What If I Was Normal For A Change?
Can you believe, reader dearest, that I had ever thought that this would be easy? That all there was to do was to think about comics, which I already do every day, then to commit these thoughts to writing, which I already did all the time on twitter dot com? Glenn Greenwald built his business model turning his half-thought twitter beefs into newsletter content! Why do I keep thinking I need to put more effort into this than the guy who broke one of the most important news stories ever to be published in my lifetime? It's the doldrums of summer, there's CIRCUMSTANCES we're just about to get into that keep getting in the way, so why not just let the extended comedy bits go, and fire from the hip? Maybe this will make up for the fact that it's 5PM on a Friday afternoon my time and I only just started writing this.
ITEM ONE: THERE'S A CRISIS IN COMICS AND YOU'RE NOT SEEING IT
Here's something you need to know about me: I've lived the kind of life that has turned the parts of my brain for remembering long-term stuff into absolute mush. So, to make sure I don't forget what books I need to pick up when I'm at the store, I've been keeping lists for what I want among this week's offering. It helps me with a bunch of stuff, it's good practice, and it got me to notice what I think are pretty big warning signs that there's about to be a crisis in comics distribution.
See, for the past few weeks, when I turn up at my fancy comic book shop smack dab in the middle of Paris' Quartier Latin on late wednesdays afternoon (already a big change on its own; I used to pick up my books first thing in the morning), there are a significant number of books that are either showing up late, or not showing up at all. Faithful readers will know this has happened before: I've had to wait several weeks before laying my hands on a copy of The Green Lantern Season Two #10. Well, the problem has grown larger, and it's a significantly bigger number of books that are getting impacted now. At first, I chalked it up to the very particulars of comic distribution in Europe, where the majority of operations are still being run through Diamond UK. This is not the case.
In a note sent to retailers this week, DC Comics laid out the damage put on their supply chain by every governing body in the world throwing their hands up and pretending the pandemic was over. 35 books are getting delayed, with more on the way. If they're getting hit this bad, there's no doubt in my mind that other companies are going to get hit as well. Something will have to be done further up the line, and this might just spiral into something way big, because this industry is still in so many ways beholden to the physical.
Now of course, some of you might say: why not make the switch to digital, then? You dumb motherfuckers, have you even SEEN Echolands #1? You think something as pure and as beautiful and as uncut as this, something so begging to be taken in full at all times, can be made readable in a dinky-ass little TABLET? Is this something you freaks really want? Because you'd be making a terrible mistake.
ITEM TWO: OKAY, LET'S DO THAT DUMBASS RORSCHACH THING
I bleed myself trying to put together a coherent critique of Rorschach by Fornes, King, and Stewart, trying to figure out an angle on every single issue so I can get on here and tell you something you haven't heard before either in the discourse or in the issue itself, I put in the effort, I put in the time; and then some loser at a comic book convention tries to start shit, and it becomes the hottest act of comic book criticism put forward this year. There's intrigue, there's conspiracy, there's even commentary on Watchmen as a text in there!
Look, I know and you know that this has all just been an excuse for some very online people to vent about Tom King because he hurt their feelings that one several times with something he put in one of his dang books. But if we all decide to act like one person being a dumbass in the face of a killer airborne virus and one person trying to do whatever they can to not catch a killer airborne virus is a bigger story than it actually is, well isn't that what living in a society is all about? Please pay attention to me.
ITEM THREE: MORE ONLINE BEEF
Another thing that happened this week online is that Rob Liefeld got fucking blasted into next week for talking shit about the original film adaptation of Blade in the mentions of Francisco Francavilla, prompting one more round of "Do we still need Rob Liefeld?" discussion, made all the more relevant since reappraising his work has become a cause célèbre among the cooler literati of twitter posting. The HUMBLE YOURSELF BEFORE COMICS take, which is the correct take, goes like this: acknowledge the history, recognize the achievement, but it's the past and it's going to remain the past. The core appeal of Rob Liefeld, as an artist, is the dynamism, right? It's the fact that every figure is bursting at the seams with kinetic energy, to the point where characters sometimes leap out of their own anatomy. That's the undeniably cool thing that made him a household name, and that has inspired a gaggle of artists working in comics today.
Consider, for example, Robin #5, a comic that's as dynamic as anything Rob's ever done, but it's executed at today's higher standards, and it's cooler, plus I like it better. The action being good isn't going to be a surprise to anyone that's been reading the series before, but the Gleb Man and current DC Comics MVP Joshua Williamson throw in a couple of very strong emotional beats in there, building the scaffoldings to make the coming fisticuffs land with an extra thud. If it can keep it up while the bodies begin to hit the floor, it's going to be GREAT.
ITEM FOUR: SUBTLETY IS FOR LOSERS
There's a sequence in this week's Superman: Son of Kal-El #2 where a young man attempts to shoot up a school. He yells "It's too soon to politicize this". His bullets have the words "thoughts" and "prayers" engraved on them. It's incredibly easy to make fun of it. It's "Shoot" from Warren Ellis' Hellblazer run written by a guy so ham-handed he has canned hams for hands. It's only a couple of pages, just one little moment of crisis to get in the way of Jon Kent trying to do the classic secret identity nonsense, but the centerpiece of the issue, where the newest Superman must save a boat full of asylum seekers in scenes made to evoke real-life situations playing out off of the coast of Australia, where Tom Taylor is from, and across the Mediterranean Sea, which is closer to me, is really just as blunt. And against all odds, I love it.
Very obviously, this is Taylor and Timms trying to put themselves in the lineage of Shuster and Siegel, making Superman the champion of the oppressed he was advertised as in those very first issues of Action Comics and Superman. It's not the first comic to do that this decade, with Grant Morrison and Greg Pak going for something similar during their runs on Action Comics, but there's worse things to get compared to, and it gets at the purpose of Superman like nobody's business. I think it absolutely rules, and it's not even the comic that goes at it the hardest released this week.
For that, you have to look to Mister Miracle: The Source of Freedom #4, a bold rewriting of Mister Miracle history that places Thaddeus Brown, the original Mister Miracle, within the black history of the DC Universe, and casts his heroism as part of the struggle against America's racism. The revelations that follow from there serve as a catalyst for Shlo Norman to figure out his own place in the world, in what is undeniably the high emotional point of the story. In many ways, it feels like Brandon Easton at his most raw and personal, which is incredible to see, but it wouldn't hit as hard as it does without Fico Ossio, who aces the emotion of the piece in a way that will break through even the most battle-tested content ghoul. (hi!) Sometimes, just laying it all out there works out. I love it.
ITEM FIVE: WONDER WOMAN IS FUN AS ALL HELL
Look, this is already too long and too self-indulgent, so I'll just say this: Wonder Woman #778, which continues Diana's journey across the higher spheres of the DC Multiverse, is an insanely fun comic. It's a comic that uses the springboard left by Snyder and Capullo at the end of Death Metal to launch Diana into a bunch of cool adventures. It's a comic that's so completely open about the influence of its contemporaries that it has a black-and-white Gillen and McKelvie 8-paneler in there. It's a really fun time, and it also has the following panel, which was basically devised Just For Me.
Sometimes that's really all it takes.
That'll do it! Tell me what you think about this formula of HYBC, and then tell your friends about it! Subscribe! We'll return next week unless all the comics catch fire or something! When YOU do it like this, it's a blog, but when I do it, it's HUMBLE YOURSELF BEFORE COMICS!