Between the Gutters: My New Podcast

Yup. I'm not dead yet. Although I haven't posted anything on this blog in quite some time, I've not stopped reading and thinking about comics. Albert and I have started a new podcast about comics called Between the Gutters.

The first few episodes out so far are about the top 25 Marvel comics of all time, where we count down from 25. Our first episode is giant-sized and we talk about comics 25-20 on our list. The subsequent episodes tend to cover two items apiece.

But there's always room for variation. This isn't a podcast solely for the purpose of talking about Marvel comics. It's intended to talk about anything about comics. We just decided to start with a countdown of the the 25 greatest Marvels ever because it would give us some structure to start out with. Leave a message if there's something you want to hear about, or a topic you think is worth discussion, or even if you just question or disagree with anything we covered in the podcast. It'd be great to form some sort of community via something we all enjoy - namely, comics.

You can leave a comment on this blog, or you can email us at betweenthegutterspodcast@gmail.com. We're on Twitter @btweentheguttrs. Our website is https://betweenthegutters.wixsite.com/betweenthegutters. We've been talking about setting up an Instagram account one of these days - mostly so we can post images of some of the comics we talk about, and even specific scenes we mention in our podcasts.

Check out the episodes we've posted so far here on SoundCloud:

https://soundcloud.com/user-713428097/sets/between-the-gutters

We're also available on iTunes:

https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/between-the-gutters-podcast/id1311976402

Oh, and why call ourselves "Between the Gutters?" It's because the gutters are the spaces of a comics page that separate the panels. So when we talk about what's between the gutters, we're talking about the stories within the panels.

Review: Superman: Earth One Volume Two

The Stupid Age of Superman: Heat vision incinerates hapless human victims. Note the skulls in the foreground.

A bit over a year and a half ago, I did a quick review of the first Superman: Earth One hardcover. It was bad. Really bad.

Many moons later, here I am, having read volume two by the same "creative" team of J. Michael Straczynski and Shane Davis. Whereas, as far as I can remember, the first volume was just really bad, book two is not only worse, but it's offensive. It's offensive to any discerning comics reader with halfway sensible taste. It's offensive to the very concept of Superman as an abstract idea. This is a Superman comic in name only. It certainly doesn't live up to anything Superman truly represents.

Let's start with the art. The art's just bad; compared to the writing and actual story, the art is the lesser of two evils. It's just your standard, somewhat innocuous homeless man's Jim Lee-style penciling with modern coloring. Things are colored a little dull and muted, except for things like explosions, heat vision, electricity, energy blasts - those just look fake and out of place, akin to flashy special effects in Hollywood blockbusters designed to "wow" the audience but are actually smokescreens to hide how mediocre the storytelling is.

But, man! Shane Davis' art has not improved at all. His work looks exactly the same as the first terrible Earth One book. Everything still looks the way they're supposed to look, but it's all so bland and uninspired, almost a little like Mark Bagley's work but with more detail, more muscles, more '90s Image-inspired "grittiness." His characters have very little, if any, sense of "acting" and their body language only meagerly conveys whatever the script calls for. Even a slightly better artist would have at least made the book worth looking at from a draftsmanship point of view. Panel to panel and page to page storytelling is indistinguishable from the vast majority of any middle of the road superhero comic you can find on the racks. It's rather disappointing to see that this art was given the original hardcover graphic novel treatment. For such a "special" comic, you'd expect a little nicer artwork. Taken as a whole, this is simply kids' stuff. Which is acceptable, I suppose, if that's what they're going for - if DC thinks this style of art can attract the Halo/Call of Duty generation, all right, fine, whatever. Good luck.

As a designer, Davis' work is still poor. Is there any good reason for Superman to have those extraneous seams stitched on his costume? Does he really need an eight pack molded right into his suit? I feel like little details like that are Davis' way of conveying how badass his version of Superman is, as though the more badass and unfriendly Superman looks, the more the audience of this book will relate with him. (Now that is a cynical thought... and an idea that simply isn't worthy of Superman, yet somehow - sadly - is probably in tune with our current culture.) About the nicest thing I can think to say of Davis' work is that at least he kept Superman's underwear on the outside of his pants. (Unlike whoever designed the New 52 Superman.)

His design for Parasite, the villain remixed for this story, is unimaginative, too. He looks like a generic purple humanoid monster with weird bulges all over his limbs who, when he finally sucks Superman's power, basically looks like a lavender Hulk (complete with torn up pants) with gross yellow spots. Sometimes, simple is more memorable, but in accentuating the supervillain's musculature and angry facial expressions, Davis makes the character appear one dimensional and run of the mill. (Of course, the writer's characterization doesn't help at all.)

It all adds up to a comic that, at its best, looks it's trying a little too hard to look flashy and exciting. At its worst, it genuinely looks utterly insipid and banal.

