Review: Batman: Black and White #2

This second issue of DC's 2013 revival of the 1996 miniseries of the same name features a cover by Jim Steranko, and while I don't really get the visual elements being incorporated (Batman's vague, somewhat saintly gesture and cowl of thorns look particularly strange to my eye, particularly given the ants, house and puzzle pieces, but perhaps it's just an allusion I didn't catch), hey, DC got Jim fucking Steranko to draw a Batman cover for them.

If that's not a "get," I don't know what is. I hope editor Mark Chiarello got plenty of high-fives for that.

"Manbat Out of Hell"
Written by Dan DiDio, drawn by J. G. Jones

More interesting than DiDio's writing of this story to me would be an accurate telling of how his work keeps cropping up in each of the various prestige projects it does, given that, more often than not, he's the odd man out in terms of either talent or reputation.

Naturally he's co-publisher of DC Comics, but is his inclusion conditional, like "Sure, I'll greenlight the project, if you promise to let me script one of the stories"...? Is it a particular artist asking DiDio to collaborate, because they're friends, because of some genuine admiration of DiDio's writing, or because they think it would be a good career move? Does it come from DiDio innocently mentioning in passing how he wishes he had more opportunities to write, particularly short stories,a nd an editor or artists mistaking it for some sort of passive-aggressive coercion on the boss' part...?

I don't know, but as with a few similar projects—Wednesday Comics, Batman Incorporated Special—DiDio stands out as one of the few who is neither a legendary creator nor one unlikely to ever get to play with the character in other contexts.

This short story is sort of troubling, to be honest.

The World's Greatest Detective sees Man-Bat (I didn't forget the hyphen in the story title; they did) in the process of attacking a man that works at a foster home. Batman acts to stop his old frenemy, and it isn't until they fight for a few pages that Batman notices that the foster kids in the room are actually Man-Bat's own children, that there's photographic equipment all around and that there are photos of child pornography scattered about the room (see above).

That's the heart of the story, the reversal in which Batman realizes the real villain and monster isn't the frightening-looking comics character. That, and perhaps also that the narrator isn't Batman himself, but Becky Langstrom.

In other words: Batman and Man-Bat vs. Kiddie Porn.

When Batman realizes his mistake, he cuts the bat-rope he had just tied Man-Bat down with, allowing  his long-time frenemy to go after the pornographer, telling the foster home employee gone bad, "I won't hurt you. I don't waste my time on scum like you."

Which is, uh, kind of true, given how infrequently child abuse and especially child pornography or sex crimes of any kind involving children crop up in Batman narratives (Andrew Vachss' prose novel Batman: The Ultimate Evil being a rather rare exception), but also kind of a weird thing for Batman to admit in a story that forces him into confronting it. His dismissive dialogue makes it sound as if he thinks such a heinous real-world crime is beneath him; he only deals with costumed criminals.

Siccing Man-Bat on the scum to seemingly murder him off-panel is pretty un-Batmanly behavior, but given the continuity-free nature of the stories in this project (In which the only real rules seem to be that each story must be 1.) Short, 2.) Have Batman and 3.) Be black-and-white), it's not really that weird or unusual.

J.G. Jones' photorealistic works looks great in black-and-white and, frankly, far better than it does in color, if you ask me. There's a luminous quality to all the whites within it (which probably doesn't come through all that great in these images, which you're looking at on a black and white website).

His design for Man-Bat is pretty excellent, giving the character actual head of an actual bat, and big, huge, proportionate wings (Contrast it with the werewolf-with-a-leather shawl version in the recent "Man-Bat" Villains Month issue).

I don't like the way he handles the fingers and hands of Man-Bat though; after spending a lot of time thinking about bat-wings over the last year or so, I don't think the character should have hands and wings...maybe just an opposable thumb at most (This Man-Bat has seven or eight fingers, counting the three extra ones in his wing membrane).

"Into The Circle"
By Rafael Grampa

By far the best, most interesting and most exciting story in this particular issue, Grampa's artwork is incredible, and each and every one of his character designs is bursting and crackling with an idiosyncratic life of its own. Not just the main players, but also the regular street criminals, who most any other artist would render as more-or-less generic. Grampa gives each of them a sharp and distinct design, looking a bit like they were assembled from parts borrowed and synthesized from E.C. Segar tough guys, Jamie Hewlett Gorillaz characters and old-school Dick Tracy heavies.

