Misc.

Meanwhile, in Las Vegas…: This week’s Las Vegas Weekly comics review column features two new miniseries offering up new spins on ancient myths, The Infinite Horizon and Hybrid Bastards.




Marvel vs. DC, Round 946: Quick question—What’s a common one-word term used to refer to the artist who provides pencil-only art for a comic book, to later be inked by an inker?

Okay, yes, that’s right.

Now, how do you spell it?

DC spells penciller with two l’s in their credit boxes, whereas Marvel spells penciler with one l. My spellcheck always underlines them both in red to let me know they’re spelled wrong (it also underlined “spellcheck” just now). I always assumed that it was because it was comic book jargon and not widely enough used to pop up in a spellcheck program.

But why do Marvel and DC differ on the spelling?

I’ve been finding myself writing it out as “pencil artist” so as to avoid finding a definitive answer. I haven’t pulled out my long boxes and done and exhaustive search or anything, but, just casually looking at my usual Wednesday stacks of super-comics, and now, just double-checking the past week’s, it seems Marvel and DC are purposely spelling the word differently.

Has anyone else noticed this? Does anyone know how long this has been going on? Or why this is going on?

If anyone has any further information on this matter, do let me know. It’s stuff like this that keeps me up at night.

And on the subject of spelling, is the term “the direct market” a proper noun or not? Should I capitalize the d and the m or no?

And how come so few comics bloggers capitalize the I in “internet” when referring to “the Internet?” That is a proper noun, unless it’s being used as an adjective, right?




As a comic book writer, she makes a fine prose novelist: I finally got around to reading Jodi Picoult’s entire five-issue Wonder Woman run, recently collected in a pretty thin $19.99 hardcover. (I had previously only read Picoult’s first, very disappointing issue before I decided to just wait until I could read it for free from the library, as “nothing at all” seems to be the amount of money the story would be worth).

It doesn’t get any better after that first issue, however, and it’s actually pretty surprising how bad it all is. I really can’t fathom how this all came about; did DC really think a name writer with the kind of book store/library cred as Jodi Picoult would be best applied to tap-dancing between the continuity points established by Allan Heinberg and the Amazons Attack! crossover?

It’s a really nicely designed trade, and has an introduction from Picoult herself, which Tom Spurgeon noted “feels like a defense attorney's opening statement.”

The art throughout is mostly pretty solid, although there are some badly choreographed scenes that look like they had dialogue rearranged or something the night before deadline (Note the panel on the right). But it’s a really uncomfortable amalgam of plot points culled from continuity (Max Lord’s murder, Hippolyta’s death, Circe’s history, what’s up with the Amazons post-Infinite Crisis, Amazons Attack!, who the hell is Everyman, etc.) and characterization made up wholesale by Picoult.

Her Wonder Woman as fish-out-of-water comedy, flirting with Nemesis-as-TV’s-Steve-Trevor might have made for a great original graphic novel or Elseworlds or All-Star type story, but for a relevant DCU event bridging crossovers? Come on.

Rereading her intro after the story arc itself, this part grabbed my attention:



I decided to undertake the challenge for a few reasons—because it was something I’d never done before; because I’d always been a fan of Wonder Woman (who hasn’t?); because I’d admired other writers who’d seamlessly moved between fiction and comic books (Brad Meltzer foremost); and because I would be only the second woman to write the comic book in its long history.



The fact that she chose Meltzer as an example of someone who had “moved seamlessly moved between fiction and comic books” instead of, say, Greg Rucka, is pretty telling. (Perhaps just as telling? She uses the word “fiction” instead of “prose;” “comic book” is a medium, “fiction” designates whether a work is true or not. Meltzer’s prose novels and comic book work are all works of fiction, just as Picoult’s prose novels and Wonder Woman work are fiction).

Like Meltzer, Picoult over-narrates her comic books a bit too much, although it’s worth noting she sticks with one narrator per issue, making her five comics a bit more clear and easy to read than some of Meltzer’s twenty-some comics.

She also seems to view writing serial comics as a sort of relay race, in which a writer need not resolve their own story, but simply stop at some point and hand the characters and the subplots they’ve introduced on to the next writer.