Now, terrible art is one thing - it could be argued that a powerful story and script can redeem bad art, or at least elevate it back to the level of passable mediocrity. Just look at Alan Moore's underrated run on Supreme (an homage to the Silver Age in general and Superman in specific), which was saddled with art by the likes of Ian Churchill and Rob Liefeld yet still reads leaps, bounds, and light years better than this turd called Superman: Earth One.

It kinda goes without saying, but JMS is no Alan Moore.

There are numerous problems with volume 2's story. The plot is basic and predictable. The supervillain, Parasite, goes on a rampage and it's up to Superman to stop him. Of course, in their first meeting, Parasite whips Superman's butt, so Superman has to regroup before he can win. Somewhere in the story, there's a subplot about Clark and his apartment neighbor Lisa Lasalle (because, you know, there aren't enough L.L.s in Superman's life) and how she keeps trying to seduce him. There's also a subplot about Clark trying to deal with how the world hates and fears him.

There are just things in here I don't think are necessary in a Superman comic, or at least don't do anything meaningful in this one. For example, during a scene when Lisa Lasalle and Clark go to the movies, she makes an allusion to giving him a handjob. I don't know if JMS thought that he was being cool or in tune with his audience, but I found this inappropriate, tasteless, and offensive. There could have many better ways to show Lisa trying to seduce Clark, or to show that she has a warped view of romantic relationships. The difference is that many of those other possibilities would have likely required a bit more subtlety, a quality that JMS does not tap into in his comics writing often enough.

In another scene, Superman intervenes in a foreign country to save some people from certain disaster. The country's military dictator confronts Superman, brazenly telling him off as you would expect. Superman actually then fantasizes about incinerating the dictator with his heat vision until the puny human is nothing but a pile of charred bones. He also fantasizes about laying waste to the dictator's military forces with extreme prejudice. (Just look at the book's cover image.) Superman doesn't really do this, of course, but he fantasizes about it and Davis draws a couple of pages showing us his fantasy in graphic detail.

Anyone who knows anything about Superman should know that this is wildly uncharacteristic of the essence of who Superman is and what he represents. It would have been fine if JMS and Davis simply showed us Superman's frustration and helplessness at the situation, but to hamfistedly force this scene upon us is simply gratuitous. I can think of two reasons for this: 1) They don't respect their readers' ability to perceive that the scenario could leave Superman, the most powerful being on the planet, powerless in the face of politics and rhetoric, or 2) JMS and Davis think that explicitly showing us Superman's revenge fantasy somehow makes him more relatable to the audience. (Because, hey, who hasn't dreamed of using heat vision to wreak havoc upon their enemies?) The first reason is insulting to the audience's intelligence and the second reason doesn't reflect well on the creators' understanding of the character.

Later, there's a scene when Superman saves Lisa from an abusive crazy ex who is about to assault her in her apartment. Using his superspeed, he grabs the guy and flies him to Alaska, or the North Pole or somewhere arctic. Superman tells the guy he'll have to hike his way back to civilization (miles and miles away) if he wants to survive, and then he flies off. Again, this cruelty is wholly unrepresentative of Superman. It's not that the guy doesn't deserve to suffer, but the problem is that Superman is unnecessarily sadistic. That's just not who Superman is.

It just makes me wonder if JMS really thinks that the reason people generally complain about how they don't like Superman is because he's a good person, too good. It's as though JMS feels that by making Superman more prone to wrathful outbursts of emotion, he's somehow more like us, more "realistic," and therefore more relatable, and therefore more people will enjoy the character. 

I get that this isn't the "real" Superman and that this is an imaginary story (aren't they all?), but even Elseworlds Superman tales have something to say about the character, even if it's in the form of something the "real" Superman would never do. The difference is, DC (and, by extension, the creators of this comic) are trying to sell us on the idea that this Superman is the embodiment of the iconic aspects of Superman. But it doesn't ring true at all.

Superman isn't cruel and he isn't petty. He's above all that. He's the ideal embodiment of the best humanity can hope to strive for. Maybe he's not the superhero Jesus, but he's got to be the superhero Moses. (Sent from Krypton on a rocketship is like Moses floating in a basket in the Nile, right?) I hate how people think you have to somehow make Superman dark or grim in order to make him relevant. Did we learn nothing from Joe Kelly's "Whatever Happened to Truth, Justice, and the American Way?" (Action Comics #775.) Superman hasn't lost touch with America. America has lost touch with him. (What's next? A comic where Superman walks across America to "find himself" again? Hmm...)

My little diatribe about the essence of Superman aside, the actual plot in Earth One volume 2 has other significant problems that are difficult to overlook.

In flashbacks, we see that the Parasite was always a sadistic individual, even as a child, and gaining his powers has only served to give him greater destructive power. It's your basic, run of the mill supervillain origin, and we also see that when he was a kid the one person he actually loved was his kid sister. Well, they're both adults now in the story and somehow, his sister sees the Parasite going on a rampage in Metropolis.