Each of them would normally be at least as interesting as The Joker, were Grampa's Joker not so unique. This Robot 6 headline is right—Grampa's Joker is the most disturbing one yet. (Suck it, New 52, flayed-off face Joker!)

Ironically, I sort of wish this Joker was in color, as I'm curious about his mouth. I'm assuming it's all red in varying degrees of intensity around his real mouth, and that the tooth like impressions around it are just lighter bits of red, either painted on or some element of the chemically-induced deformity, but that's left to the imagination. Actually, the exact nature of this Joker's look might be dependent on a twist in the story, but still: Awesome design.

Grampa's story isn't just a bunch of great drawings though (And hoo-boy, is that fight-scene with Batman awesome!); there's a very clever little twist to it, with great crazy-person Joker narration, and some pretty smart, proactive crime-fighting strategy on the part of Batman and Alfred.

"A Place In Between"
By Rafael Albuquerque

Batman finds himself on a skiff in the River Styx, with Deadman playing Charon. As a regular Batman reader for years, I had a pretty hard time buying some elements of Albuquerque's story—Batman not recognizing a scene from Greek myth, Batman not recognizing Deadman, Batman and/or readers being asked to believe that its not clear if superhero Batman would end up heaven or hell after death—which is probably two little road bumps too many for me in a story that's only eight-pages long.

Albuquerque sure draws the hell out of everything though, and this is another example of artwork that actually looks better in black and white than in color. He does a great job of selling a Batman-with-pupils, too, which a lot of artists have a hard time pulling off convincingly, and I enjoyed the surprise appearance of a favorite Bat-villain.

"Winter's End"
By Jeff Lemire and Alex Nino

Lemire the writer isn't really a big deal, and seems a bit out of place here, given how regularly one can find Lemire's writing in the rest of DC's line these days (Lemire the cartoonist, or Lemire the artist, however, would have seemed more deserving of inclusion here). But if someone had to write something for Alex Nino to draw, I suppose it might as well have been Lemire.

This is a pretty straight-forward, even generic story about Batman fighting ninjas in the snow while wearing the sort of arctic adventure battle-suit that a Batman toy-line might include. There's mention of Mister Freeze and The Riddler, both somewhat randomly and out-of-place, but Nino doesn't draw them and Lemire doesn't write them in story.

This is mainly just a showcase for Nino's weird, angular artwork, his thin, kinetic, occasionally tortured-looking character designs and his admirably bizarre technological and architectural elements.

"Silent Knight...Unholy Knight!"
Written by Michael Uslan
Illustrated by Dave Bullock

This is a great showcase for Bullock, an incredible artist whose work bears a striking resemblance to that of his peer Darwyn Cooke, only generally with a more detailed, illustrative quality.

This is premised as a silent movie, and the Batman who appears is the "first-appearance" Batman, with a Golden Age Bat-mobile and logo. After a page devoted to replicating the credit sequence of a movie, this is presented in a format similar to that of a silent movie, with dialogue and narration appearing on title cards between action panels.

The level of detail in the art, the irregular panel shapes, the degree of action and variety of angles all seem more modern than silent movie era though; viewed as a film, this would have to bee seen as a film aping silent movies. It's still gorgeous though.

The plot introduces a new villain, albeit one with the name of an old, somewhat obscure DC period hero) who, in a rather prevalent tradition of Batman villains, shares a great deal of origin and modus operandi with Batman, but went in the opposite direction.

Cheater-pants at DC reveal final cover for Brightest Day Aftermath: The Search for Swamp Thing #1

Today at DC's Source blog, the publisher revealed the final cover for the first issue of Brightest Day Aftermath: The Search for Swamp Thing. When the series, was originally announced, prior to the revelation that the Swamp Thing character would be rejoining the DCU portion of their publishing line after years of being "off-limits" outside of their Vertigo mature readers imprint, the book was simply entitled Brightest Day Aftermath: The Search, and they revealed a terrible cover with two of the characters in silhouette only. The new cover has the characters filled in—one was apparently blacked-out to protect the secret that John Constantine would also be appearing in the DCU for the first time since (I want to say) 1996, and the other one was blacked out apparently just to keep things extra mysterious.

Here's the original image, followed by the final one: As you can see, they cheated with the outlines—particularly on the far right—in order to ensure secrecy. They've done this before, to protect the line-up of the Brad Meltzer re-launched Justice League of America before the first few issues came out.

