Ugly American # 32: Fabulous Killjoys # 1 Review!

Script: Gerard Way/Shaun Simon
Pencils: Becky Cloonan
Colors: Dan Jackson
Letters: Nate Peikos
Gerard Way is probably best known to readers of this column as the creator of the precociously delightful Umbrella Academy. Everybody else in the world probably knows Way best as the front man for My Chemical Romance. His co-scripter Shaun Simon is also a musician, which makes sense. The most important element you need to understand about The Fabulous Killjoys is that it isn’t prose fiction fused with pictures, but lyrical poetry.

The plot is fairly straightforward, well-trodden, and steeped in the usual trappings of dystopian futures. Life in Battery City is grim and choked by the greed of the BL/ind corporation. Citizens and rebels are either killed to fill quotas or converted to Scarecrows and bent to the cause with mind-altering masks.

Regular folks are murdered for having their headphones on too loud, and Porno Droids are forced to purchase increasingly inferior battery charges at ever escalating prices. Nobody is out of BLIs reach. Around any corner, the Draculoids are there waiting to effectively suck the life out of everything.

Outside are the denizens of the Desert, where freedom comes at a price. You never know where your next meal is coming from, and you have to remain on constant alert just to stay alive. Once upon a time there was hope in the form of The Fabulous Killjoys, but they were lost in battle. They traveled with a little girl – a little girl some believed to be some kind of messiah.

This comic is the story of that little girl, still un-named at the conclusion of the first issue.

The story is told over a bed of lyrics put down by renegade DJs, broadcasting when they can to give hope to the remnant fighting BLI. I think those scat messages are a good barometer for the book as whole:

“Empty Spaces. Lost Traces. Battery City Races. Getting taller as our desert – smaller. Dreams. Visions. Suicide missions. Anniversaries are lies if we forget why the confetti flies.”

It’s a little over-the-top, for sure. If that kind of thing is going to grind at your sensibilities, then Killjoys is just not for you. But it surely separates itself from the pack.

Killjoys is poetry, colors, and nostalgia. All of the names in this book seem to sing to me about my past. “Vinyl” recalls old records….like hair-metal Poison records. “Poison” was the leader of the Killjoys. Also on the team? Kobra…..you know, like GI Joe?

Instead of eating, our protagonist spends her last funds on Poison’s mask. And there are pogs for sale at the counter as well. Can you believe they’re still trying to sell those damn pogs in the dark future?

I feel like I know where this book’s heart is at, and I sympathize. I think it’s human nature to glorify one’s past as the “good old days” and fear for the changing future. So I’m a little wary of that impulse. On the flip side, I can’t help but feel a palpable sense that life has turned a bit plastic and rote.

I just….I remember watching that old Eurythmics video for “Sweet Dreams”. There’s Annie Lennox
with utterly striking hair and eyes. For reasons that neither science nor sorcery can explain, Dave Stewart is playing what looks like a cello next to a goddamn cow. He rolls his eyes to the back of his head so that only the whites are showing. If somebody paid you five million dollars, you could not explain why he does so.

The music is haunting, Lennox’s voice is exquisite, and that piece of art is indelibly branded on the brain for eternity.

Where I’m going with this is…I don’t think that video happens in 2013, certainly not like that. We seem to have life cracked these days, in all the worst ways. The science of marketing has run the numbers, analyzed the focus groups, and determined the correct neuro-linguistic programming techniques to squeeze the most dollars out of the most sheeple.

It works. But it sucks.

I don’t know what was going through the minds of the folks that shot “Sweet Dreams”, but I don’t think it had anything to do with replicating past techniques, creating brand awareness, correct product placement. I’m not convinced they were strictly thinking of money at all. I think they were just trying weird things because it seemed like a worthy, or dare I say fun thing to do.

Back in the 1980s, this was how things worked. David Lee Roth was jazzercising in his red leather pants and mixing in his vocals as the loudest element of the track, because well, he was David Lee Roth. Murray Head could get regular airplay with “One Night in Bangkok”, which regales the listener with tales of competitive chess players. I’m not even kidding.

What the hell has happened to joy, and strangeness, and trying things just to see what happens when you flip your switch? I don’t think Columbia Pictures released Total Recall
last year for the joy of it. I think a bunch of people with nice clothes and impressive degrees got in a room, found a brand to exploit, attached a trio of recognizable pretty faces to drop into it, and bought a bunch of serviceable special effects to distract the audience from the fact that there was no soul anywhere near that corpse of a movie.

And like I said, it works. One of those pretty faces was Kate Beckinsale, so I gave them my money like a dutiful citizen of Battery City. But like I said….it sucks. I think if Phillip K. Dick could see what his story became, he might throw up a little.

I think this is what Killjoys is about – celebrating the vibrant, and the inspired, and the chaotic, and the wonderful. I think it’s about lamenting how grey and processed and unbearably inevitable our increasingly soulless existence is becoming. I don’t know that I have that correct, but I do know this –

I don’t read a lot of comics these days that prompt that kind of thought and emotion out of me.

There are things to nitpick, if one likes to pick nits. There’s a fight between Val’s little V Squad and a pack of Draculoids. (“Black-and-whites”, the DJ calls them, code for cop cars, enforcers of the law just like the Dracs, see how clever and nuanced the book is?) The outcome of that fight is completely unclear from a storytelling perspective. Did they kill the Draculoids? Run them off? Whu happen? One minute they’re fighting, the next minute the Draculoids have disappeared and the Vs are wondering what to do with their dead friend Volume.

It’s poetry, people. You don’t go to West Side Story to examine fight choreography. You go to watch the singing and dancing. Same thing here.

And you may have to give it multiple readings to draw everything you need out of the comic. When I got done with my first spin, I was attracted to the tone, but came to the conclusion that the story didn’t make a lick of logical sense. It took the second go ‘round to determine that there is an incredible amount of information presented in Killjoys, but it does throw you into the deep end of the pool. Everything you need is there, but you need to be a good swimmer.

My bottom line on The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys is that it shows a wealth of promise and represents must reading. I’m not ready to give it my unreserved approval yet, because I don’t know how in love I am with the lyrical nature of the book. It’s also dancing on the edges of papier mache lefty politics, and you can imagine how thrilled I am waiting for that other shoe to drop.

