a very strong month for great covers, so I can only assume that book publishers are pushing big product to the shelves to get ready for the holidays. The offerings include some great repackaging of Basil Wolverton and Wally Wood, stunning color work from Ted May and Jon Vermilyea, great design from Gary Taxali and Chris Ware, and a lot of blossoms and a little touch of houndstooth.

Spacehawk Mini Comic (Fantagraphics), cover by Basil Wolverton

Basil Wolverton may be best known for his grotesque caricatures in MAD Magazine, but he worked in a lot of genres. Spacehawk was evidently one of his early works, and if this gorgeously lurid cover is anything to go by it was a delightfully daffy sci-fi pulp.

Adventure Time #9 (Boom), variant cover by Jon Vermilyea

If Wolverton has an heir in the business of brilliant grotesques it may well be the gloriously gory Jon Vermilyea, whose Adventure Time cover is one of the most exquisitely vile images I've ever seen. And this is for (ostensibly) a children's book!

30 Days of Night #11 (IDW), cover by Christopher Mitten

This similarly demonic cover for an actual horror book isn't anywhere near as disturbing! But it is still a wonderfully vivid piece, and the smoke skulls are terrifically realized.

Injury #4 (Alternative), cover by Ted May

I've written before about the appeal of dissonant palettes. I think of it as a hallmark of underground comics, which often sought to reject the comforts of insubstantial gloss and present readers with more challenging visuals, but we're increasingly seeing the use of these palettes in the mainstream (see below). Here it is in its natural habitat -- alternative press -- and used to extraordinary effect to create a cover that begs to be explored.

Haunt #27 (Image), cover by Nathan Fox

And here's dissonance in the mainstream; much less confrontational, but still pleasingly striking. Nathan Fox is really establishing his brand with his work on this title.

Building Stories (Pantheon Books), cover by Chris Ware

Comics' master draftsman sets out his stall with this impressive image map cover for an innovative new work that invites readers to navigate one life through multiple stories in any order. And look, the "i" in "Stories" is an eye! (Sometimes it's the little things.)

Cartoon Utopia (Fantagraphics), cover by Ron Regé Jr

This cover really makes me smile, and maybe gives me a sense of four-color spiritual well-being. But cartoon utopia looks more outdoorsy than I expected.

Blab World vol. 2 (Last Gasp), cover by Gary Taxali

I love the nostalgic advertising vibe of this cover. It comes from contemporary illustrator Gary Taxali, but it looks authentic, like something found at a garage sale.

Mattias Unfiltered: Sketchbook Art of Mattias Adolfsson (Boom), cover by Mattias Adolfsson

I don't know the work of Mattias Adolfsson, but I was totally charmed by the detail and understated whimsy of this cover. It's like Where's Wally, but with a giant robot! And a dinosaur! And I think that might be a Valkyrie? Catch them all!

Blacklung (Fantagraphics), cover by Chris Wright

I see a lot of Joann Sfar in this densely demonic and stylishly constructed cover, and that's enough to convince me to investigate the work of newcomer Chris Wright.

Bride of the Water God Vol. 12 (Dark Horse), cover by Mi-Kyung Yun

Trees and blossoms seem to be a theme on covers this month. Here they provide depth and grace, a frame for a beautiful image and a motif for the character that's repeated on her dress.

Wolverine #315 (Marvel), cover by Michael Del Mundo

And here are those blossoms again, both forming a leering face to threaten our heroes and giving a heavy clue to the story's location. But I also like this cover for the stylized shapes Del Mundo constructs his heroes out of.

Hawkeye #3 (Marvel), cover by David Aja

I considered skipping superhero covers entirely this month; there weren't many good ones, and there were more than enough great covers from other places to get on with. But this cover convinced me of my folly. Wonderful design.

Fairest #8 (DC Vertigo), cover by Adam Hughes

This may be the best naked lady comic book cover of all time. Of course, most of the others are terrible, but I don't mean it as faint praise.