The final Search For... cover's still not a very good piece of work, although I do like the fact that Constantine is facing away from them and smoking a cigarette. It makes it look like the heroes are all reacting to his smoking, and, as you can see, their reactions range from Superman's fury to Zatanna's concern.

There will also be a variant cover to the comic, because how could there not be a variant cover to a comic book in 2011, and it's by artist J.G. Jones: In rendering and overall design, it's superior, although not something that knocks my socks off. The best part though? Look at how cute Jones' bats are:Batman just doesn't spend enough time hanging out with cute bats. He's always in the company of big, scary bats.

Hey Kids! Comics!

(From DC Comics’ Final Crisis #6, written by Grant Morrison and illustrated by J.G. Jones. Re-posted here on EDILW, just so I can have all my scans of Marvel Family gore, violence and crotch shots all collected in one place)

Should DC maybe have some kind of rule about the maximum

number of books that can be released in a single week in which the villains discuss raping Supergirl?

(From Action Comics #872, written by Geoff Johns and illustrated by Pete Woods and Brad Anderson)


(From Final Crisis #5, written by Grant Morrison and illustrated by J.G. Jones and Alex Sinclair)

Hey Kids! Comics!

(Panel from Final Crisis #5, written by Grant Morrison and illustrated by J.G. Jones and Alex Sinclair)

I just had a thought about Final Crisis #4

You know that scene where The Flashes find Iris Allen sitting in her apartment, watching the TV with the omega sign on it, receiving a steady stream of Anti-Life Equation? And then Barry Allen plants a lighting kiss on her and cures her?

Is this because the two of them share some cosmic love connection, and his kiss is like the prince awakening poisoned Snow White from death? Or is the Speed Force that gives Flash his powers Anti-Anti-Life, or are Flash kisses simply able to counteract the effects of the Anti-Life Equation?

Does this mean that Barry Allen could save the day simply by running around the world at super-speed, planting kisses on everybody currently in the thrall of the Anti-Life Equation?

Man, that would be awesome if Final Crisis #7 were nothing but 30 pages of nine-panel-grids of Flash making out with people...

Links!

—Three DC books set to ship last Wednesday didn’t actually show up on the shelves; bumped from the schedule at the last minute. All-Star Batman and Robin, the Boy Wonder had that problem with improperly printing the black bars over the swear words, Action Comics had Superman drinking a beverage out of a bottle that could conceivably have been beer (straining my eyes on the scans, the label looked like “Crow Root Beer” to me, but maybe it was “Crow Lite Beer,” I dunno), and DC Universe: Decisions…wait, why did DC Universe: Decisions fail to ship last week?

If you’ve forgotten, that’s the stupid-sounding book about DC’s Justice League heroes trying to defend presidential candidates from an assassin and getting pulled into politics. But for maximum irrelevance, they’re totally fake, fantasy candidates, not Barack Obama and John McCain, because who would be interested in reading about real politicians in their funny books? (Besides everyone who picked up the Barack Obama issue of Savage Dragon and is looking forward to the IDW bios, of course).

DC’s impulse to keep real-world politics out of their funny books is understandable, since I imagine a surprising number of their readers are probably Republican and pretty much all of their superheroes are all moderate to extremely super-liberal Democrats (except Hal Jordan, Hawkman and Guy Gardner). Of course, that being the case, why on earth even bother doing a story about superheroes and the presidential election?

No word on why this is a week late yet. I had hoped it was because DC noticed at the last minute that “Hey, this is a horrible idea for a comic book…and look, this Judd Winick guy is a rotten writer! We can’t publish this crap!”

But it was on shelves this week, so it was merely delayed. What was changed during that delay? I don’t know, but I wish I did.

On Monday, Comic Book Resources gossip columnist Rich Johnston wondered aloud if it had something to do with one of the candidates looking a little bit too much like Condoleeza Rice, but that couldn’t have been it, as the final issue still had a Condoleeza Rice lookalike in it. Retailer and Savage Critic Brian Hibbs noted that the cover was apparently changed slightly, in a minor (and weird) way that I can’t even begin to make sense out of a possible motivation for.


—Instead of blacking out the swear words in All-Star Batman and Robin, the Boy Wonder, maybe they should just print this exhortation from Captain Marvel on the covers of DC comics with R-rated language?


