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Interview: Kellee Santiago Talks Thatgamecompany's Road Ahead

GameSetWatch

- 10 hours and 8 minutes ago

[Continuing a set of interviews by Game Developer magazine EIC Brandon Sheffield for GameSetWatch, he talks to Thatgamecompany's Kellee Santiago on a multitude of neat topics regarding downloadable games and the Flower creators' future.]

Kellee Santiago is cofounder of Thatgamecompany, known for genre-shaking downloadable titles such as flOw and Flower, which both push the boundaries of games and their emotional resonance, but also give Sony something to point to in the way of artistry in the PSN space.

Thatgamecompany has been growing, slowly but surely, to where Santiago can now step out of the defacto-production role she often held on top of her studio running duties, so that she can now look externally, to see how TGC can potentially help other smaller indies, or expand the company's offerings in targeted ways.

We spoke with Santiago recently about changes within the company, the potential of a Flower expansion, PSP Go and Project Natal, as well as the viability of a TGC game based on an emotion like rage:

Thatgamecompany's Next Steps

Can you talk a little bit about what's next for you guys?

Kellee Santiago: I have to admit that it's probably going to be a little frustratingly vague just because we're in the middle of just solidifying the details on our current PSN project.

But I think the last three years we've spent building up this brand of Thatgamecompany and what it is. We hope what people are getting from us is Thatgamecompany is about providing meaningful experiences and unique experiences through video games.

And as I see us going forward and growing as a company in the future, I think what we'd like is to bring more titles under that brand. Whether that's us growing an internal team to handle multiple projects or by going with more of like a label structure where we have "Thatgamecompany presents," and we're able to help other teams that we see and other projects that we see that we really want to see come to light, that would fit under that brand as well.

Interesting. So, not exactly like a publisher, but like a liaison or something?

KS: Hmm, a liaison? Yeah, I think it would be kind of... That's partially what we've been doing in some ways, and I think just formalizing that as a business plan maybe.

How would you say you've been doing it already?

KS: I think we've become involved with a lot of the other indie developers. I mean, we're all more connected now than we've ever been before thanks to venues like the Independent Games Summit.

What we've also tried to do in addition -- I mean, I always say that we're one of the few companies that hopes that other people copy us, because we don't want to be this little niche random thing. This is where we want things to go. We want a lot of games to be made like ours.

What we've also been trying to do is when we see stuff that's awesome, or if people come to us asking for advice or connections or something, we always try and set them up. In these interviews, I think we try and drop a lot of projects, you know, names, and try to gain exposure for the indie dev scene as a whole.

Talking about the next project I didn't realize that you were necessarily tied to PSN. I just knew it was with Sony. It didn't connect for me that it was PSN specifically.

KS: Well, the goal has always been digital distribution.

New Platforms

What do you think about PSP Go then?

KS: The PSPgo... It's interesting. I just remember Jenova saying that when he was in Shanghai, he saw a lot more people having PSPs than DSes. I mean, this is totally anecdotally, but that they were very much like fashion accessories, and that they would watch media on it or something or browse the internet but not really play games. And I could see the PSP Go continuing that, like being that. I don't know as a game system... $250 is a lot of money.

That's true.

KS: [laughs] I thought that was expensive, but...they're also putting out a lot of major franchise games on PSP, so it will be interesting to see if that helps more people on PSP playing games, checking out the new stuff that's there as well. Fat Princess is going to go PSP.

It's definitely been a piracy vehicle previously, so it will be interesting to see how the PSPgo does in that regard. I also wanted to ask you what you thought of Project Natal -- it seems like a Jenova kind of thing.

KS: Yeah, well, I was going to say, it certainly falls under a lot of the... Or touched on the things that I know he's been interested in as far as that. Especially when you think about accessibility, removing the controller completely.

I guess one of the major criticisms that I've heard the last couple of days is people saying, "Well, how are they going to first-person shooters on it?" It's like, "Well, maybe they don't do a first-person shooter."

And maybe it's about making new games, allowing for different kinds of games. We don't have to think about games that already and how they're going to translate to that control. I think what it is is it allows for new designs to emerge.

My question is how much of it is real.

KS: Yeah.

The New Hire

So you have Robin Hunicke (previously a design lead at EA) now. How did that come about?

KS: It grew really organically. I mean, as you probably know, we got her fresh off of shipping Boom Blox Bash Party. So, I think as she was wrapping that project, she was thinking about her next steps. She's just one of those people we also like to bounce ideas off of, so we started talking about some of the ideas we had for our current project, and it just seemed like a really great match.

I think that with our experimental game design process, one of the issues that we've had in the past is tightening up the production of that and tracking it and developing a better process for it. And Robin just really has a passion for designing a team experience around creating these kinds of games that we saw as a huge value.

My question will be how many incredibly strong personalities can Thatgamecompany hold without exploding? I know that even as a small team, it's difficult to get everyone to push in the same direction.

KS: Well... [laughs] I mean, part of that is Jenova growing as a director, and I think he has. I think that also allowed for this to happen on this project. I mean, hopefully we want there to be lots of strong personalities at Thatgamecompany because we want to be a company that attracts the best and the top talent.

You can find a lot of people who are willing to do whatever you tell them, but when you want to continue to create unique games and unique designs, you need people who will also step up as leaders and also champion their ideas and bring new ideas.

Flower

Certainly. Jenova talked a bit about whether there would be a Flower update. Can you talk about that at all?

KS: Again, there's nothing to confirm or deny right now. We're unfortunately still so small that it's hard to divide our resources effectively. Flower was certainly designed as a complete experience.

One of the ethical challenges we face as a company is that we really strive to provide meaningful experience to the player. So, in the past, when we've thought about developing expansions or developing downloadable content, it becomes very difficult because we really, really want to make sure that it's very meaningful, that we're not just trying to get more money out of people that love our games.

So, that's added to this challenge of Flower being a complete experience as well. So, when we think of what to add and what would be meaningful. It's very difficult. At the same time, it's regrettable right now that we haven't been able to support those fans and those players in a better way because the outpouring of expression after that game and the emails we get have just been amazing. We would really like show them that we care about that.

BIt's quite difficult when of course you sort of want to go on and do your next thing but people still want more of what you've already got.

KS: Yeah, yeah. Hopefully, part of that is satiated by just our next project, and that will be another Thatgamecompany project, and I think the players of Flower and flOw will enjoy it.

Right. But how long is that going to take?

KS: Right. [laughs] Yeah. And also, when we think about the projects, I mean, right now, as I was saying, it's like our current project is requiring an all hands on deck sort of approach, so it makes it difficult to then try and manage downloadable content or an expansion. But it's something we're trying to improve.

I guess you could go with like external help like you did with the PSP version of flOw, but I don't know if that's appealing.

KS: Yeah. I think that's also something where now that we've gained Robin as a producer, that will allow me to focus more on that stuff, hopefully opening up the opportunity of doing exactly that.

And certainly the code for Flower is a lot better, so in that way, it will be easier than flOw was. [laughs] Yeah, poor Supervillain had like the worst time, and I just really, really give them mad props for dealing with that.

I guess that's what happens with indie teams' early projects. It's like, "Well..."

KS: "No one's ever going to look at this ever again." [laughs]

As long as it works.

KS: Exactly. As long as we ship it.

On Rage

Are you going for a specific feeling for the next project?

KS: Yes, but we can't talk about it right now. But we always start with emotions, and this is no exception.

Well fine! I assume that... I always wonder what would you all do with an emotion like rage, or something like that, which I know is really outside of what Jenova wants to do. But I've always found that curious.

KS: Well, part of our mission statement is to create games that communicate emotions that aren't currently available on the video game apartment. Rage is well-covered.

Right.

KS: But that's not to say it's out of the realm of a Thatgamecompany game because if one day, we've moved well beyond, I don't know, the emotions that are communicated today, which I can't see because I think there will always be an audience for this -- I mean, I'm so stoked for God of War 3. I think it would be really interesting, that's all I can say.