Paradise Kiss (Vertical), design by Nicole Dochych, art by Ai Yazawa

If it weren't for the serious design aesthetic of the guys at Vertical I'd almost never get to talk about manga here. Manga covers so rarely stand out on their merits. This is a pretty simple portrait piece, and I don't love the font, but I do love the houndstooth. More houndstooth on comic covers! Perfect as the winter winds roll in!

Drops of God: New World (Vertical), design by Taylor Esposito, art by Tadashi Agi

Vertical again, and a very mature combination of color, interior art and eye-catching typography. This cover makes great use of book design ideas without shying away from being a comic.

Came the Dawn and Other Stories (Fantagraphics), cover art by Wally Wood

And while we're talking smart use of interior art, here's another superb example. This collection is all about the mastery of Wally Wood, so the cover presents a taste of his work in an uncluttered and respectful way, while also establishing a trade dress for Fantagraphics' new EC artists line.

Fatale #8 (Image), cover by Sean Phillips

This could potentially have been a boring image -- it is, after all, a man sitting in a chair -- but Phillips gave it atmosphere and presence not just with the neat use of spot red in the candles and the dog's eyes, but with the simple trick of slightly tilting the angle. That creates a level of engagement with the figure that wouldn't be there otherwise, because of the sense that you're not looking at him; he's looking at you.

Point of Impact #1 (Image), cover by Koray Kuranel

This is a really smartly framed cover. You may have heard the stories of rookie comic writers who set their artists the impossible challenge of establishing a location and showing an action in a single panel. This cover manages that impossible feat, with style and restraint.

Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments

Rediscovering Comics' Queer History: An Interview with 'No Straight Lines' Editor Justin Hall

Andrew Wheeler — 2012-11-01T10:00:00+00:00

Filed under: Fantagraphics, Indie, Interviews, Culture

Earlier this year Fantagraphics published an extraordinary collection of LGBT comics from the past four decades. No Straight Lines brings together comics from the early days of the alternative and underground press, stories from the era of the AIDS crisis, contemporary webcomics dealing with identity and gender issues and much more in one volume. The result is a fascinating examination of post-Stonewall queer culture.

To mark the end of Queer History Month, ComicsAlliance spoke to No Straight Lines editor Justin Hall, a cartoonist whose personal works include True Travel Tales and Glamazonia, to learn what inspired the collection, how he put it together, and what he thinks readers and cartoonists alike can learn from it.

Comics Alliance: First, Justin, congratulations on putting the book put together. It's a beautiful work from beginning to end.

Justin Hall: Thank you. I really wanted a kind of coffee table book. Obviously it has historical importance and cultural importance but I also wanted something that is a beautiful art object. Increasingly as comics go online the stuff that remains in print has to have kind of a fetishy quality to justify its presence on the bookshelves and to justify all the dead trees.

CA: How did the project come about?

I curated a show at the San Francisco Cartoon Art Museum called No Straight Lines: Queer Culture and the Comics, and that was the world's first museum show of this material, so the Cartoon Art Museum has been an amazing supporter of this project through every step of the process and I can't thank them highly enough.

We wanted to do a catalog of the show, but the funding fell through for it, so that was the genesis of the project. It stuck in my head that a book needed to be done along these lines, and of course, as these ideas do, they sort of grow in your head and become this monster, and several years later it was time to pitch this thing and I went to Fantagraphics.

CA: Tell me about your philosophy as the curator of this collection. Was there a picture you wanted to paint, or certain boxes you think you needed to tick?

I thought of it as a sort of three-tiered editorial approach. My first category was artistic worth. Absolutely every story in this book needed to be good comics. I wanted people to open this book, even people who don't know much about comics, and be able to enjoy it thoroughly.

The second thing was historical relevancy. The book is divided into three general chronological sections, so the book spans four decades of this material. The first section focuses on the gag strips coming from the early gay newspapers and gay magazines that exploded after the Stonewall Riots, and also the underground commix that were feminist oriented and eventually queer oriented that came out of the underground commix movement beginning in San Francisco. This covers roughly the time between the late 1960s and through the 70s.