Meltzer’s done this with everything he’s written. “Archer’s Quest” had a pretty dramatic turn in the relationship between Oliver Queen and Connor Hawke that was introduced but left unexplored. Identity Crisis was really nothing but turns in characters and plots, few if any of which were ever resolved, and which DC writers have been working at making sense of ever since. Similarly, his four-story JLoA run was full of changes and sub-plots he had no intention of resolving; he was simply seeding the book for future writers.

Picoult’s run takes that concept to a more dramatic level, as she doesn’t even resolve the main conflict in an equivocal, open-ended way. The graphic novel ends with one character holding a knife to our heroine’s throat. Her love interest is poisoned and dying. There’s a nuclear missile pointed at the island home of the Amazons. The U.S. military and JLA are still warring with the Amazons in Washington D.C.

And that’s the end of the book.

When I’d read Spurgeon’s review a while back, he noted that it ends with “a ridiculous cliffhanger ending that asks readers to buy yet another book after dropping 20 bucks on this one,” I assumed he was simply referring to the book leaving some subplots unresolved. But no, it doesn’t resolve anything at all, and it doesn’t merely end with a “to be continued” in the last panel, but the last page is actually a full-page ad reading, “Find out what happens next in Wonder Woman: Amazons Attack.”

What a thoroughly despressing book. This had the promise of one which could help evangelize the medium, bringing new readers to comic books, and now I fear all it will accomplish is making sure any who do pick this up as their first graphic novel to simply swear them off for life.





And speaking of Spurgeon and crappy Wonder Woman stories… Spurgeon recently interviewed Catwoman writer Will Pfeifer, the man responsible for Amazons Attack!.

It’s a pretty interesting and wide-ranging interview, one which reminded me how much I liked the 1999, Jill Thompson-illustrated Vertigo mini Finals, which was apparently Pfeifer’s comics debut.

He seems pretty honest about the nature of Amazons Attack! and t he frustrations of writing books like it:



I've worked on a few crossovers before, but this is the most closely I've been involved. It was almost a year ago exactly that I went to the DC offices for a weekend. We sort of plotted out the whole six-issue series, and we talked about all the tie-ins and this and that. When you're working on a big crossover like this, a lot of the plotting is just connecting the dots in a way. This is going to happen here, we'll deal with this here, and then over in Teen Titans this will happen, and then we'll deal with this, and then we'll deal with that. Readers may not like it, and in some ways it can be a pain to write, but that's what a lot of modern comic books are. The big ones that sell and the big ones that people seem to like are the ones that have crossovers crossovers crossovers. When you're writing it, the object is to hit those plot points. As a writer you try to work in those human emotions and twists and surprises and fun and action along the way. But you have to hit point A, B, C, and D because in another book, somebody's going to be hitting it.



It’s pretty funny watching him and Spurgeon sort of make sense of it all:



I think at its most basic, people have an idea about whatever superhero or character they love and have their ideal version of that character somewhere in their head. When you go against that version, some people are going to react very strongly. Amazons Attack! is right there in the title. They kill that guy and his kid on the very first page. People were really upset about that. But it was supposed to be shocking. It was supposed to be upsetting. It wasn't supposed to be a triumphant moment for the Amazons. People who have been reading Wonder Woman for however long they've been reading Wonder Woman —and some of them have been reading for a long time —they didn't like the fact that the Amazons were attacking and were evil. They also didn't like the fact that in Amazons Attack! that there wasn't enough Wonder Woman, and that Wonder Woman wasn't driving the plot along. The reason for that is that there's another book called Wonder Woman [Spurgeon laughs] where all that was happening.



While I don’t think anyone really wants to read superhero comics about people slaughtering innocent children on the first page, I doubt that (or the lack of Wonder Woman in the story) are the reason people reacted so negatively. I think it was more the fact that the story wasn’t any good, and didn’t make any goddam sense, not only within the context of the DCU and its history, but within the pages of the series itself.

Was that Pfeiffer’s fault, or the person who asked him to hit A, B, C and D? Because, B didn’t go with A and C, and D kinda cancels out A, and you can’t have B and C in the same story at the same time and expect it to make sense.

Regardless, this is one of those instances where it’s hard to feel too sorry for a comic book writer who wrote some shitty comics and then said it wasn’t entirely his fault (like JMS recently did with One More Day). Nobody makes you write these comics, and accepting the embarrassment that comes from writing bad ones—whoever’s bad ideas are ultimately fueling them—is part of the process. The writer’s name appears on the cover of the book, just like it does on the paycheck.