I think it would be interesting to start a game with, you know... Well, maybe God of War, you know, that's what they captured so well, with that like visceral rage, and then designed everything around that.

I'm really interested with this Six Days in Fallujah project that keeps getting picked up and dropped and dropped...

Well... Have you actually seen the gameplay?

KS: Nah, I don't know.

That's the thing. A a lot of indies are coming out to stress the importance of Konami, but having seen it, it didn't look very complex to me -- like just another male power fantasy video game.

KS: I wonder, because I know some of the guys at that development studio, and their heart is in the right place. So, I guess I was excited by... Well, maybe partnering with Konami, they would have been able to get it to a very meaningful place.

But yeah, you're right. Intention isn't everything. There has to be execution behind it.

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Michael Bay Trashes Megan Fox, Talks 'Transformers 3' and 3D

Cinematical

- 17 hours and 7 minutes ago

Seems like a small war is starting to brew between Michael Bay and Megan Fox, after the latter said some unflattering things about Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, telling the Early Show recently that she still doesn't understand the movie and that it's apparently made for geniuses. Bay, of course, is not one to take criticism lightly -- especially from some girl who was nobody until he dropped her into the first Transformers movie.

Speaking to The Wall Street Journal about the situation with Fox, he says, "Well, that's Megan Fox for you. She says some very ridiculous things because she's 23 years old and she still has a lot of growing to do. You roll your eyes when you see statements like that and think, "Okay Megan, you can do whatever you want. I got it." But I 100% disagree with her. Nick Cage wasn't a big actor when I cast him, nor was Ben Affleck before I put him in "Armageddon." Shia LaBeouf wasn't a big movie star before he did "Transformers"-and then he exploded. Not to mention Will Smith and Martin Lawrence, from "Bad Boys." Nobody in the world knew about Megan Fox until I found her and put her in "Transformers." I like to think that I've had some luck in building actors' careers with my films."

We shouldn't worry whether this war of words will hurt either person's involvement in a third Transformers movie because according to Bay that's not happening anytime soon. On a third Transformers film, he says, "I just want to take some time off. It's been almost three years that I've devoted myself entirely to this world of robots. At some point, enough is enough-and I literally carried this movie on my back. ... I don't know who [would] want to take on my shoes with this franchise. We might just take a year down."

Filed under: Action, Sci-Fi & Fantasy, Celebrities and Controversy, Fandom, Newsstand, Comic/Superhero/Geek, Remakes and Sequels

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Imaginary Gadgets 0005: The fantastic machines of Leonardo

Wired: Beyond the Beyond

- 1 days and 1 hours ago

Imaginary Gadgets 0005: The fantastic machines of Leonardo

Who: Leonardo da Vinci

What: plans and sketches of imaginary objects from Da Vinci’s surviving codices.

When: circa 1480 â€“ 1519

Where: Florence, Milan, Rome, Bologna, Venice, Amboise

How: schemes of cosmopolitan polymathic artist-engineer.

Why: glory, intellectual mastery, royal commissions.

Leonardo da Vinci is the world’s most famous inventor of imaginary objects. At his death, he left some 18,000 pages of plans, schemes, drawings and writings. About 6,000 pages have since been rediscovered and published. They are the largest trove of writing by any Renaissance technologist.

These works were never published in his lifetime. Some of his writings seem clearly intended for an audience other than himself. Yet the pages of his journals are intermixed with accounts, lists, personal jottings, and so forth.

Da Vinci did built some real and functional devices: they were festival stage machineries, musical instruments, and (in one case) some palace plumbing. His other devices — and there were hundreds — never came to fruition. He also trifled with painting, a minor aspect of his work.

What was he thinking?

Da Vinci was extremely intellectual active. He also had a long career, so his engagement with physical objects came in intellectual phases.

A. The apprentice period. At fourteen, Da Vinci enters the Florentine atelier of Verocchio, an artist-engineer whose busy cultural factory involves drafting, painting, plaster casting, sculpture, metal-casting, architecture, carpentry and mechanics. As a famous craftsman in the most advanced city in the wealthiest region in the world, Verocchio is an urban contractor and a general factotum. Verocchio works on large-scale commissions and can be depended-upon by his patrons to carry out broad-scale commissions in a high style. The crew in his employ has a can-do attitude, similar to a movie crew. They do not much trouble themselves with specialization, because the technical professions have not yet been invented. There are no formal schools of engineering. Artist-engineers tackle creative problems as they find them. They rely on rules of thumb, revived ancient learning, and gossip.

As a teen, Da Vinci carefully studies the advanced machinery in Florentine construction sites, and draws the public works in detail. As an appentice to Verocchio, he likely has his first exposure to the semi-secret manuals of machines and engines, known as “theaters of machinery,” that were circulated in manuscript among adepts. He starts keeping notebooks of his own.

B. Hoping to ingratiate himself into the urban canal-building craze, Da Vinci studies dredges, locks, hoists, and dams. He becomes convinced that water is poorly understood, and that canal-builders get poor results because they rely too much on rules of thumb.

Da Vinci spends several years drawing water in motion. He creates a private physics / metaphysics of fluid mechanics. Occasionally he’s a minor consultant in urban water projects. He is never in charge of one, but these mighty efforts have such large budgets that his modest fees vanish into the haze. Da Vinci doggedly sketches and maps many superbly ambitious water projects which are never carried out.

C. Hired by an aggressive Duke of Milan, Da Vinci amuses his patron by creating large numbers of sadistic cartoon war machines, none of which are ever built or deployed in battle. The years in Milan are his most commercially successful period. He mostly works on directly-commissioned toy special-effects for Milanese court masques and parades. At this work he truly excels. Eventually a real war breaks out, the Duke is swiftly defeated and Da Vinci has to flee.

D. Da Vinci is introduced to geometry by a learned friend from the
court of Milan, now also in exile. Since geometry is composed from “elements,” Da Vinci becomes convinced that machines also have “elements.” Da Vinci now excels at drawing all the parts of all extant known machineries.

He spends many years ingeniously recombining the “elements” into
more-or-less plausible contraptions. Many look prophetic, and vaguely
anticipate future technical developments, but none are actually built.

Other Renaissance engineers such as Taccola and Francesco di Giorgio create illustrated catalogs. Da Vinci is familiar with these works. At one point he is employed by Cesare Borgia to loot a major library. Da Vinci never publishes any such catalog himself. He seems torn between an urge to publicize himself and and urge to hide his actual plans.

“Imaginary gadgets” are common rhetorical devices in the Renaissance.
Artist-engineers will take a relatively straightforward device, publicly known, and throw in a few excess working-parts to give the gadget an extra baroque gloss. These fantasy-machines are promotional brochures, meant to snow aristocrats into hiring their authors as wizardly experts.

No strict guidelines exist to separate practical from impractical machines, so most anything visually plausible will pass muster among high-ranking but technically illiterate patrons. Genuinely functional devices have a high risk of being stolen by rivals, since a patent system does not exist.

A great deal of borrowing, swapping, stealing and annotation goes on as gadget manuscripts are stolen, borrowed, looted or copied. Many Renaissance machine designs survive and thrive for centuries, although the names of their artist-engineer originators are lost or deliberately obscured.

E. Having broken machines into constituent “elements,” Da Vinci becomes obsessed with similarly dissecting animals and human beings. He becomes heavily reliant on first-hand visual observation. He distrusts the Latinate literary “learning” of traditionalists, who excel as political courtiers and can therefore frustrate his schemes.

Da Vinci regards the human body as a complex of machine elements and hydraulic forces. He invents a private physics involving “movement, weight, force and percussion” as the four powers uniting the macrocosmos and man, the microcosm. Drawings such as the famous Da Vinci “Vitruvian Man” are a scientific visualization of his theories.

