De Nada, Joe Quesada

So, upon writing my opinion blog on the current states of Marvel and DC, I started thinking on a controversial bigtime player, Joe Quesada. Joe was the instigator of the Marvel Knights line, bringing in Kevin Smith on Daredevil which has basically had a ten-year run of being really good. From Smith begat Mack who begat Bendis who begat Brubaker. From the success of that line he was promoted to EIC, and proceeded to make huge changes in the Marvel U. He brought in Morrison and Quitely to X-Men, helped usher in the Ultimate line with Bendis, Millar, Kubert, Hitch and Ellis, brought Ennis to The Punisher and JMS to Amazing Spider-Man.

There've been a lot of good runs under his tenure, with Hulk under Bruce Jones and Mark Waid's Fantastic Four. I also believe he was the guy that resurrected Black Panther with Christopher Priest at the helm.

However, people on the internet hate him. Now, I've covered this slightly on my post on internet message boards, but it bears repeating. I've heard him called "Joe Quesadilla" which struck me as a little bit racist considering that he's Cuban. His name sounds different. It's the same principle as the assholes who stress Barack HUSSEIN Obama. The general consensus is that he's ruined Marvel, he's pissing in the open graves of Jack King and Stan Lee (wait, Stan Lee's not dead yet? Boize Moi, he must be drinking that same swill that Nick Fury does), yada yada yada.

What exactly did he ruin at Marvel? The hopelessly convuluted X-Men? The post-Clone era Spider-Man? The Avengers featuring teenage non-evil Tony Stark? Heroes Reborn? Ugh. Just think of all the great, memorable comic runs and stories in the 1990s. Then think of the same of the 2000s. 2000s wins.

Obviously I think Joey Q has done more good than harm. He brought back the subtle rivalry with DC while making JLA/Avengers a reality. Although after reading it maybe that one should have stayed a pipe dream. Marvel comics continue to spank DC in regards to sales so he's clearly doing something right. He's also done a good job of positioning Marvel as the hipper company, which it kind of always was-from the era of stodgy Silver Age "your dad as a superhero" DC to the modern "simple wing of a huge conglomerate", the competition isn't really fierce. Marvel is a Twittering, TV-friendly place.

Is he perfect? No. As mentioned before, the revamp of a universe not even a decade old was unnecessary and dumb. The idea that you don't have to explain magic, and that Peter Parker would make a deal with the devil (literally, Beezlebub) is idiotic. They kinda killed Supreme Power by bringing it away from MAX. They cut off Epic's wings before it took flight, only for them to eventually allow creator-owned series too late to take advantage of Millar's movie and sales-spawning works, not to mention probably alienating a ton of dudes that probably just went to Vertigo. Yeah, Epic was a huge missed opportunity. And he keeps hiring Greg Land, although it's admirable for him personally that he sticks up for friends and employees.

So, I dunno. Feel free to criticize Joey Q. Hell, do it here, in the comments section, and give me something to respond to. But try not to be too big of a weirdo about it. Or else you'll end up like this gentleman here.

State-er Of Affairs

Alright, there's been some big changes to this blog, in addition to more and more followers. I figured I'd give the personal recollections a rest and do another catch-up to anyone new.

Hello. I am Seethe Rogers. Actually, I am someone else, but my internet nom-de-plume is Seethe Rogers. I'm an angry ex-employee of a (probable) ex-comic shop. See how clever my name is now?

So, as for the changes?

Paypal/Amazon

I have become a whore. I decided to set up a link to donate via Paypal, and a link to my Amazon wish list because frankly, it's free to do so. I wouldn't want to enter into an agreement that would place pop-up ads or anything that would ruin the site, but I can put two little links up knowing that people can ignore them if they want to. I know the economy is about one coke-fueled Wall Street sneeze away from utter collapse, and that now that school has started back up my posting frequency will be once a month (not really, but maybe), but I figure if someone, some anonymous person out there is doing really well or is secretly an industry person, then if they want to give me even a buck in which to buy a fruit-and-yogurt parfait at Mickey D's, then who am I to stop them? If you, like me, are a broke college student, or a broke family man, or just broke and at the library using free internet... then by all means don't click. But at least the Amazon link will give you some idea of what I'd be reading if I was still reading.

YouTube

I decided to put one foot firmly in anything over the past three years and spiced this blog up. I had been thinking of videos that would connect with my posts somehow. Some of the humor is subtle, as only Heroclix players would get the significance of Rick Ross talking about "pushing it". Not all are music videos, as when I somehow found a video on not getting raped by tentacles, and put it on the post about the girl who probably wanted to get raped by tentacles. I think the ones that I found (and I'm still looking) are pretty awesome, so play away!