The cardinal is the state bird, the Pekar is the state curmudgeon: My fellow Ohioans, have you seen this political cartoon collaboration by Harvey Pekar and Nick Bertozzi yet? No? Then go read it. I love the use of the shape of the state as a lay-out, and I’ll be damned if Bertozzi doesn’t draw the scariest Pekar I’ve ever seen (I really like that Pekar is a lot like Batman; every artist finds a slightly different facet of the character). I would totally buy a set of postcards based on the “Greetings From Ohio” part, with the weird close-ups of a glaring Pekar in each letter…





This has very, very little to do with comics: Chris Ware designed the logo and poster for writer/director Tamara Jenkins’ latest movie, The Savages .

It doesn’t have anything to do with comics beyond the fact that Ware designed these, however. (The aesthetic of the film, and its melancholic sense of humor, sort of aligns with that seen in Ware’s work, though). It opened in Columbus on Christmas; if you’re so inclined, you can read my review of it here.

The other movie that opened in Columbus this week that’s well worth a trip to the theater? Juno, in which J. Jonah Jameson’s teenage daughter Kitty Pryde gets pregnant, and decides to have the baby and give it up to Elektra for adoption. That’s reviewed here.




Fanboys For Pele: I love comic books. And I love the music of Tori Amos. So the announcement of a an Image Comics-published anthology of short comics stories based on or inspired by her work should be something I’m really pumped about.

And while I can’t wait to read it, I’m not going to get my hopes too high at this point. Image’s Put the Book Back on the Shelf, which did the same with the songs of Belle and Sebastian, another favorite, was a pretty mixed bag—some stories were great, some were interesting, some were godawful. Since Amos’ work seems to be much less narrative than Belle and Sebastian’s, I’m really curious to see how it will translate to adaptation—it should definitely give creators a bit more leeway.

Thinking back, I can recall relatively little about the Belle and Sebastian anthology, with only the very best stories and the very worst sticking in my head. I do recall it being a really fun reading experience though, as I broke out all the Belle and Sebastian CDs and read the stories while listening to the songs. I look forward to doing the same with the Tori Amos anthology.

As with any anthology, the contributors will make or break it more than the concept. News of who’s involved is still trickling out, but at the very least, it will include work from Hope Larson, Colleen Doran, Lea Hernandez, Chris Arrant and Star St. Germain, and Columbus’ own Tom Williams.

One of the first places I saw the project announced was at The Beat, and man, there are times when I have no idea what Heidi MacDonald is talking about:


Amos is one of early adapters in the comics/media crossover trend, due to her friendship with Neil Gaiman (the two were introduced by Hoseley) resulting in many lyrical and comical mentions of one another over the years.


What exactly is “the comics/media crossover trend?” Comics is a medium. Is she referring to Amos’ music as “media” and comics as “comics?” And regardless, I don’t understand the implication that Amos is “one of the early adapters.” Amos has never written or drawn any comics, and these are the first comics stories based on her music. She read comics and was friends with Neil Gaiman, who is rumored to have based Delerium’s final look and personality on Amos, but does that make one an “earl adapter?”

Sometimes I get a real “Biff! Bam! Pow! Holy Watchmen Batman, Comics aren’t just for kids anymore!” vibe from The Beat, which is odd, given that it’s a comics-specific blog, you know?




And speaking of Tori Amos and comics… I’ve been enjoying the hell out of Nathan Rabin’s “My Year of Flops” series at The Onion AV Club. It’s exactly what I think criticism should be—so well-written and entertaining to read, it doesn’t matter if you’ve seen or plan to see the film being discussed, because the review itself has great value in and of itself. Anyway, Rabin gets around to one of the worst comic book adaptations of all time, Howard the Duck.

And he points out that Tori Amos was up for the part of Beverly.

Which means this could have been Tori Amos:



Or, worse yet, this:



Rabin also spends some verbiage belittling Y Kant Tori Read, Amos' pre-solo career rock band that really wasn’t so bad. I kind of liked that album! In fact, I liked more songs on it than on Scarlet’s Walk. And I’m not ashamed to admit it.

Well, I’m a little ashamed, but not so ashamed that I won’t admit it anyway.





Dear Dan DiDio.... Last week’s “DC Nation” column saw Dan DiDio in teasing mode, presenting an annotated Christmas list from various DC characters.

Let’s parse it at exhausting length, shall we?

Superman— A new place to call home.