—Remember when it was announced that those charming rascals Mark Millar and Bryan Hitch would be taking over the monthly Fantastic Four comic for some reason, and there was no way it was going to be late because Hitch was seriously already one million issues ahead and even though they totally lied all those other times about being so far ahead that lateness wouldn’t be an issue this time they really, really mean it baby so just give them one more chance please?

Well guess what?

Retailer, blogger and tireless swamp monster advocate Mike Sterling noticed that Fantastic Four finally missed a month in July.

I don’t find that really all that remarkable—who believes anything Mark Millar ever says about anything at this point anyway?—but I did find it kind of remarkable that there wasn’t the sort of fanbase freak out about this creative team’s failure to deliver on time after such strong assurances that they would.

I remember during Ultimates and Ultimates 2 this was A Really Big Deal, but now I either don’t read as much industry hype news as I did back then, or readers just don’t really care any more.

Are Millar and Hitch not the white-hot creative team they once were? Is there just too much Millar product out there at the moment? (FF is one of four Marvel series he’s currently scripting) Are Marvel fans just much less interested in the FF than in The Ultimates? Or is a one month delay just not even really worth noticing in today’s industry, with books like Spider-Man/Black Cat, All-Star Batman and Robin, the Boy Wonder, Allan Heinberg’s Wonder Woman and Ultimate Wolverine Vs. Hulk having set the bar for timeliness so low that a Millar/Hitch FF book missing a month is beneath most readers’ notice?

I imagine it has something to do with all of those factors, as the sales for this creative team’s FF have been much lower than I would have expected, which seems to indicate a general lack of interest in the book relative to other Millar/Hitch or Millar/Any Other Artist projects.


—I will totally cry if Kirsten Dunst doesn’t return as Mary Jane in the next Spider-Man movie. They will be manly tears, but tears nonetheless.


—Speed Racer was released on DVD this week, which is tremendous news. To hell with Iron Man and The Dark Knight; for all their virtues, I think Speed Racer is still the best comic book-based movie of the year and, in fact, one of the best movies I’ve seen this year (By virtue of being a film that did things previous films haven’t, and thus showing viewers things they haven’t seen before).

Kevin Church posted a highlight-filled video featuring the theme that played over the end credits under the post headline “I am SO obsessed with this.”

His obsession is contagious.

I’ve watched that video like eight times since he posted it so far. And as awesome as it is—featuring Speed’s flying scissor lock and Pops’ overhead ninja-spinning among all the car acrobatics—it doesn’t even include some of the best parts of the film (like Racer X punching a Viking racecar driver in the face while both of their race cars are airborne).

God, I love that movie.


—After a few brief sentences on it in yesterday’s weekly review-o-rama, I thought I’d come back to comment on All-Star Superman #12 more thoughtfully at some point in the near future.

But then I read Savage Critic and Jog the Blog blogger Joe McCulloch’s review, and now don’t feel any real need to. McCulloch just plain nailed it, and all I can think to add is “What he said.”


—The last image of Superman in All-Star Superman, industriously working to rebuild the heart of the sun from within, toiling at a lever while we see some vague-looking machinery in the background, made me think immediately of Guy Maddin’s 2000 short film, The Heart of the World.

If you haven’t seen it and have six minutes to spare, check it out:



It’s a silent(-ish) film about a beautiful young scientist named Anna who discovers the heart of the word is dying and who is being wooed by a mortician, an actor playing Jesus in a passion play and an industrialist. So obviously the plot is very different from Morrison and Quitely’s Superman story.

But like All-Star Superman, it ends with the principal character deciding to save the world by becoming the new center of a heavenly body, and, also like All-Star Superman, it’s a passionate love letter to its own medium.

Proceed with caution though. The score may be stuck in your head for the rest of your life; it’s been in mine for about eight years now.


—Did you read any DC comics that were released this week? If so, you probably saw this week’s DC Nation column. Hey look, it’s former Best Shots @ Newsarama.com contributor Janelle Siegel between two of her fellow new assistant editors! Congrats again Janelle; now I’ll feel (a tiny bit) bad when I complain about the terrible, terrible Batman books…


—Tom Bondurant notices that Final Crisis, despite being a story Grant Morrison has supposedly had written before Countdown, despite the assurances from creators and editors that there would be no delays, despite having a skip-month built in and despite additional pencillers being brought in to speed J.G. Jones along, is going to be late after all.