For now, though, I like what I see. If you’re into early Love & Rockets, Brazil, or Repo! The Genetic Opera, this is certainly in your wheelhouse. I recommend any comics reader, hell, any reader at all give this a whirl, because it cares enough to take chances, and there is more than enough skill and craft to warrant your attention.

Curious to hear any opinions on the book – if you’ve read it, please do chime in by commenting below!

Ugly American # 31: Comics and fridges and death, oh my!

I want to talk about Avengers Arena again this week, because it’s fun and it’s worth it. The comic itself is several grades more interesting than it gets credit for, even from its supporters, in my opinion. It’s an interesting artifact, and what’s even more fascinating is watching people react to it. Does any comic encapsulate what’s right with comics and wrong with the people who read them more perfectly than Avengers Arena? I say thee nay!

The only thing I like better than good comics is watching humans respond to them like deranged amoeba in my personal petri dish. The whole package is too delicious.

A good number of the amoeba have really freaked out about Avengers Arena # 10, to the point where Bleeding Cool ran a story on it. Sister Grimm “dies” at the end of the issue, and this produced quite the fit of Pharisee robe-tearing, over-taxed tear ducts, and many a “fuck Dennis Hopeless”. Which when you think about it is sort of a sweet offer, but I’m betting he already has someone lined up for those duties. But I digress.

You may have noticed that I didn’t announce any “spoiler” warnings about the Nico “dying” bit as I normally would. This is actually related to my main point about all these histrionics:

THEY TOLD YOU UP FRONT THEY WERE KILLING EVERYBODY (BUT MAYBE ONE) IN THIS GODDAMN COMIC BOOK.

Why is anybody shocked or upset that their beloved characters are dropping like flies in this thing? That’s what they said they were going to do! If the idea of a character dying in this comic causes you strife….I don’t know….maybe this isn’t the comic for you? Just a thought.

Imagine going to a restaurant and ordering from the nice French waiter.

YOU: “Yeah, how’s the Peking Duck? Just to let you know, I don’t like things that are salty. Love Peking Duck, but just can’t handle a lot of salt.”

WAITER: “Zee Peking Duck is tres magnifique, madame, but I’m afraid eet eez quite salty. Quite salty.”

(Apparently Batroc the Leaper is your waiter, which is awesome. Good to see him working)

YOU: “OK, I’ll take the Peking Duck, then. And some raspberry tea.”

BATROC: “Oui, madame. I would just like to remind you, howevair, zat zee Peking Duck eez very salty.”

YOU: “Uh-huh.”

BATROC: “Very well, madame.”

Now, if you get your Peking Duck and you don’t like it because it’s too salty….who is to blame? Is it the chef’s fault? Would it be reasonable to start shouting and cause a scene, then run to the internet and start trashing the restaurant about how crappy the food is and how poorly they treated you, or are you just a stupid asshole who didn’t listen to what the waiter plainly told you? I will let you, dear reader, solve that mystery for yourself.

Meanwhile, the chef wrote the shit out of that issue. Listen, the traps are easy to identify. If this is just a mousetrap built for blood, it’s pandering to the worst of the worst of us. But that’s never been what this book is about.

Avengers Arena is a giant character study about what happens to (mostly) good people when you strip away the trappings of civilization and throw them into pure survival mode. It’s not a “snuff comic” any more than Nolan’s Dark Knight was a snuff movie. Same themes, same questions, except Hopeless has a lot more space to make the drama breathe, and he’s been using it to grand effect.

The point of AA # 10 isn’t that Nico “dies” at the end. The point is the continued ascendancy of Katy, and the fact that nobility took a major hit this episode. Katy is a Machiavellian bitch on wheels, a joy to root against, and a fantastic example of a comic book creating something out of nothing. I didn’t care about Katy, or Death Locket, or Cami, or Kid Britton six months ago. They all mean something to me now. What are you reading these days that means something to you now? I’m digressing, though.

The point is that in issue # 9, a group of the kids finally understood that Katy was a real threat that probably needed to go for the good of the group. For wonderful character-driven reasons I won’t ruin for you here, that seemed like the wrong thing to do.

That decision split two very good friends and fellow Runaways, Chase and Nico. Nico couldn’t pull the trigger on Katy, but the lessons of Murderworld have been teaching Chase that he can’t necessarily afford his best impulses, so he dissented. Nico kicked Chase out of the group, and then Katy used Chase (against his will) as a tool to destroy Nico. Heart-rending stuff, and all plausible given the mechanics of Katy’s power set and Chase’s new toy. Nico, for her part ushers the rest of her group to safety and then stands off against an entire pack of combatants that includes her best friend in the arena and a friggin’ SENTINEL.

Now, if you’re paying attention at home, here’s what the scorecard looks like - Dennis Hopeless just engineered a result that includes perfect emotional poignancy while escalating the tension of the plot while simultaneously forwarding his moral themes. And by the way, all of that unfolded seamlessly in the organic action of the story, without shaking the car or making you reach for the KY bottle. What in the FUCK are you people bitching about? That was virtuoso. This is comics at their best.

And by the way, people, look at the last page again. Nico has no bars lit on her life-o-meter, but her last act was to grab the Staff of One (with the only hand she has left) and cast a “help” spell at it. Maybe that spell was too late, and maybe it isn’t. Maybe next issue the staff brings her back. Maybe she doesn’t come back until Bendis or somebody important decides they want to use her again a year from now.

To me, that 'aint the point. To me, the point is that this book is really about to ramp up and get down to the nitty and the gritty. There’s a bunch of young people on Murderworld now who have no choice but to realize that this game isn’t a game, and that a moral code is a death sentence. Sympathy and friendships are death sentences. How will the remaining players react? I don’t know, but I can’t wait to find out. For me, that’s the point.

The points on the hater boards seem to revolve, as they always do these days, around Southpaw Bunny politics and blind emotion. Lots of talk about “fridging” Nico, which doesn’t impress me. You can’t just reference “Women in Refrigerators” and drop the mic like you said something meaningful.

Well, you can do so on the comics news sites, but that doesn’t play here at the Ugly American. I think it’s possible to have a debate about the frequency of female death/trauma in comics, or the validity of the “helpless female useful only to drive male vengeance” stereotype.