Child Labor, by Mary Wings

The second section focuses on the 80s and 90s as AIDS hit, so there are a lot of cartoonists' reactions to HIV and the AIDS epidemic. Then there were the punk zines that came about in the 90s that really changed the dynamic of queer comics and alternative comics in general.

The final section focuses on a new batch of trans and non-binary gendered creators, which is really I think the most exciting segment of queer comics right now. There's incredible work being done on genderqueer themes. The third section also deals with the movement on to the web and out of the traditional queer media ghetto of the gay publishers, gay newspapers, and gay bookstores.

The final editorial approach would be representational merit. I wanted to make sure there was obviously a good balance between women and men, make sure there were enough trans voices, also comics from different points of view, comics about different subjects. Everything from the AIDS crisis to doing drag, to marriage, immigration, bullying, domestic abuse, to dealing with racism in the gay community, to coming out stories.

CA: Were most of the comics in the collection ones that you had come across over time, or did you have to do a lot of hunting to put the book and the art show together?

When I curated the show, that was 2006, and Andrew Farago of the Cartoon Art Museum worked with me on it and I think it was a very important show, but I learned a lot more about queer comics in the years following that. I became the talent relations chair for Prism Comics, which is an advocacy group for LGBT comics, so that enabled me to learn more about the history of queer comics and also to start looking at a lot of the emerging web comics and new developments in queer comics, so the book is much much more extensive than the show was able to be.

We also do a Queer Press Grant every year at Prism Comics, where we give an annual award to self-publish an independent comic supporting queer characters and queer themes, and every year the applicants get better, they get more diverse. It's inspiring what's happening, what's continuing to happen with this talent pool.

CA: I came of age in the 90s, and I expected the comics from the 70s and 80s to feel like a time capsule of a previous generation's gay culture and gay attitudes, but I was surprised that I found it very resonant and very relevant, and I recognized the culture and the attitudes today. Did you have that experience?

It's very interesting you bring that up because that's something that caught me off guard as well. The narrative in my own head was that the first section of the book, comics from the 70s, would feel really dated, and that would be of historical merit but it would look kind of silly compared to how sophisticated we've gotten about queer identities now.

Billy Comes Out, by Howard Cruse

But I agree with you, I did not find that experience, what I found was material of remarkable complexity and thoughtfulness, and unfortunately some of the battles they were fighting back then we're still fighting now.

There's definitely a difference as you move through the four decades, but it's much more subtle than I expected. It's also a testament to how good those early creators were. Howard Cruse, Trina Robbins, Roberta Gregory, they're some of the best cartoonists in the business and they were doing work of surprising sophistication from the very beginning.

CA: Do you think the generation that is coming of age today - the new voices, the "It Gets Better" generation - will find the same resonance in those early comics?

I certainly hope so. One of the things that was very important to me was to give young queer readers and especially queer cartoonists a sense of their history and sense of their heritage. Queer history and culture is not something that is passed down within families, generally.

One of the most powerful moments in selling the book was at San Diego Comic-Con where we essentially debuted the book and it sold out, which was wonderful. The last book I sold was to a mother who came up to me - and I'm actually getting choked up about it - she came up to me and said she wanted to buy the book for her young gay son, he was 18, and she wanted him to see his culture. She couldn't tell him about what it meant to be a gay man, but this book could help him be proud of this culture and this community and this history. That was so incredibly powerful for me. I've heard from other young queers that they look at this book and get a sense of their heritage.

CA: That's really lovely to hear. Do you think that there's anything that the cartoonists of the previous generation can learn from these new voices in turn?

I think that some of these older cartoonists will hopefully be inspired by the limitless possibilities of the web and by the possibilities of the new kinds of storytelling in an era when queer stories can come in to the mainstream. Look at Alison Bechdel's career path, for example. She started in the queer media ghetto writing only for other queers, writing Dykes to Watch Out For which was only serialized in gay newspapers, but then she moved into the mainstream book market and became a New York Times bestseller with graphic novels that are very queer, but can now be accepted by everybody, can be read by everybody. I think those older cartoonist will be very much inspired by newer cartoonists finding their own voices and finding their own ways.