Lately it seems like Superman goes through Fortresses of Solitude like water, but since Geoff Johns and Kurt Busiek so recently gave him his latest (basically the one from Johns’ sometimes co-writer Richard Donner’s Superman movies), I’m going to guess he’s keeping those digs for a while.

And I doubt he’ll be moving out of Metropolis any time soon, as Busiek’s done a lot of work building the city up, with new geography and city services and such like.

So, I’m going to guess this refers to some sort of New Krypton, as the two Superman writers seem very interested in new Kryptonian history.

Superman Prime— A time to call my own.

I don’t care. Sorry.

Batman— More time.

I’m assuming this is just a joke about how busy Batman is, and if it’s a tease of some kind, it’s pretty vague. I mean, at any point in his fictional career Batman could have asked Santa and/or Paul Levitz for the exact same thing.

Robin— A memorial for Stephanie Brown

This is the one that has clearly set the most tongues a-wagging, or at least fingers a-typing. The request is of course scratched out, with the words “Can’t Do!” atop of it. For someone who claims not to pay too much attention to the messageboards and blogosphere, DiDio sure knows how to tweak the online fans, doesn’t he? Assuming he’s not just being a dick, this seems to be another strong indicator that Spoiler’s on her way back to life.

Does that mean the godawful costume the girl going by the name “Violet” in upcoming Robin solicits is a resurrect Spoiler? Ugh. If that’s what she’s going to be wearing, maybe she should stay dead.

Come on Mr. DiDio, didn’t you see Project Rooftop’s redesign Stephanie Brown thing a few months back? Particularly Dean Trippe’s wonderful design?

Anyway, I’m more interested in the fate of Spoiler as an observer than a fan at this point. I never much cared for her outside the pages of Batgirl. The fact that she died at all, or that Batman never gave her a monument never really upset me, certainly not as much as I was upset by the fact that she died in a terrible story that didn’t make a lick of sense, and that she died from being tortured within an inch of her life and then from having Bruce Wayne’s lifelong friend and pacifist Doctor Leslie Thompkins deny her care to teach Bruce a lesson.

God…

I like the idea of Robin asking for a memorial for his dead ex-girlfriend for Christmas from Dan DiDio, though. If Tim Drake wants a memorial to Stephanie, then it’s easy to imagine some pretty uncomfortable conversations around the table at Wayne Manor, with Tim being all like, “Sooooo, have you given any more thought to erecting that memorial to Stephanie yet?” and Bruce being, “Oh look, it’s the Bat-signal! Gotta go! We’ll talk later!”

Batgirl— My very own mini-series

This one made me laugh. Assuming they’re talking about the current Batgirl, Cassandra Cain, she had her own monthly ongoing series which was selling adequately (not great, but not any worse than much of DC’s DCU line) but it was cancelled to…I forget the exact phrasing, but it was along the lines of streamlining the Bat-books (Apparently by just two titles; Batgirl and Gotham Knights).

So a new miniseries featuring a character who, just a few short years ago, was strong enough to carry her own title, seems like an odd move. After all, DC spent the last few years chasing away her relatively few fans and sabotaging the character as much as possible*, and now they’re looking to capitalize on the severely diminished returns for 4-6 months?

Red Tornado— A new body and a family to call my own

As Patrick pointed out in the comments section the week I reviewed JLoA #15 (the issue in which Red Tornado’s body was destroyed), his body is supposedly indestructible.

And that’s not, like, some obscure trivia from mentioned in a single issue of the pre-Crisis volume of Justice League of America or anything, but it was, like, the whole point of Brad Meltzer’s first arc on this very series, “The Tornado’s Path.” The new, smart Solomon Grundy wanted to put his brain into Red Tornado’s immortal android body precisely because it couldn’t be destroyed, and thus Grundy would never have to die and return to life again.

I find it almost as amusing as it is irritating that not only did Dwayne McDuffie, the JLoA writer who followed Meltzer, not really read Meltzer’s stuff too closely, but neither, apparently, did DiDio.

Not sure what to make of the “a family to call my own” comment. Does that mean in addition to Red Tornado’s wife and daughter, who also appeared throughout “The Tornado’s Path?” That story was just last year. It was the best-selling thing DC published. Surely DiDio read it, right?

Green Arrow— My son back

Black Canary— My husband’s son back

Man, this list of teases is terrible for my blood pressure!