F. Da Vinci further refines his drafting skills, becoming the best technical draftsman in the world. He is convinced that he has attained a new, more complete comprehension of nature, which combines precise perspective drawing with a deep understanding of primal forces known only to himself. Since he lacks any functional, experimentally grounded physics, he becomes convinced that an accurate, properly scaled drawing of an object implies that it will function in real life.

Da Vinci also creates a few three-dimensional models, mostly modelling human body parts.

A combination of bad luck, political turbulence and a well-deserved
reputation for missing deadlines denies Da Vinci any large-scale technical commissions. He never gets a chance to field-test his giant fantasy machines, yet his public reputation is extremely high. He works for powerful patrons and is widely considered one of the cleverest people in the world. His personal charisma frees him of any need to rely on publication for fame. He is accused of necromancy at one point, but the charge doesn’t stick.

Da Vinci spends a great deal of effort and time drawing flying machines. The machines look very much like living birds and bats. After years of drafting effort, Da Vinci manages to do some weight-ratio analysis. He then realizes that the human body lacks the strength to lift itself with flapping wings. He turns his attention to gliders but, since gliders don’t exist in nature, he can’t copy them by direct visual observation. His attempt to fly is stifled.

G. Da Vinci announces various plans to create a comprehensive encyclopedia of his immense hoard of autodidactic knowledge. This plan is never carried out. He is defeated by old age and the colossal size of his own archive. He spends a peaceable retirement chatting about philosophy with the young King of France, who is an ardent and generous admirer.

H. The posthumous period. Leonardo’s works are scattered by his heirs. Collectors and curiosa hunters have a hard time making any coherent sense of the great man’s eclectic musings. The papers are bundled in various ways that destroyed their original chronological order. Two thirds of the writings vanish.

I. Moderns re-interpret Da Vinci’s work. They are considered prophetic, although Da Vinci never describes futurity, or casts his work as something that people will do in the future. He is never plotting a future course for civilization; he is always planning schemes that he himself, his followers or patrons might care to do, if they can find the resources.

He makes no effort to advance learning in general. If a project fails to find financing, he abandons it. In certain especially hasty sketches, he seems to be ridding himself of nagging ideas in order to free himself to turn his attention to something more mentally refreshing.

Leonardo leaves no direct intellectual heirs; he founds no schools of thought; he invents nothing that goes into common technological practice. His ideas about physics are entirely idiosyncratic and see no further development.

His imaginary devices become extremely popular and are much admired
five hundred years later. Even then, however, nobody builds full-scale
replicas of his machines; nor do they develop them.

*******************************************

Atemporal Leonardo, or, a design exercise in the prepostmodern archaeofuturistic

Let’s now turn our attention to what it might mean to create Leonardo-style imaginary devices “in the Leonardo tradition.” How might his efforts achieve some vitality in contemporary circumstances? Is it possible to create/recreate an imaginary Leonardo imaginary-gadget?

A. Find and unite a group of “Renaissancepunks.” Attempt to please their tastes. These pastiches would lack “authenticity” — they would be pastiches of a period aesthetic. However, they might have pop-appeal. Fifteenth-century devices of wood and bronze would be fairly easy to mimic with contemporary hobby techniques. It should go without saying that few or none of them would “actually work.”

B. Study the Leonardo oeuvre with care. See if there are any obvious gaps in his combinations of the “elements of machines.” Since so much of his work is lost, Leonardo must have created hundreds of imaginary gadgets now lost. By filling any missing combinations, one might re-invent these. They would seem very Leonardo-like, and no one but a scholar would be able to tell that they were modern fakes/recreations.

C. Study Leonardo’s “machine elements” and create a generative-art program that combines them, generating thousands of “potential Leonardo machines.” Select the most appealing candidates and manufacture them.

D. Start a design-school project that models “Renaissance society.” Appoint a “Renaissance Lord” as judge. Distribute wood and bronze tinkertoy elements. Tell the students to create amazing model “war machines” so as the please the tyrant.

E. Model Leonardo’s elemental design approach, then apply it to modern materials such as plastics, aluminum, epoxy and so on. Alternately, take clearly implausible Leonardo schemes and see if they can work with more advanced materials. Alternately, take functional objects and make them unworkable in a Leonardo style.

F. Release an actual Leonardo plan as an “open-source instructable.” Pretend that you invented the device yourself. Give it to the “community.” See what happens.

G. Find a gifted painter who fully understands drafting and perspective. Hire him to become an engineer strictly *because* of his ignorance
of math and physics. See what he “invents.”

H. Reinvent “Leonardo physics.” Pretend that these late-medieval concepts represent actual physics. Make applied devices that would “work” in those parallel-world conditions. Game physics could be adapted to this.

J. Choose an imaginary Leonardo device, build a full-scale prototype, then tinker with it until it functions.
***********************************************

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Comic Book Legends Revealed #214

Comics Should Be Good!

- 1 days and 3 hours ago

Welcome to the two-hundred and fourteenth in a series of examinations of comic book legends and whether they are true or false. Click here for an archive of the previous two hundred and thirteen.

Comic Book Legends Revealed is now part of the larger Legends Revealed series, where I look into legends about the worlds of entertainment and sports, which you can check out here, at legendsrevealed.com. I’d especially recommend last week’s Movie Legends, for a piece about Waldo (of Where’s Waldo fame) popping up in Mel Gibson’s Apocalypto!

I presume Shelly did not like last week, and I don’t think she will be too pleased about this week, either!

Let’s begin!

COMIC LEGEND: John Severin was tricked into drawing the Rawhide Kid MAX mini-series not knowing what the content was.

STATUS: False

As you might recall, last week we discussed the Rawhide Kid mini-series that Marvel put out under its MAX imprint (their “mature readers only” line of comics). That’s the series that took a different look at the classic Marvel western hero and made him out to be a fairly flamboyant gay man (while maintaining his fighting skills).

The series was written by Ron Zimmerman and was drawn by John Severin, who was in his 80s when the mini-series came out. Severin had drawn Rawhide Kid stories when the character was NEW (before Marvel Comics was even known as Marvel Comics! It was still Atlas Comics when Severin started working there on the Western heroes). So it was a real coup to have one of the character’s early artists draw this new, fairly controversial mini-series.

In any event, writer Chuck Dixon made some comments at the time about the comic book. He said:

But am I to understand that John Powers Severin is drawing this wretched piece of exploitational trash? John objected to (but finally drew) a western story I wrote in which an unmarried couple were shown together in bed. (this was for the more adult-oriented ‘Savage Tales’ magazine.) Could he have willingly participated in this? I doubt it very strongly. I’ll bet he was handed a plot with no idea that the subject of the Rawhide Kid’s ’secret’ would be revealed in the dialogue.

Reader Gorpulon wanted to know if this was true (Gorpulon knew that Marvel denied it, but he was wondering Severin ever did).

First off, yeah, Marvel did, in fact, deny it, pretty emphatically, really.

Here’s Marvel Editor-in-Chief Joe Quesada on the topic:

Every once in a while something so ridiculous comes out of a mouth of one of my fellow comicbook constituents that I just have to chime in and clear up some things. Now I realize that by me bringing this up more people will now have heard this comment than the few that actually did, but heck that’s okay.

[Quesada then repeats the above quote - BC]

Now let’s read this carefully because it’s troubling on many levels. First, let me say that I like Chuck, heck I hired him to work at Marvel Knights. I guess that’s why I’m so troubled by what he’s implying here. Must be that mix of sun and sigils.

1- That Senior Editor Axel Alonso is so unscrupulous, so underhanded that he would actually try to fool the great John Severin into doing this book. That he would lie to his talent about something so important to core of the story.

2- That as Editor in Chief, I would condone such behavior of any of my editors. That I would let my editor lie to a talent about what he or she was working on and not fire that editor on the spot.

3- That John Severin isn’t smart enough to know what he’s drawing or that he’s incredibly gullible.

Which is it? Quite frankly all of the insinuations here are pretty crappy and owing of an apology. Not to me, because at this point after hearing a rant like the one above, I could give a horse’s butt what Chuck thinks of me, but to Axel and John.