Incredibly, even though she is in another part of the country and watching the news as the Parasite ravages the city for hours, she is able to realize he's her brother, hop on a plane, land in Metropolis, and meet him in the middle of the streets of downtown Metropolis while he's still in the middle of his rampage.

The logistics of that are a real stretch.

First of all, it's a little hard to swallow that the sister could even learn the Parasite is her brother. And even if she did know, how feasible is it that she could watch him, live on the news, then hop on a plane, fly out there, and meet him while he's still on the same rampage he was on when she was watching TV in the first place? That would mean his rampage has gone on unabated for at least several hours and yet the authorities still haven't intervened to the point where they are still allowing commercial flights into what's essentially a warzone. Plus, she straight up wanders right up to him on the street while he's wrecking stuff.

It's overly convenient and cheesy.

To add to the corniness of the situation, the Parasite sees his sister, calms down a bit, and they hug because she knows he's actually a good person at heart, yadda yadda yadda. Predictably, his powers cause him to siphon her life force during their embrace, and she dies in his arms. This drives him into an even more furious rage, and that's when Superman finally is able to kick his butt. Lame.

The book ends with a scene of the government recruiting Lex Luthor (who, in this story, has a wife named Alexandra - get it? Lex Squared! I'm rolling my eyes.) in order to find ways to deal with these metahuman threats in the future. It's supposed to be a little ominous but by this point I was just happy to say I finished the book.

This comic really lit a fire under me. It set afire a blazing inferno of hate full of rage and spite so deep within my soul that no love could ever quench it. This scorching hellfire continues to consume me the more I think about this comic. Superman: Earth One volume 2 is a book whose sole purpose in the vale of tears known as human existence is to anger and offend me. The comic has absolutely no redeeming value and I would rather read a Safeway advertisement in the newspaper than this offensive drivel.

On top of all that, I borrowed my copy of the comic from the library and, because the book itself is cursed, I was late in returning it. The overdue fees are added insult to the ignominy of the experience of reading it, and just more kindling and fuel for my hatred.

Review: Batman: The Dark Knight Volume 1: Golden Dawn

David Finch writes and draws a Batman comic.

Unkindly, my first thought when I heard about this a couple years ago was, There's no way that can be good.

Perhaps even more unkindly, when I saw the hardcover at a library the other day, my first thought was, Wow! I can't wait to read this so I can feel justified in hating it!

This was a bad comic, even by DC standards. I get that Finch is popular artist, but I honestly don't think he's a good one. Or at least he doesn't have a style that appeals to my sensibilities. I can stomach his art if the story is interesting enough (see Moon Knight with Charlie Huston, or Ultimate X-Men with Bendis), but nothing about his drawing and storytelling has ever, ever indicated to me that he could possibly be a gifted writer. Golden Dawn is evidence enough; it's your standard, run of the mill Batman story, only with a lot more gritted teeth, furrowed brows, and veins pulsating through clothes.

Dawn Golden (Yes. Her name is Dawn Golden and the story is titled Golden Dawn. David Finch clearly learned from Jeph Loeb - that's their idea of subtlety and wit.) is a girl from Bruce Wayne's past. She's been kidnapped. It's up to Batman to save her. He encounters Killer Croc and the Penguin. There's also a side plot with Etrigan the Demon and Ragdoll that eventually crosses over into the main plot. Now, I've given you some of the general beats of the story. Use your imagination and create a story using those points.

Unless you're mentally retarded, you've just imagined a comic better than the hardcover open in front of me.

Finch crafts the most basic, generic superhero story full of all the tropes you've come to expect from a Jeph Loeb or Judd Winick comic. It kind of reminds me of Todd McFarlane's Spider-Man: Torment from the early nineties; that was one of the first really art-driven big name superhero titles, and it was a piss poor comic (unless you were simply satisfied with T-Mac's art). Finch relies on splash pages to punctuate his story beats, but without any genuine emotion and drama behind the story, it all ends up being a series of meaningless moments captured in panels. His art is detailed but the details rarely seem to serve any stylistic purpose. Unless they're fighting, his characters are poor actors and don't convey any real emotion.

Oh yeah, there's also a subplot involving a teenage girl (at least I think she's a teenage girl - with Finch's art, she could just be a really short adult) stealing some tech that ends the ordeal with a cliffhanger. I have to admit I'm not really interested in seeing how it all turns out. And there's a good chance that I'm going to forget everything in this comic by next week. 

The sad thing is, I really wanted to hate this comic a lot, but it was so bland and insipid that I don't have the strength to unleash my unbridled disdain. I thought it would move me to new heights of rage, but it was such an uninspired piece of work that I've got nothing...

