And a thank you

We two and a half folk that write Comicdom Wrecks! would like to thank you – yes you! – the reader for taking the time to read these words we place upon the information superhighway.  We love getting comments on what we write and are always interested in what you’ve got going on.  And we want to share it with you.

So check over there on the right  hand side of the screen and you’ll see a list of links.  You like us?  We like you.  If you comment on a post here with a link to your own blog or Twitter page, we’ll throw the link up there.

And as always, thanks for reading!

Making something better

Admittedly, we don’t check our email address very often.  We’re only human and we tend to forget that it’s even there, even though it’s right there bam smack on the side.  But when I did check it a few days ago, I found something that had been sitting there for quite a while that I’m kicking myself for not having gone and checked it earlier.

We here at Comicdom Wrecks! love to make fun of Rob Liefeld.  We really do.  He’s successful and we hate him for it because we think his art looks….well, god awful, really.  But in all the Rob Liefeld bashing that gets tossed out, never did I take a moment to think “How could I do it better?”

Ron Joseph did think that, and he shared it with me.  And now I’m sharing it with you.

Ron took the first five pages of the now-cancelled Hawk and Dove and redrew them in his style.

Chuck Austen’s X-Men: She Lies With Angels

When I was in 9th grade, a part of the English class curriculum at my school was the famed William Shakespeare work The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet.  Now this is going to date me a bit, but I remember which grade that happened because the entire freshman class at my school got to take a field trip to the cinema to see Romeo+Juliet – you know, the one with Leonardo DiCaprio.  And really, nothing helps cement a lesson than a memorable field trip.

The point I’m making here is that when you come across a story solicited as a tribute to a work you’re familiar with, it’s easier to critique that story – especially if it misses the mark completely.  She Lies With Angels is one of those stories.

Took Place In
Uncanny X-Men #435-436

Team Line-Up
Archangel (leader), Husk, Wolverine, Nightcrawler, Polaris (the other five X-Men on the cover of #437 (Iceman, Northstar, Jubilee, Juggernaut, Havok (leader) do not appear in this story)

Others You Should Be Aware Of
The Guthrie clan (Ma, Josh, and Jeb)

In a Nutshell
Husk comes home to Kentucky when a family feud gets out of control just in time to catch her brother’s “forbidden” love in the middle.

As always, we’ll be going through the story with a sarcastic mocking tone, but in the process I’ll be pointing out the attempted ties to the original tragedy, and how it doesn’t work.  Because I pretend to be smart, even though I just started this sentence with a conjunction.  Shut up – this site says it okay.

Silent Shadow of the Bat-Man

I meant to post this months ago, but time and life got the better of me.

We received an email from Andre Perkowski with a link to an interesting mash up of a silent Batman film matched with a live orchestra score.  It’s 52 minutes long, but a pretty wacky enjoyment.

Thanks for the email, Andre!

Shouting out

A while back, I posted an article about how Professor X totally dropped the ball on training the New Mutants.  I started the article with an awesome piece of the best lineup from the series that I found through the magic of Google.

A couple days ago, the artist of the sweet piece left a comment, surprised to find his art somewhere that he didn’t put it.

That artist is Dan Blouin, and I have to say that not only do I like this piece, I was a fan of his other works that I saw through the link he left.

So check his stuff out on deviantART.  His name is VegetarianGoat.

On influence and responsibility

Let’s say that in our own little made up land of Hypotheticville, two new comics hit the shelves from a major publisher, both becoming hot sellers.  One is called Wonder Squad, in which brightly colored super-heroes band together to fight injustice and save life, liberty, and all that.  The other is called Demon Blayze in which a tortured soul is wrongly sent to hell, only to be given a second chance of life, only to find his family has been killed and thus he uses his new hell spawned abilities to punish wrongdoers in a horrible manner.  Heavy metal may be involved.

Some time after Wonder Squad and Demon Blayze become accepted norms on the comic scene of Hypoville, two separate incidents occur.  One happens in which a small hypothetical child does a string of good deeds and a feelgood story makes major media wires that the kid’s heroes are the Wonder Squad, and the kid was just doing his (or her) hypothetical best, just like his heroes.  The media hits it and all those hypothetical fans of the comic, as well as the entire medium, use the story as an example of the importance of their medium and how it has a good effect on its fanbase.