Just for the record, John was approached and told the idea for Rawhide before there was even a writer fully attached to the project. He has known from the very beginning and loved the idea from day one. According to Axel, he’s also loving all of the media attention the book is getting as well.

He also worked from full script.

Let’s take a look at some pages from Rawhide Kid #2…

Those pages sure look like Severin is in on the joke, no?

Luckily for us, in Comic Book Marketplace #98, Severin DID talk about the series…

Severin: It’s kind of weird. (laughs) I guess, yeah, I think the information is already out there. The Rawhide Kid is rather effeminate in this story. It may be quite a blow to some of the old fans of Rawhide Kid. But it’s a lot of fun and he’s still a tough hombre.

That interview was given before (or right around) the release of the first issue of the series, so it sure does not seem like Severin was unaware or what was going on, right?

I think Dixon’s point was mostly rhetorical, anyways – sort of a “He couldn’t know what was going on, because how could he have known and still done it?” type of thing.

Thanks to Gorpulon for the question, and thanks to Comic Book Marketplace (and John Severin) for the spot-on quote, and thanks to Rich Johnston for the other quotes!

COMIC LEGEND: EC Comics was told to change a black character to a white character or else violate the Comics Code.

STATUS: True

By the end of the 1955, Bill Gaines’ comic book company, EC Comics, was in pretty rough shape as a result of the 1954 creation of the Comics Code Authority.

Gaines firmly believed that the Code was designed, at least in part, to put his company out of business, as the Code had rules against titles with the words “horror” and “terror” in them, and rules about how large the word “crime” could be in a comic book title.

So within a year, sales of EC Comics had slumped dramatically.

The last traditional comic book produced by EC Comics was 1955’s Incredible Science Fiction (a series that had just begun a few months earlier, taking over from Weird-Science Fantasy) #33.

The last story in the issue, “Eye for an Eye,” had to pulled at the last minute due to objections by the Comics Code Authority.

So Gaines and editor Al Feldstein substituted a story that Feldstein had written (drawn by Joe Orlando) that had appeared in Weird Fantasy #18 in 1953.

The story, “Judgement Day,” was about an astronaut sent by the Earth to examine a planet to see if it was up to snuff and worthy of joining Earth’s “Galactic Republic.”

Well, the planet of robots was found wanting, due to its treatment of different colored robots.

Then, of course, the big “twist”…

When the issue first came out in 1953, it was heavily lauded, including the following missive from a certain Mr. Bradbury…

However, when Gaines and Feldstein went to put it in place of the pulled story, they were told no, the story violated the Comics Code.

Judge Charles Murphy (administrator of the Code) said that they would have to change the astronaut from black to white if they wanted it to be included.

After being told that, clearly, the color of the astronaut’s skin was practically the whole point of the story, Murphy backed down, but said that they would at least have to get rid of the perspiration on his skin.

Feldstein and Gaines both refused, and Gaines threatened a lawsuit and/or a press conference to shine a light on why exactly the story was objected to.

The story ran as is.

However, it was, as I mentioned, the last traditional comic book published by EC Comics.

It’s a damn fine comic book story, at that, so if you’re going to close out your comic book company with a story, that’s as good as any (EC, of course, kept going, just not as a traditional comic book company).

Thanks to Digby Diehl’s excllent book on EC Comics, Tales from the Crypt: The Official Archives for the information! Also thanks to cyberghostface for helping save me scanning time!

COMIC LEGEND: The address of Dr. Strange’s Sanctum Sanctorum is of a building Roy Thomas lived in during the 1960s.

STATUS: True

Reader Stergios asked about a story he heard that:

[T]he mansion where Dr. Strange lives, his Sanctum Sanctorum is located at 177A Bleecker Street, Greenwich Village, New York City, New York, which in this universe was the actual address of the apartment building in which the series writer at that time actually lived.

And I have heard in other places that this address doesn’t really exist and is completely made up.

Where does this address come from? Was it Stan Lee’s at the time? Or was it some other writer?

First off, the history of Doctor Strange’s Sanctum Sanctorum is pretty interesting.

It appears in the very first appearance of Doctor Strange in Strange Tales #110, including the funky window designs…

And the building as a whole appeared in Strange Tales #117…

But, similarly to Namor’s home of Atlantis (as I mentioned in this previous installment of Comic Book Legends Revealed), it was never actually called anything for years.

It was just “Doctor Strange’s Greenwich Village retreat/home”…

It was not until Strange Tales #132 that it was even referred to as a sanctum at ALL, let alone a Sanctum Sanctorum….

It was not until Roy Thomas was in charge of Doctor Strange that the place got its name and address, 177A Bleecker Street.

And yes, Stergios…

A. 177 Bleecker Street DOES exist (here it is)…

and

B. Roy Thomas lived there for a time (I believe he was rooming with Gary Friedrich, but it may have been someone else).

What I would like to know from you readers out there is what issue did the Sanctum Sanctorum officially get its name? And what was the first issue to feature the address? I believe it was courtesy of a telegram delivered to Strange, but I can’t recall of an issue outside of Doctor Strange #183 where he received a telegram (and that issue doesn’t have the address on the telegram). Help me out, folks! I’d also like to know exactly which comic book pro Thomas shared the apartment with, as well! Thanks!

Okay, that’s it for this week!

Thanks to the Grand Comic Book Database for this week’s covers! And thanks to Brandon Hanvey for the Comic Book Legends Revealed logo!

Feel free (heck, I implore you!) to write in with your suggestions for future installments! My e-mail address is cronb01@aol.com.

As you likely know by now, at the end of April, my book finally came out!

Here is the cover by artist Mickey Duzyj. I think he did a very nice job (click to enlarge)…

If you’d like to order it, you can use the following code if you’d like to send me a bit of a referral fee…

Was Superman a Spy?: And Other Comic Book Legends Revealed

See you next week!

3 Comments

At July 3, 2009, Comic Book Legends Revealed #214 wrote:

[...] here to read [...]
At July 3, 2009, Chris Bloom wrote:

I'm not homosexual, but that dialogue from RAWHIDE KID makes me embarrassed on their behalf. If that's the best ...
At July 3, 2009, Manglr wrote:

I'll point out that the "Judgement Day" issue was also covered pretty fully in the wonderful "Ten Cent Plague". ...

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Dissidia: Final Fantasy gets September PAL launch, new Collector's Edition detailed

PSP Updates

- 1 days and 3 hours ago

Dissidia: Final Fantasy - Image 1

Scratch off that Autumn release you've noted for Dissidia: Final Fantasy. Square Enix has finally given a more specific release date for the game's PAL outing along with details about a new collector's edition.

Europe and other PAL territories will be seeing Dissidia: Final Fantasy across retail shelves on September 4. It's later than the US launch, but perhaps the CE package can make up for it. Here's what it contains:

Unique Dissidia: Final Fantasy clamshell packaging
Full boxed copy of the Dissidia: Final Fantasy game
Dissidia: Final Fantasy Best Selection Soundtrack Mini-CD: The Dissidia: Final Fantasy Best Selection Soundtrack Mini-CD includes a selection of music tracks from the game that are especially chosen for this Special Edition version by composer Takeharu Ishimoto. The Mini-CD will be presented inside a unique pochette and contain liner notes written by Takeharu Ishimoto.
Hardback, 48-page The Art of Dissidia: Final Fantasy artwork book: featuring character artwork, CG rendered art and more from across the game production.
Brady Games Official Miniguide: 32-page game guide printed in full colour, with character artwork, descriptions and walkthrough information to help you win the battle.
Exclusive Lithograph Prints: 2 Exclusive Lithograph prints, inside a unique Dissidia: Final Fantasy branded bandwrap featuring artwork not used to promote the original Japanese version of the game.

Note that the last item may be an EB Games exclusive, as the AU EB Games site says that it is. Even without a PSP to go along with it, all that content sounds loads better than the PSP bundle GameStop is offering. Shame the press release didn't mention any pricing details.