I always wonder, whenever I read a bad comic, where do they get the pull quotes that they slap on the covers to try and sell people on the book? I mean, the front cover has a pull quote from IGN that says, "David Finch is a master of superhero comics; The Dark Knight is further proof of that." Did that reviewer actually think this was a masterfully executed superhero comic - that out of all the superhero comics ever made since the dawn of time, this is as sterling an example of the genre in all existence? Or was he just being sarcastic and his quote taken out of context? I have to believe it's the latter; the alternative is just too depressing a thought.

The best thing I can say about the Golden Dawn hardcover is that at least it collects a story from Batman #700 written by Grant Morrison (which has nothing to do with Finch's story). It's probably Finch's finest moment since his Moon Knight run.

Review: Batman: Earth One

Okay, so what is the point of this comic? Why does something like this even exist? What purpose does it serve beyond making some money? (I suppose those questions could apply to a lot superhero comics these days, but I'm really just pointing at this one.)

Over a year ago, I reviewed Superman: Earth One and asked myself similar questions. I want to say that the purpose of this line of Earth One graphic novels baffles me, but the truth is I know it's just a cash grab. Batman: Earth One is a little better than Superman: Earth One, but that's mainly because Gary Frank is a much, much better artist than Shane Davis.

Batman: Earth One takes the familiar origin of Batman and tries to... do something... with it. What exactly, I couldn't really tell you. It's got all the basics: We see the story of Bruce Wayne being orphaned and vowing to rid Gotham City of the evil that took his parents' lives; his first outing as the Batman ends up in failure; with renewed resolve, he's finally able to make right on his vow and triumph. Yadda yadda yadda.

Predictable.

I assume Geoff Johns wants to make Batman fresh and modern, so he makes Alfred a former military soldier with a prosthetic leg and a goatee, because, y'know, goatees are badass. It's just details like that which really grated on me as I read the comic. There was just something about it where I felt like Johns is just trying too hard to make us feel like we're seeing something fresh, when it's really all just the same old stuff just dressed up a bit. The violence, the spectacle, the Ultimate-ization of various familiar characters - it all just felt like a cry for attention.

For example, James Gordon has a character arc: He starts off as a morally compromised cop who, after having his daughter's life threatened, eventually turns it around to become the principled hero cop we all know he should be at the end of the story. Harvey Bullock actually plays a big role in Gordon's turnaround, although by the end of the ordeal, it's implied Bullock himself is about to begin a fall from grace, descending from good-looking TV cop show host to alcoholic detective. Oswald Cobblepot (the Penguin) is the corrupt mayor of Gotham City. Nothing about how these characters were handled impressed me, and I just couldn't buy into Bullock as a debonair former TV show host. Johns tries to lay the foundation for future stories by introducing the subplot of Martha Wayne (Bruce's mother) and her family's creepy past. Her maiden name? Arkham. DUN DUN DUN! I don't know, was that supposed to excite me for the next installment when we get to see how the entire Arkham family became insane? 

There's a scene in this book that I think is supposed to be the emotional climax of Batman's arc, when Alfred tests Bruce's emotional fortitude by picking a fight with him in Wayne Manor. Bruce gets his butt whooped, but ends up fighting a little dirty by sweeping the leg (displacing Alfred's prosthetic leg in the process). Of course, as Bruce walks away with new resolve in his heart, Alfred brushes away a tear and basically says, "He finally gets it." The whole sequence is painfully trite. Just flat out corny.

Really, if you're going to remix or reimagine a classic, you have to bring something new or clever to it. This comic treads the same hallowed ground as Batman: Year One and doesn't offer anything new in a creative or satisfying way. At this point in history, it's fair to say that Year One is one of the top two best Batman stories ever. Is there any reason for someone, for anyone, for a new reader perhaps, to read Earth One over Year One? No. Absolutely no reason at all.

It just makes me cynical - like DC Entertainment knows that the legions of existing Batman fans who already know the ins and outs of his story will eat this up, regardless of its quality, just because it's Batman. And I do believe fans did eat this up, according to the sales figures. I hate comics fans sometimes - even when they're given crap, they gorge themselves on it. That just makes these corporations feel like they can continue feeding us crap because the people will eat it.

Everything that Earth One aspires to be, Year One already accomplished... in 1987. Gary Frank is a fine artist, but I'm sure even he'd admit he's no David Mazzucchelli. Let's face it: If anyone were really hankering to read a Batman origin story, you'd point them to Year One. It's a timeless comic and one that's so definitive, so perfect, that it utterly negates the entire purpose of Earth One.

Review: Justice League Volume 1 Origin by Geoff Johns and Jim Lee (The New 52)

I don't know what there is to say about the New 52. Personally, I haven't been more disinterested an unmoved by current mainstream superhero comics since I was a kid and the combination of the Age of Apocalypse and the Spider-Man Clone Saga made me quit reading superhero comics entirely. Generally speaking, these past couple of years haven't been pretty for Marvel and DC, but DC in particular has really been hitting rock bottom.