The second story is which a kid violently attacks someone else for something he believed they were doing wrong and the victim may or may not survive the attack.  When the story hits the same major media wires, the story tells that the kid idolized the main character of Demon Blayze, and the media notes that his acts mirrored those of the comic character and question whether such stories should be allowed.  This, in turn, outrages the hypothetical fans of the comic, as well as the entire medium, as the mean press is simply jumping to conclusions and vilifying the work which is just a story and shouldn’t be taken too seriously.

You may notice that while both those stories’ details were hypothetical works of fiction, the reactions displayed certainly were not.

Get well, Peter David

Just came across this article on Comic Book Resources.  Apparently over the weekend, Peter David suffered a stroke over the weekend.  Around here, his X-Factor and Young Justice are two of our favorite books.  Looking for something better to say, but words just fail me right now.  Maybe we can come back later with a more eloquent entry.  But right now, we just wish him a quick recovery.

Question about fandom

My question is a fairly vague question, but I am going to use specific examples to get the point across.  In general, can you be of fan of something if you have never seen the source material, or possibly don’t even like the source material?

Can you be an Avengers fan if you’ve never read an Avengers comic book?  Let’s say that you saw all of the Marvel Studios movies and loved them.  You saw The Avengers opening day, then multiple times afterwards.  You bought merchandise featuring your favorite characters, and maybe even some collectibles.  Yet, you’ve never read an Avengers comic book.  Have no desire to.  Are you a fan of the Avengers?

What if you watched the shit out of the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon, had all of the toys, and got ridiculously excited when you found out that there was a second movie coming out, while all the well not even knowing it was based on a comic book?  Are you not a fan? 

300 Word Rant – Spoilers

I hate having stories spoiled for me.  However, I have accepted that there are some situations in which someone might give away a major plot point, and I can’t be mad at them for it.  A movie that has been out for over 2 years.  A television show that has ended.  Comics that are several years old.  You get the idea.  It needs to have been years in order to give everyone that wants to read/view something the opportunity. So, if you spoil something that’s been out for years that I haven’t watched/read, I can’t get mad at you.  It’s my own fault for waiting so long.

That said, I will get mad at you if you spoil something in an issue that came out in the past two weeks, and I’m currently in the process of buying.  Sure, I expect people at a comic shop to talk about what is going on in comics.  Especially when it is a pretty big story.  But keep things vague.

The correct way:  “What did you think of what happened in issue X?”  “I was really surprised/I liked it/I hated it.”

The wrong way:  “What did you think when [Character name] did [specific action] to [Character name], while making [Character name] [specific action].”

And when I call you out on it, don’t defend yourself by saying that it’s not the biggest part of the story.  I don’t really care.  You still took away the opportunity for me to discover the story for myself, because you couldn’t be considerate of others.  I’m not going to be grateful that you only gave away part of the story, instead of giving away the whole story.

So please, when discussing things in public, please be considerate of others and don’t discuss major story points in front of people who are wanting the opportunity to enjoy the story as you did.  This also goes for walking past a line of people waiting to see the movie you just saw, as well.

Jinxworld frustrations

Initially, this was going to be a post about how I wished Volume 4 of The Mice Templar would start already, being that the end of Volume 3 said it would start in the Fall of 2012.  Being a semi-diligent researcher, I went searching for any information regarding this.  This search led me to the Jinxworld forums. (Brian Michael Bendis’ site.)  Michael Avon Oeming (one of the creators) does have his own section there.  I get to the forums, and find that pretty much every thread is only viewable to those that are logged in.  No big deal, I’ll create username, I thought.  And that’s where my problems began.

The e-mail address I tried to use was my Gmail account.  An e-mail address that I’ve used for over 8 years, and the one I put on my resume in order to contact me.  However, I got the following message:

The administrator has banned your email address. To contact the administrator click here If you tried to register with a generic (free or temporary) e-mail service like Yahoo, Hotmail, or GMail, then your registration has been blocked. Due to security concerns, we have enacted a new policy; you cannot use a temporary or free email service ( i.e. hotmai, yahoo, gmail, etc…) when you start a new account or change your email address in your profile. You must use a permanent email account

In all the time I’ve spent on the Internet, I have never seen this as a policy.  But whatever.  I thought, maybe if I clicked “here,” and contacted the administrator, then maybe they would would be able to register me, or direct me towards an e-mail address that would work.  Here’s what I got when I clicked “here.”