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Box of Comics: June 2009

Comics Should Be Good!

- 1 days and 7 hours ago

And lo, the first round of cuts to my pull list hits, as I try to wean myself off single issues and into trade paperbacks. What did I decide to keep buying in singles? Join me under the jump for the stuff I bought that’s worth typing about: robots, space horses, vampires, more vampires, and Batman. What’s most surprising, dear reader? My favorite comic this month wasn’t written by Grant Morrison. (Gasp!)

Atomic Robo: Shadow from Beyond Time #2 by Brian Clevinger, Scott Wegener, Ronda Pattison, and Jeff Powell (Red 5)

This, my friends, was my favorite comic from June 2009. Mark it in your ledger!

Brian Clevinger and Scott Wegener have perfected their shared wavelength and created the most entertaining comic on the stands. Clevinger’s plotting is perfectly pared down to the essentials– after all that fun banter and exposition in part one, this episode’s all action, but not without its fair share of hilarious dialogue, be it Charles Fort’s mixture of eagerness and incredulity (”Edison would never allow the likes of you or I near his necrophone”), or Robo’s carphone conversation with Nikola Tesla, in which he tries to act like nothing’s wrong and he’s not chasing down a giant Lovecraftian (literally!) beastie with a carful of lightning guns. Meanwhile, Wegener’s artwork is crispier than fried chicken, his facial cartooning brilliant– it’s marvelous how he can eke so much emotion out of a character who, by all rights, doesn’t have a face.

It’s in the last handful of pages, however, where Clev and Weg (as they shall now be known) really hit me, as Robo literally turns things up to 11 and the reader is handed the most badass, exciting comic book moment I’ve read in ages. It’s faultlessly paced, the epitome of action storytelling. “There’s one underlying scientific principle common to all existence. … Everything explodes.” That’s the best way to describe Atomic Robo– explosively awesome. And not in the “Taco Bell put the fear of God in me” way.

Batman & Robin #1 by Grant Morrison, Frank Quitely, Alex Sinclair, and Pat Brosseau (DC)

I suppose the title is technically “Batman and Robin,” but I enjoy typing ampersands. What can I say about this comic that hasn’t already been said? Nothing, probably. Heck, reviews of the second ish are already out and I’ve just sat down with the first! Egads, Bill, get with the times! Batman & Robin #1 is so last month!

G-Mo and F-Qui have this thing down to a literal science by now. They have become such a well-oiled machine that one expects nothing less than perfection from their collaborations, and we pretty much get that here. I loved the hell out of this thing, from the vibrant yellow background on the cover to the flying Batmobile to Quitely putting the sound effects into the art to the decrepit remnants of the giant mechanical dinosaur to the cutaway of the Bat-Bunker (which I did hope would be a bigger drawing, I admit), to Damian calling Alfred “Pennyworth” to the paracapes to the brilliantly disturbing new baddie Pyg. And now I’m out of breath. But yes, absolutely gorgeous and electric, giving me the same chills I got with Morrison and Quitely’s first issue of New X-Men. You might as well call this New Batman, because that’s what it is. I didn’t think I’d care about Dick Grayson in the Batsuit, but I’d read it forever if these two Scottish blokes were in charge. Really, there is no need for another Batman comic besides this one.

So there, I’ve just repeated what everybody else said. But man! What a cool comic! Why couldn’t Morrison’s whole run to date been like this?

Beta Ray Bill: Godhunter #1 by Kieron Gillen, Kano, Alvaro Lopez, Javier Rodriguez, and Nate Piekos (Marvel)

Kieron Gillen writing pop comics about hip music and the cool cats who dance to it? I can’t wrap my brain around that. Kieron Gillen writing an action comic about a space horse with the power of a Norse god who decides to kill an unstoppable force that devours planets? Hell yeah, sign me up.

I get the feeling that Gillen’s going to be a big name in a couple years, one of those go-to guys at Marvel who follow the same path as Matt Fraction or Jason Aaron– they’ll wow you with their early creator-owned work and then start spinning cool superhero yarns, but they gotta start by paying their dues. And so Kieron Gillen gets to write a mini-series about one of my favorite characters, the noble alien warrior with a face like a dead horse who shares my name and flies a talking spaceship named Skuttlebutt. I’m surprised to see Beta Ray Bill getting the spotlight as regularly as he has been, what with the mini-series and one-shots and team books he’s appeared in over the last few years. What once was maybe a novelty pet character of Walt Simonson’s is apparently a favorite of some editor out there, and so we’re blessed with books like Godhunter, which is about the titular Bill deciding Galactus needs to die, and going about the mission. It brings him into contact with SWORD, which puts him in the path of of a being who disintegrates folks with his cosmic organ music– yes, that happens– and then into a smackdown with one of Big G’s heralds. And yeah, the story is pretty groovy, and it could be going places, so I’ll be looking forward to the second issue.

Kano should probably be a star by now, but it seems he keeps getting overlooked for the big assignments, and that’s a shame, as he really bridges the gap between a looser, cartoonier line, and more of what’s the Marvel house style, but it gives the art a real verve.

This puppy’s a whole lotta pages for four bucks and has no ads! What it does have, though, is a reprint of Thor #337, the first appearance of Beta Ray Bill, written and drawn by Walt Simonson. I’ve got this issue in my collection already, but what really struck me in perusing the reprint were the colors, especially when compared to the new story. George Roussos provided the original coloring to this old story; on newsprint, it looked cool, rife with Benday dots, but on these slick magazine pages, the bold flat colors throttle one’s retinas– in a good way, of course.

Take a look at the two panels above. Which ones excites you more? Yes, coloring is far more of an art in comics these days, and I do enjoy the various digital brush strokes you can see in Thor’s face on the opening pages, but these bombastic colors in the back half of the mag really command my attention. A lot of coloring these days feels really over-rendered, which gives the pages a muddled feel, and certain contributes to the “sameyness” of Marvel art. Loads of careful attention is paid to the comics page these days, but I can’t help be more enchanted by the almost violent, done-by-hand work of Simonson, Workman, and Roussos in some old issue of Thor.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Tales of the Vampires by Becky Cloonan, Vasilis Lolos, Dave Stewart, and Comicraft’s Jimmy (Dark Horse)

I made sure to buy the one that had the Moon-n-Ba cover, because those two gents are awesome.

What Cloonan and Lolos give us here is something only tangentially related to the Buffyverse, but I’m glad that Buffy logo is on there, because that means a lot more people are gonna buy this comic, which is superbly crafted. Cloonan works away at the periphery of the Buffy mythos– folks know vampires exist now, sure, and slayers are out there, but Nashua, New Hampshire is far from the Hellmouth (well, closer to the one in Cleveland), and dull teenage life is still dull teenage life. Jacob yearns for more, and he gets it– at a price, of course. It’s about choices, and bad ones, specifically.

Cloonan’s known for her art, but she really sells the script here, especially with the mother character. Lolos’ art is excellent as always, deftly cartooned, letting the primary characters be almost swallowed by the empty backgrounds, until the vampires bring everything into close-up.

Dave Stewart’s colors are magnificent. There’s a reason he’s the best in the biz, and it helps that he falls more in line with what I talked about above. Many of the colors here are subdued– lots of mauve, surprisingly– but that works to the art’s advantage. I dig Stewart’s play with light, whether in the panel above with the parking lot lamps, or with the shadow that so often appears on the protagonist’s face for the first half of the book.

So yeah, it’s a good book, probably more akin to Demo than any issue of Buffy, and I hope the usual Buffy audience picks it up and responds well to it.

Lightning Round!