Reruns

As time goes by, I remember more about things from the past, and if I've already blogged about them I will go back and add to them. Just my way of expanding this baby out and getting it to a place you might visit again and again. And as I have no method yet of making money or even calibrating visits... know that my intentions are altruistic.

This post looked somewhat awkward for a while as for some stupid reason I could not get the font to work. Also, as previously stated my full semester has started up so start settling in for some long-ass waits. But then again you folks stopped commenting, so how do I even know someone is reading this? Well, BFM will. Hey, BFM! You're one of my BFFs!

Finally, to Derek Coward and Dave Slusher- self-masturbatory totally works. Now, you might not be the two most sexually experienced fellows on the block, but I'll clue you in. If some partner (to be PC) massages you in the bathing suit area, that can be considered masturbating you. Now, if you masturbate yourself, or self-masturbate, you're doing something of no interest to anyone else. Indeed, it is something to get sick over. Unless you're a hot lady. So when comic creators do self-masturbatory stories, they are writing for them, and no one else. I look forward to people barely sitting through my posts. Or fucking themselves. Whichever they might like better.

Actually, that sounded harsh. I'm just giving you shit. Feel free to tear me down on your blogs and twitters and friendfeeds and podcasts all you want. We're all just asshole nobodies on the interwebs anyway. Take it sleazy!

Just for the hell of it. This was funny. Not everything has to connect.

Triumph At Comic Con 2008

I know that everyone in the nerd world has memorized this 10x over, but fuck it. I need something to break up any monotony in posts about all the idiots I knew before. Besides, it still cracks me up that people online thought Scott Kurtz was a woman. Haw! Take that, you crappy web comic douche! You know the thing with web comics? They're not good enough to be actual comics. Enjoy!

Do You Remember Wizard Magazine?

When I was a teen, there was no cooler magazine for people that aren't cool than Wizard.

I first picked it up around 1995, I think. My mom and I were housesitting my grandfather's house and I picked a magazine out to help bide the time in the era before internet, cable (or at least them having it) and the like. It had Wolverine on the cover, if you can believe that!

I immediately knew I made a pretty good choice, as Wizard used to be pretty damn thick. Those things were packed. They had readable material up the yin-yang, from a funny and weird letters column, a section for homemade action figures, articles, a price guide featuring spotlights on quality reading on every page, and humor. Everywhere there were captions, on the action figures, under the photos of conventioneers at the front of the news section, and even in the legal mumbo-jumbo in the contest rules. And it was funny. Legitimately funny.

I started to get Wizard on a regular basis, even pre-dating by a few months my own comic reading habit. And in days when I couldn't afford all the comics I wanted, I still got Wizard. They were ballsy and weren't afraid to explain how Todd Mcfarlane's writing or Rob Liefield's everything sucked. It was full of young guys in their 20s and 30s, having a good time, bullshitting, and talking geek stuff in a way that made it seem not-so-geeky, and hip, even! They really were ahead of the curve in the "cool nerd" revolution that hit the early 2000s, where you can see A-listers at San Diego and movies starring Seth Rogen and Michael Cera blow up the box office. By all accounts they should all be driving Hummers that run on liquid baby seals back to their mansions where they bang European women all the live long day.

Well, apparently not so much. Wizard had a run for a while where they bought out a ton of conventions and ran roughshod over the business. I like to think of them as the WWE of comic magazines, in that sense. Then again, New York started up a major convention again and San Diego grew into the biggest industry convention of all. They made another misfire by scheduling Wizard World: Atlanta around the same weekend (or the same weekend) as a much beloved Carolinas convention known as Heroes Con, and were eviscerated online so much that they canceled Atlanta and acqueisced dominance to Dragon Con run by creepy Ed Kramer. None of this really bothered me, as conventions were fun the first two or three I went to, then they became increasingly sad, and I would walk around and feel dirty that these were my bretheren. Once again, not talking about your average Joe IStillReadAvengersButIHaveAGirlfriendAndApartment but more the "this is the only three days I leave my mom's house" people. There, but for the grace of God, and all that...

Wizard Entertainment has fingers in other pies, too. The best, to me, was Toyfare. This was the magazine that spawned Robot Chicken. Except in my opinion this is funnier than Robot Chicken. The best section was Twisted Toyfare Theater, which was so popular they turned it into a series of trade paperbacks. In order to prove they're a big, humorless corporation DC explicitly forbade Toyfare from using their characters in the parodies. Oh well. There's only so many jokes you can pull from those lifeless stiffs anyway. They also had Inquest devoted to gaming, Anime Insider to... anime, and started an unsuccessful comic company, something that could have been seen as a conflict of interest, but it failed so who cares!

Needless to say, I kind of forgot about them until Rich started blogging about recent troubles. I have no inclination to search the back catalogue for all the stories, so once again go to Lying In The Gutters and let your fingers do the walking. With falling convention attendance, longtime employees like Pat McCallum and Brian Cunningham were shown the door. Actually the majority of the staff I enjoyed no longer seem to be employed there, with the sole exception of Mike Fasolo, a latecomer to the magazine, and even that could have changed by the time this post is put up. Apparently they also rely on free help to maintain the forums, with the free help offered in the hopes of getting a paid position. Good luck with that.

I think one of the things that led to the downfall of Wizard is the internet. There's just no sense in waiting 30 days for news when it hits you in 30 seconds via Comic Book Resources, Newsarama, and other places. The rest is just a combination of factors like increased commercialization, lower page counts combined with higher prices, less humor and more focus on ads disguised as articles. Of course, all those things could have been present when I was reading and it's just the rose-colored glasses of youth that didn't make me see them. I mean, one valid concern that's always been there is the total absence of anything not Marvel, DC or Image. I can see that criticism, and I can also recognize that you won't find that much about Troma in Entertainment Weekly, either.

I don't think Wizard will ever really go away. The industry is big enough to need a major magazine to publish it, and Wizard, by virtue of being the first "glossy, sexy" magazine will be it. I don't know if it will ever reach the heights of its 1990s heydey, but then again... will the world reach the heights of the 1990s ever again?

This is a video that one of my buddies did for a Wizard contest in the early '00s. I love the Poundstone line...

Men Are Martian Manhunters, Women Are From Amazon

And so begins the probably final chapter in my likely trilogy of posts that make me sound like an incredible sexist. The first being about the "Phoenix" who I had the misfortune of working with and the second being about the fight against evil led by anorexics. But in my defense, at the time of the anorexic post there were ads all the time for the Terminator tv show and for Doomsday, and as for the Phoenix... well she plain sucks.

I sort of intimated on this particular pet peeve with my post on the Phoenix, but here it is: moderately attractive girls who like comics seem to be, more often than not, really annoying and full of themselves. It's like they lord over the fact that the ratio of male-to-female comic fans are 357:1 and male to decent-looking female comic fans look like 7,892:1. As I said before, if these girls were to go to the local discotheque/bar/what have you they would be mostly ignored by the typical dudes who go there. Put them in an area where there are horny, hard-up lonely guys around and... jackpot! I say this with no malice, just an observant eye calling it as I see it. Take it from me, one of my close female friends from way back in high school grew up to be a cosplayer. I asked her her favorite characters and she named a buncha broads whose costumes she liked. So there.

A perfect example can be found in the Lying In The Gutters column found here. Rich Johnston came upon a craigslist ad and posted the thing for all to see. I don't recall if it truly became the industry meme that he predicted (i.e. breaking internets in half, blonde latinas looking like hookers, etc etc) but it certainly caught my eye. I'm going to post the ad here and intersperse my thoughts through:

Midtown Comics boy, you're hot. - w4m - 23 (Midtown West)

Date: 2007-09-12, 1:03PM EDT

You- gorgeous comic shop cashier, maybe 20ish years old, black t-shirt, asked blonde/red-head (like the band?) boy in white polo to "hold down the fort," lip ring (but then, you all had lip rings, didn't you?)Me - 23, brunette, red tank top, black skirt-only girl in comic shop, Monday, sept. 10, afternoon

I waited in line to ask you about a special comic order. I am ashamed to admit that I stared heartily at your beautiful dark eyes while I stood there. I fantasized about nibbling that hot lip ring on the right side of your lip and grabbing your crotch. I didn't get a look at your crotch. Damn. On most guys, lip rings don't work but there is something about you that makes it the hottest thing in the world. Cute comic shop boy (have I mentioned how I hate it when girls call guys "boy". What is he, 12 or something? Is she a schoolteacher?), I want to make out with you. I want to feel your lip ring all over my body. I came in with a guy, but I was not dating him. He is my trainee at work. I am not interested in him at all. (and I am sure that he is flattered and thrilled that you made such a point of saying that)

Cute comic shop boy, I fantasized about throwing you into a supply closet and tearing off your pants and raping you until you couldn't walk (when did rape become acceptable? Or is it only acceptable if you're a chick? Guys, go out sometime and tell a girl she looks good... and you want to rape her. Then report back on how it went). I guess that's somewhat unlady-like and rather slutty (yes). If you remember, though, I did not tear off your pants or even rape you while we exchanged sexually charged comic banter (what did that sound like? "Hey, want to see my Giant Sized Man-Thing?"). I wanted to. I wanted to take off those loose fit jeans and go. To. Town. I am sorry I led you on when you showed me some comic recommendations. I'll probably buy another one next week so I can see you. But I don't think I'm that into comics. I want to be, for you. But my heart isn't into it (then... what was the special order comic about? Huh? It's only a craigslist ad and you're already lying to him about something). My heart is into your body. I hope you wanted it ("it"? You have a penis?). I hope you wanted me to give it to you (the penis?). But I can't. Because I have a boyfriend. We've been together for three years. I know it doesn't matter to most hot guys but it matters to me (yes, it matters so much that you went behind his back and placed a craigslist ad. You can't cheat on your boyfriend so bad you write about how you want to cheat on him). So even though I wanted to rape you crooked, sideways and covered in chocolate sauce, it can't ever happen. I'm sorry. I am hoping this is a letdown for you (I hope I teased you and gave you blue balls. Nice). I am hoping you wanted me covered in chocolate sauce as well. I suppose there is always the chance that you didn't want to rape me, too (I hope and pray irony is a stranger to her lest she find out that rape is definitely not something you want to happen to you under any kind of circumstance). You told me your name and where you live, though, so I think the wanna-rape-ratio had to be pretty even. So I'm sorry. But look on the bright side. There's something you don't know. It's terrible. While I am, to the general population, pretty cute (and have a top notch rack), I harbor an insidious secret. (uh, that is thinking way too highly about oneself. You're alright. But pretty cute? With that schnozz? And "top notch rack"? You hide it well, madam. And what's with everyone from New York having black hair and olive skin? Is that town 98 % Italian and Greek, or 99%?)

Cute comic shop boy, I'm a nerd. I play World of Warcraft and like to read gaming webcomics. I sit around in my pajamas and lead midlevel instances over Ventrilo. I'm dying for my epic flying mount. I like to go to Staples and purchase office supplies and organize my desk. There is a of picture me in a World of Warcraft shirt at jinx.com, with a fork in my hair. I love Age of Mythology, even though it's about a hundred in gaming years. I have a Playstation 2 and Xinaghua pwns my face. I say pwns, even in real life (I hate people that do this. Things typed should never be said. I knew this girl who said "pwn", "win" and "fail". I stopped talking to her. True story). I wish I could sew so that I could wear her sexy bellyshirt outfit and parade around town, hooking up with other nerds who like hot chicks in skimpy gaming outfits (what a whore). I go to I-CON at Stonybrook every year so I can watch Voltaire sing about Star Trek, and so I can flirt with him because he's in my 'five.' I love Stargate SG-1 and Richard Dean Anderson. Claudia Black is a goddess.

Cute comic shop boy, I hope one day I hope I let my inhibitions and your pants down and our rape to rape ratio with each other becomes 1:1. Maybe another girl can even get in on it (oh what a surprise she's "bisexual". Just like every other woman in this country between the ages of 14 and 32). In the meantime, I'm going to take you (and this hot girl) to bed with me every night for the rest of the week. I've already thought about you twice. You were great. So was she.

I love your lip ring.

P.S. I'm sorry about my terrible lesbian vampires joke. (wait, there was a lesbian vampire joke?)

<3>

Girl who doesn't love comics that much but loves your eyes.

So there we go. I did google this and found a discussion and a blog post, both from Newsarama, I think. The Newsarama commenters seemed to think she was a psycho stalker tease. Of course, later in the year, something not altogether surprising was revealed here.

Can you imagine the poor sap who dated her for 3 years? Probably thought he found the jackpot with having a moderately attractive female into geek stuff, only for her to glimpse a guy that looks like CM Punk's little brother on a whim and send him straight to Masturbationville. With stopovers in Latenightcryingjagland and Selfloathingtown.

It only took 3 months at the max, probably less, to put the kibosh on a 3-year relationship. Furthermore, just a month later LITG fans were privy to this. I hope it was worth losing a longtime boyfriend for a dude to rape you in chocolate sauce while lesbian vampires watched for 4 months. Four months, tops. The dude quit the comic shop. She probably scared him out of the hobby. Now he's into the Yankees and Jovi. For shame.

Okay, let's everyone cut the shit. Normal people are slowly but surely pouring into this hobby. I can go to Borders and see nice, cute girls reading manga. Maybe not Iron Man, but sequential art nonetheless. Everyone likes comic book movies. Every single young person has played the Wii. Being a geek has never been more socially acceptable. That being said, please stop acting like you're doing us a favor by deigning to hang out with the losers. Yes, there are a ton of mouth-breathing, sweaty fatties that have bizarre and sad personal lives and treat these characters as if they are family instead of a paycheck for a huge corporation. There are also nice, normal guys that think this stuff is fun and/or funny.

I've always hated people that fished for compliments, and you won't find a better example than girls dressing up as Dawn or Witchblade or whatever. And you won't find so many aspiring Mae Wests anywhere else. Seriously, talk to a girl in a comic shop and she'll tell you many a joke on how she's probably scaring all the dudes there and they're probably all up in arms that she knows who Optimus Prime is. I took a photography class last semester with a girl that looked an awful lot like Lana Lang from Smallville (i.e. a Canadian Eurasian goddess) and she saw Transformers in the theaters three times. Three! I've never seen any movie in the theaters three times. I think the most was The Departed and Jackass Number Two at two times each. So really, we're not that impressed with your Cobra Commander shirt and Green Lantern tatttoo. Just be cool. Capische?

As for the rest of you... get your comments on! I'm (obviously) not making any money from doing this, so the second most-important thing I can get from this (besides peace of mind) is knowing that people are out there reading and enjoying. Or reading and hating. But at least reading. Make up a fake name, it's the internet!

Alex Ross Seems Kind Of Like A Dick

I'll take a break from the normal personal recollections and give an opinion on the industry that we found/find ourselves in.

Doesn't Alex Ross seem like he's kind of a dick?

I wasn't reading comics when Marvels came out, but I remember the hubbub of Kingdom Come. I looked at his art, and yeah, it's impressive. Although, something always seems a little "off" to me. Everyone looks like the ideal in the 1950s. The guys, while huge, seem a little fat. I know that's probably "more realistic", but come on. It's comics. There's a dude with a ring that makes giant green shit.

I remember people going ape shit over Kingdom Come, which I never really understood. It's a very "of its time" story. It was basically a reaction to Rob Liefeld, Image comics and the industry in the early to mid 90s. It all seems so dated now, the concern over bad influence super-heroes. People in costumes with lots of leather and tattoos, smoking and blowing each other away. DC let its big, end-of-the-universe-as-we-know-it epic be a response to a fad. A fad that was on its way out by the time the book came out. Besides, if anyone wants to get a peek at what was the best possible way for DC to do its "end of an era/Ragnarok" story then they can take a gander at this. Now, that's a story!

I think the thing that bugs me the most about Ross is that he's a traditionalist. He's one of these people that likes things from a certain era, and that's all he'll deal with. Most people agree that the Barry Allen Flash died a hero, with dignity, in a decent story in Crisis On Infinite Earths. Not Ross. Barry Allen was screwed, and should be the Flash to this very day. Screw the people that have watched Wally West grow into a fine hero of his own for the past twenty years. Kyle Rayner as Green Lantern? Dick Grayson as Nightwing? Not hearing it and not drawing it. Everything should be exactly as it was during the Silver Age. That's when comic books peaked and nothing that came after it was worth a damn.

When does it end, though? I mean, somewhere out there there are fans even older than Ross thinking, "Hal Jordan? Space cops? Fooey! It's Alan Scott or nothin'!" Or maybe "Barry Allen can't hold a candle to Jay Garrick! Now that was a real hero, he wore a WWI helmet and everything!" Fair's fair. What about them, Ross? They were here first.

One of the things that writers like Alan Moore and Warren Ellis talk about is the lack of variety in comics and the stifling urges to do self-masturbatory stories over and over again. Moore said he can't look at super-heroes anymore because all he sees are the dead men they were stolen from. Ellis talked on how going into a comic shop is like going into a bookstore where 90% of the books there are about nurses. Now, there are some fine books about nurses out there, I'm sure, but do you really need such a vast majority of them? I don't go as far as they do. I enjoy a good superhero yarn as much as the next guy (well, maybe not as much as the fat 40-year-old in the stained Gambit shirt) but I don't know if I really need to constantly read stuff that never changes, never grows, and never dies.

So let Iron Man wage war on good old-fashioned costumed crusaders. Let Captain America and Batman croak. Turn the Hulk red. Whatever. Because everyone knows that the industry is full of Alex Rosses just biting their lips in anxiety until they get the chance to make Iron Man mind-controlled, resurrect Captain America and Batman, and make the Green Goliath angry and emerald again. Just ask Geoff Johns.

I think this video kind of has some interesting parts where his douchebaggery can't help but leak all over everything...