Here’s hoping that having the stars of Green Arrow/Black Canary ask for Green Arrow’s son Green Arrow back means that Connor Hawke isn’t really dead, and/or that these items tease a story about bringing him back and are not, in fact, intimating that the next few months of Green Arrow/Black Canary will be devoted to mourning his death.

Whether he’s dead-dead or just temporarily dead, in either case it shows writer Judd Winick’s lack of imagination. When Connor Hawke was shockingly killed at the end of the last issue, he either seemed to die but will be back soon (like Oliver Queen in the Green Arrow/Black Canary Wedding Special of a few months ago), or he actually died, like all those characters in Judd Winick’s Titans East Special #1 from a few weeks back.

Darkseid— The Fifth World

Don’t care to the point in which this is part of Countdown, but may start caring if this is an element of Final Crisis, as the writer of the latter, Grant Morrison, mentioned the coming of the Fifth World back during the climax of his JLA run.

The Rogues— Revenge!! (A sentiment shared by all the villains in SALVATION RUN)

Revenge? For what? Instead of giving them the death penalty or putting them in jail for life for the murder of Bart Allen (in addition to any and/all other crimes they might have committed), The Rogues were handed their favorite clothes, their very powerful weapons, and then sent to a planet free of superheroes to do whatever the hell they want until one of the many super-brilliant mad scientists there figures a way to spring them all. I really fail to see the drama—or logic—in Salvation Run.

Mongul— A ring collection

The last issue of Green Lantern Corps ended with Mongul getting a Sinestro Corps ring, and I imagine he’ll therefore be fighting some ring-slinging Green Lanterns soon.

DiDio’s end of the year interview with Matt Brady at Newsarama was illustrated by a piece of art depicting Mongul with three different colored rings.

The rings in the image all have the Green Lantern symbol, rather than the various pictograms the new rings are supposed to bear. Because of that, it reminded me of the Mark Waid masterminded epic The Silver Age from a few years back, in which Lex Luthor and his villainous allies created their own special power-rings, which looked and worked like Green Lantern rings, but were different colors.

I’m really surprised that event hasn’t been collected into trade yet, given how many great/popular writers and artists were involved, and that so much of recent DC history has been driven by the characters it featured (The Silver Age League including Green Arrow and Black Canary, Elongated Man, The Secret Society of Supervillains and so on, plus a one-off iteration of the Seven Soldiers of Victory).

(An aside: I’m apparently not the only one who noticed the similarity between Geoff Johns’ rainbow corps and Waid’s Silver Age story, or the fact that the later is overdue for trade collection. I am, however, the slower to post about it one).

Geo-Force— Rock samples from another planet

Don’t really care at all, but I wonder if this will have anything to do with GF’s mysterious power problems Meltzer introduced but never resolved in JLoA.

The Question— A visit from an old friend

The real Question coming back to life? Nah, probably just Batwoman appearing in one of the issues of the Crime Bible series…

Speaking of which, I don’t see Batwoman requesting her series starting any time soon. Or Manhunter requesting her series resuming any time soon, either.

Booster Gold— The Blue and Gold back in action

Seconded!

Looks like that’s what we’ll be getting in the next few issues of Booster Gold, March’s issue of JLU and March’s issue of Blue Beetle.

I get the feeling Ted Kord won’t actually be coming back for real at the end of this upcoming Booster Gold story, but, as I’ve said before, I hope he does because it’s only a matter of time before someone brings him back to life, so better to have it happen through the agency of a time-travelling Booster Gold than via something silly like, I don’t know, magic herbs, as in colleague Ice’s recent silly resurrection.

Lord Satanus— Control of Hell

Neron— Control of Hell

DiDio’s notation has arrows pointing to their requests, with the words “Uh-oh, this could be a problem.”

Sounds like this refers to Keith Giffen’s upcoming limited series about a war for control of hell, which he discussed with fellow Columbusite and Newsaramite Vaneta Rogers during an interview posted the other day.

Giffen’s an experienced storyteller, but man, I’d kinda hate to have an assignment like this. After all, stories of power struggles in DC’s Hell have been previously told by the likes of Garth Ennis, Alan Moore and Neil Gaiman.