Whereas I felt that the era from about 1999-2009 or 2010 was a modern Golden Age for comics, I now believe, with full conviction, that we are now in what I have termed the Stupid Age of Comics. We're at the stage where these corporations are basically just throwing crap at the walls to see if anything will stick. They don't seem to realize that even if something sticks to the wall, it's still crap. There are lots of ideas but so many of them are embarrassingly bad concepts that I honestly don't know how anyone could have thought these were good.

Here are a couple of quick examples of distressingly bad (or downright stupid) ideas just off the top of my head: Spider-Island, Minimum Carnage, Earth One original graphic novels, the Superior Spider-Man, JMS on Superman and Wonder Woman, the New 52, any Jeph Loeb comic, and Before Watchmen. To further hurt matters, DC killed WildStorm and is slowly but surely chopping the balls off Vertigo - both of which are decisions which I assume make tons of financial sense for their parent conglomerate Warner Bros., but absolutely do nothing to help improve the overall quality of the artistic merit of their products. And somehow, DC's still giving work to writers like Scott Lobdell, Fabian Niceza, Dan Jurgens, and Judd Winick. What a stunning lineup of commercially-oriented superhero writers. I don't doubt that there are a lot of people who are enjoying their comics, because somebody out there has to be buying them, or else why would they keep getting work?

But today, I do not come to praise DC, but to bury them, to bury them in an avalanche of hatred, a hate so deep and powerful that no love can ever vanquish it. Just because lots of people apparently like their comics doesn't mean I feel any obligation to feel the same. After reading a number of New 52 comics, I found a couple that were promising (mostly Jeff Lemire's comics, although longtime readers of this blog do know that I have an irrational appreciation and compulsion for everything Peter Milligan touches), a few that were super bland and absolutely the embodiment of middle of the road, and a bunch that were so bad that I put them down and wondered what was the point in living if comics had reached such a low point.

Justice League by Geoff Johns, Jim Lee, et al. is emblematic of the bottom of the barrel. Massively hyped upon release and produced by two of the biggest names in superhero comics, Justice League was supposed to be the flagship DC book. I guess it still is, because it represents everything that's terrible about their approach to comics over the past several years.

Having just read the first hardcover collection of the first 6 issues, I can say, again, with full conviction, that we are living in the Stupid Age of Comics.

Look, if this comic came out in 1993 and I had never read or watched a single Justice League story, ten-year old Dru would probably think this was pure awesome. But I'm not a kid any more and there have been so many amazing Justice League stories over the past 20 years, from Grant Morrison's definitive JLA run, which was worthily followed up by many more fine comics by Mark Waid and Joe Kelly, to a couple of J.M. DeMatteis/Keith Giffen/Kevin Maguire Justice League International throwback miniseries, to the Bruce Timm/Paul Dini Justice League and Justice League Unlimited cartoons. Somewhere in there, Warren Ellis even wrote an Authority-esque Justice League story, a six-issue blast of accessible, cinematic superheroism that still stands leagues above this travesty from Johns and Lee.

I haven't truly enjoyed a Johns comic since the Identity Crisis era. It could be a coincidence or it could be a conspiracy, but ever since he basically became DC's guiding creative force, I haven't liked his work. But I have a lot of fondness for his Avengers run at Marvel, as well as his Flash, JSA, and the early half of his Teen Titans. Those are really fun superhero comics.

However, this Justice League comic is an exercise in cliches. It's got everything from misunderstandings between the heroes (leading to the obligatory hero versus hero fight scenes) to the mysterious cosmic mastermind scheming and plotting behind the scenes (even though it's obvious from the get go that it's Darkseid). It's a story about the team first forming in this softly rebooted universe (is there any other medium where we so readily bandy about terms like "softly rebooted universe?) so Johns takes a "year one" approach to the Justice League's formation. Everything's predictable and you've seen it all before.

Problem is, these are all icons. I believe Morrison himself once stated that the JLA are the pantheon of gods. Everyone knows who these characters are. Go and reread Morrison's first JLA arc, New World Order, where the team gets together to fight the Hyperclan. That's how you do a team origin story. By boiling down each character to his or her essence, everyone gets a chance to shine in Morrison's classic.

Johns chooses to give each character a few "shining moments" by either making them jerks (see Superman and Green Lantern), overly earnest to the point of caricature [see Wonder Woman, Cyborg (yeah, I don't know what he's doing in the Justice League, either - unless this is just one of those equal opportunity race things), and the Flash], or having them basically punch some parademons hella hard (see Aquaman). It all feels very forced and trite.

The dialogue is peppered with predictability and awkward sentimentality (Cyborg's conversations with his father stand out as an egregious example of this) and even the humorous bits are weakened by Jim Lee's art style.

