§ Nice Art: Leela Corman has a stunning comic about her grandparents, Holocaust survivors, up at Tablet.
§ Spectrum, which presents awards annually to the best in fantasy art, held their honors Saturday and Mike Mignola won the Grand Master Award, which honors a career for quality and influence. Previous winners include Ralph McQuarrie, Al Williamson, Richard Corben, Jeffrey Jones, H. R. Giger, Michael William Kaluta, Mœbius, and Frank Frazetta.
§ The Today show had a segment on “female driven superheroes” and profiled Marvel’s Sana Amanat, Katie Kubert and Emily Shaw. I seem to recall another major media story that spotlighted this trio, so good pr!
The Today show had a segment on “female driven superheroes” and profiled Marvel’s Sana Amanat, Katie Kubert and Emily Shaw. I seem to recall another major media story that spotlighted this trio, so good pr!
§ Meanwhile librarian Lisa Brown selects a small list of Graphic novels that feature strong roles for girls
§ Free Comics Book Day was a big success I’m hearing, and including in Michigan!
Crowds at Allen Park’s Big Ben’s Comix Oasis, Dearborn’s Green Brain Comics and Lincoln Park’s Quick Stop Comic Shop were as large as ever. Other area stores, Taylor’s The Pack Shack, Southgate’s Hero Time Comics, and Trenton’s Comic City also celebrated the day. The threat of rain drove down some of the initial lines at stores across the region, but that just made people trickle in throughout the day instead of line up at store openings. “Normally I’m among the first in line,” John Derry, of Carleton, said outside of Big Ben’s Comix Oasis. “I saw the weather last night and decided to wait until a bit later for the line to die down. Turns out it was a great morning”
§ Gene Yang is turning to nonfiction with Dragon Hoops, due in 2018 from First Second. It explores the true story of the 2015 Bishop O’Dowd High School boys’ basketball team, which tried for the California state championship. This does not sound like Yang’s usual subject matter but I have a feeling he’ll make it exciting. The story deals with “sports culture, race, the tension between high school academics and athletics, and the race to victory.”
¶ And now your Civil War Links section. I’ll have more to say about the movie and the MCU a bit later, but this should keep you busy.
§ Desiree Rodriguez looks at the state of motherhood in superhero media, and surprise, it’s not that great.
Mother’s Day is a day we celebrate the woman (or women) in our lives that fulfill the role of “mother.” Mothers—the good and the bad ones—are an important part of our lives. Moms that worry about what media teaches their children, what superheroes are really super, and so much more. Mothers are important; their absence from the narratives of various superhero franchises is keenly felt. Even more so, it’s outright troubling. Mothers in superhero films and television shows are martyrs, one-scene heroes, villains, or more often than not sidelined for the father figures in the protagonists’ life.
§ Abraham Riesman looks at the comics history of Bucky with the good hair, including the Brubaker Epting run which invented the Winter Soldier and Captain America’s return in Avengers #4.
Sure enough, the book revealed that Cap was back — and, improbably, just as youthful as he’d always been. In the story he’s found trapped in ice in the North Atlantic, and, upon thawing out and waking up in front of the heroes, he jolts up and screams, “Bucky — Bucky! Look out!” But there’s no Bucky to be found. As we learn in a flashback, tragedy struck during the war: Bucky was blown up while trying to stop a booby-trapped plane in midair, and Cap — attempting to save him — fell into the frigid water, where he froze in suspended animation, only to later wake up in a world where his best chum was long gone.
§ ASIDE: every time I link to a story like this I feel compelled to point out that when Stan and Jack brought back Cap THEY WERE DOING A REBOOT! A REBOOT!!!! Kirby and Joe Simon created Cap in 1941, so the character was a mere 23 years old. Playing time expansion game, this is like a character created in 1993 in contemporary terms — in other words, just about every popular Marvel and DC character. the Can you imagine if there had been Twitter when Marvel Comics launched in 1962?
§ Both Chris Evans who stars as Captain America, and Kristen Bell have been open about their issues with anxiety and depression of late.
§ Speaking of Evans, from that same profile in Rolling Stone, we’re reminded that Marvel is making Avengers 3 two movies in one at least partly because that’s Evans last turn as the character:
Evans calls Civil War, definitively, “the last installment of Captain America.” In November, he heads to Atlanta for back-to-back filming on the third and fourth Avengers. “Like, 10 months,” he says of the shoot. “Ugh. My body’s gonna fall apart.” Downey says Marvel movies are like the presidency, in that they age you prematurely: “I hope he’s enjoying this moment, where he’s still tall and blue-eyed and handsome.”
§ Kevin Feige has a long interview at Deadline that has already spawned many headlines. I’m sure it will form a foundational text for Marvel Studios Kreminology for a while.
It’s all about the filmmakers that we hire, the screenwriters that we hire. I think in the case of Civil War, you also had executive producer, Nate Moore, in the case of The Avengers, Jeremy Latcham, in the case of Doctor Strange, Stephen Broussard, we all have our own tastes and we all like to be entertained by going to movies. We’re all very nervous about becoming too serious and pompous as the cinematic universe continues to grow. I think that’s something we’re always on alert for as we work with our filmmakers. That said, Chris Markus & Stephen McFeely and Joe and Anthony Russo, understand that tone and had helped define it going back toCaptain America: The Winter Soldier. We have an amazing partnership now with a creative cabal that understands where you need to have fun. The entire purpose of that airport action scene in the film was to deliver on the promise of the conceit of civil war, but also to have a tremendous amount of fun so that the movie could then take you to a surprising place later.