*Batgirl appearances since the end of her own series, but before this month’s Outsiders #2?Robin: Boy Wanted written by Adam Beechen, who left the title shortly afterwards; “Titans East” by Geoff Johns and Beechen, the conclusion of which (by Beechen alone) is in the running for the worst DC story ever published (I think it’s a tie with JLoA #10, the conclusion of “The Lighting Saga”), a few pages of World War III by Keith Champagne and/or John Ostrander and/or whoever gave those poor bastards a set of plot points and said, “Here, make a script of some kind out of this, would ya?”, and the issue of Supergirl in which this happens:

Picoult's Wonder Woman: Unblurbable?

The above half-page house ad ran in last week’s batch of DC Comics, and I couldn't help but notice the blurb running with the ad, from USA Today: “Not only does this make Picoult one of the first female Wonder Woman writers, this adds her to a growing list of novelists-turned-comics scribes.”

What is striking about the blurb is how neutral it is. It doesn’t say anything at all positive about the book, but merely recites a couple of facts. Picoult’s only the second woman to write Wonder Woman, and there sure are a lot of novelists writing comics these days.

Um, yeah. So?

If the point of such blurbing is to sell your comic/book/movie/whatever, using a more objective third-party whose opinion won’t be as suspect as, say, a blurb form Jodi Picoult, Terry Dodson or Paul Levitz saying what a great story this is, then you generally want to get something positive to put in that blurb.

I’m always amused by the blurbs used in TV commercials or newspaper ads for terrible movies, where they have to try really hard to find someone, anyone, to say something, anything, positive about the movie they can use, and occasionally you’ll get a positive statement coming from some tiny local media outlet you’ve never heard of.

But it’s still preferable to have John “The Movie Guy” Gerrety from The Rural Bumblefuck Examiner raving “Catwoman the purr-fect summer action movie” in your ad than Roger Ebert observing “Catwoman is yet another example of Hollywood’s love affair with comics” or something.

Certainly the outlet from which the blurb comes is to be considered. USA Today saying anything about a Wonder Woman comic is good news from DC’s perspective, I’m sure, even if they don’t have anything particularly nice to say (I may be misremembering, but this wasn’t actually from a review anyway, was it? I seem to recall linkage pointing to a USA Today profile on Picoult regarding her Wonder Woman story).

But this is such a bland statement, that I’m surprised DC even bothered with it. Did no one in the mainstream media say anything nicer about Picoult’s Wonder Woman? Did no one in the comics press? (And since this ad is running in DC Comics, you can go ahead and quote Wizard or Newsarama anyway; the comics “press” saying “This book rules!” is going to carry more weight with the audience for this ad then a dry factoid from USA Today that they already knew anyway).

Even if there were no rave reviews, couldn’t the ad designers resort to the old clip quotes up to make them sound more positive trick? Sticking with our Catwoman example, say Rober Ebert said, “a perfect storm of bad filmmaking decisions, resulting in a movie that isn’t just bad, but is likely bad for you; you will probably lose I.Q. points sitting through this travesty.”

Well, it can always be clipped to this:


“[P]erfect…”

—Roger Ebert


Okay, maybe that’s an extreme example, but the idea remains the same in less extreme instances. By carefully choosing the words you quote, where you start and end a blurb, and what you chop out to replace with an ellipses, even a less-than-glowing review can be made to sound positive.

But could it be that not only did no one in the mainstream media say anything nicer about this book than USA Today’s factual observations, but no one in the comics press had anything nice to say either? Did they all unanimously pan it, and pan it so bad and so hard that no positive blurb was even salvageable?

Just for fun, I looked to see what some of my favorite comics critics (whose stuff I could easily find online during ten minutes or so of googling) had to say about the high profile launch of the series (most critics and commentators seemed to stop reading after Picoult’s first issue anyway) to see if I could find anything positive about the book, or at least something that could be massaged into a positive blurb.

I couldn’t.

My favorite comics critic of them all, the extremely handsome gentleman who writes the comics review column for Las Vegas Weekly, covered WW #6 when it came out, and this was the most positive portion of his review: “Picoult fans will likely find it more charming than Wonder Woman fans will.”

The rest was split between factual observations a la USA Today and negative comments. The best we could get out of that would be


“Charming…”
—Las Vegas Weekly


That same witty, kind-hearted and virie critic (who is also a great dancer) maintains a comics blog, and the nicest part of his review of the book there was, “Wow, I wasn’t expecting this at all—Very Popular Novelist Jodi Picoult’s first issue of her brief run on Wonder Woman? Not very good.”