Huh. Maybe Jones shouldn’t have been going to quite so many conventions and doing quite so many interviews over the last few months, or maybe DC should have simply hired an artist who can draw a book a month for their latest big crossover.


—It’s Joe Kubert’s birthday and oh my God Joe Kubert is old! I knew he had to be getting up there, but I didn’t realize he was already in his early eighties. It’s hard to believe he’s still just as good as he ever was, and that he’s still as productive as he is, pumping out far more pages in the last two years than either of his sons.

I think I’ll go re-read some Showcase Presents: Enemy Ace stories to celebrate…


—Uh-oh. Speaking of Enemy Ace, Dan DiDio mentioned the most bad-ass pilot of all time in explaining this “Faces of Evil” theme month DC’s doing in January. I think such theme-months are pretty great ideas, particularly if the individual issues are all approached as done-in-one jumping on points (as was the case with “Big Head” month and Eisner-like logo month and, to a lesser extent, the post-Zero Hour #0 issues and “The One Year Later” issues).

I’m a little worried to see Anarky’s name pop up again, and extremely perplexed by Enemy Ace’s inclusion. Unless he’s popping up in the pages of Booster Gold (awesome!) or in a special issue of Jonah Hex in which a very old Hex fights him (with guest art by Joe Kubert?…Please…?), I can’t imagine which of DC’s books the Hammer of Hell would fit into without it sucking too badly.

Of course, if the Justice League found him frozen in a block of ice Captain America-style and made them their new leader, that might be pretty cool…

Hey Kids! Comics!

(This page of boobs, blood and a beheaded dog is from Final Crisis #3, written by Grant Morrison and illustrated by J.G. Jones and Alex Sinclair)

Wanted and race

As comics fans will find this Friday, the film Wanted falls closer to From Hell and League of Extraordinary Gentleman than to 300 or 30 Days of Night, in terms of how closely it adapts its comic book source material. Like those two bowdlerized versions of Alan Moore books, Wanted bears so little resemblance to its source that its somewhat puzzling that the studio bothered adapting it at all, instead of just giving it an original name.

Gone are the supervillains and superheroes, the costumes, most of the characters, the worldwide conspiracy controlling the nature of reality, the amorality, the metafictional aspects and, um, the plot. All director Timur Bekmambetov and his three-man screen-writing team keep are the title, the names of two characters, and two brief scenes (Wesley shooting flies with a gun; Wesley shooting corpses on meat hooks).

Is that a good thing or a bad thing?

Neither, really; it’s just an observation (For an assessment of the virtues of the film, I should have a review up at Donewaiting.com on Thursday afternoon).

I think losing so much of it—particularly the superhero/supervillain content and the big idea that the DCU multiverse is really real and the real world is really a fiction, but Lex Luthor and company made us think the opposite—loses what makes Wanted Wanted, but it doesn’t necessarily make the movie itself bad (or good).

The moral point of view of the movie is also almost opposite of that expressed in the comic; the film’s Wesley is a bit arrogant and a total badass assassin, but he’s still the hero; he’s not a murderer, rapist and villain, as he is in the comic.

Movie-Wesley also isn’t a racist.

Is Comic Book-Wesley? I’m not sure, but the case can certainly be made that he is. Or, at the very least, that the white character has some issues with characters with darker skin than his. Or should the case be made that it is the character’s creator, the guy filling his head with thoughts and his mouth with words, who has some issues?

I hadn’t reread Wanted since it’s release about four years ago, and, when I reread it last week after seeing the film, I was pretty shocked at some of the ways race plays out in the book.

During 2006’s Civil War, Millar wrote a scene in which a clone of an Aryan, blonde-haired, blue-eyed Norse god murdered a black hero, and some folks jokingly pointed out the symbolism online. While I was a little bummed about Goliath getting killed, and thought the scene was a turning point for the quality of the series, I certainly didn’t see anything racist, intentionally or unintentionally, about it.

In Kick-Ass, the third issue of which was just released a few weeks ago, Millar has a white kid playing vigilante attack some black kids in the first issue, fight some Puerto Ricans in the second issue and then attack some black dudes in the third issue. I gave up on the series due to its exceptionally poor writing, but simply attributed the white guy-fighting-minorities story thread as tone deafness on Millar’s part, akin to his clumsy, out-of-touch pop culture references and complete divorce from how the human body responds to punishment.

But the questionable aspects of Wanted are harder to dismiss.