Astonishing X-Men #30 by Warren Ellis, Simone Bianchi, Andrea Silvestri, Simone Peruzzi, Morry Hollowell, and Chris Eliopoulos (Marvel)

A lot of folks rag on Simone Bianchi’s art, and I’ll say this: I really dig it. It’s not the most dynamic, and the storytelling isn’t necessarily brilliant, but my word, look at those ink washes! Every page of this looks like it wasn’t sullied by mere human birth but instead brought down from Olympus by the god of storks himself and raised on pure, massaged Kobe beef. Other than that, the story finally decides to go places in its last chapter and the X-Men become dark, mean, genocidal maniacs. Maybe this is the beginnings of a dark, longform plot from Mr. Ellis, but it takes a lot to make me enjoy an X-Men comic, and I don’t feel I’ll be back for the next arc. Sorry, chaps.

Captain Britain & MI13 Annual #1/#14 by Paul Cornell, Mike Collins, Adrian Alphona, Leonard Kirk, Ardian Syaf, Livesay, Jay Leisten, Craig Yeun, Jay David Ramos, Christina Strain, Brian Reber, and Joe Caramanga (Marvel)

You know, I read the Annual, and still I feel that I don’t know anything about Meggan or the game of cricket. There’s not much in here to excite me or make me really care about the characters. Sorry, Paul! But I did very much enjoy #14. Yes, the opening negates the previous issue’s balls-to-the-wall cliffhanger, but it does so using pieces earned from previous stories. Things are heating up for the big finale, and I’m looking forward to it, though I’m saddened that the end is near.

Seaguy: Slaves of Mickey Eye #3 by Grant Morrison, Cameron Stewart, Dave Stewart (no relation), and Todd Klein (DC/Vertigo)

I was going to write about this here, but I’m now considering saving my thoughts for a larger standalone post. But it may just have redeemed this mini-series for me; I’ll have to reread the series and get back to you later. Promise!

Two-in-One Review!

Doctor Who: Autopia by John Ostrander, Kelly Yates, Kris Carter, and Kubikiri (IDW)

Thor: The Trial of Thor by Peter Milligan, Cary Nord, Christina Strain, and Joe Caramanga (Marvel)

I try not to buy comics whose titles don’t start with A, B, or C, but sometimes I make exceptions.

I’ve lumped these two comics together because they both provoke the same feeling in me, which is that they feel like comics you’d find in a three-for-a-dollar bin in the back of a comic shop, wedged between unloved issues of Dan Jurgens’ Justice League run. By which I mean they both exude the less-than-sexy aroma of the dreaded “filler.” This Thor book is not unlike a random Thor annual you’d find in the early 80s, only with better coloring, and the Doctor Who comic lacks any of the more interesting or exciting ideas and developments you’d find in the show; it’s just what one fears when they open a licensed comic.

I know Ostrander and Milligan are good writers– I’ve read their good writing! I feel they’re more capable than this. Both comics just kinda go through the motions, shuffling towards the inevitable when they happen to run out of pages and the plot decides to stop. The artists do their best with the material– Kelly Yates’ cartooning is quite polished, and he storytells the hell out of a plot that mostly consists of guys and robots standing around; Cary Nord draws a mean fantasy barbarian comic, and this issue is no exception.

Neither book, however, thrilled, intrigued, or otherwise truly entertained me. There’s nothing inherently wrong with these comics– everybody does a professional job, nothing stands out as an eyesore– but they’re just kinda there. A mediocre comic from good creators is the most depressing comic of them all.

1 Comments

At July 2, 2009, Chad Nevett wrote:

Trial of Thor is almost worth it just for the whole CSI: Asgard element. I would totally buy a comic ...

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What I bought – 1 July 2009

Comics Should Be Good!

- 1 days and 10 hours ago

Man, I love the new blog format! Although I guess only Brad and I are MAN enough to use the tags. Come on, my fellow bloggers, tag it up!

Agents of Atlas #7 (”Secrets of the Deep Part Two” and “Mr. Lao is Sleeping”) by Jeff Parker (writer), Gabriel Hardman (artist, “Secrets”), Jana Schirmer (colorist, “Secrets”), Nate Piekos (letterer, “Secrets”), Carlo Pagulayan (penciler, “Mr. Lao”), Jason Paz (inker, “Mr. Lao”), Elizabeth Dismang (colorist, “Mr. Lao”), and Tom Orzechowski (letterer, “Mr. Lao”). $2.99, 23 pgs, FC, Marvel.

So, in the second story contained in this issue, a dragon fights a genie. A DRAGON FIGHTS A GENIE!!!! Do I really need to go into more detail?

Oh, I guess I do. Well, the Namor/Namora romance is dealt with so that no one can point at Marvel and say, “Hey, they support incest!”1 It was kind of a haphazard kind of mess, that first story, as the principals kind of wander around by a giant sea anenome that looks like a flower but is far deadlier than everyone (well, almost everyone) suspects until Bob figures it all out and everyone goes home. It’s definitely not bad, but it feels kind of like Parker thought it would be cool to show Namor mackin’ on Namora but wasn’t sure how to extricate himself from that untenable situation. (I doubt if that’s the case, as I’m sure Parker plotted the whole thing out long before issue #6 saw print, but it just feels like he wasn’t sure how to get out of it.) It’s notable for the subplot with Derek Khanata that continues to bubble as well as Hardman’s fantastic art, as he really does a wonderful job with the underwater scenes. I’ll get back to the coloring, which has been a bugbear2 of mine since the title began.

The second story is the secret history of Mr. Lao, Jimmy Woo’s dragon friend, as “told” to Temugin through a psychic link. And yes, he fights a genie … and loses. So sad, Mr. Lao! It’s a fun story that apparently leads into more secret history, and it’s gorgeously illustrated by Pagulayan and Paz, which might sound odd given that I’ve been critical of that team since the title began. But you’ll notice who’s coloring the stories. Hardman’s art is colored by Jana Schirmer, while Pagulayan’s is colored by Elizabeth Dismang (who was recently featured right here on the blog, where you can see some of the pages from this issue). I don’t mean to pick on Schirmer, but I just haven’t liked her work on this book, as she seems to soften Pagulayan’s lines far too much and, although Hardman’s work resists that a bit, his work is a bit softer than it has been when Dismang (or should we call her Breitweiser?) colors it. Pagulayan’s lines are much stronger in his section, and I have to assume that’s due to Dismang’s influence. This title has been fascinating when it comes to the influence that colorists can have on the art. I mean, I’ve known for years how much influence inkers and colorists have on the pencils, but this series is a fine example of that. I don’t doubt that Schirmer is quite good (check out her DeviantArt site if you don’t believe me), but I don’t like the style she employs with the artists on this series.

Anyway, A DRAGON FIGHTS A GENIE!!!!!! And the recap page is quite awesome, as many of Marvel’s are. I’d rather read the recap page than see yet another alien get shot through the head. You know which book I’m talking about!

Finally, Mark Paniccia edits both this and The Incredible Hercules. In a comics universe where it seems editors do, well, dick, Paniccia is editing two of Marvel’s best books right now and throwing in footnotes when he gets the chance. I don’t think it’s coincidence. I’d just like to give a shout-out to Paniccia, because I rag on editors quite a bit.

1 I don’t know what the big deal with incest is. Okay, I do know what the big deal with incest is, but it’s not like royalty for centuries haven’t married cousins and whatnot. I mean, how closely related are Namor and Namora, anyway? It’s not like they’re fraternal twins or anything. Sheesh.
2 “Bugbear” is a weird word. I don’t know if I’ve ever used it before, either in speech or writing. Look at you, good readers – in on the ground floor of me using a word!

Astro City: The Dark Age Book Three #3 (of 4) (”Into the Abyss Part Three of Four: Deep Cover”) by Kurt Busiek (writer), Brent E. Anderson (artist), John Roshell (letterer), and Alex Sinclair (colorist). $3.99, 24 pgs, FC, DC/Wildstorm.