The Bunny side is going to lose that argument to about 15 minutes of real research, because this just in…every character in comics suffers atrocities. It’s kinda part of the gig. Remember that Capt. Everything Goes Right All The Time For Him series? No, you don’t. Because it never got pitched, much less published.

So yes, we could have that debate, but that’s not what’s going on over at the boards right now, or on your local Twitter. It’s a pervasive reactionary mindset that says “I didn’t like it, the character was female, so it must be sexist”. If you disagree with them, then you’re sexist, too.

Actually, I think pervasive is the wrong word, though. I think the vast majority of comics readers either don’t care about this stuff, or maintain a more reasonable attitude. The problem, in my opinion, is that this hyper-vocal manic minority get a lot of ink on what passes for comics news outlets, offer little in the way of dissenting opinion, and it gives the nonsense more weight than it deserves.

One of these idiots actually had the audacity to post a hate-tweet post script of:

#okay kill the Asian woman that’s totally fine…

I wonder if that person recognizes that their “defense” of Nico is uglier than any imaginary bigotry he ascribes to Dennis Hopeless. I’m guessing not. No, there’s no thought process necessary to hear clapping at the end of your rage any more. It’s just “I didn’t like it, the character wasn’t white, therefore it’s racist.” Absurd.

No charge of racism or sexism against this series in particular will stand up to an ounce of actual rational analysis. Meanwhile, Marvel just had Brian Wood build an X-Men team of X-Women, and they’ve been actively courting pitches on what Tom Breevort is calling a “Black Avengers” book. Does that sound like a publisher cultivating bigotry to you?

To recap on a more positive note - Dennis Hopeless is putting on a clinic, and regardless of what you may have had tweeted at you, Avengers Arena is fantastic in all areas.

You may disagree below.

Ugly American # 30 – It’s a Trap!

Let’s talk about the end of Justice League of America # 4 because it has many layers, and some of them are even vaguely interesting. I guess I’ve decided not to spoil anything specific, but in order to talk about the book, you need to understand that the issue concludes with what appears to be the “death” of a fairly prominent female character.

So…..where to start? I guess I’ll start with some of the market aspects. I know Monster Mike was worrying about folks finding a copy, thinking that a pack of dirty speculators (like myself) may have erased all available supply. It appears that won’t be an issue for a couple of reasons. One being that there really doesn’t seem to be much of a fervor in the secondary market on this, which I find exquisitely fascinating. To me, that’s bold and direct evidence that the golden goose of empty hype may have shat out its last egg for a while. You can only go to the whip on the same magic trick so many times before the audience becomes numb to it.

The comics audience has been particularly resilient (some might say moronic) about maintaining their fascination with the “Death” bit. But as I type this, there are copies of JL of A # 4 available all over the place for cover price or less. I can even grab a copy of the Howard Porter variant for the same price as the regular edition over at Lone Star. So much for death fever! And in any case, I don’t think Monster Mike needs to worry about speculators ruining the reading party any more, at least for 95% of the comics material out there. Mark Millar is making the digi-heads wait a little bit for Jupiter’s Legacy, but most everything you’d like to catch up on is available (for rent) from Comixology, infinite copies in the supply, and all you need is internet access.

This is not to suggest that speculator runs can’t do any damage. I think we should be rewarding any interest in our local comic shops. If a patron, particularly a new patron heads to said local shop only to find that the super exciting “what’s all this hullaballoo about?” issue isn’t available for purchase….well, that’s a problem. That’s an interested party that may never come back. But again, that doesn’t seem to be the case here. I was in my LCS today a good three days removed from launch and there were stacks of this issue available.

I wonder, though, does the lack of mania here actually reflect the masses finally giving in to richly earned cynicism, or is the fact that DC was actually able to keep this a secret partially to blame? It’s pretty common for the punditshphere (myself included) to lambast the publishers for leaking their big reveals to the press early. But when you think about it, whether we’re talking about Johnny Storm , or Miles Morales, or Superior Spider-Man, or the nineteen other secret Marvel deaths they’ve bungled, it never did seem to hurt sales, did it? So maybe they knew something we didn’t.

Hard to say. I still think this is just mass apathy from a very tired and abused comics constituency. Whatever the case, I don’t know of any fellow comics reader or article on the usual sites that really believes this “death” is real or will stick. Which is a bit sad. We’re jaded past the point of no return, which is kind of frightening, but also kind of liberating. The Big Two have been using empty hype like a bad drug for too long. There will be some withdrawals coming down from that, but the recovery is surely going to be better than the junk we’ve been getting lately.

Contrast that with Alpha Flight # 12, circa 1984. Different time, different attitude. In 1984, John Byrne killed off Guardian and we all considered it deliciously ballsy. It’s not like comic book deaths were rare or permanent back then, but there was no obsession with the hands of the puppeteer, and no sense that the publisher was “just fucking with you”. I guess I don’t know why Byrne decided to ace the team leader of Alpha Flight, but I suspect it had to do with A) Introducing a sense that anything could happen at any moment and B) Forwarding the character arc of Heather Hudson.

Who could forget the final pages of that comic? The good guys were not doing particularly well, and this was in keeping with the themes of Alpha Flight to that point. Mac Hudson was a scientist, not a military guy. Same with Sasquatch. Shaman and Snowbird were mystic protectors, sure, but the Beaubier twins were basket cases, Marrina was psychopathic more often than you’d like, and Puck was just a midget with a giant “P” on his chest. How’s that gonna work? And what the hell was Mac doing dragging his non-super-powered wife into that mess? That ship was destined for trouble from the start, and boy did it hit the rocks in # 12. It isn’t just the fact that Guardian died, though, it was the way he died. His battle suit failing catastrophically, a harried Mac Hudson is interrupted at a critical moment by his wife Heather. No telling for sure if that’s what ultimately sealed his fate or if he was doomed any way…but if you’re Heather, how do you not interpret that as causing the death of your husband? A few seconds after that interruption, there was nothing left of Guardian but a little pile of ash. Heather had a lot of growing up to do, and grow she did, right on the page.

Nobody had a clue that was coming, mind you. There was no such thing as Previews or Newsarama to spoil things for you. There was simply word of mouth after the fact, and Alpha Flight 12 left quite a few jaws on the floor. Perhaps I’m not remembering correctly, but there was no speculator run on that kind of thing in ’84, either. Alpha Flight # 1 cost more than cover, because, DUH, but after that the issues in demand were # 13 and # 17 because they had goddamn Wolverine on the cover, man! Don’t you know that Wolverine on the cover is big bucks, man!!! Talk about a magic trick that’s lost its magic.

No, everything was a secret. Any info you had on upcoming projects was likely to come from the publishers themselves in the form of house ads. They didn’t tell you much, either. Can you imagine the emotional wreckage that would be the comics landscape if there were an internet just before Marvel unveiled the New Universe? None of us would have survived. Our brains would have been burnt little nubs, and Kickers, Inc. # 1 would have produced a brief burst of incalculable rage and then instant death. As it was, we got a few months of a purple lightning bolt on the back cover our Marvel books. We were lucky.

Or were we? I feel like we were better off then, but maybe not. The downside was that there was no rational way to make decisions about your reading habits, other than live communication with other actual human beings (the horror!) and quizzing them about what was going on in the comics they were ingesting. There was no solicitation telling you that Frank Miller was about to unleash perfect comics with Born Again. One month, Daredevil was absolute rubbish. Then came Born Again, and then you blinked and the month after that you got goddamn Madcap by Mark Gruenwald. To call that a jarring shift of the gears would be the understatement of the millennium. That was life. You either collected Daredevil or you didn’t, and there was no way of discerning the potential quality until you dove in face first. Sometimes you got some poop on your face doing that, but at least in the Born Again era, the feces only cost 75 cents, so you almost didn’t mind.

Most retailers will tell you that prior knowledge is critical to the game at this point. It’s hard to order non-returnable comics correctly, and the money is made on the hits. You don’t make any money ordering 5 rack copies of Firestorm. Yeah, you’re ordering at a discount, but if one of your readers drops the book, and another takes a vacation and buys her copy in Sarasota instead of your shop, you are fucked. There’s no upside, and there’s no margin for error on most comics. You make money with hits. If you order 50 copies and two people drop the book and one goes to Sarasota, you’re still OK.

So if the Justice League of America # 4 contains the “death” of a prominent character, that’s something a retailer wants to be privy to if he or she thinks it will sell a ton of copies. Sure, some folks will take the time to request a re-order or get a second print on a sell-out. But really, if you miss the boat on a hot book you just lose. Everybody loses, actually. The reader is disappointed, the retailer is out some significant money, the publisher is out a small amount of money, and there’s just bad will all around.

The retailer needs to have some indication about how to order, but of course you can see the problem when said retailer has to rely on the publisher to give them that information. I don’t know how to tell you this…but the publishers are slightly biased about the number of books they are sure will be big hits and change everything about comics forever. In fact, if you listen to the publishers, you’ll find that they are producing a dozen of these books every single week. It’s amazing.

And that’s the problem with Previews. The reader wants information about the upcoming books so they can make informed decisions about where to spend the ridiculous sums of money it takes to buy comics these days, but how can the publishers relay that information accurately without spoiling everything? The retailer wants the same info to order correctly and serve their customer, but it’s in the publishers best interest to spin everything as The Next Big Thing, and again, how can they tell the retailer what they need to know and preserve any kind of surprise? If Admiral Ackbar were here, he would promptly bark at you that the whole situation is a trap. And he’d be right.

The solution? Destroy the internet, I guess. It’s only going to end up as Skynet, right? We don’t need it.

That’s my answer. You may offer alternative resolutions by commenting below.

Ugly American # 29: More powerful than a loco in-law?

My home base in icy Minnesota is becoming something of a comic book hotbed. A couple years back Gary Dahlberg’s untimely death brought us the Twin City Pedigree, one of the most pristine Silver Age collections on the planet. Dahlberg had a gig at a book store, so he got first crack at the comics before they even hit the shelves. He was cherry-picking mint books before anybody knew what an Overstreet Guide was.

Someday my collection of certified trade paperbacks is going to raise some eyebrows as well, but that’s a few years down the road. I’m just letting you know now, though…it’s coming.

But in the now, we’ve got David Gonzalez. He likes to buy houses on the cheap, fix them up and flip them. So he buys a little fixer-upper in Elbow Lake, MN for $10,100 and starts knocking walls out. That’s where he finds a copy of Action Comics # 1.

These days, you’re probably going to insulate your walls with a little Owens-Corning pink stuff that will make everything but your insides itch for three solid weeks. In 1938? You stuff the walls with comic books. Crazy, huh?

But it gets crazier. The book is in remarkably good condition, all things considered. It’s been sitting inside a wall for about 70 years, for crying out loud. Vincent Zurzolo of Comic Connect is convinced it was a solid 3.0 before Gonzalez made the tragic error of showing it to his in-laws. After a violent game of “keep away”, the back cover rips and becomes detached at the bottom staple. So when it finally gets to CGC, it comes back a 1.5 grade. Zurzollo is calling it a “$75,000” rip. I think he might be too conservative on that estimate. I think if I’m David Gonzalez, I’m spending most of my comic book proceeds on hiring a contract killer. But that’s just me.

Right now the Gonzalez copy of Action # 1 is up for auction at Comic-Connect, bidding closes on June 11. As I type this, the current bid is $137,000. Gonzalez says that he’s only slated to receive 50% of the proceeds, which sounds fairly absurd to me.

I can see why he might go that route – Comic Connect is an extension of Metropolis Collectibles, a reputable firm with a history of achieving record-breaking sales on that specific book. In order to get top value for the comic it really needs to be certified, and it helps to have somebody with connections to line up a serious buyer. A book like that attracts a certain number of crazies, also potential fraud.

It’s one thing to send in your copy of Amazing Spider-Man # 300 to CGC, (membership fee + about $20 will get that done) and quite another to submit the premier Golden Age comic. I doubt that David Gonzalez was even aware of CGC prior to discovering his copy of Action # 1, so it’s tough for him to know what to do. The problem is that there are “fair market value” price limits on submitting books, and CGC is going to want 3% of that fair market value to grade it.

Even at the extremely conservative estimate of $100,000 raw, that still means it’s going to take $3,000 to get that thing graded. Now, if Gonzalez had enough liquid assets to buy a house for profit, I’m betting he had enough on hand to grade it himself. But he’s still out of his wheelhouse, so I can understand wanting to farm all of that nonsense out to a pro.