Here’s a scene from #3, in which the leaders of the five crime families meet, and neo-Nazi supervillain The Future tells off Vandal Sava—er, Adam One:

Now, The Future is not just a supervillain, but he’s a Nazi supervillain, so the fact that this evil jerk is also racist hardly seems like a shock or surprise. He also complains that he was promised the Jews by his fellow evil rulers of the world, and, in the very next panel there, talks about how women fantasize about being raped by fascists.

So yeah, not a good guy. Him hurling racist epithets is pretty much to be expected.

But what about this? Here’s Wesley narrating a scene from #1:

I’m not sure what to make of this scene. He points out that she’s African-American in the narration, and in the next sentence says “I’m embarrassed by the situation.” Embarrassed that he’s being yelled? Or that he’s being yelled at by his “African-American boss” as he says, or that he has an “African-American boss” at all?

I don’t know. But including the words “African-American” to the narration at all encourages one of the latter readings. The art clearly indicates that the woman he’s talking about is African-American, so why redundantly mention her race if he was only embarrassed by the fact that he was taking shit from his boss?

Then, two panels later:

The meaning of the word “cholo” has changed over the years, but is apparently most often used to refer to poor Mexicans or immigrants from anywhere south of the U.S. border these days.

And in #2, there’s this:

I’m not sure what he means by “Spike Lee extra;” is he simply referring to New Yorkers? Because that’s kind of a weird thing to say: “On the way home from work tonight, every New Yorker in the entire fucking world will have spat on my back again.” What does that even me?

Or does he mean “black guy,” like the guys in the panel seem to be?

After Wesley is recruited by the supervillains of The Fraternity and butches up, we get this charming sequence, which is an awful lot like the scene at the climax of Kick-Ass #1:

So Wesley’s a racist, even if he uses softer terms like “Spike Lee extra” and “African-American” instead of dropping N-bombs or terms as crass as The Future used.

That by itself wouldn’t be all that troubling either, as Wesley is, like The Future, a villain too. One of the subversive aspects of Wanted the comic book is that it’s a superhero book without any real superheroes; just villains. Wesley’s a better supervillain only in that he’s smarter and tougher than the other villains, and that he rapes women instead of children and animals, like The Joker Mr. Rictus.

Complicating that reading, however, is this panel:

Wesley’s boss isn’t a supervillain. She’s just a civilian, one who appears in about two panels of the whole six-issue series. And she’s giving Wesley shit, not about his job performance, but about being white. She unfairly stereotypes Wesley as being a member of the KKK and having a small dick just because he’s white.

I don’t understand this panel at all. What’s Millar trying to say? That she’s racist too, and that there aren’t really any innocent civilians in the world? Because it’s a weird example. One would imagine she wouldn’t be able to be in any kind of position of authority if she was always publicly ridiculing her white underlings for their whiteness, you know?

The only other black character in the book is Catwom—er, Halle Berr—er, The Fox, and while she has substantially more panel-time than, say, The Professor or Mr. Rictus, her character is hardly more developed: She likes having sex (to the point that she regards both Gibsons as life support systems for their cocks, which is all she’s interested in about them), she likes money, she likes killing people and she never, ever lets her nouns and verbs or tenses agree.

Considering these scenes, it’s understandable why the filmmakers wouldn’t want to stay too faithful to the source material—some of it is pretty ugly, and would give the film a lot more baggage than anyone would reasonably want to invest millions of dollars into lugging around in public.

Mark Millar: Still just comic book-famous, or famous-famous?

Today The Incredible Hulk opens in theaters, and in just two short weeks the next of this summer’s many based-on-a-comic-book movies will see release: Wanted, Night Watch director Timur Bekmambetov’s adaptation of Mark Millar and J.G. Jones’ 2003 Top Cow miniseries of the same name.

See this?

That’s a pass for a preview screening of the film. In most media markets of a certain side, they do preview screenings of movies, to ensure reviews and coverage the weekend of release, as well as word-of-mouth. For studio movies, this usually entails an evening screening in a big theater house, with critics mixed in with a large crowd.

The studios hire local or regional advertising and/or PR firms to organize these, and they in turn usually partner with a local media institution like (newspaper, radio station, TV station) to distribute these passes. Sometimes those media will then partner with a local business to help them distribute passes. For example, when I worked for a local altweekly, our advertising people would get a stack of passes that they would give to a business to give away, usually trying to find a business whose clientele would be likely to appreciate the film (For example, if the movie were based on a video game, they might approach a video game store; for one based on a comic book, they might approach a comic book store, and so on).