I’m sure this has been pointed out before, possibly even by me, but one of the nice things about Astro City is how Busiek writes superpower encounters. He not only writes them from a bystander’s point of view, which helps the reader get into it even more than usual, but because he is writing from this viewpoint, his superpowered fights are often disjointed, as we never see it all because the bystander is always ducking for cover and whatnot. In this issue, we actually get a bit more than we’re used to getting, but it’s interesting that the climactic moment, when Charles and Royal confront their parents’ killer, is interrupted by superpowered beings, and Busiek does a nice job implying that this sort of thing is just a fact of life in Astro City – as he has often done in the past. Just because he’s done it before doesn’t mean it’s not effective, and it’s always interesting to see how Busiek comes up with all these characters with fascinating powers and basically uses them as a backdrop.

And we get some more interesting facts about the Silver Agent, which is kind of neat. Busiek is always cognizant of the world he’s created, and I wonder how many charts and graphs and timelines and genealogies he has lying around to keep track of all this stuff (or maybe he’s just a super-genius). As good as this book is in single issues, the pleasure lies in the entire epic, and it’s always keen to re-read these (even though I don’t always have the time). Yes, the saga of Charles and Royal is interesting, but it’s interesting on more than one level – we have the human drama, but it also fills in a bunch of gaps in the history of this universe, and it’s fun to read that part of it. And the Incarnate is pretty keen, even if I’m not sure how scary someone named Egron the Sifter could have been. Look out – he has a sieve!

Atomika: God is Red #9 (of 12) (”Test”) by Andrew Dabb (writer), Sal Abbinanti (artist), Simone Peruzzi (colorist), and Dave Sharpe (letterer). $2.99, 22 pgs, FC, Mercury Comics.

I really can’t stress how uniquely wonderful this book is, because it’s hard to do that in a world where so many different and cool comics exist. When issue #8 came out two weeks ago, The Dude wrote that it reminds him of Miracleman, and that’s not as crazy as comparison as you might think. It’s epic storytelling, the kind we get occasionally on something like Thor, except that Dabb and Abbinanti have, yes, gone to 11 on this book, and they’ve never turned it down yet. Even the “quiet” moments, such as early in this issue, when Atomika is reunited with his son Chernobyl, is impressive because of Abbinanti’s art, which remains a blend of fantasy and Soviet-style propaganda that hits you right between the eyes. Yes, his thighs are gigantic, but these are gods we’re talking about, people! They ought to have gigantic thighs, oughtn’t they?

Of course, Dabb and Abbinanti continue to throw all sorts of insane concepts into the book, such as Chernobyl testing himself by opening the gates of hell and fighting all the demons contained within. The battle is visualized brilliantly enough, but Dabb keeps up with the purplest of prose, which still fits the bombast perfectly, and when Chernobyl does what he does to defeat the demons, Atomika’s narration is pretentious in the best way possible, in that describing what Chernobyl does almost goes beyond words, and Atomika is just trying to keep up. Dabb does a fine job in the smaller moments, too, giving us a glimpse into Atomika’s mind when he first sees his son after long decades apart and setting up the final act of this story on the final few pages. The machinations behind the scene are good enough, but it’s Atomika’s “humanity” – for lack of a better word, as he’s a god – that helps ground the insanity and make this such a great book. In a comic book landscape littered with tinpot dictators who don’t really earn their exaggerated speech, Atomika does, and it’s fun to follow him through the years.

Come on – put down that book with whiny Hal and worshipful Oliver going off to make out (let’s hope) and give this a chance! You know you want to!

Batman and Robin #2 (”Batman Reborn Part Two: The Circus of Strange”) by Grant “It’s nothing like ‘Prodigal’! Shut up!” Morrison (writer), Frank Quitely (artist), Alex Sinclair (colorist), and Patrick Brosseau (letterer). $2.99, 21 pgs, FC, DC.

You know what’s funny about Dick Grayson desperately trying to get Damian to listen to him? In a weird way, it’s the same as Morrison and the other Bat-writers trying desperately to get the readers to listen to them: “Damian’s really cool, you’ll see! Dick can be Batman, you’ll see! Hey, where are you going? Put that copy of Reborn down! Come on, what kind of lame explanation is that? We’re DC, man! Didn’t you love Dark Knight?” It’s quite humorous. Or maybe I just see it that way.

Anyway, as much as the current regime would like us to forget it, I just can’t get “Prodigal” out of my mind. I guess that was never meant to be permanent while this change surely is (wink, wink), but Dick’s woe-is-me attitude in this book doesn’t ring true because he’s already replaced Batman once. Gordon and the cops sussing out that something is wrong doesn’t ring true either, because Gordon already knows that others have taken up the Batman role, and he wasn’t too jazzed the first time it happened. Morrison’s writing isn’t bad when Dick is speaking to Alfred about how sucky it is that Gordon just won’t respect him (wah!), but it’s just odd because Dick knows what replacing Bruce is like, and he should have gotten this out of his system long ago. It points out the fatal flaw with both “Prodigal” and “Batman: Reborn” – there’s no reason why Batman is necessary. Nightwing can patrol the streets of Gotham as easily as Batman can, and while he might not have the same relationship with the cops or the same effect on punks, leading to a spike in crime initially, once he beats the snot out of some of them, he’ll be established and everything can return to normal. Pretending to be Batman just makes people question you, as Gordon and the cops do, and as Damian does. Damian respected the man inside the suit, not the suit itself. Why should he respect Dick?

Anyway, the Circus of Strange part is still the best part of the book, and Quitely does a marvelous job with the fight in the police station. But, at the risk of opening myself up to ridicule from those smarter than I am who claim that if you don’t understand every single thing in a Morrison/Quitely production you’re basically a moron, what’s going on in the last panel of the book? In the penultimate panel, Damian is getting overwhelmed by the freaky red-haired things, and the pig dude walks around the corner of the carousel (yes, I know a carousel is a circle, but he’s coming around the corner of it anyway!) and watches as Damian gets overwhelmed. In the next panel, he continues with his eeeeevil monologue, implying that the final panel is happening simultaneously and, somewhat, in the same place. But I don’t think it is taking place at the abandoned circus. It seems clear that this is Pig’s “big plan” – have those red-haired dolls detonate bombs all over the place, and it appears that’s what’s happening here, as we see (I think) innocent bystanders caught in the blast of one of them. Is that what’s happening? If so, boo. Have we heard anything about his big plan? Did I miss it in B & R #1, because there’s nothing in this issue that points to this conclusion. I know that G-Mozz is all about making us do some leg work, but wouldn’t a panel or two of the red-haired things assembling throughout the city been a nice bone to throw to us stupid readers? When you have red-haired things overwhelming Damian in one panel and in the very next one we see more red-haired things, we instantly connect that they are in the same place unless we have something to indicate they’re not. That’s not being stupid, that’s the nature of reading a sequential narrative. If Morrison wants to get all Mark Danielewski or Milorad Pavic or James Joyce on us, he should get better at it.

Anyway, this is better than “Prodigal,” I suppose. Boy, is that damning with faint praise. Oh, I’m just joking – I like it quite a bit. It’s just that, as usual, I hold people like the God of All Comics to a higher standard than I do almost everyone else, so he tends to bug me more. It’s still a gorgeous book, and overall, it features the kind of weird villains I like seeing “Batman” fighting.

And does Lucius know Batman’s secret identity or not?

Chew #2 (”Taster’s Choice Part 2 of 5″) by John Layman (writer/letterer) and Rob Guillory (artist/colorist). $2.99, 22 pgs, FC, Image.

Layman is still feeling this series out, so we get a few superfluous pages of Tony Chu arguing with his stereotypically assholish boss, but otherwise, he’s just putting Tony through his paces on this first case. He introduces a love interest who probably isn’t what she seems, gives us more about the main case and its connection to the chicken ban, and a bit more background about Mason Savoy, Tony himself, and the mysterious villain behind everything. It’s certainly still a fun comic to read (well, “fun” being relative, as Tony does eat a human finger), but that’s not why it’s worth a look. It’s worth a look for Guillory’s art.

