Mike Sterling's Progressive Ruin
For you, the living, this blog was meant too since 1969
Mikester This is what I found waiting for me when I came into the store after taking the previous day off:
Everyone is so fired.
Saw G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra last night…thought it was pretty entertaining, actually. It’s no Oscar winner, but it was goofy fun, didn’t take itself too seriously, and scenery was chewed at all the appropriate moments. Plus, how awesome was Joseph Gordon-Levitt? “Very” is the answer you’re looking for.
The interesting thing about this film (and I had the same sort of experience with the Transformers films) is that I was not a viewer of the original cartoons, nor was I a reader of the Marvel comics. I have no connection to any of the characters or situations, no nostalgia for the franchise. In my job as funnybook-seller, I’ve of course come across the names and faces of the Joes and their enemies, but it was all just a series of trademarked properties to me. It took seeing the movie to finally put together how everything related to everything else, and give me some background on just what the heck’s going on here, anyway. (I know some purists will argue that the film changes stuff from the comics/cartoons…but the point is that at least I have a better idea now than I did before.)
Also, on the topic of the film: the girlfriend is a huge G.I. Joe fan, and she loved the movie. The only way she would have liked it more is if it were instead The Adventures of Snake Eyes and a Handful of Fellow G.I. Joes Who Only Have about Five Minutes of Screen Time Total in Order to Make Room for MORE SNAKE EYES.
Keeping my post short today, internet pals. Sorry about that. I do have some other topics I want to discuss here, but I think I need them to sit on the stove a while longer before I serve ’em up. You know how it is.
Rats. I’ve been trying not to pick up the variants, but I think I may have to go for this one.
Now with Bruce Wayne and, to a lesser extent, Captain America, we didn’t get that. The Wayne Batman is still appearing in one-shots and Confidential, Cap was still getting one-shots, and an alternate version of him was popping up in Ultimates. And then there was that Captain America: White thing, which had one issue, with more perhaps theoretically coming, someday. In other words, the characters may supposedly be dead ‘n’ gone, but you never get a chance to miss them because they never go away. Lessens the impact a bit, I think.
My example of a revival of an ’80s property done right was Grimjack, which gave us a standalone “back to basic” story with that first IDW mini-series from a couple of years ago. Yeah, sure, as someone who was reading Grimjack during its original run, I would have liked to have seen stories that picked up from that point, but the continuity…the explanations required to set up just what’s going on with Grimjack, would almost certainly have been too much for anyone new to the series to bother with. With prices going up and money tight, you gotta keep that cost of entry low, and giving readers a continuity-lite story to reintroduce your long-dormant characters seems to be the way to go.
That’s a pretty roundabout way of saying I’m looking forward to more Grimjack, but there you go. I’m looking forward to more Nexus someday, too, but hopefully they’ll have better luck next time.
However, “Red Circle nostalgia” isn’t the enormous sales influence one would expect, he said sarcastically, since we’ve barely moved any copies. Even pointing out that 1) hey, I liked it, and 2) that J. Michael Straczynski guy wrote it, you guys like him — nope, not a lot of interest yet. We’ll see if things hopefully improve.
Still really enjoying everything else, though. Kyle Baker’s Hawkman is a delight, and oh Lordy, Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez Metal Men – that’s some four-color ambrosia right there.
Aaron also said something interesting while perusing this comic. He said that back in ’93, when Employee Aaron was but The Adventures of Little Aaron, the whole Breaking the Bat/Knightfall/Knightsend/Knightrider saga was the talk of the playground. There was one little kid, he said, who would even make up elements of the story, like Bruce Wayne having a super-mechanized wheelchair that could transform into, I don’t know, a battletank or something. (Well, come to think of it, I really didn’t follow this particular saga…maybe Bruce Wayne did have a transforming mecha-robot wheelchair.)
But mostly I just like the idea of current comic book events being a topic of discussion among school-age kids. That’s not something I’ve considered, mostly because 1) I’m not a school-age kid, and thus don’t know what they usually discuss nowadays…I just assume they were all talking about that rock ‘n’ roll music and hula-hoops, and 2) the general feeling is that kids nowadays don’t care about superhero comics, which is such an overwhelming perception that even I get stuck in the mindset from time to time despite seeing, on a regular basis, with my own eyes, in our very own shop, kids buying superhero funnybooks.