If I found that book inside my wall, I wouldn’t have had enough in my couch cushions to get it graded myself. Actually, I think my house was built in about 1980, so when I get around to smashing all my walls in with a four pound sledge, I’m likely to find some ratty copies of the Micronauts, which doesn’t sound quite as exciting. But if we’ve learned anything from David Gonzalez, it’s that houses are just really big, really fun piñatas. You kinda have to just take a literal whack at the superstructure and see what kind of prizes are inside.

Were I Mr. Gonzalez, I think I would have written an email to Buddy Saunders over at Lone Star Comics. Standard commission on those auctions is 10%. You may not get a record result, but then again, maybe you do. The Lone Star folks have some reach as well, and you don’t really need much of a hard sell to get people interested in the first appearance of Superman, do you? Especially not one with such a spicy provenance - who wouldn’t want to own the copy of Action # 1 featuring rips from an insane aunt-in-law? That’s not just history, that’s a conversation piece.

Yeah, I’d hit up Saunders and offer him 15% commission instead of the usual 10% if he fronted the grading fee. I don’t see him saying “no” to that arrangement. Having a copy of Action # 1 is a pretty good draw for your monthly auction. And from my end, a 15% commission sounds a little better than a 50% one. I guess it’s all gravy, though, considering Gonzalez got the whole house for 10K and is going to make at least 5X that on the insulation alone. Only in Minnesota!

Thor # 344

While we're talking market stuff, I thought I’d mention The Mighty Thor # 344. Folks who follow this stuff are claiming that Malekith is the Big Bad of the new Thor movie. Of course, you know how that turned out for Iron Man 3! So, we’re taking all of this with a grain of salt for now.

Another caveat – chasing down movie villains isn’t always as much fun as you might think. I remember when the first Ghost Rider movie came out, there was intense interest in Daredevil # 270 featuring the first appearance of Blackheart. Well, that lasted about five minutes. Today that copy of Daredevil is suitable mainly for lining your hamster cage.

What I’m saying is, if you can find a copy of Thor # 344 in your LCS for a couple of bucks, you might want to grab it and strike while the iron is slightly tepid. In NM shape, I think it’s reasonable to expect that comic to fetch around $15. I would do that as soon as humanly possible, because I don’t believe that window lasts very long. So do it. Worst case scenario, you have a Thor comic by the legendary Walter Simonson, and that’s never something to complain about.

If you do have something to complain about, you can do so by commenting below.

Ugly American #28: SpringCon for Hitler!

While Mike & Remy were busy dominating the East Coast Comics Expo, I was busy in Minnesota dominating the MCBA SpringCon. Or to be more accurate, I was busy being dominated. Now, sometimes I have to pay extra for that with certain social engagements, but it was not really what I was looking for out of my convention experience.

So, SpringCon starts at 10am on Saturday. I and a couple of my friends get in line around 9:45. It’s raining a little, but we’ve got an umbrella and spirits are high. I pay my $12 admission, a lady slaps a bracelet on my wrist, smiles, and says nothing.

We walk in there and start taking the place in, Tom spots the Half Price Books booth on the far end of the building and we start wandering toward it at about quarter impulse power. Next thing I know, I’m catching some angry shouting out of the corner of my ear, followed by louder and angrier shouting. I turn around and discover that the world’s biggest asshole is puffing up on my friend Wally about being “a fan”, and is now bum-rushing me to give me more of the same.

Now…a few words about working retail “security”. I’ve been in that business for about a decade now, so I understand it from both sides. I understand the headaches of dealing with unruly and self-entitled patrons, and I also know that if you’re even a little competent at the job, you begin with respect. In the immortal words of Dalton:

“Be nice….until it’s time to not be nice.”

Well, nobody at the MCBA thought it wise to show their aggro little bouncers Roadhouse before the event. Something else the fine folks at the MCBA missed – the part where they train the staff to direct their customers where they want them to go, or post any kind of signage, or I don’t know….put up some fucking stanchions making a path upstairs where they want to house the chattel prior to 10am.

How difficult would it have been to have the person taking your money say “Hey, head upstairs and get in line until we’re ready to cut everybody loose at 10am.” That seems like a fairly simple thing to implement. Or not. How are the shouting gestapo going to get revenge for their bad high school experience if we tell them what we want?

But it gets better. Once the yelling stopped and actual English entered the equation, we went upstairs without so much as a backhanded comment. And believe me, a good backhand seemed justified. On the second floor I can see the masses in the back of the room, and I can see some folded tables in front of me. I was handed a little “goodie” bag when I paid at the front, door, but I carry a messenger bag with me to any Con I attend so I can have my hands free.

You can probably guess where this is going. I casually stop for a moment to put my goodie bag inside of my messenger bag, and wouldn’t you know it before I can even get the satchel open, there’s more shouting coming at me from forty yards away. I’m talking furious, piercing shrieking. Something about how if I don’t immediately get in the back I’m going to be the last person on the show floor. I couldn’t exactly tell, because I think most of the yelling was in actual German.

Folks….I’m just trying to put one bag inside of another on a convenient flat surface for a grand total of 30 seconds before I queue up with the rest of the Pod People. What is with all the fucking yelling?

The three of us line up in back. Nothing has been prepared or organized, mind you. They’ve got a few hundred people snaked around some pillars in an ad hoc manner. No stanchions, no tape on the floor…you can imagine how much angry barking it took to make that fly. Actually, I didn’t have to imagine it, because a couple minutes after we got in line, there was more shouting from the SS about moving to my right. The din wouldn’t stop until I moved about 8 inches that direction. You think I’m kidding, but I have witnesses. All of that absurdly over bloated rage? That was over 8 inches. I’ve been in the building for a total of less than five minutes and have now been verbally assaulted on three separate instances…..OVER NOTHING. Congratulations, MCBA. You really know how to show a gal a good time.

All of this abuse was for my benefit, mind you, to keep me out of the rain. Please don’t try to help me in the future, MCBA. Not your forte. I was perfectly comfortable outside with an umbrella to protect me from the rain. Who was going to protect me inside from the Fourth Reich?

