So in just two weeks, Marvel’s The Avengers has made a billion dollars worldwide. Over the past fourteen years, films based on Marvel superheroes have grossed over nine and a half billion dollars at the box office, and with the upcoming Amazing Spider-Man, Iron Man 3, Wolverine, Thor 2 and others, you can expect to [...]
Yesterday was the fifth anniversary of Countdown #51. Hopefully everyone honored the anniversary in the same way as its creators: by trying to forget that Countdown ever existed. Indeed, what can be said about Countdown that has not already been said about the Vietnam War? It was a quagmire, an unwinnable war of attrition that [...]
I. Everybody Talking About Changing the World, the World Ain’t Never Gonna Change In the summer of 2011, I came up with a plan. I would collaborate with Chris Eckert on a post previewing DC’s relaunch of its line of superhero comics, and write a series of brief posts in subsequent months that would discuss [...]
It’s the end of the month, so you know what time it is: 5-10-15-20 time! No one guessed the really dumb research question from last month: I read over two dozen black and white issues of Luke Cage looking for the first recorded instance of “Sweet Christmas!” That means no one gets the Luke Cage [...]
This past weekend David Brothers brought up Frank Miller’s big 1994 speech from a Diamond Retailers seminar that got reprinted in the back of Sin City: The Big Fat Kill #5. He wrote something about it too. It’s a powerful speech, and dismaying at how much of the speech could easily be cross-applied to the [...]
Welcome back to 5-10-15-20, a monthly column that looks at things that happened in comics using arbitrary five year jumps! I realize this is being published in April. I had finished the post a week or so ago, but got caught up researching something really dumb and forgot I hadn’t posted this until today, when [...]
Six months after DC’s historic line wide relaunch, it’s become clear that the artists have taken over. The four best books from the first wave — Wonder Woman, Flash, Batman and Animal Man — all have talented writers, but with all due respect to Messrs. Azzarello, Lemire and Snyder, the art is the primary appeal. [...]
In the interest of making everyone feel old, inspired by Scientific American, and because I spend too much time digging through old comic book material anyway, here’s what will hopefully be a new monthly feature: 5-10-15-20, a look back at goings-on in the funnybook field in half-decade increments. Yesterday should’ve been the fiftieth birthday of [...]
I’ve been meaning to write about comics for about two months, but life got in the way. Family, work, holidays… you know the spiel. I haven’t stopped reading comics (as evidenced by my Twitter feed), but between the controversies about salaries and work conditions at Marvel Comics, the Kirby (and Ghost Rider) litigations, diversity in [...]
Another New York Comic Con has come and gone… The FBB crew ran wild during the annual pop culture festival that reminds us that we have the best and the worst hobby in the world. We drank, ate, schmoozed with creators and held our annual FBB/4L reunion sans David “Benedict Arnold” Brothers. We also drank. [...]
Looking across the sometimes bleak landscape of Women in Superhero Comics, it’s easy to get dispirited. Whether’s it’s inequity in representation — be it in the stories or on the credits page — there’s still plenty of ground to make up before things are acceptable. And even when female characters are pushed to the fore, [...]
Everybody’s talking about THE NEW 52, which must be exciting for everyone working on those books at DC Comics. Unfortunately, they’ve spent the past few months still publishing THE OLD 50-SOMETHING, which seem to have largely been forgotten by all parties. It’s not surprising, given the fact that most of them are last-gasp inventory stories [...]
With the flood of news last week from San Diego, its inevitable that some things will escape notice. Here are two overlooked picks from the San Diego Comic Con, along with some other ephemera. At DC’s Vertigo panel, Derek McCulloch announced Gone to Amerikay, an original graphic novel about Irish immigration to the United States [...]
2011 will be a crucial year for DC Comics. In September, DC will relaunch its entire line of superhero books in a bid to expand its audience while holding on to the core of loyal readers. Over the coming months, we’ll see if DC has mastered the delicate art of pleasing everyone – the readers [...]
Here’s the latest news from over thirty years ago!