An enterprising, and perhaps soulless ad person could easily turn that into


“Wow…very good.”
—Every Day Is Like Wednesday



But not without running the risk of being called on their bullshit. And Every Day Is Like Wednesday isn’t exactly the household name USA Today is, so it’s not really worth messing with.

Another of my favorite sources of comics criticism is the Best Shots column at Newsarama.com, where a half-dozen or so attractive, witty and kindhearted comics critics weigh in on the previous Wednesday’s releases, and then people with pseudonyms chime in about how much they hate that Firestorm’s a black guy or who the best Green Lantern is, and why you’re an idiot for disagreeing.

Back in March, Best Shots crewmember O.J. Flow tackled WW #6, and here’s what he had to say: “On its own merits, Wonder Woman #6 is respectable stuff, thanks mostly to some gorgeously clean and expressive art from Drew Johnson and Ray Snyder.”

And, a bit later, “Picoult does good dialogue, and she strikes the right balance of drama, humor and action.”

Those are genuine positives, but even if you whittle them down to accentuate the positive, the best you can get is



“Respectable stuff…good dialogue…balance of drama, humor and action.”
—Newsarama.com


Not exactly glowing, is it?

I next turned to Chris Sims’ blog, The Invincible Super-Blog, because I imagine sources that have the words “invincible” and “super” right there in their title are automatically more authoritative then those that don’t, and would thus be sought after for blurbing. For example, if the quote DC did end up using was from The Invincible Super-USA Today, it would be a bit more impressive, wouldn’t it?

Also, Sims has some experience being blurbed by careful blurb-crafters. He’s brutally savaged Marvel’s Anita Blake comics in his ongoing The Annotated Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter features (Which I do believe makes the ISB the number one source for Anita Blake comics coverage, just in terms of amount of attention paid to them). And proving they have a great sense of humor (and/or were hard up for positive quotes), when it came time to find blurbs, they included a “Grab a copy and follow along” from Sims, which is how he kicked off a typical post ridiculing an issue.

Well, he didn’t care for WW #6 either, and had this to say: “Granted, it's not the worst comic I've read all week, but, well, Tarot came out, and it was still a pretty heavy contender…Simply put, it's a mess.”

And that’s pretty much the most positive part of it. I guess we could snip out “Not the worst comic I’ve read” and blurb that, but, well, maybe USA Today’s not-an-endorsement-of-any-kind blurb is preferable than “Better than Tarot!”

On to the savagecritic.com, where Brian Hibbs began his review with, “Oh. Ouch. Lots of problms, not sure where to begin," and ended it with, “Fairly AWFUL.” In between we’ve got, let’s see, “vain,” “empty-headed”…Yeah, there isn’t even anything to work with here.

Oh, I know! Lisa Fortuner, that lady who’s always yelling at people about Green Lanterns! She’s a big Wonder Woman fan, and even buys, read and defends DC/Wonder Woman related works she strongly dislikes, like Amazons Attack. Surely she had something to say about WW #6 that can be snipped into blurb-able shape.

Here’s her review: “Yes, every bad review you’ve read is true… I've read a lot of stuff that I've been iffy about on the first reading. I've read stuff that was entertaining but not particularly good on the second reading. I've read stuff that was mediocre but still had charm. I've read stuff that was decently plotted and timed but relied on cliched characterization and stereotypes, and therefore ruined my experience. This issue was just plain bad, and I don't say that about a lot of things.”

Hmmm, I don’t think there’s anything to work with in there, either.

Now, I’m sure whoever put that house ad together for DC spent longer than my ten minutes looking for a perfect combination of high profile source and a positive statement about the books, but they must not have ever found it, hence the “This is a comic book by a woman who is a novelist” blurb from USA Today. I sure couldn’t find anything more positive than that, and now I kinda feel sorry for whoever it was who had to look in the first place. Spending a whole work day or two reading horrible reviews of a book you’re trying to promote can’t possibly be pleasant.

EDILW Presents: Wonder Woman Wednesdays!

Wonder Woman’s had a rough time of things lately.

She’s the First Lady of Superheroes, a position she’s earned by, um, being the first lady superhero. She’s one of only three Golden Age comic book characters whose adventures have been in continuous publication from the time she was created to the present (You know the other two). She’s one of the most widely recognized comic book characters in the world, even among the “civilian” population.