Once the clock struck 10 and I could deal with the vendors instead of the wardens, everything was fine, of course. Half Price Books is always my first stop, and usually a significant money-maker for me. Not so this time. There was very little in the way of desirable out of print material, and what was there was marked up, not down. I saw an ex-library copy of the Buffy: Spike & Dru trade for $15. That’s a nice book in even average condition, but an ex-library copy is barely even a book. When they’re asking a premium on something that’s been checked out 350 times and is wearing an ugly library sticker on it, I think it’s safe to say that my TPB-selling-cat is quickly escaping its bag.

What I lacked in TPBs at Half Price I more than made up for in Bronze Age gems from Comics4Less, however. What a fantastic business model that crew has! They had about 50 long boxes set up, and 90% of it was bronze-to-modern beauties for $2 a pop. No wall books or silver age keys, but they did have a few long boxes full of some hotter material for $5 a book.
This wasn’t a pile of the usual garbage, either. You know what I’m talking about – the endless sea of post-unity valiant, return of the Supermen books, the piles of Brigade…blech. If you had holes in your collection for that early New 52 stuff? You could have filled a lot of those in for $2 a throw. There was a ton of 70s-90s Amazing Spider-Man available, even some of the rarer end-run issues from the first volume. Alan Moore era Swamp Thing? Check. Bronze Age horror and war titles? Check.

I filled in major gaps of my Master of Kung Fu run (now about 2/3 complete) and Power Man/Iron Fist run, (now about 85% complete) it was all around NM and dirt cheap. And because everything is the same price, there were no annoying price stickers to mess with. I’m the type that just can’t deal with a price sticker on my bag. So when the books come home, I either have to burn an afternoon trying to peel the damn things off, or I have to throw those bags/boards away and use my own. Long story longer, I like everything about Comics4Less.

The big score of the Con was the Layla Miller commission that Doug Mahnke did for me. Readers of this column might remember that I stole Monster Mike’s sketchbook idea during HalCon. Mike is collecting sketches of Supergirl for his daughter Kara. My story doesn’t tug on the heartstrings quite as much, but I sure get emotional about it.

My favorite comics character is Layla Miller from X-Factor. So whenever I go to a Con now, I try and have my favorite artists add their spin on Layla to my book. What’s funny to me is that I’ve got three of them now, and not one of the artists even knew who Layla was. (Somewhere Peter David is frowning and doesn’t know why) Here’s the tip though, folks – if you carry a printed picture of the character for reference, most artists are happy to oblige. Some of them even prefer drawing a figure out of their wheelhouse. If you were Doug Mahnke, would you really want to draw another Hal Jordan?

Actually, he might. But I didn’t ask him to do that. Once I showed him my book, Mahnke’s response was basically “She’s just a woman with an “M” on her face? Pffft, I can do that.” And he did. I think it turned out exceptionally well.

So yeah. The comics made me happy, the original art I scored made me positively glowey, but unfortunately I think I’ll always remember this particular event as “SpringCon for Hitler”.
How was your weekend? You can tell me by posting a comment below. You could also tell me how awesome my Doug Mahnke Layla Miller sketch is. I won’t mind.

PS: Doug Mahnke pronounces his last name” MAN-key”

PPS: Doug Mahnke thinks I’m fairly insane

PPPS: He might be right

Ugly American # 27: Iron Man 3 Review!

So, I went to see Iron Man 3 starring Robert Downey 2 yesterday. ( ©Remington J. Osborn Industries, Inc. 2013) Before we move on, I’d just like to point out that I fully intend to spoil the crap out of everything. So if you don’t want that, then stop reading.

I saw it in 2D, because I finally learned my lesson on 3D after The Avengers – why would I pay more for a slightly less pleasing visual experience? Answer: I don’t any more. I also went with very little in the way of expectations. Because I haven’t spent the last six months in a sensory deprivation chamber, I knew that this instalment featured Ben Kingsley as The Mandarin. I don’t read news or study trailers of movies I know I’m going to see, because I’m savvy enough to understand that parsing the prelude has two possible outcomes:

• I’m wrong about stuff, in which case I was unduly excited about any positives my imagination created and unduly worked up over stuff that didn’t actually make it into the movie. The former breeds disappointment and a sense of being cheated, while the latter breeds bitterness for the entire period up until the actual viewing of the movie. None of that increases my pleasure.

• I’m right about stuff, in which case everything I’m right about is no longer spontaneous or fresh, and can only “meet expectations” at best. This produces an experience equivalent to opening a Christmas present you already knew about in June. Oh boy. How exciting. None of that increases my pleasure.

So for those of you feeling a little bamboozled after dissecting the Iron Man trailers every time Marvel Studios yanked your leash with a few more scenes to pant over….well, you bought your own pain, there, didn’t ya? Cause what you were expecting was a gargantuan battle for the ages between Iron Man and Mandarin.

What you weren’t expecting was a remake of Mr. Mom.

Surprise!

Yes, that’s right, Mr. Mom. You know, the one where Michael Keaton played a very successful businessman and alpha male. Extenuating circumstances caused him to separate from all of those things he was really good at and obsessed over. He becomes a mental basket case. The character arc here is to reach inside and become a better man with a new identity forged in the fires of relationships with kids. The far more mature wife still sort of needs to be saved from a lecherous baddy in the third act, but she doesn’t need nearly as much help as he thinks she does. In the end, the family unit is stronger for the man realizing that he can maintain competence without sacrificing intimacy.

And there you have it, that’s Iron Man 3, only this time Guy Pearce gets socked in the nose by Gwynneth Paltrow instead of Terri Garr blasting Martin Mull in his mug. Oh, there is another key difference. Because the folks at Mr. Mom didn’t have comic book fans to consider, they just told the story and didn’t have to try and swindle you into thinking a funny little addict was really an evil mastermind. But no, Marvel Studios is still comics at heart, so they bent over backwards to make sure you were “wrong”, regardless of the cost.

Let’s pause here and let me clarify a few things. To be fair, the cost of losing The Mandarin wasn’t terribly high, in my opinion. I say that because all of the Ben Kingsley scenes were terrific, whether he was the television construct Mandarin or the actual goofy Trevor Slattery. When Kingsley switched between the two characters mid-sentence, I nearly stood up and clapped it was so wonderful. Yes, it does cheapen the menace of the movie a bit. The Killian character wasn’t a total catastrophe, though, Guy Pearce was good.

It goes deeper than that, though. Remember in the first movie when Tony first gets captured in Afghanistan, and there’s that bit about the Clan of the Ten Rings? The Iron Man franchise has been promising us comic fans that we were getting an Iron Man/Mandarin tilt from the beginning…and now that all turned out to be bullshit. This is in lock step with the current Marvel business model. We’ve paid for out tickets three times, and now that it’s effectively done, Marvel is able to point at us and say “Fuck you, we fooled you!” Which is great. Congratulations. You won, never saw it coming and you made a lot of money in the short term. Why is it that Marvel “winning” always involves a bunch of pissed off regulars?

I think 90% of the people going to see the film won’t register the bait-and-switch as an issue, because they don’t have anything invested in 40 year-old comic stories. That Clan of Ten Rings stuff? The vast majority don’t remember and don’t care. So again, the cost wasn’t terribly high. But there was a cost.

The second thing I wanted to clarify is that I think it’s a fairly interesting and ballsy thing to turn the third act of your superhero magnum opus into a Mr. Mom remake. These days I sometimes prefer an ambitious failure over a well-executed piece of expected cookie-cutter filmmaking. And I don’t think I consider Iron Man 3 a failure at all, really. Because of the film’s conceit, it necessitated a lot more screen time with Robert Downey out of the suit, and all of that is fantastic. He’s incredibly charming, and there was some value in watching Stark try to solve problems without using the armor as a crutch.

On the flip side, I don’t know that I ever fully bought into the concept that Tony Stark, or any other sane person would actually go that route. I had a hard time digesting the idea that Tony would spend so much time mucking about a prototype Mark 42 suit that didn’t work when there were clearly 900 other fully functioning suits available. And by the way, if that army of armors was available to him at the end, why didn’t he just call one or three or seven of those suits to help him from the start instead of dragging his broken suit through the snow with a length of rope or something that inexplicably sprang up from out of nowhere. Why go through the process of storming the castle with jury-rigged equipment from Home Depot when he could have just called in the cavalry at any time?

The answer, of course, is that it wouldn’t have served the story. We needed that time for Tony to be externally vulnerable but building strength internally. We needed that space to build up a rapport with the little kid. And as you’re able to let the logical stuff go, the emotional stuff resonates pretty well and there were a ton of laughs to be had. Well, for me at any rate. I was in the theater with about eight other people, and I was the only one making a sound about anything. So I made a bit of an ass out of myself being the lone gunman of guffawing, but there were lots of funny moments in that movie.

And lots of maddening ones, too. Operation: Clean Slate? Really? The lesson is just to blow all that shit up? Ridiculous. Ridiculous and irresponsible. Also, I think if I saw one more suit of Iron Man armor fall completely to shit because something tapped it, I was going to scream. I can build Lego structures with more stability than Tony Stark assembles his combat armor. Embarrasing.

So yes, Iron Man 3 giveth and taketh away. This will sound bizarre, but I’ll tell you the moment that sold me on the movie forever. When Harley tells Tony about his father abandoning him, Tony’s paraphrased response is:

“Yeah, that happens sometimes, but you don’t have to be a pussy about it.”

First of all, it’s a really funny line. More importantly, in a world increasingly devoted to the worship of victimhood, I applaud anybody with the balls to suggest sucking it up and moving on. And that’s what those two do. Tony’s got anxiety attacks, and Harley has a bullying problem and daddy issues, and it could have been all too 21st Century Bunnified. But nobody crawled up into the fetal position and took a bunch of medication. They problem-solved. They acknowledged the hurt and pushed through it. These are tenets the Ugly American can get behind.

So yeah, Iron Man 3. Is it what you were expecting? Hell no. Will you laugh a bunch of times? Damn right. Does it make some interesting and also baffling choices? Check, and check. Is it a good film? Ehhhh….yes? Yes, I think it is. But if I’m going to watch that story, I think I’ll just go back to the original, when it was called Mr. Mom.

Ugly American # 26: FCBD Edition!

File this in the “duh” category, but I love Free Comic Book Day. It’s really a minor miracle, when you think about it. Unusual that the publishers ordinarily obsessed with wringing the last nickel out of their current base have the prescience to see the value in using that loss leader as a gateway to future sales. At least once per year they do, anyway. Unusual that so many retailers (many of whom don’t seem to understand that these are products meant to be sold, not just stocked) go above and beyond to push for a real event.

FCBD is important to me. I go to multiple venues, and I pay attention to what’s going on when I get there. There are lots of ways to skin the free comic cat, and I’m always interested in how different shops handle that. I want to know if interest in the event is waxing or waning, expanding or sinking into apathy. I scout out the registers and exits, to see how many people are also spending cash, and how many are just sucking off the free teat. Mostly, though? I want to see how many new faces are in the house, and how many of them are kid faces.

I’m happy to report that in the Minneapolis area, FCBD is bigger than ever. My “home base” at this point is Hot Comics in New Hope. I got there around 2pm, they had been open since 8am. The place was PACKED, and the line was snaking around the store. Lots of kids in there. LOTS of kids. Recognized almost nobody, which was very promising. Noticed a lot of questions from newbies, and there were actual staff there to act as sherpas. And everybody in that joint was spending money.

At Hot Comics, they gave you plenty of reason to spend money – 50% off back issues, 30% off trades, 25% off toys and apparel, and 20% off the expensive “wall books”. That’s aggressive. That’s how you put your best foot forward, though. You had the option of just grabbing some free books off a display table…by the time I got there it was bare except for Marvel’s Infinity and the Valiant offering.

If you made any kind of purchase, though, Hot Comics had pre-packaged bags with about a dozen books inside. There were two flavors, a kid’s pack and an adult’s pack. Very smart. I took the adult bag, and it was loaded with everything I was looking for, most especially that Oni FCBD edition with Roberson’s Strangers (already trading for $10-$15 on eBay, for crying out loud) and the Dark Horse flip-book with Gerard Way’s Killjoys. There was lots to like, though. Some lovely painted art in the Top Cow Aphrodite IX comic, and who doesn’t like Judge Dredd or Atomic Robo, particularly at the bargain basement price of free?

