Category Archives: Columns

LITG: Just when I was struggling with a topic…

Life in the Gutter

…the DC blog “The Source” gave me a good few reasons to be excited.

Before we get started, a couple things:

  • The information I’m going to talk about literally came out less than an hour before I typed this.  Now, it could be old news by the time you actually see it on the website, but I wanted to make sure to cover my bases.
  • I’m leaving on Sunday for the Reynolds Journalism Institute at the University of Missouri-Columbia for two weeks, which means that I won’t be back until the end of the month.  I’ve already scoped out that there’s an LCS in Columbia, but I can’t guarantee that I’ll have time to read anything, let alone write about it.  From what I’ve heard, I’m going to be plenty doing the student/reporter thing for the next two weeks.

Okay, here’s your last warning.  New stuff coming…

Superman #701 came out today, and while I haven’t read the whole book yet (my shipment from DCB doesn’t get here until Thursdays), I did read the preview that’s posted all over the Internet right now.

Thoughts?

I love it, and if this is the kind of story JMS is going to be telling, then I’m going to be a very happy Superman camper for the foreseeable future.  Can he fly? Yes.  Does he want to? No.   And really, that’s pretty cool.

It makes total sense to me that after a year off Earth, Superman would feel distanced from humanity and feel it necessary to really get in touch with it again.  New Krypton gave him a chance to experience his Kryptonian heritage and know more about where he came from, but it also put him at odds with Earth and its people on numerous occasions.  I think that, more than anything, the New Krypton storyline and everything that came along with it solidified what I think Superman/Kal-El/Clark Kent knew all along:  He might be from Krypton, but Earth is his home.

And the new artist for J.T. Krul’s Teen Titans team is…

Nicola Scott, baby.

That cover for #88, the one that opens Krul’s run with the Titans?  Amazing.  I’m excited for this, and not just because of the creative team.  If the team members on the cover are any indication, this is going to signal the return of the more “classic” team: Superboy, Wonder Girl, Beast Boy, Raven, Kid Flash, and…Ravager.  Okay, so I’m curious how she makes her way back into the fold and what happens to other current Titans, like Static, Aqua Girl, Bombshell.  It sounds like Blue Beetle is off with the Generation Lost crew.  I suppose we have a few months to find out what becomes of them.

The blog post on The Source had some words from Krul about Scott being added to the team.  We all know she’s awesome, so I’ll save you the whole paragraph.  It’s these couple of lines that really got me excited, though.

“Oh, and wait until you see her take on Damian. That’s right, I said         it. What would Teen Titans be without a Robin.”

Lord help us, Damian is going to be a Teen Titan.  Krul’s right, of course.  What would the Teen Titans be without a Robin?  What’s going to be fun is seeing how this Robin differs from the other Robins that have been on the team.  I have no doubt that the other members are going to be in need of some serious therapy in the near future.

This week, the gals rule the conversation

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I know everyone can guess at least one female character I’m going to discuss this week.  And I promise, we’ll get to that.  But for now, excuse me while I take a short break to do the Dance of Joy.

Still here?  Good.  I guess I should probably explain that, huh?

I have to confess that Superman isn’t exactly my favorite character.  It’s Lois Lane.

I had ambitions of being a reporter once.  (Okay, so maybe I still think about it sometimes.)  It was my thing in college.  I learned about journalism terms like writing leads (and burying them), the inverted pyramid, and the importance of sources.  Sometimes I even slip into reporter mode when I’m writing this blog.

Every so often, we hear about reporters “protecting their sources.”  It seems to me the ultimate protection of a source–and no, I don’t care that it’s only a comic book–is Lois Lane’s knowledge that Clark Kent is Superman.  Talk about sitting on the story of a century!

But hey, I could go on forever about the character development of Lois Lane.  The one piece of information that has bugged me over the last couple of months though, is when Paul Cornell announced that Lois would be featured in his Action Comics run as Lex Luthor’s girlfriend.

WHAT?!?!

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Life in the Gutter – Back from the Depths

Life in the Gutter

I know, I know.  It’s been late April since I posted anything on the website.  For that, my deepest apologies.  The explanation is a long, long story but involves hospitals, state-mandated Response to Intervention training for school, a late out for our school, and a killer time getting the Senior Issue of our school newspaper to printer before the seniors actually left school.  All in all, it’s been a crazy couple of months.