And Jim Lee's art just isn't good. I know he's one of the most popular artists of this generation, but I just don't think his work does any favors for the story. His character designs are terrible, with most characters sporting some sort of bizarre and unattractive collar and lots of weird plating (I assume it's plating - they could just be extraneous lines) on their costumes. I especially hate what he did to Superman - not only is the armor completely pointless for the character, but he took away one of the things that makes Superman look like Superman; Superman should always wear his underwear on the outside of his pants. Without his underwear on the outside, Superman just looks gay. Darkseid, with his bulky armor and constant gritted teeth, looks terrible, too, looking more like a generic He-Man villain than the cosmic despot and embodiment of evil that Jack Kirby surely envisioned.

Also, there's a scene where Lee illustrates a pre-Cyborg Victor Stone playing football. I get that football games must be difficult to draw, but his football scene wasn't convincing at all. It's enough to make you question the physics of his drawings even when he's drawing superhumans flying around punching the hell out of winged alien creatures.

I didn't see the point of this comic at all. Six issues to tell us how the Justice League got together? It's just a story that has no other purpose than the plot it purports to share with readers. How many times have we seen a superteam origin story? How many times have we seen a Justice League origin story? If you're not going to do anything fresh and new, then why even bother making these kinds of comics at all? There's no thematic depth, there's nothing particularly witty or clever in terms of dialogue or overall execution, the character development is shallow and superficial, and it all  focuses extensively on physical action and bombastic explosions. This must be the kind of comic book that Michael Bay reads at night before he decides that he could make a Justice League movie.

There's also an epilogue at the end that's supposed to set up some sort of ongoing plot thread or mystery, but it's so cryptic and relies on the reader having knowledge of other New 52 comics that I can't be bothered to care. I can only hate.

I hate the bland writing. I hate the tasteless character designs. I hate the style-over-substance of the art. I hate the very concept of rebooting the universe and telling yet another tired origin story. I hate that this comic exists and I hate how there are so many people out there who will continue to read, buy, and support comics just like this, thereby ensuring a never-ending production of similar dreck.

Thoughts on The Dark Knight Rises

The Dark Knight Rises Poster by Jock

I finally got around to watching The Dark Knight Rises this past Sunday. [I started writing this post a couple weeks ago but haven't taken the time to finish it until now.] I enjoyed it. I don't love it, but I don't hate it, either. I'm sure I'm not as high on this movie as most folks seem to be, but that's all right. I wanted to love it, but I just couldn't. To me, this movie could have been worse, but it also could have been a lot better.

Maybe some people don't understand why I can't just easily embrace this movie. I think most of my friends think of me as "the comic book guy." After a little time to reflect on the movie, I think I'm finally able to articulate why I can't love The Dark Knight Rises like I do its predecessor. (The Dark Knight is one of my favorite superhero movies. I don't have any love for Batman Begins, though.)

Needless to say, MASSIVE SPOILERS abound in this post.

Doin' Work

A couple of months ago, a few friends and I joined forces to be vendors at a local sports card/memorabilia convention. It's long been my dude Allan's (a big time sports card collector) dream to sell cards from a table at a convention, and I thought it'd be fun to share the cost of paying for the table (only $30 for a six-foot table, way cheaper than your average show) and pool together our cards and comics. Albert (aka Raging Bert) had a box of comics he was looking to unload, so he and a couple of other people joined Allan and me on this little excursion. We had a bunch of sports cards (basketball, baseball, football, hockey, golf, etc.) and quite a few comics to sell.

[Allan's written a pretty straight-faced account of the day at his blog here: Real Men Collect Baseball Cards. Me, I figured I'd give you the street's eye view of the event and the experience.]

Lynn took a bunch of photos to document the special day, seeing as how being a vendor at a collectibles show was on Allan's bucket list. Lynnsanity is a true pro, having photographed dozens of weddings. [See Lynn's website here: http://iamlkc.com/.] Even when we were getting ready to go to the show (which was held in the gymnasium at John O'Connell High School here in San Francisco), Lynn was taking pictures of us surveying our inventory at Allan's house. I felt like a bridesmaid getting all made up for my buddy's big day.

Surveying our inventory before heading out.

Getting ready to pack everything up.

Like I said, Allan's got a tidy overview of our day over at his blog, and some more of Lynnsanity's pictures to boot. It was a long day, but I felt it went by pretty quickly. I had a bunch of basketball and some football cards (stuff I collected when I was young) that I just dumped in Allan's boxes, and he was pretty much in charge of selling those.

He even helped me sell my autographed Will Clark baseball that I've had sitting in a box (not even openly displayed) since I was in elementary school. I'm not a baseball fan, so I had no regrets. Did a part of me feel a little twinge of regret for selling that piece of memorabilia? It was something I'd owned for most of my life... A friend of my father's gave it to me for my birthday or Christmas or something when I was but a whippersnapper. I guess in a way, I had a small amount of sentimental attachment to that baseball. And I got what, like five or ten bucks from that? I guess a part of me did die with that sale. (But it was reborn when I used those earnings and got some Batman comics a couple weeks later. No regrets.)

