Be glad I didn't use an image from the inside of this comic

So Darwyn Cooke got caught on video saying that superhero comics should “…stop catering to the perverted needs of forty-five-year-old men.” He called out rape, children being forced to eat rats, explicit sex, foul language, and a lack of new characters. And now some people are getting upset. Oh come on, like you’ve never thought any of that.

Unfortunately the whole thing got derailed by his swipe at turning Batwoman into a lesbian, which came off as rather homophobic to some. Personally, I have to admit, I read it more as the character continuity issue of a man who likes his Bronze and Silver Age comics, which is somewhat humorous, given that he’s complaining about comics being ruled by the whims of forty-somethings, but he is large, he contains multitudes. (To which I say, Darwyn, it wasn’t “overnight”. She may have been around since 1956, but she hadn’t made any significant appearances since Crisis on Infinite Earths which basically changed everything. SEE? I can be as big of a geek as you are.)

So let’s break this down from the point of view of someone who is not forty five or male — me.

Perverted needs

I'm sorry, what?

Let’s be honest. The disturbing scenarios described by Cooke don’t disgust twenty and thirty-somethings — not to mention the sick little teenage boys we all went to school with — any more than they do forty-five-year-olds so much as they repel new readers of any age.

I’m going to come right out and say it — when you don’t know if a heretofore demure superhero title is going to dissolve into an orgy of rape and disembowelment in the next issue, it makes it that much harder to recommend to a new reader.

There’s definitely room for darker titles. I don’t think that anyone gets too up in arms when Hellblazer features yet another unlucky magician getting eaten by demons, but when you’re reading a JLA title and unexpectedly a hero gets dismembered and his preschooler gets murdered, it is all rather “What next, the moon turns to blood?”

While I’m not suggesting a return to the days of the Comic Code Authority, frankly, I think it would help matters immensely if readers knew, even unofficially, whether a particular comic title would be more likely to be shocking in the sense of “I had no idea the Batcave would explode!” or “On panel rape, graphic murder, more rape.” Having the stomach to handle prurient atrocities should not be a necessary skill for reading superheroes aimed at a post-grade school audience. If you really want a larger and more varied audience, keeping some of your titles and characters definitively away from the ultraviolence and disturbing content would be a good place to start. After all, did we really need to see evil dominatrix Mary Marvel?

No wonder many non-comics fans imagine us to be unwashed, socially inappropriate goons.

Forty-five-year-old

But yes, let’s get back to the question of whether or not comics cater to older fans in a way that makes for bad comics and excludes younger readers. Do they? Yeah, sometimes.

More than one comics professional has expressed the idea that all superhero comics are fueled almost entirely by nostalgia, and I have to say, I think that’s a very dangerous position to take. In my own experience, this isn’t true, at least not any more. How many adults under 30 even have fabled halcyon days as an eight-year-old at the supermarket spinner rack to want to recapture anymore? Most of us couldn’t get our hands on real comic books until we were in our teens, and when we did, we were probably more interested in the exciting stories or colorful characters than getting in touch with some lost era. Trying to get a new reader to recall the Silver Age or even Bronze Age of comics with a tear in the eye is a self-evidently ludicrous proposition.

Mainstream and superhero comics have a lot more going for them than simply a long history and great name recognition. Superhero comics aren’t really some sort of bizarre cult worshiping the desecrated remains of the 1930’s. They’re entertainment, and they’re fun. Forget this at your peril.

If Marvel decides to bring back Loxy the Dancing Bagel, they’d better have a very clear idea in mind of why somone who has never heard of Loxy would also enjoy and follow that book. The individual stories have to have some entertainment value of their own beyond simply being the next bit of paper with the character’s name printed on it. Otherwise, by issue 14, “Loxy and the Sinister Spread Scenario”, even the hardcore Loxy fanclub will start to tail off buying it, and good luck recruiting new readers!

Part of the power of the long-running superhero universes is that you can fall in love with a character and follow his or her exploits for years, watching the character change and grow in fascinating and unexpected directions in the hands of one creative team or another. The DC and Marvel Universes are one of the most fascinating and multi-faceted experiments in collaborative storytelling ever to see print, and that’s nothing to sneeze at. But precisely because they are so large and complex, it’s short-sighted to expect all of your readers to have to remember a ten-year-old plot point in order to get the story. A well-written story ought to work for longtime fans as well as new readers.  Yes, I know, that’s hard to pull off. But at the very least, it should be a priority to try.

If I had a dollar for every time I’ve heard something like “I want to read X-men / JSA / Marvel Comics / superhero comics, but where do you even start?” I would be able to buy several deluxe edition hardcovers, that’s all I’m saying.

Men

Dear comic book artists,

Stop tracing porn for your mainstream superhero comics.

Love,

Me

Look, there’s nothing wrong with eye candy. But when the storytelling takes an obvious back seat to illustrating your sexual fantasies, don’t be surprised when girls and women are turned off by it. That doesn’t mean that superhero comics aren’t for women, or that women don’t like or read superheroes

So do young people read superheroes?

Give me a break. Of course we do! There’s a lot to love about superhero comics. Walk into any comic book store today that isn’t a den of ’70s carpeting and stultifying testosterone and I would be willing to wager that at least 60 percent of the customers are under 40. The kids at my local library are continually checking out superhero books — they always seem to have the ones I want when I’m trying to find one.

Many, many superhero comics are having wonderful runs right now. Personally, I’m enjoying Justice League: Generation Lost, Prince of Power, Booster Gold, Gotham City Sirens and Young Allies at the moment and I can hardly wait for Batwoman to return this fall. There’s absolutely no question that there are good books out there, or that there are younger people reading them.