The passes usually look like the one in the picture there. On one side, is a version of the movie poster, and on the reverses is all of the pertinent info about the screening—when and where it is, how many it’s good for, some fine print regarding not recording it on your cell phone camera and posting it on the Internet, et cetera.

Sometimes, they contain a little bit of info about the film. That’s the case with Wanted.
(Above: This is what the pass looks like in Looking Glass Land).

There’s a little paragraph about the movie, and I found the phrasing of this paragraph about Wanted to be kind of interesting, from an inside-comics-fandom-looking-out perspective, anyway.

It’s just two sentences long:

Based upon Mark Millar’s explosive graphic novel series and helmed by stunning visualist director Timur Bekmambetov—creator of the most successful Russian film franchise in history—Wanted tells the tale of one apathetic nobody’s transformation as he is introduced to a new life and new powers that he never knew existed. In 2008, the world will be introduced to a hero for a new generation: Wesley Gibson.

We’ve all noticed the increasing mainstream acceptance of comics and comics culture over the last decade or so, something that seemed so gradual for so long, and suddenly, BOOM! the rest of the world suddenly started caring about this art form we’re all so passionate about.

Now terminology has always been a problem in discussing comics/comix/graphic novels/sequential art, and we seem to have settled on “graphic novel” through usage, but it’s kinda problematic, particularly if one cares to sit down and start to draw lines separating around what a graphic novel is and what it isn’t. (Is Neil Gaiman’s Sandman a graphic novel, or a series of graphic novels, or a comic book series? Technically, it’s a comic book series, right? But when the comics are collected into a trade, then it becomes a graphic novel and, hell, collect the graphic novels into a giant omnibus, and suddenly it’s only two graphic novels).

Anyway, Wanted is referred to as a “graphic novel series,” which it isn’t. It’s a comic book series. It was published in six single floppy, stapled, spine-less issues. You could call it a graphic novel, if “comic book” or “comic book series” bears negative connotations—I’m fascinated at the acceptance comics have when referred to as “graphic novels” as opposed to “comic books”—since it has since been collected into a trade paperback format, with a spine and binding and a single cover and all. But to call it a series of graphic novels, you’d have to argue that each and every single issue of it was a graphic novel, and I don’t think one can argue that.

The other thing I found interesting, the thing that actually made me thin there was a post in this at all, was that it mentioned writer Mark Millar, but not artist J.G. Jones.

Now, the credits for the film—the one’s that appear on the poster, anyway—says “Based on the series of comic books by Mark Millar and J.G. Jones,” but Jones’ name isn’t on the paragraph on the other side of the pass above.

That indicates that whoever composed that paragraph thought Millar’s name was more important than Jones’. This surprised me, because I was under the impression that neither of the creators were names that anyone outside of comics would have ever even heard of, let alone be a selling point. Millar might be one of the biggest—and best selling, I’m sure he’d eagerly point out—names in the North American comics industry, but if you don’t read comics (or read about them) would you have ever even heard of him?

I’m not singling Millar out; Grant Morrison, Geoff Johns and Brian Michael Bendis are among the best-selling and most popular writers alongside Millar, but does anyone who’s never seen the inside of a comic book shop know who the hell they are? Hell, even Neil Gaiman’s mainstream name recognition is at this point far stronger for his non-comics work than his comics work; folks who don’t read comics still know the fantasy author who wrote Coraline and Stardust.

Frank Miller, Alan Moore, Stan Lee, maybe Will Eisner, probably Jack Kirby and Harvey Pekar and now Marjane Satrapi, those are names folks outside comics would easily recognize as comics creators. But Millar? This is the first movie based on his work. He hasn’t written for other media the way, say, Neil Gaiman has. I know some of Millar’s work has gotten mainstream media attention—particularly Civil War—but it’s always been in the context of look what Marvel’s doing with their Marvel heroes, not look what This One Writer is doing.

Were those sorts of articles enough to jack his Q-rating up high enough that name-checking him in a one-paragraph description of Wanted makes a lot of sense?

Perhaps.

If so, though, I find it pretty surprising.