I quickly came to the realization that it would be impossible for me to completely recap everything that has happened in the last couple months comic-wise.  But, here I am trying to get caught up on Raging Bullets episodes and just finally getting around to listening to 207 on the Smallville season finale, and I’m internally cracking up at all the things that have come to light since the episode aired.

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Bat Casebook — June 16 Catch-Up Edition

The Bat Casebook

Hello, and welcome to the Bat Casebook, where I review the Bat-Comics that came out during the week for you–usually. Right now I’m going to do something a little different, and do last week’s books. I didn’t do it last week, because the “big book,” Birds of Prey #2, was unavailable on my side of the Union. So I’m going to talk about that, go briefly on Azrael #9, and then talk about the Joker’s Asylum books that came out in the past two weeks, including the one from this week, Killer Croc. This will be a bit shorter, so I can also get this week in, so let’s dig in!

Birds of Prey #2

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Biting the Bullet: Digital Comics are here from DC!

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http://dcu.blog.dccomics.com/2010/06/23/for-immediate-release-dc-comics-launches-digital-publishing/

I have mentioned on the show many times that I am a fan of comics reaching out to a digital audience. I don’t feel we need to get so worried about this as a replacement for paper copies but as an opportunity to reach out to a new digital crowd.

Comics as a storytelling medium have much in common with today’s Video Game and digital media culture. Video game storytelling is becoming more and more complex and this is not longer restricted to role playing game. I think many video game fans that have never been exposed to comics are comic fans in the making. The type of serialized deliver they expect from the best in video game sequels is exactly the type of storytelling they will get in comics.

I don’t think this is the only crowd that will be attracted to digital comics for the first time but it is certainly an audience base that is much larger than even the top selling comics of today. I am hoping we see advertising initiatives to reach this audience base and draw them into the wonderful world’s that we have been loving for so long.

My big frustration with digital initiatives is the fear that it will hurt the comic retailer. The only way that will happen is if fans of the paper product prefer the digital. I just don’t see that being the case. As long as there are collector’s, there will still be a paper product. While I am an advocate of digital comics, it won’t be a replacement for my paper comics. I look at this the same way as I looked at the birth of the trade paperback. It’s just another avenue of content delivery to increase exposure. I firmly believe that digital deliver should target an new type of potential comic fan vs. the current audience.

JokerFish #04: Say “Kalamazoo” To Save The World

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I have a strange relationship with the supernatural side of the DC universe.

When I first ventured confidently into the world of comics half a decade ago, I probably would have told you that my favorite DC characters were Batman, Green Arrow, The Joker, Deathstroke, the Bat Family… the street-level characters. For me, there was something much more interesting about the idea of superheroes with semi-realistic and theoretically attainable powers. Overpowered characters like Superman or The Hulk never held much resonance with me; they could win any battle by smashing things, or solve mysteries just by looking through walls. Batman had to think, strategize, plot, discover and analyze. Bruce Wayne was human, and when I was a kid, the unwritten promise was that I could be Batman one day too if only I tried hard enough.

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JokerFish #03: Superpants And Batface

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I was listening to Episode 205, in which Sean and Jim had a lengthy discussion (Raging Bullets? Lengthy? Never!) about the upcoming limited issue, company-wide, epic crossover crisis event – Last Action Of The Supermen In The New Krypton War. Superman-related discussions on Raging Bullets are always interesting to me because I don’t pick up any Super books.

Okay, maybe that’s an exaggeration. I’ve been picking up Power Girl and Adventure Comics which are in the Super Family, but you won’t find any Man, Girl or Action in my comics pile. Nothing against the Boy In Blue – it’s not that I don’t like him, it’s just that I don’t like him as much as I like all these other great books I’m picking up. Some readers are Bat-People, and some are Super-People – I’m a Bat-Guy. It might have something to do with growing up in the late 80s and 90s with the Batman movies and shows, just as growing up in the 70s and early 80s must have influenced a lot of Superman fans. Even if you like both, I think even Sean and Jim could tell you whether they’d ultimately root for Bruce or Clark in a fight (though I’d argue that in a Batman vs. Superman battle situation, the smart choice for an onlooker is “to run like hell”).
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Bat Casebook — May 12 Edition

The Bat Casebook

Hello and welcome to the Bat Casebook–where I take the comics that are batman-related and review them for you, even though right now you’ve probably read them already. But you’ll read this anyway, for my opinion is Legion and needs to be HEARD. Stop laughing. Anyway–this week we review Batman: The Return of Bruce Wayne #1, Birds of Prey #1, Batgirl #11, and Batman #699.

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