Oppressed Minority Cartoonist, by Alison Bechdel

CA: There is one strip from Alison Bechdel in the book about being an Oppressed Minority Cartoonist, which explores her frustration at having everything she does filtered through her sexuality and gender. The tension between queer identity and assimilation is a theme that recurs throughout the book. Do you think we're any closer to a synthesis of those two ideas?

That's one of the biggest questions that's constantly being grappled with. There's no answer to that question. Women cartoonists deal with it, queer cartoonists deal with it - do you call yourself a woman cartoonist or do you call yourself a cartoonist who happens to be a woman? The same thing with queer identities. It's a very tricky balancing act. It doesn't ever have one fixed answer and that's the end of it. It has to be constantly re-asked as society shifts and as your work shifts as a cartoonist.

I've struggled with that with my own work. When I first started making comics I did True Travel Tales, which was a series of biographical and autobiographical travel tales. I traveled around the world for years with a backpack and I made comics about it. And there were queer parts to that because I am queer and I would meet other queers, but for the most part it's not queer comics at all, and I had a wider audience within indie comics.

So there's a constant balancing act of how do you define your work and how do you find your audience. There are some people who very much want to speak to the queer audience and are perfectly content in doing that for their entire artistic career, and other people who do that for a while and then tackle other subjects, but who maybe want to bring in queer narrative concerns and points of view to their other work as well.

In the past if you had any queer characters at all in your comics, they were de facto queer comics, because the mainstream either ignored LGBT characters completely or abused them, essentially. So now we're in a position where society is much more accepting of LGBT communities and narratives, so you can have characters and themes in your comics without it being a queer comic, and that's exciting, that's liberating.

Oppressed Minority Cartoonist, by Alison Bechdel

My definition of queer comics is comics that speak to queer identities and realities from an insider's perspective. They don't have to be made by queer people, I have several straight creators in the book, like Trina Robbins and Joyce Farmer, but still have an insider's perspective. Now that the mainstream is more progressive, it's their job to incorporate and assimilate LGBT characters into their stories, but it remains the job of queer comics to dissect and analyze the queer experience in a more sophisticated way, to dig deeper. Clearly, some queer cartoonists will want to do this project, and others will not. The amazing thing is that in our culture now, there's a choice.

CA: I felt there was a shift as I moved through the book from biography and autobiography towards more allegorical stories and fiction, though all still clearly queer comics. Is that an accurate assessment of the evolution of queer comics?

I think that's probably true. I think there's a lot of science fiction and fantastical stories being done now. I'm seeing more of that on the web. There's still a lot of autobiography being done, however, and memoir will remain an important part of queer comics moving into the future because it's still so complicated, forming queer identities and accepting them and growing in to them is still such a complicated process that there will still be a lot of memoirs done around these themes.

You see this particularly with the trans creators. There was a smattering of trans stories happening earlier, but basically the trans cartoonists really came up in the beginning of the 2000s, so they're kind of in the position now of dealing with identity issues that gays and lesbians were dealing with back in the 70s and 80s, so it's interesting watching that happen.
Christine Smith, for example, is a web cartoonist who does a strip called The Princess about a trans girl and her family and friends. She was one of the recipients of the Queer Press Grant this year, in fact. She's basically creating a strip to help the little girl that she was when she was young, who never had any support. She's doing this for the new generation of trans children, creating role models, showing them images of themselves in a non-pathological way, and allowing them to be who they are.

The Princess, by Christine Smith

It's a similar project to Mary Wings', who was the first lesbian cartoonist. She had never heard the word lesbian until she was 19, so then she heard it and she was like, "oh, that's what I am," and then she made this comic about coming out as a lesbian and she tried to get it out there to help other young women in her position. I feel like her project was very similar to what Christine is doing now for trans girls, trans women, and that's an interesting generational parallel. Mary even said as much when I had both her and Christine on a panel at WonderCon.