But don’t expect a twenty-three year old with fond memories of Wally West and Bart Allen to give a damn that Barry Allen got brought back from the dead or be cool with the fact that you sidelined his heroes to do it. He was a year old when the “real” Flash died.
Kate Fitzsimons writes for Publishers Weekly, Publishers Weekly Comics Week, and her personal comics and geek culture blog geekiferous.com.

In this dimension, Woodring’s plans for the giant pen are equally noble:

The dip pen is a bit of fetish item for me (as it is for many pen users). The pen is extremely difficult to master but ultimately allows for an extraordinary degree of expression. The well-constructed pen and ink drawing is a monument to perseverance, requiring tremendous patience and control. I am thrilled by the challenge of creating such drawings in public and introducing new audiences to the allure of the medium. The pen (nib) itself will be approximately 16 inches long, made of steel and fully functional. The holder will be six feet long and made of wood with a metal sleeve insert to hold the pen. Nib and holder will resemble as closely as possible the actual implements on which they are based.

Once the pen and penholder are built I will train myself to ink with it; and once I’ve done that, I will arrange at least two public performances in which I will use the pen to ink large graphite drawings on 3′ x 5′ sheets of bristol.

The deadline for raising the funds is tomorrow. We have only a few precious hours left in which to save the world and make this pen happen. Will you tell your grandchildren you did not support the construction of a giant steel pen? Think about it!

Cartoonists Ted Rall, Matt Bors, and photographer Steven Cloud are in Afghanistan to tell “the people’s story” and send back cartoons. They’ve been uploading them as often as possible using satellite phones.

While Iraq is now at peace, Afghanistan is not such a safe place to be am American these days, as the cartoons sometimes show. Here’s a photo by Cloud of Rall and Bors in local garb. You can follow along on Twitter or on their blogs, here and here.

Jordan Crane’s great storage room of comics, WHAT THINGS DO, posts What Am I Doing Here? by Abner Dean, a lovely mid-century comics collection. Not quite work safe, although it’s debatable.

And Gabrielle Bell — this one is an EPIC.

We could have SWORN there was a third…but can’t find it now. Readers?

Could this be a cover subject for CLInT Magazine?

And why is Mr. Millar wearing ear goggles?

Developing.

Via Tony Harris.

Both of artist Colleen Doran’s sites — A Distant Soil and Colleendoran.com — have been hacked, she confirmed in a phone call. Luckily, all her sites — which host her webcomic serialization of A DISTANT SOIL and her popular, pithy blog– had been backed up and have been moved to a new host and should be available over the weekend.

According to Doran, she suspected something was amiss when she noticed someone from Turkey hid visited her site oftimes. “I could see something was wrong, but I didn’t have the technical know how to fix it,” she said. Unfortunately her webhost, Media Temple, wasn’t able to catch the hacking until it was too late and both her sites had been infected with malware. Even Goggle cache shows the sites as suspicious and won’t let a viewer in.

“It’s annoying because I was planning to do a whole series of blog posts about how to build your traffic,” Doran lamented.

Hopefully she’ll still write that series! We’d read it.

(Via Robot 6)

Fifty percent of the proceeds from these auctions will go to CAPS, but the remaining 50% will go to Heath and Reese directly. Heath is undergoing surgery in a few months and needs assistance in covering those costs, and Reese is dealing with eye problems and disabilities due to a back injury. Both artists are living on fixed incomes, and any money they receive to offset these additional expenses will be a huge help.

Contributors to this benefit auction include Jack Davis, Ernie Chan, Al Jaffee, Nick Park, Jeff Smith, Doug Sneyd, Dan Spiegle, William Stout, Mick Gray, Angelo Torres, Stan Lee, Dean Yeagle, Sergio Aragones and Russ Heath himself.

If you’ve got artwork that you’d like to donate, please contact CAPS President Pat McGreal at patmcgreal at aol dot com He’s hoping to receive pieces (or hi-res images, at least) by Monday, August 9, for inclusion in the official auction catalog, so please let him know right away if you’re interested in participating.

Thanks very much for your consideration. Whether or not you’re able to contribute artwork for the auction, please help spread the word. The more high-rollers who know about the auction, the more funds will be raised for these two talented and deserving artists.

Anyone who is a student of comics history needs no introduction to the work of Heath and Reese. As the freelancer population ages, even with Medicare, it is obvious that health care and other retirement costs for our founding fathers and mothers is becoming a group activity. And it’s one we need to pitch in on.

“The character is called The Fixer and he’s very much an adventurer who’s been essentially searching for a mission,” Miller said. “He’s been trained as special ops and when his city is attacked all of a sudden all the pieces fall into place and all this training comes into play. He’s been out there fighting crime without really having his heart in it — he does it to keep in shape. He’s very different than Batman in that he’s not a tortured soul. He’s a much more well-adjusted creature even though he happens to shoot 100 people in the course of the story.”

Miller reveals that his anti-terrorism tale has mellowed a bit over the years, as well:

“Holy Terror” has been a long journey, but Miller said he views it as a project that has arrived at its final destination right on time, creatively speaking.

“It began as my reaction to 9/11 and it was an extremely angry piece of work and as the years have passed by I’ve done movies and I’ve done other things and time has provided some good distance, so it becomes more of a cohesive story as it progresses,” Miller said. “The Fixer has also become his own character in a way I’ve really enjoyed. No one will read this and think, ‘Where’s Batman?’”