I’ve been to HCC on Black Friday and for big sales, and I’ve never seen activity in that joint like I did today. I can’t imagine what it was like when the doors first opened! Here’s the part that impresses me, though – there is absolutely no way they could have anticipated getting slammed quite like they did. But I got my full pack of free comics, and they were in no danger of running out when I left.

It’s tough to be a comics retailer in 2013. You’d like to order through to the moon, but this stuff is non-returnable. Granted, for FCBD you’re only on the hood for the shipping…but paper is heavier than you think. In this case, Hot Comics did the right thing and really sold out on this event, making sure everybody was happy when they left. I hope they made a billion dollars and a thousand new customers, because they earned it today.

I got everything I was looking for out of the FCBD offerings in one stop, loaded up on a pile of Harley Quinn back issues, bought a nice copy of Authority # 1 for $4 and a less than NM but still perfectly awesome copy of Uncanny X-Men # 141 for $9. Days of Future Past, people! Fantastic.

Next stop was Twin City Comics. By the time I got there around 3:30pm, there was little left but crumbs for the FCBD books. I got there pretty late, so it’s partly on me. It’s a little weird to me that not even the DC “Last Son of Krypton” book was available, though, usually the Big Two books are in plentiful supply. I would have liked another copy of the Oni and Dark Horse comic, but them’s the breaks.

While the free books ended up being a mild disappointment, the not-so-free books offered up some unexpected scores. I went digging through the back issue bins, the sale was a “buy two, get one free” offer. I’m pretty familiar with the stock at every LCS in my area, but out of the corner of my eye I see a copy of Batman Adventures # 12 at the front of a strange box of kids comics below the regular back issues. I’ve never seen that material at TCC before. Maybe I just missed it?

Sure enough, I see a VF copy of Harley Quinn’s first appearance in comics with a $5.50 price tag! That would be a fine jackpot on its own, but after peeling back a couple of issues I see another copy, this one in NM 9.2 condition with a $5.00 sticker on it. I can get $75-$80 for the one, and around $100 for the other. And I got the really nice one for free – thank you, Free Comic Book Day!

Next on the list was The Source in Falcon Heights, easily the biggest shop in Minnesota. I knew it was busy long before I got inside, because the place was so crazy busy I had to park three blocks away!

This is the best part, though. As I get near the entrance, I see a father and three boys coming out, and every one of them has a smile plastered on their faces. The kids look between the ages of 8-12, and they all have what appear to be packages of Hero Clix. The oldest boy is jumping up and down and says “That was awesome, dad!” Then the middle kid is tearing into his Hero Clix before he even gets to the car and says “Let’s get this party started!” That is an actual thing that came out of human’s mouth when I went to The Source today.

Now, I don’t want to over-dramatize this, but that’s incredible. And I don’t even care that they didn’t seem to be directly interested in comics. (Dad certainly had his pack of free comics in tow, though) Do you know how many people read comics because of Spider-Man and X-Men cartoons? I don’t think it’s too out of whack to suggest that 20% of the whole constituency got there in just such a manner. So if those kids are into Hero Clix, and I dare say they are WAY into Hero Clix, then we just won. Because someday, when they’re ready, they will need a new place to put all that love. And if we keep the torch burning with FCBD events, the comics will still be there when that time comes.

Once I got in, I headed straight to the back and discovered that they had also created pre-packaged bags of free comics, also in kids/adult varieties. With my adult pack in hand I hit the sales floor, where everything was 20% off.

I came a cat’s whisker from snapping up a Rocketeer Artist’s edition. It was ticketed at $149.99, which my phone tells me would have come down to about $120. A very fair price, but unfortunately the box had a really unattractive groove hacked into it. If I’m going to drop $120, I don’t want the book looking like it got into a fight with Danny Trejo. I also spied an Ame Comi Harley Quinn mini-figure there last week, but it was gone today. Sigh. That’s the price you pay for not getting to the sale until after 5:00pm. The good news was that I was tripping over children the entire time I was in the store. There were an insane number of people in general, but a shocking number of them were still in grade school. Very inspiring.

I have a rule that I don’t enter a comic shop without buying something. It’s a pretty easy rule to follow. I settled on a nearly pristine copy of Tomb of Dracula # 33 for $8 after discount. I’m totally in love with anything from the Bronze Age at this point, with the horror and war books at the top of my list. When I was growing up, I wanted nothing to do with either. Now, if you show me a nice copy of Werewolf by Night, I can’t help but smile. Or any cover that Mike Zeck drew. But I digress.

When I got outside, I peeked inside my Source bag of free comics and was simultaneously impressed and disappointed. There was only current FCBD comic inside, and was the Infinity book that I already had two copies of. I was really expecting to find another assortment of FCBD books like I got at Hot Comics. Also in the bag were a trio of the $1.00 DC “After Watchmen” books, and a copy of Starcraft # 1. So in terms of retail value, I got way more “bang for my buck” from The Source. I would much rather have had my choice of FCBD material, though. Ah well.

Incidentally, that Infinity book was sort of an odd duck. On the plus side, I sure do like looking at things that Jim Cheung draws. That part was good. The story does some strange things, though. It mostly centers on those weird alien guys that bookend the Avengers movie. Apparently, they are genetically engineered parasites called “Outriders”, and at least some of them work for Thanos.

I can certainly see the benefit in adding depth to the movie mythos. I don’t know if you’ve heard, but a few people went to see that Avengers film. Unfortunately, there’s a series of “then” and “soon” and “47 minutes ago” time-shift cues that unnecessarily muddy the narrative waters of what should have been a dirt simple progression. Also, the outriders don’t really do much apart from posture and say mean things to aliens you aren’t familiar with and don’t care about.

Finally, the issue closes with a nebulous phantom of a future threat you don’t understand and aren’t invited to feel anything about. Ghostly Outriders seem to be touching Marvel characters on their heads. What does that even mean? I suppose it’s meant to be a mystery, and I’m intended to be intensely curious about the whole thing. Mostly now I just look at these things and say “would somebody please tell me what the fuck is actually going on here?” I don’t think that’s the goal, but that’s the result.

I’m not going to dwell on that, though. I’m going to dwell on all the energy I was feeling in those local shops today, all the great comics I got for free, all the great comics I got for cheap, and all those excited kids I saw today. Let’s get this party started!

PS: Please do tell me about your FCBD experience by commenting below.