CA: It seems to me there's more fluidity not just in terms of gender identity but also in terms of sexual identity in the later comics. There's a less monolithic, if I can say that, vision of what it means to be queer. Are we progressing towards a different understanding of queerness as we move through this book?

Absolutely. Concepts of queerness have changed dramatically across the years. You look at some of the early polemics around sexual identity, and a lot of the early folks didn't really believe in bisexuality, for example, or were very suspicious about gender fluidity, and now we're in a position where I think we can see queerness as a very complex spectrum that can involve both gender and sexuality.

And that complexity makes it even more fascinating as a subject to make comics about. So I'm excited about what happens next. I want to continue to see people like Edie Fake and Annie Murphy and Mysh, this cartoonist from Israel, doing really sophisticated interesting things about gender and sexual identity in ways that really were unimaginable earlier.

CA: I was interested reading Lana Wachowski's introduction to the book where she draws a contrast between the glamour and the perfection of superhero comics and this flawed, sweaty humanity of underground comics. Do you think this grungy carnality is an essential part of queer comics' identity?

It's hard to pigeonhole queer comics as an aesthetic or artistic style, and one of the purposes of the book is to show there is an incredibly wide range of artistic approaches to this material. That said, I would say a generally unifying factor of queer comics is a sort of rawness and honesty that oftentimes manifests as grittiness.

For me, I actually really like those stories. It's part of my bias as an editor, I like stories that are raw and honest and take your breath away with their intensity, I'm more drawn to stories that have that sort of aesthetic. To me there's something really exciting about an unfiltered vision, in all its quirkiness.

Seven Miles A Second, by David Wojnarowicz,

James Romberger & Marguerite Van Cook

One of the things that distinguishes comics is the do-it-yourself tradition, and it's ultimately about you and paper and ink, and you can get your vision, however eccentric and strange and unsalable it is, you can get it out with a photocopying machine and some ink on paper, and that makes it a medium that you don't need resources and money the way you do for film or for television or for other media. That makes comics a medium that's good at exploring strange eccentric views of identity, and that definitely translates to queer comics.

CA: Your collection starts around the time of the Stonewall Riots which are cited as the breakthrough moment for queer visibility. Was there anything pre-Stonewall, from a coded era of comics, that you were tempted to include?

Certainly you can get into semantics about what are comics - you can look at some Greek vases from antiquity and think of them as queer comics. But what we think of traditionally as comic books with queer material, it was really erotic comics that started it. Tom of Finland, I would say, was really the first gay cartoonist. He was doing these wordless sequential narratives with his character Kake, this jovial leather man who would get into very awkward situations.

This material was illegal. So really the depiction of gay erotica was a tremendous act of revolution, and was very dangerous. People were jailed, people were fined, businesses were taken down because of this material.

Those kinds of comics started in the 40s, 50s, 60s, and by the end of the 60s the obscenity laws were starting to be loosened, especially in the United States. ... But it wasn't until the Stonewall Riots, which are generally thought of as the birthplace of modern gay culture, that suddenly gay newspapers and gay magazines started developing, and those publications needed comics, so that was when you saw the first gay gag strips appear.

Miss Thing, by Joe Johnson

Oddly enough at the same time as this cultural awakening was happening in queer culture there was also the beginning of the underground comics movement happening in San Francisco. ... So I think those two things kind of dovetailed. I think by the time that Gay Comix, the gay comics anthology that began in 1980, that Howard Cruse was able to bring in some of the sensibilities of the gay gag strips, the aspirations of the lesbian comics, and even some of the ribald nature of the gay erotica stuff that predated all of that, and really coalesce it into a broad anthology that showcased all of this material.

But it took a while. The early material was dangerous stuff to do. It's very hard for our generation to look back and imagine how difficult it was and how dangerous it was to produce queer material back then. We all owe a tremendous debt to the creators back then who risked so much in the name of artistic and personal freedom.

