§ First off a big congrats to the Beat’s Marvel Sales Chart champ Paul O’Brien as he and wife Susi welcomed little Andrew into the world last week. Word is that the new issue is already racing up the charts.
§ Apparently some of the half million people who go to Comiket, the world’s biggest comics-related event, smell. Hopefully it is a very small percentage, otherwise that would be horrible.
§ J. Caleb Mozzocco editorializes on the recent Kevin Maguire leaves JL3000 story—there were several updates to that fast moving story that I didn’t get to because it was just too fast moving! Howard Porter replaced Maguire on the future JL, and Maguire got a job penciling Guardians of the Galaxy #10 which is the most natural thing in the world because a) Maguire specializes in future retro space teams and b) Bendis! has been going on about him on twitter for eons, so much so that when Maguire’s exit from the DC book was announced, a person turned to me and said “Bendis is gonna get him,” first thing.
Anyway, back to Mozzocco, who also goes over DC’s allocation mess and Mark Millar and everything people have been talking about all week.
It’s frankly hard to imagine an artist who is even more of a known quantity at DC Comics, which makes his removal from the title for any reason having anything at all to do with his style or the quality of his work kind of insane sounding. Who at DC—hell, who among superhero comics readers—doesn’t know what Maguire’s art looks like? What’s particularly depressing about the move in the broadest terms—that is, beyond how frustrating it must be to Maguire himself, and frustrating to fans disappointed that he won’t get another crack at a Justice League next month after all—is that one of the specific reasons he cited for his removal was that DC wanted a more “‘dark and gritty'” direction and, well, just look at the grimaces on that cover.
§ For some reason, I still haven’t linked to these photos of Fantagraphics publisher Gary Groth as a teenaged fanzine publisher. Digging the Selectric, the photo of Sal Buscema, the hair…everything, really. Groth was at the time the publisher of Fantastic Fanzine, the 10th issue of which you can read in full right here.
§ If you live in Ohio and would like to insure your comics collection, a fellow named Jestin Davis writes to say that his company offers that service in a specialized fashion. I’m not vouching for the company, but I’m sure it’s something that a lot of people have thought of from time to time and comics pose very specific problems in storage and grading that make insurance not as easy as you’d think.
§ Our good buddies at the Golden Apple in Los Angeles have just launched an Indiegogo campaign to start a production company. Many rotating perks and such, so check it out.
§ Another person who amazingly, had a great time at Comic-Con!
§ A book of essays on Warren Ellis’s TRANSMETROPOLITAN is out from Sequart; contributors include Chad Nevett, Warren Ellis, Darick Robertson, Julian Darius, Kevin Thurman, Patrick Meaney, Ryan K. Lindsay, Sean Witzke, Greg Burgas, Johanna Draper Carlson, Sara K. Ellis, Jason Michelitch, Chris Murphy, Brett Williams, and a Kevin Colden cover. (via)
§ This is an old old link, but somehow I never linked to Todd Klein’s incredible history of the DC offices in Five parts: The DC Comics Offices, 1930s – 1950s Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5. Photos of Bob Oksner, layouts of who sat where, Dorothy Woolfolk!
Link to the J. Caleb Mozzocco article.
“What’s particularly depressing about the move in the broadest terms—that is, beyond how frustrating it must be to Maguire himself, and frustrating to fans disappointed that he won’t get another crack at a Justice League next month after all—is that one of the specific reasons he cited for his removal was that DC wanted a more “‘dark and gritty’” direction and, well, just look at the grimaces on that cover.”
Is it possible that they fully intended to go with the bwhahaha story and for whatever reason (time/era;capturing lightning in a bottle twice is near impossible; creative team not gelling like they once did) it just wasn’t working? And because it wasn’t working they decided to mix up and totally change direction? And if not for the invention of twitter we wouldn’t know about any of this at all?
” And if not for the invention of twitter we wouldn’t know about any of this at all?”
Well, without Twitter we might not get near real-time updates, but presumably everyone would notice when the book shipped three months later than originally solicited and with a different artist, wouldn’t they?
Deciding on a workable direction is generally something that occurs BEFORE comics start being sold.
“Deciding on a workable direction is generally something that occurs BEFORE comics start being sold.”
True but life and comics aren’t perfect. Perhaps all involved assumed that everything that was going to come out would be as brilliant as wonderful as no doubt I’m sure every creative team hopes. And maybe once the pages came in, it turned out to not work as everyone had liked.
Maybe there’s a simpler reason Maguire was let go on the JLA3000 project. Maybe he was behind schedule and DC didn’t want to embarrass him by saying that. Just a guess.
Obviously anything is possible in any given case. But (a) it’s not like Maguire has a track record of unreliability, (b) the tone of a Justice League comic produced by that creative team should not have come as a surprise to anyone, absent clear instructions that something else was wanted, and (c) this sort of thing happens at DC ALL THE TIME. There is just no way on earth that DC has this much worse luck than Marvel. I’m sure some of these incidents are of the “could have happened to anyone” variety, but surely not all. (And if it IS just bad luck, god help anyone working in the DC offices, since they can probably expect to be struck by a meteor any day now, with luck like that.)
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