The lady deserves some respect, you know?

But what does she get instead? I don’t know—what’s the exact opposite of respect?

The rejiggeirng of DC’s fictional universe that occurred in Infinite Crisis drastically changed Wonder Woman’s status quo in the company’s shared setting, so that the decades-old rejiggering of Crisis On Infinite Earths was de-rejiggered, apparently knocking George Perez’s run on her title out of continuity/canon (And here’s a dispiriting thought: This is apparently no longer canon, but this is).

At the same time, her series, which was experiencing one of it’s rare peaks in quality thanks to writer Greg Rucka’s acclaimed run on the title, was cancelled to make room for a brand-new Wonder Woman series, to be written by relative newcomer Allan Heinberg (Whose previous comics credits included maxiseries Young Avengers and co-writing a JLA arc with Geoff Johns).

In relaunching the title, Heinberg took his clues from the 1970s TV show, introducing a new, nostalgic/retro status quo that was more in keeping with the Wonder Woman of the ‘60s and ‘70s then the one readers have followed the last 20 years in comics (and, in the past few years, on the Justice League cartoon).

This Wonder Woman had a Clark Kent-like secret identity (Diana Prince, an Amazonian secret agent who wore her hair up and a pair of shaded glasses) and worked for the U.S. government’s Department of Meta-Human Affairs. She’d stepped down from her role as ambassador, thus leaving the world stage to be a secret agent and fight supervillains. Heinberg delivered the first four-issues of an intended five-issue run over the course of a year before DC removed him from the schedule due to missed deadlines.

Next up was a not-very-good one-issue fill-in story, making way for best-selling author Jodi Picoult. Rather than giving Picoult the sort of carte blanche they’d given best-selling author Brad Meltzer with the Justice League characters in Identity Crisis and Justice League of America or Heinberg on Wonder Woman, Picoult was assigned to write a six-issue arc that built on Heinberg’s new version of the character. (Imagine instead a Picoult-written miniseries or original graphic novel, in or out of continuity).

If Heinberg’s Wonder Woman was mediocre, Picoult’s was actually terrible.

Like Heinberg, she ignored much of the last 20 years or so worth of Wonder Woman stories (Perhaps rightly so, perhaps not, depending on Wondy’s continuity, which no one knows the status of post-Infinite Crisis). In addition to keeping Heinberg’s innovations of a secret identitied-up ex-Goddess of Truth who’s trying to learn what it’s like to be an ordinary human buy hunting superhumans as a secret agent, Picoult played Wonder Woman as a fish out of water character who can’t order coffee, pump gas or work turnstiles, all of which seems…off. (If she’s a founding Justice Leaguer again post-Infinite Crisis, as IC and JLoA have made clear, that means she’s spent at least the last 11 years living in the United States, on more than one occasion living with normal American families and even working in a fast food joint).

It’s hard to say just how much of the title’s current suckiness is Picoult’s fault and how much is editorial’s. At any rate, the results have been a story featuring the dense continuity that keeps new readers from easily getting into a comic (at the least, you'll have to have read about Max Lord's killing and the previous story arc of the title, and Manhunter sure wouldn' hurt) accompanied (ironically) by the sort of continuity errors that keep hardcore fans from supporting the book.

Picoult on Wonder Woman should have been a creative, public relations and sales slam dunk for DC (and were she writing a miniseries or original graphic novel, it probably would have been), but instead it’s simply turned into strike two on their Wonder Woman relaunch.

DC’s already announced the next writer: Gail Simone. Simone is a very good comic book writer (in addition to being a woman), a writer who at her absolute worst is still guaranteed to be able to deliver stories at least as good as Heinberg’s, but on a monthly rather than quarterly schedule. Which is great news.

The bad news? Simone’s Newsarama interview intimates that she’ll be working with the post-Infinite Crisis status quo, and, of course, there’s still four more issues of Picoult’s run, and another two-issue fill-in stint, before Simone takes over.

But not all is bleak for the Amazing Amazon! We at EDILW are planning to do our part to make things a little less grim for our favorite star-spangled shorts rocking heroine, which is why we’re launching a new feature this week—Wonder Woman Wednesdays. Each Wednesday we’ll have a Wondy-centric post, and the plan is to keep ‘em up coming at least until Simone begins her run on Wonder Woman or we run out of funny Golden Age panels to post out of context and make bad jokes about, whichever comes first.