Yes, it’s cartoonish, but so what? Guillory manages to mitigate the confrontation between Tony and his assholish boss with body language and facial expressions, showing just how assholish the boss is without Layman having to do anything, really. When Tony snaps and throws a punch at said boss, Guillory does a wonderful job showing how fast a big dude like Mason Savoy can move. The love interest (who appears to be some kind of food critic, but we don’t actually meet her, so I guess we’ll find out) gets a wonderful reaction shot to a hamburger into which she bites, while Daniel, the fast food worker who found a finger on a burger, goes from snotty to desperate beautifully (why he goes through this range of emotions is a highlight of the book). Then, when Savoy gets in a fight against Yakuza, Guillory really takes off, as the battle is choreographed as wonderfully as Quitely’s is in Batman and Robin (their styles are completely different, of course, and Quitely takes more chances with his panel layouts, but in terms of choreography, they’re similar). I still don’t know how Layman will be able to keep this series going, but I hope he grows into the writing more, because his artistic partner is firing on all cylinders. It’s not a badly-written book, but it gets a big boost from the art. And that, plus the strangeness of the concept, is good enough for right now. We’ll see after the first story arc if it is.

Elephantmen #20 (”Star Bright”) by Richard Starkings (writer) and Marian Churchland (artist). $3.50, 23 pgs, FC, Image.

As always, this review is a bit late because I was waiting to receive it in the mail. Mad props to Richard Starkings for sending it out to me. (Can a 38-year-old white man get away with using “mad props”? Such are the sociological conundra I pose here at the blog, folk!) It came out two weeks ago, but you might have missed it!

It’s fascinating to consider how long Starkings has been working on this concept, as you look at the cover and realize it’s signed “Ladrönn 2000.” Starkings has just been sitting on the drawing, waiting to use it as a cover! Luckily, this issue focuses on Vanity and her relationship with Hip. Funny how that works out, doesn’t it?

This is yet another quiet issue, as Vanity and Hip head out to the sticks to visit the only friend of a man killed back in issue #9. Hip tells Vanity it’s agency policy to offer condolences in the cases of deaths in the line of duty, so that’s why he’s hanging out in a diner in the middle of nowhere. (As an aside: you rarely see the singular version of “condolences.” I wonder why not?) He brought Vanity along to ease her into field work. That’s the set-up, but in Starkings’s hands, it becomes much more. When he brings up why they’re there, he mentions it’s also part of his rehabilitation. Vanity is curious about that, and we’re reminded that Hip, as well as his elephantmen brethren, were killers back in the day, but before he can bring that up to Vanity, she’s off on another topic, reminding us how flighty she can be. There’s the usual prejudice against elephantmen, Vanity kicks some ass, and overall, it’s a fine issue that once again examines the world of the 23rd century and how it’s both very different and very similar to ours. It’s also an insightful look into Vanity’s relationship with Hip and how “normal” it is despite the obvious obstacles. Starkings has gotten better at writing this kind of issue, where things unsaid are as important as things said, and it continues to give the book more depth than it did when it started. Early on, the science fiction was more front and center, but as it’s gone along, Starkings has gotten better at the social commentary, which has become a bit more subtle.

As with the last two issues, Churchland is a good choice for this kind of story. I’m not sure if she could do as good a job with the “hard” sci-fi parts of the book, but with these stories that have focused more on the “human” parts of the book, she’s done a very good job. Starkings has taken the story out of the brooding city and into the country, and Churchland’s soft watercolor look suits that very well. Her Vanity, interestingly, is a bit more innocent than Moritat’s or Ladrönn’s, which is interesting for this issue, as she shows herself to be a bit more vulnerable than we’ve seen her before (granted, she still kicks some dude’s ass, but other than that). It’s a nice contrast to the other artists who have worked on the book.

This book is definitely worth the time I have to wait for it. Of course, the free-ness of it factors in, too, but as I’ve said before, I’d be buying this even if Starkings cuts me off tomorrow! But I hope he won’t.

Greek Street #1 (”Blood Calls for Blood Part One: The Monster of Greek Street”) by Peter Milligan (writer), Davide Gianfelice (artist), Patricia Mulvihill (colorist), and Clem Robins (letterer). $1.00, 32 pgs, FC, DC/Vertigo.

Vertigo continues the category of “Why on earth wouldn’t you buy this,” as we get the first issue of Greek Street, which has 32 pages of story for one thin dollar, 100 meager pennies! And hey! naked chicks on the first page! Gold!

The conceit of this book, in case you didn’t know, is that Greek characters from myths are still (or again?) living in London and doing the same old nasty stuff to each other. It’s an idea with a lot of potential, and Milligan is twisted enough to pull it off. The main character, Eddie, gets involved in a gang feud and, if you know anything about Oedipus … well, he fulfills some of that prophecy, too (ewwwww). Then there’s a murder that a police officer named Dedalus is looking into, the aforementioned gang feud, and something odd going on in a house somewhere. Frankly, this issue is kind of a mess, as Milligan simply chucks what appears to be every plot thread into this and just hopes we can keep up. It revolves around Eddie, of course, but it’s still a mess.

But guess what? Gianfelice, whose art isn’t as rough as it was on the first arc of Northlanders, draws it all nicely, even almost giving us male genitalia (but doesn’t, as even though this is a Vertigo book, we still can’t have that, can we? we might all go gay, right?). It’s a horribly creepy book, and Gianfelice does a great job with it, especially the ending, which made me and ought to make you cringe. And despite the mess, it’s really compelling. Milligan does a fine job creating a bunch of characters and giving them interesting personalities. There’s a ton in this book, and unlike the most recent Vertigo #1, The Unwritten, it doesn’t have a straightforward plot – Milligan just throws us in and commands us to swim! And why wouldn’t I? And why wouldn’t you pick up issue #1? Maybe it’s just wacky enough to lure you in!

Mr. Stuffins #3 (of 3) by Andrew Cosby (writer), Johanna Stokes (writer), Axel Medellin Machain (artist), Andres Lozano (colorist), Daniela Fiore (colorist), and Johnny Lowe (letterer). $3.99, 22 pgs, FC, Boom! Studios.

This series ends as predictably as you might expect, but Cosby and Stokes still have a lot of fun with it, from Mr. Stuffins acting like Rambo to Zack acting like, well, Rambo. Like a lot of Boom! books, it seems like it might have benefitted from (possibly) one more issue, but perhaps that would have been taking the conceit a bit too far. I guess it’s fine as a three-issue series. The problem is that this comic is about the father as much as anything else, and David doesn’t get as much screen time as he should. Unlike Mr. Stuffins, he’s not terribly heroic, but he does what he has to because his family’s in jeopardy. As fun as it is to watch a teddy bear kick ass, the real core of the book is a man desperately fighting forces against which he shouldn’t have a chance, but doing it anyway. It makes for a nice comic, but it had a bit more potential than that, and I wish it had been realized.

Of course, as with every Boom! book, there’s the price that often keeps people away. I guess they do fine (they’ve been around for a while, after all), but it’s frustrating. I’d certainly rather read this for four dollars than a comic where the latest iteration of the Avengers goes around shooting people in the head just for fun, but that $3.99 on the cover is still daunting, I admit. I wish Boom! could figure out a way to bring down the price of the trade, at least. Oh well. That makes these difficult to recommend, because while I’d say for $2.99 this is a fine comic, I’m not sure it’s worth the extra three dollars. I’m aware that I harp on prices far too much around here, but it’s always in the back of my mind when I’m writing about these comics (not so much when I buy them, as I just dip into the kids’ college funds – they won’t mind, as by the time they’re college age, we’ll be eating random strangers and living in caves anyway). So it’s something to think about. Sorry if it bores you.

Secret Six #11 (”Depths Part Two: Amazons Unleashed”) by Gail Simone (writer), Nicola Scott (penciller), Doug Hazelwood (inker), Mark McKenna (inker), Jason Wright (colorist), and Travis Lanham (letterer). $2.99, 22 pgs, FC, DC.

There’s so much to love about this comic that I’m not sure where to begin. I mean, in the opening scene, that chick enforcer of Mr. Smyth is just wandering around with heads(...)

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