Some fan-ish comments and concerns pertaining to Final Crisis #1

—I don’t like the redesigned Black Racer. I think the New Gods are more awesome (literal definition; not colloquial) with a certain degree of goofiness to them. A dude in the sky with skis gripping ski poles just looks more wrong and out of place in a this-guy-might-be-some-kinda-new-god-like-entity to me then one without ‘em. Looking at the “new” Black Racer in the couple longshots J.G. Jones gives us of him, I wouldn’t even know those were skis if I wasn’t familiar with the Kirby design; I would just assume he’s a guy with really long feet, which looks more completely stupid than goofy.

—It was cool to see John Stewart in his civilian clothes, at his day job, changing into Green Lantern in a supply closet all Clark Kent-style. We always hear about Stewart being an architect—any time a new structure is built for a superhero in a DC comic, they always seem to mention John Stewart designing it—but that’s the extent of his professional life.

I was kinda surprised to see him changing in a closet though. He has a secret identity? I wonder how he keeps it, considering he doesn’t wear a mask of any kind and never has, was married to an alien for a while, and was in a wheelchair for a while and then suddenly not?

—Like everyone else, I was really perplexed by Stewart, Hal Jordan, The Guardians and then the JLA talking about how rare a “deicide” or the death of a New God is. Wasn’t Orion like, the last New God to die? I didn’t even read Death of the New Gods (guest-starring Superman, Green Lantern and the JLA) or Countdown (ditto), but I saw a couple of ‘em die in my regular reads. You couldn’t walk around the DCU this past year without tripping over a New God corpse.

—Also, it was unclear to me if Stewart and Jordan had never seen Orion before, or if they didn’t know that the other had, or…what. But the whole, “Recognize him?” scene seemed off. It even ended with Stewart telling Jordan that these New Gods came with bad gods.

—I love Signal Man’s cape.

—Libra’s dis on Vandal Savage was pretty cool. He does seem pretty pathetic for a supervillian with a goal of world domination, give the fact that he had a 50,000-year head start over the Ra’s al Ghuls and Lex Luthors of the world.

—J’onn J’onnz’s “death” was so abrupt and presented in such a way that I didn’t even really care, despite really digging the Martian Manhunter. Actually, I don’t really see any reason to believe he is dead at this point; all I have to go on is a TV news report. But if Barry Allen’s coming back in this story, and I have to assume most of the New Gods will as well, I see no reason to worry about J’onn dying.

Or be emotionally invested in the scene at all, actually.

—Note that Superman leads the four-panel JLA meeting, and the engraved gavel is in front of his seat. So much for being chairperson, Black Canary.

—Shouldn’t Red Tornado be a holographic head floating around, and not a physical body sitting at a seat? Isn’t that what’s going on in JLoA these days?

—I wish Jones woulda drew symbols on the back of the Justice Leaguers’ chairs.

—I’m afraid I just can’t make sense of the timing of Seven Soldiers in the context of this story. Seven Soldiers had to have occurred before Countdown, and this seems to be occurring after Countdown.

Even if we allow for the appearance of some of the Seven Soldiers in Infinite Crisis as either their pre-Seven Soldiers selves (Frankenstein would have been hero-ing before his miniseries for example; which Mister Miracle that was who cameoed was ambiguous, etc.) or mistakes (Klarion II and Shining Knight II both appeared briefly in IC; Bulletteer in 52), there’s just too many chronological problems to excuse.

Shiloh Norman is Mister Miracle in Firestorm, which occurs before the events of Countdown, since Countdown continues a story thread from Firestorm. Klarion II appeared both in Robin and Countdown, and hadn’t been to the surface world before his own Seven Soldiers mini.

All of the New Gods appeared in Countdown and/or Death of the New Gods, which occurred over a year after Infinite Crisis. Does that mean there was a war in heaven in which Darkseid triumphed, the New Gods were all cast down, reborn as mortals (in the pages of Seven Soldiers), then resumed their familiar shapes, only to lead to another “war in heaven” in which Darkseid triumphed and the New Gods were all cast down, reborn as mortals (in the pages of Countdown, Death of the New Gods and Final Crisis)?

And how do Scott Free and Shiloh Norman relate at this point? Is the latter the former reborn? Or are they two distinct people as they were prior to Morrison’s Seven Soldiers, or…what?

I still enjoyed Final Crisis, but this bugs me a bit, as it seems to be an indication that this isn’t going to be the panacea for all of the DCU’s woes that the company seems to be hoping it will be.