Likewise, Allan had a bunch of comics from his youth that were just taking up space. Between the two of us (regular joes who have never run an actual store), we had a pretty respectable amount of stock. Throw Albert's stuff into the mix and we actually had a good combination of quantity and quality comics for sale.

Our table was in the corner of the school gym. Here, Albert and I review some of our stock.

I think the most entertaining things about being a vendor at a show like this are the strangers you encounter, the things they pick up and consider buying (and sometimes actually end up buying), and observing them as they go about examining your wares.

It's probably no secret I can be kind of a comics elitist. I have pretty strong opinions on a lot of comics, including stuff I haven't really read before. Most of the stuff we were selling was stuff I had already read at least once, though, and even the stuff I hadn't really read was stuff I was still generally familiar with, like most of Allan's '90s Image and Valiant comics. Still, even though we were selling a fair amount of stuff I didn't really like or respect, I was able to be a pretty good salesman overall.

Like Allan said in his recap, we somehow turned a profit. This was despite the fact that this show was the first of its kind at John O'Connell and possibly could have been publicized a bit better. Plus, it rained hard all day long, which I'm sure kept crowds at bay. Most of the visitors at the show were John O'Connell high school students.

Checking in for the day.

There was a  dealer next to us who was selling sports cards embedded into plaques that were like 20 or 30 bucks each. He had a few tables to display all his stuff and I honestly don't think he made a single sale the entire day. I chatted briefly with a couple other vendors around us and I got the impression that they had bad days and regretted coming.

Therefore, it helped that our prices were so low. We had an entire longbox filled to the brim with random singles. We were selling 'em six for a buck. We easily could have gone five for a buck, or even just kept it at 25 cents a pop, but I had no problem being generous. There were a couple of other tables in the gym selling comics, but I looked around during the day and I can honestly say that we had the most appealing stock in terms of comics that are actually worth reading.

There was this one guy right next to us who completely blew us away in terms of stock: he had probably a dozen or more longboxes filled with comics, and he also had some Silver Age stuff for sale. Still, his bread and butter longbox comics were priced at 50 cents a pop... Totally not a deal compared to 6 for a buck.

At one point, I saw two teenagers at his table browsing his stock. It didn't look like they were gonna buy anything because they'd put back whatever they pulled out to check out. Then one of them turned his head, looked over at our table, and saw our "6 for $1" sign on our longbox. Those two guys spent at least a solid 90 minutes perusing our comics. I was able to engage them and we talked comics as they browsed. It was kinda cool because I didn't feel like I was just trying to push stuff on them to buy, but they did ask me for recommendations. I guess we built up a decent amount of customer/vendor rapport and they bought a few stacks of comics. I think one of them even came back an hour or two later to buy some more stuff.

Two of our best customers. No one else was selling a complete run of Morrison and Quitely's All-Star Superman.

There was also this one kid who came to our table like four times throughout the day. Each time he left, he'd say, "I'll be back later. I just need to get more money." I think this was a day when my typically useless comic book savant knowledge actually paid off (literally). I remembered he bought a couple issues of Wolverine on one of his earlier trips, and when he came back I had the next sequential issue, which I remembered we had in one of our boxes, ready for him.

"You remember those issues you got earlier? This is the next one... Buy this and you can find out how the story ends," I said to him.

"You've convinced me. Thanks," he replied, handing me a quarter with no hesitation or forethought whatsoever.

By the end of the day, at his final trip to our table, he was scrounging his pants for loose change in a desperate attempt to buy more comics. I didn't even have to really try to sell him anything at that point. He just walked up, thrust a couple dollars in my hand, and asked me to pick some comics for him. I didn't do him no wrong, either. I gave him the Frank Miller/John Romita, Jr. Daredevil: Man Without Fear complete miniseries. C'mon, for less than a buck, that is just an amazing deal! I was envious of his bargain-hunting powers at that point. It was the least I could do for our best and most loyal customer.

The guy on the right was our best customer. Look at him fiending for comics. That's great.

It's nice to have repeat customers. There's a certain satisfaction in knowing you've got 'em hooked, a particular comfort in knowing you can depend on someone's addiction to bring them back over and over, and a dizzying sense of power in knowing that only you can satiate their hunger. I'm not saying that I felt like a drug dealer selling junk to helpless fools, but... Hurm. I felt more like... like a comic book pimp.