Of course, during the time Aaron is talking about, comics were going through a boom period, and the likelihood of the number of comics-reading kids reaching a certain critical mass to allow for general discussion of comics was much greater, I’m thinking. I’m sure it wasn’t the whole playground, naturally…may very well have been just Aaron’s circle of oddball friends, but still, I like the idea of kids getting caught up in comic book storylines and having their roundtable discussions of them.
Nowadays, with readership as low as it is, I imagine the “critical mass” I mentioned is never reached in, say, your average school full of kids, so I wonder if anyone is having that kind of discussion anymore. I mean, sure, probably…we do tend to find our own, but with the advent of the internet no one is ever truly on their own. They could always talk about these things on a message board, or, God help them, a blog.
Which got me to thinking about how often I talk about comics and storylines and such. Well, in my case, it’s my job, so of course I talk about it at the shop. But outside the store…yeah, okay, there’s this blog thing I’m doing. But in actual, face-to-face conversation, outside the work/blog context…not very often, come to think of it. My girlfriend sometimes asks for backstory on the occasional character or situation we see in a comic-related TV show or movie (and I fall down on the job trying to pull out specifics regarding some X-Men characters, much to her disappointment), but that’s about it.
How often do any of you folks talk about comics just as part of your regular day-to-day conversation? Not at the comic shop, not on comic book internet sites, not as part of your comic-creating/publishing jobs, but just…you know, you get home from work, finish dinner, and then give your pal a call, during which you ask “Hey, did you happen to read the newest issue of Dr. Glockenspiel?” in between some casual talk about the weather and about how much you hate your job. You know, like that. Like I said, I don’t do it very often…but then, I already have a couple of outlets for that kind of discussion.
So, yeah, that was kind of rambling. Sorry about that…to think all I wanted to do was post that pic of Bane cracking Batman. That is a pretty awesome picture.
If there exists a rock ‘n’ roll battle adventure featuring the Star Trek crew (or reasonable facsimiles thereof), I would like to know.
“FUNNY ANIMAL” CH’P
GREEN LANTERN MOSAIC CH’P
ZOMBIE CH’P
In other news:
Andrew has also had a little fun with Angel Love, DC Comics’ odd if strangely-appealing series, as does Kevin Church.
So I’m currently in the process of rereading the current Green Lantern series from the beginning, just because, you know, I’m on bit of a GL kick and I’ve been meaning to reread the whole Sinestro Corps War thing and I figured, what the heck, let’s just start with the first issue. And, as I noted to someone who asked if I was going to blog about it when I mentioned I was doing this on the Twitter, I didn’t intend to write about it on the site. I just wanted to reread some comics from my collection without having the thought of “must use this to generate content for Progressive Ruin” hanging over me.
Well, the fact that you’re reading this means I haven’t been entirely successful, but I found that I wanted to note some continuity/backstory changes regarding one of the characters. Thus, it’s away from the reread of the current GL, and back to one of the previous series….
Now, I’ve gone on before about how Kilowog’s upper arms bother me a bit. When he first appeared, he had spindly upper arms and bulky forearms, sorta like Popeye:
I know it’s a dumb thing to focus on, but every time I see Kilowog in a new comic with those bulky arms, I can’t help but think “they’re doing it wrong,” even though that’s how they’ve been doing it for 20+ years now.
Anyway, that’s my problem, not yours, and I’m sure they make some kind of medication for that. But here’s the other thing I wanted to point out: when Kilowog was first introduced (way back in Green Lantern Corps #201, June 1986), he was a figure of mystery and suspicion. None of the other characters knew who he was, and there was some speculation as to his true intentions:
While I was looking that up, I was reminded of this fellow from Green Lantern Corps #202:
Been going through some Green Lantern comics at home…you know, I kinda miss having this old Green Lantern Corps Quarterly series on the stands:
Here’s something to annoy you: these extra-sized comics cost $2.95.
And hey, remember this redesign of the Golden Age Green Lantern?
Inside this issue is a brief reminder of which decade you were in, in case you forgot:
Green Lantern Corps Quarterly #6 (Autumn 1993) – cover by Jim Balent
interior panel from Green Lantern Corps Quarterly #6 by Ruben Diaz, Travis Charest, Ray McCarthy & Agop Gemdjian
* Your Not Safe for Work context, sir.
Had this item show up in a collection recently: a UK Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back hardcover annual from 1980, reprinting Marvel Comics’ adaptation of the film.
And here’s something that just now occurred to me as I was scanning this item: what is that reflected in Darth’s eyes, there:
