Of Late Comic Books & General Gripes

Before the thread regarding Mike Choi's personal loss and dedication to his work gets to far away from its original intent, I'd like to allow any griping to move to this blog, instead.

That can include:

Shouldn't contracts allow for artists to have some time off during the year?
How hard are publishers trying to spin the late comic book deal as a service to the fan?
What is up with Secret Invasion costing $4 with the only "added value" being a cardstock cover?
And anything else one might want to gripe about...

For Those That Bitch & Moan About Late Comics...

Over on his blog, Mike Choi talks about the drawbacks of being an artist. After mentioning how taking a traditional vacation is pretty much impossible, he shares the following:

But it's all good. I've worked on the last five Thanksgivings. However, something opened my eyes slightly today to the idea that something might be wrong in my prioritizing when work is involved.

I woke up at 2 pm, after four hours of sleep. I had two voicemail messages. the first was from the VP of editorial at Marvel, and the second was from my mom, who told me that my uncle had died. I called Marvel back first.

The funeral is this Wednesday, and the book is due Thursday (for me). I won't be calling my editors for an extension, because a) I know I won't get it, because issue 500 NEEDS to be on time understandably, b) measures have been taken to avoid lateness already, measures I wish hadn't been taken but were absolutely necessary, and c) so help me, if Nick called me right now and said, we'll make the books late so you can have an extension, or we can get someone to fill-in for you, I would turn him down.

I hope you join me in sending your thoughts and prayers along to Mike and the rest of the Choi family.

NYCC SCHWAPP!!!: Passing A Message To Grant

Before hitting the road to NYCC, my friend Aaron asked me to pass personal messages from him to Grant Morrison and Jenna Jameson. While I wasn't able to get the message to Jenna, I did deliver his message to Grant. It was a little more impersonal than he may have desired...

Kirby, Bliss, & Homage Etiquette

The great and wise JK Parkin is covering this over on Blog@Newsarama, but I wanted to add my two cents. Apparently, a university professor has identified a New Yorker caption contest piece as a Kirby swipe, with Jeff Trexler and Mark Evanier (recognized authority on all things Kirby) jumping up to defend it as being so obvious an homage as to not have been any sort of lapse in ethics.

I really don't see why some are playing favorites with this artist. Yes, I'm sure his intentions were fine...but it takes nothing to put an "After Kirby" in there to acknowledge for the world that it is an homage. There was a time that people went nuts anytime there was an homage cover ON A COMIC BOOK (where, you know, everyone points out that we'd recognize an obvious Kirby homage) without an "After ____" on it.

If the artist can sign his own name to it (as you can see in the New Yorker image), then he could have put an AFTER KIRBY and told the world it was an homage instead of just letting it be a cool little secret between him and people familiar with the source material.

I mean...I know 95% of the New Yorker audience are comic book fans, right? So he'd only be doing it for that 5%, but it'd still be the right thing to do...

Oh, there was eventually an AFTER KIRBY added to its posting on the internet, by the way...after the professor bitched and moaned about it, I believe.

I'm not saying it was a huge deal. But pissing on the professor for pointing out that it was an unacknowledged homage (which, by normal definitions, means you can classify it as a swipe) by the legal and comic book scholars just isn't right. How is the professor to know what the artist's intentions were if the artist didn't do anything proper to publicly demonstrate those intentions?

Terry Two-Fer...ummm...Thursday

Terry Dodson has shared two upcoming X-Men covers he put together.

Secret Invasion X-Men #1


Young X-Men #5

SCHWAPP!!!@TheMovies: Indiana Jones & The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull

ASM BRAND NEW DAY SPOILERS: Dig? Thumbing Of The Nose? Or Just Being Cute?

As discussed, the last page and a quarter plays on the JMS saying that Quesada's answer for everything OMD was, "it's magic; we don't have to explain it!"

Is it a dig at him? Is it kind of thumbing their nose at the situation? Or is it just meta-cute?

You make the call!

The New Runaways Team?

Terry Moore and Humberto Ramos are doing the rounds to publicize their new Runaways work. But you know what? I care more about what Christina strain has to say about it to Vaneta Rogers back in March:

"I'm very excited about it because Humberto's work looks fantastic," she said. "He's drawing it similar to how he was doing X-Men, but he's doing a really good job of getting the characters' personalities down. Everybody's really distinctive. He captured their personalities really well. So I'm very excited, and I have some interesting ideas about how I'm going to do it. And I'm kind of referencing Carlos Meglia for the coloring stuff. So I'm going to go for this kind of animated look."

Strain is a hold over from all of the previous Runaway "regimes"...and a valuable one at that. She's quickly become one of the colorists you can quickly spot the work of.

SCHWAPP!!! Comics Week 28: Secret Invasion #2