There was also this guy who came by early in the show and pulled out some of those X-Book Fatal Attractions hologram cover issues, as well as a variety of other holografx and foil and gimmick cover issues. It was like he was going through all our boxes specifically looking to score those. There was a moment when I saw him pull out a series of gimmick covers and Albert and I just made eye contact. I wanted to laugh, but I didn't wanna lose a sale. After he bought those comics, I looked at Albert and said, "You know what they say: A sucker is born every minute." Or maybe Albert said that to me. I don't know. I just thought it was extremely funny that someone would actively seek to buy the poop comics that were just trying to get rid off, stuff that was just taking up space in our lives that we probably would have just given away for free eventually. There were other people who bought a some of our crappy, worthless, useless '90s comics. I took their money every time, but a part of me unkindly kept thinking of them as chumps.

Saw this guy pick up that holografx Web of Spider-Man issue and I could barely suppress a smirk.

The other main thing I remember from the show was this one older, tall dude. He really, really needed a friend badly. He first came up to our table and we made some pleasant conversation. I think that might have been a mistake on my part. Usually at these kinda shows, vendors don't say crap to you unless you ask them something, like politeness is a sign of weakness or something. (It's somewhat true... Check out Allan's post and see Point #2 about being soft. Being soft isn't really a problem, I think. It's that most vendors at these shows are jerks trying to prey on the innocent-hearted. If I had known that guy in Allan's story was just buying Allan's beanie babies to resell them at his own table, I would have given his daughter a free copy of Todd McFarlane's Spawn.)

Anyway, I was too polite to the tall guy. He was browsing my trade paperbacks and hardcovers as we spoke, so I didn't mind, really, and he did end up buying my Breakdowns hardcover (a collection of early work by the Pulitzer-winning Art Spiegelman, creator of Maus) as well as Water Baby by Ross Campbell (although the cynical part of me thinks he bought Water Baby because of Campbell's ability to draw interesting-looking chicks). The problem was that even after he bought the stuff, he stood in front of our table and kept on talking to me.

I kept trying to be polite, but it's hard when someone has no social awareness and doesn't understand that a one-sided conversation isn't very interesting to the person on the receiving end. He kept telling me about his experiences with tennis players over the years and how he was a semi-pro and how he didn't want to play basketball because "Shaq would throw [him] around like a rag doll." Keep in mind that this guy probably had a solid 20 years of age on Shaq. Like an idiot, I kept on smiling and nodding at his comments, even asking him a question here and there to elaborate on some of his points. (Another one of my big mistakes.) The guy didn't stop talking. I guess he didn't have a real strong sense of social awareness.

I have a fake smile because he'd been talking to me for 15 minutes at this point. Allan's got a genuine smile because he thinks it's funny.

Albert basically saved me from purgatory after like 20 minutes of this by saying, "I'm going to walk around and check out some of the tables." That gave me the opening I needed to excuse myself because, you know, I had to check out the other tables, too. Unfortunately, that meant Allan was stuck listening to him. Sorry, buddy! I just felt like I'd done my time.

Oh, ho. Not so funny now, eh?

Later that day, I actually saw him doing the same thing to another vendor on the other side of the gym. Only it was worse. The tall guy was actually lounging on the floor right in front of the guy's table. The vendor looked pretty helpless and impotent. He didn't have a partner so he had no escape hatch. I felt sorry for him, but I thought that if I tried to help, I'd just get stuck with the tall guy again.

Yeah. He really just needed a friend. Unfortunately, we weren't selling friendship at our table.

[A couple weeks ago, I actually saw him again! I had just gone to a karaoke joint in Japantown with some friends, and as we walked out, he walked past us on the street! He was carrying a tennis racket and he was humming to himself rather loudly. Actually, humming might not be the best word... It was more like he was buzzing like a fridge. I don't know why. Fortunately, he didn't seem to notice me as he walked past us, but the incident definitely made me feel like he still really just needs a friend.]

Profile pic!

At the end of the show, the comic book vendor next to us, the one with a bunch of longboxes, wanted to buy us out. He made us a lowball offer, which I didn't consider. The other thing was that I didn't want to just sell our comics to a guy who was just gonna try and resell 'em at a higher price. I mean, throughout the day, I know that other vendors came and checked out some of our stuff, and bought some. Those sales weren't the ones that mattered to me.

It was far more satisfying to sell comics to people that were actually gonna, you know, read them and hopefully enjoy them. That's why I liked selling a stack of cheap comics to kids. I remember when I was at that age and just starved for reading material and entertainment. I'd like to be a vendor again one day, and it's nice to know we still have substantial inventory.

Ultimately, that's what I enjoyed about doing the show. I liked being able to point people to good, cheap comics. It was fun to shoot the breeze with people who were interested in the things I'm interested in. Even the show organizer (John O'Connell's athletic director, who organized the show as a fundraiser for the athletics department) came by our table and said he appreciated that our crew was probably one of the least-shady vendors. He was also a big Spider-Man fan, and I was able to hand him some stuff he hadn't discovered before.

The show was fun. I'm looking forward to next year.

And the saga continues...