CA: Do you think LGBT comics are an area Fantagraphics may want to explore further? I don't want you to make a statement on their behalf, but I am curious. It seems Taschen has cornered the market on that part of the bookstore.

It will be interesting to see. One of the things I really wanted to prove to the American comics industry and to Fantagraphics is that a book like this could sell. Queer comics have a market. They can sell to straight readers who would be interested in queer narratives and compelling cartooning, but also a queer market still exists that is hungry for this material and will pay money for it. So the fact that it's doing so well is really gratifying, and I hope that it paves the way for more of this to happen from all sorts of publishers.

I would love to see some collections of some of the cartoonists, the European cartoonists, translations of some of their work, and maybe some of the earlier generation of American gay cartoonists. For example Jerry Mills who did the strip Poppers, that's an amazing comic, and he's dead, he died of AIDS unfortunately and is survived by his wonderful partner Sal, and his work is just fantastic. It's kind of a time capsule of gay realities and gay humor at the time, but it also still reads very fresh. It would be wonderful to have a good beautiful collection of his work. There's a lot of stuff like this that really should be collected.

Poppers, by Jerry Mills

CA: Are there any creators who didn't make it into the book, any important queer voices coming up now that you think people should keep an eye out for the future?

One of the most difficult things in compiling the book was not being able to include some of the longer form webcomics, serialized comics, and graphic novels that are being done now. I wanted to stay away from unsatisfying excerpts, so most of this collection is complete short stories or one-pagers, but people should be on the look-out for more queer comics done on a larger scale, that are happening more and more.

I didn't include manga or Asian comics in the anthology because I feel like the world of queer manga is enormous, and has its own set of artistic intentions and cultural contexts behind it, and it really requires its own book. But what I'm seeing increasingly is this influence of queer Asian comics on queer American comics. Yaoi is such a huge genre - yaoi is stories of gay male sex and romance made by women for a primarily female audience - and you're seeing that aesthetic come over into queer American comics, as well as the aesthetic of bara, or gay male stories made by gay men for gay men, which have a different look to them.

CA: Do you think there may be a sequel to this collection?

I would love to revisit this in five or ten years and I think we'd see a different picture, I think we'll see a lot of young emerging cartoonists who are doing really exciting work, using all different kinds of influences, I think some of them will look back historically and be inspired by some of the older cartoonists as well, doing a lot of stuff on the web, doing a lot of long form comics, and that's going to be great. I'm really looking forward to seeing what happens. I would love to do a follow-up to this book ten years down the road.

Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments

Halloween Gets Nerdy at Toronto's Silver Snail Party

Andrew Wheeler — 2012-10-31T18:30:00+00:00

Filed under: Culture, Cosplay

Halloween is the time when everyone becomes a cosplayer. That's especially true at the annual Halloween costume party hosted by comic store Silver Snail, which have become legendary in Toronto. Everyone wears a costume. Almost everyone makes an effort. And most of the costumes are super-nerdy. A lot of them are comics-based, but you'll also see costumes based on movies, TV shows, video games, toys, and internet memes - and the best part is, no-one asks who you've come as, because everyone there is nerdy enough to know.

This year, to mark the Snail's relocation to new premises at 329 Yonge Street, the party was bigger and nerdier than ever. ComicsAlliance was there - with photographer Paul Hillier - to capture some of the best costumes on film.

Gambit and Rogue

Jamie Madrox the Multiple Man

Iron Man

Green Arrow

Mary Jane Watson and Peter Parker

Powdered Toast Man

Black Widow and Winter Soldier

J. Jonah Jameson

The Monarch and Dr Mrs The Monarch

Mses. Marvel

BuckyCap

Pac-Man and Ghost

Strawberry Shortcake

Flash writer/artist Francis Manapul as Charlie Chaplin (with Dalek Tank)

Lobo

Mario Kart

Batwing artist Marcus To as Indiana Jones

Ghostbusters Logo

Catwoman and Bane

Toph

T'Pol

Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments