Comic-Con 2009: Big Deal?
So its Sunday night and we've just come through Comic-Con. There's lot of other panels that will be covered in a flood of info over the next two or three days, but near as I can tell, ALL the panels from the Big Two have been covered, so we're going to get into that.
This is going to be a slightly different format than last year's Comic-Con "report". Last year I basically broke it down to the things that had come out I was most excited about. Considering I read comics for superheroes and only half were superhero projects, I was pretty psyched about the whole CC last year, for them to think up five full projects I had some interest in.
This year kinda went down pretty weird though. Maybe I'm wrong, but it kinda felt like they didn't want to announce anything huge for some reason. I feel like that, but why? ...I *know* they couldn't have thought their fans were all at the Twilight Panel.
But there was a lot of things that weren't announced or even mentioned that I felt should have been, and a lot of things that were announced it was like, in my eyes, "...Meh. Big deal."
You know here at Jumping in Headfirst I hate being overly critical. There's too much of that in the world, so I like to bring the positive stuff, so what's happening here is that I'm going to try and temper the negative stuff I DO mention here with positive things, as I talk about the projects I'm hyped for, and the projects I wish I had seen/thought they should have talked about.
Projects I'm Excited About:
- Marvel Anime (Wolverine, X-Men, Iron Man, Blade)
For fans of comics AND anime? This is a dream come true. For my money, our country has always had it wrong. Japan will adapt any manga property to the small screen if its popular enough. And for them, animated series don't just run a set length even when hugely popular. The biggest shonen series all run in excess of 100 episodes, easy.
Another thing they do--something I REALLY wish we could do--is that they air adapted properties at proper times, so unnecessary edits don't occur. Popular shonen series usually run weekend mornings, while more adult series will air during primetime, or even later. Hopefully Marvel's big heroes can gain the proper audience in the Land of the Rising Sun so I won't have to be stuck with "Iron Man: Armored Adventures" for the IM toon of the decade.
(Another property I'm especially excited to have adapted into anime is X-Men. If you're asking why, go here. Witness the win.)
- Farscape (Ongoing)
I had this up last year on my Comic-Con 2008 list. Since then there've been 3-4 adventures/stories told with my favorite characters of the Sci-Fi world. Apparently they've been hugely popular, because Farscape has been greenlit for a ongoing series, and I'm DEFINITELY excited about that. Also it appears they're going to continue the different mini-series about everyone's favorite raging Luxan, D'Argo--AND it appears the webisodes aren't dead yet. Wow. Flawless victory indeed!
- Muppet Show (Ongoing)
Something else I had on the list last year. They were a little late with launching this one since I think the first issue took until March, but I've enjoyed what they've done thus far, so the idea of seeing this series on a regular basis makes me happy. Its okay for "funnybooks" to be, well, actual funny books, now and again. (Now I'm considering finding out if the Muppet Show is on DVD somewhere...would be an excellent companion to this series, no?)
- Nation X
Matt Fraction's X-Men has been great IMO thus far, so I'm still riding with him as we enter this upcoming big story, which will be the first story for X-Men coming out of the Dark Avengers/X-Men crossover. Details are scarce, but its being described as a part of Scott Summers' (coolest mutant ever now) master plan, and also touted as the first confrontation with the X-Men since last year (which was just a one-off appearance and not a big story). Its always nice when they downplay a huge villain before they let him come back to the forefront to start some shit.
- Justice Society of America & JSA: All Stars
Bill Willingham and Matt Sturges are two incredibly talented writers who've done work on both superhero and non-superhero projects. And I STILL pity them for having to follow Geoff freaking Johns' run on the JSA. Still, it helps to have them do this, expanding the first super-team into a geniune franchise (which seems to be the thing to do in comics right now). Between these two titles and Power Girl, a post-Johns JSA could actually be fun. Now if we can only get an Hourman/Liberty Belle book...
- All-Flash
The preceding mini-series for this was on last year's Comic-Con list. Geoff Johns begins his first arc on the rebooted Flash franchise, alongside writer Sterling Gates for Kid Flash. I...question the decision of a Kid Flash book, but giving it some thought just now, it says something that they're willing to put forth the proverbial olive branch to all the people thinking that they're just throwing Wally out so that Barry can be the main guy, it takes a lot to say, "Hey, we're not even giving Barry his own book. The only guy getting a title is Bart." I'm glad to see that, and also glad we're finally getting the Flash series underway. Hopefully we'll be seeing just what sort of stories can be told with the Flash as the "guardian of time", as Geoff has often put it.
That's it, methinks. Six projects, one of which I learned of prior to CCI 2008, and 2/3rds of the rest are just ongoings of minis on last year's post.
Not Don't want to get pointlessly negative, so I'm going to state my problem in a way where you can conceive how DC and Marvel could have fixed it:
They treated the San Diego Comic Con, the biggest comic (or any other) convention of the year, like they would any other convention. That's the problem. This isn't a Wizard convention, or WonderCon. Its not even NYCC. Its the San Diego Comic-Con. The big fish in the convention pond. There are some people that don't even show up for this one since its so huge they're aware they won't even get noticed. But these are the two biggest publishers in comics.
I heard far too much, "we'll be telling you about that in a couple of weeks". This is the biggest con of the year. Announce everything NOW. Don't wanna hear from you for weeks after that.
And to give you an idea of what I want to hear, I really feel like it should be the way I told my friend weeks before the con: "Comic-Con is like E3 for comic books. None of the stuff you hear about is really coming out until next year." There's a reason for this thought pattern. Thanks to solicitations, which a lot of comic book fans that visit cons follow, we know about comic stories at least three months in advance. And since SDCC nearly always occurs after the solicits for that month have been released, we already know what comics are coming out all the way up until October. You can't have a con where you purely talk to us about projects in the two months left. (Granted, their con was more like they were pretending we hadn't seen the solicits...I guess there's some merit in going that direction.)
Okay, so with that out of the way, what did I really want to hear about? Glad you asked!
* First thing was definitely the big company crossovers for 2010. I hate the way they try and pretend like every event is going to be the last one ever because our guys aren't gonna make it through, like the writers and artists suddenly WON'T need to be paid next year. C'mon, you know what's up. Knock it off.
No, I don't want to know EVERYTHING in the company crossover. Just a tease, to get us all hyped. This was unnecessary in '08. The big crossover was already out there--Blackest Night. Geoff wrapped up Sinestro Corps War and then hit us with the tease for the last bit of the GL trilogy he'd been crafting, so we knew what was coming.
Now however, we just have vague ideas. Nothing concrete, but there are rumors:
For DC, the biggest event of 2010 is either one of two things:
- The Superman series has got a big story they're building to that's been coming since 2008's New Krypton. Everything's set up to be Earth versus New Krypton, with all the DCU heroes caught in the middle. This COULD be contained in Superman's books, except the Superman: Two Worlds panel let us in on the fact that the Thanagarians (Hawkman/Hawkgirl) would be popping up as the Kryptonians once conquered their race, and the race on Saturn would ALSO be laying out some warnings after NK began shuffling moons around like the galaxy was their living room. With other planets already confirmed for involvement, one could easily see this growing into being THE event of 2010.
- James Robinson is taking over Justice League. Having already been tapped to write the long-awaited mini-series Cry for Justice, it was only natural to pick him for the job after DC noticed previous writer Dwayne McDuffie explaining it was DC's fault for making the book suck so bad. With the League selling far lower than its supposed to after so many false starts and half-hearted stories created to lead into one story or tie into another, they're definitely in need of something that will bring the readers back, so with so many rumors of the League becoming two books with one being written by either Greg Rucka or Geoff Johns, its certainly possible this would be the book to watch for DC's next big tentpole. (Of course, I'm not yet willing to say that Superman's current problems won't become so big they'll simply spill over naturally into the Justice League anyway. Interplantary war DOES seem like the sort of thing they would handle.)
As far as Marvel, there's just a bunch of rumors swirling around right at this point. Only thing confirmed is that "the third act to the story started with Civil War" isn't too far away. Other than that, all we have are hints and guesses. First off, writer J. Michael Stracynski leaving Thor due to an oncoming line-wide crossover. Second off, Cap writer Ed Brubaker is finally bringing back Steve Rogers. A tease during the last big con (Wizard World? Heroes Con? One of the two--both happened simultaneously) hinted that, maybe, just perhaps, after Steve was inserted into the Marvel U proper, he, Thor, and Iron Man might possibly all be on the same team when it was finally time to take Norman Osborn down. This is possibly the coolest thing ever, since we haven't seen the three on one team since Geoff wrote the Avengers back when I was an underclassman in high school and Thor left the team due to differences with Cap and Tony.
We don't know anything concrete yet though, and given that Matt Fraction is hinting that things get better, not worse for Tony following World's Most Wanted (more on that maybe in a different column, as I find it stupid, a bit), and one would think on the agenda for Tony after 12 issues of running from, well, everybody, as well as growing progressively more stupid, would be an arc involving getting him back to where he should be as a hero, hopefully getting a new armor in the process, particularly if he's about to join a team to take on the villains who're currently media darlings and running basically everything right now.
What it comes down to is that we should've found out SOMETHING about their tentpoles for the next year, no matter when they were debuting. We don't need to know everything about them--all I'm asking for is a poster, a title for the event and the creative team. Throw that up there and let us guess about the rest. Answer no questions. (Give NO interviews, too. If you're not giving out info, please don't take interviews solely so you can say, "I really can't talk about that right now..." Contrary to what you think, this kills hype.)
* The writer of Thor. I'm sorry, this really wasn't that big of a deal, and JMS's run is over before the year is even out. Someone ASKED about this and they literally said it was too soon to talk about it. So...when are you intending to talk about it? At a Cup O'Joe panel on CBR? It won't get even half the publicity it could have gotten at the con.
* When Grant Morrison is writing Bruce's (Batman's) return. Here again, we're not looking for major information. No need to spill what all is going to happen, but you and I all know Grant's Batman and Robin comic is only plotted for 12 issues, so we've got roughly a year between now and Bruce's return. (Ten months, essentially.) So tell me this: Why no info on this? Is it a mini or a part of Morrison's ongoing? What's the projected release date This isn't like Marvel with Captain America--you've got too many characters and books relying on this to stretch this out the way they have. (Reports say Brubaker originally only intended to keep Steve gone for four months.) Eight titles focus around or exclusively on Batman, so its highly doubtful a response strong enough to keep this going for longer than the original year will occur, so come on.
* Gail Simone's next big project. She's doing amazing work on Wonder Woman as well as the villains only book Secret Six, and there's been a third book in the works for her since last year, if my memory serves me correctly. Are we seeing the new Batwoman here, where we're going to be waiting on this project for 3 years? Hopefully not. Its supposed to be a "huge" project, so what better place to unveil than here?
* Kurt Busiek's next project. The guy just came out of Trinity where he roughly cranked out four titles a month. Still under contract at DC, so he's GOTTA have something, plus for all of us who saw the tail end of Trinity? There's got to be a HUGE project he's working on remaining under wraps right now, and it might have been the only way to pull the rug from under Marvel when they announced they got the rights to Marvelman. (Having read Alan Moore's version of Marvelman, Miracleman, I have to say that I could not be less interested right now.)
* The next weekly. This one's a gimme. No, seriously--Wednesday Comics is running for another two months and then they're done. The entire project was finished ages ago, so where better to hype the fifth weekly, launching in (hopefully) early 2010? By the way though, smart move guys. Give the weekly buyers a break for a few months. Diminishing returns (as well as it being insanely hard to top their initial series, which got all the top DC writers aside from Kurt Busiek on a single comic) has lead to lower sales on every weekly thus far--a break of 3-5 months is a brilliant idea, so when you start talking about the weekly comic project again people may be more willing to shell out the $$ for them.
What do you think faithful readers? Could I be unreasonable in my requests here, or am I right and this con was way underrated? I believe I'm on point this time. Even G4's coverage didn't pop up until TODAY, and there was only *one* day of it and its not even being re-aired.
Ah well. All-in-all, comics are telling some good stories right now--some might even say *great* ones, so don't think I'm being all down on DC and Marvel--I just want to know what happened.
This is going to be a slightly different format than last year's Comic-Con "report". Last year I basically broke it down to the things that had come out I was most excited about. Considering I read comics for superheroes and only half were superhero projects, I was pretty psyched about the whole CC last year, for them to think up five full projects I had some interest in.
This year kinda went down pretty weird though. Maybe I'm wrong, but it kinda felt like they didn't want to announce anything huge for some reason. I feel like that, but why? ...I *know* they couldn't have thought their fans were all at the Twilight Panel.
But there was a lot of things that weren't announced or even mentioned that I felt should have been, and a lot of things that were announced it was like, in my eyes, "...Meh. Big deal."
You know here at Jumping in Headfirst I hate being overly critical. There's too much of that in the world, so I like to bring the positive stuff, so what's happening here is that I'm going to try and temper the negative stuff I DO mention here with positive things, as I talk about the projects I'm hyped for, and the projects I wish I had seen/thought they should have talked about.
Projects I'm Excited About:
- Marvel Anime (Wolverine, X-Men, Iron Man, Blade)
For fans of comics AND anime? This is a dream come true. For my money, our country has always had it wrong. Japan will adapt any manga property to the small screen if its popular enough. And for them, animated series don't just run a set length even when hugely popular. The biggest shonen series all run in excess of 100 episodes, easy.
Another thing they do--something I REALLY wish we could do--is that they air adapted properties at proper times, so unnecessary edits don't occur. Popular shonen series usually run weekend mornings, while more adult series will air during primetime, or even later. Hopefully Marvel's big heroes can gain the proper audience in the Land of the Rising Sun so I won't have to be stuck with "Iron Man: Armored Adventures" for the IM toon of the decade.
(Another property I'm especially excited to have adapted into anime is X-Men. If you're asking why, go here. Witness the win.)
- Farscape (Ongoing)
I had this up last year on my Comic-Con 2008 list. Since then there've been 3-4 adventures/stories told with my favorite characters of the Sci-Fi world. Apparently they've been hugely popular, because Farscape has been greenlit for a ongoing series, and I'm DEFINITELY excited about that. Also it appears they're going to continue the different mini-series about everyone's favorite raging Luxan, D'Argo--AND it appears the webisodes aren't dead yet. Wow. Flawless victory indeed!
- Muppet Show (Ongoing)
Something else I had on the list last year. They were a little late with launching this one since I think the first issue took until March, but I've enjoyed what they've done thus far, so the idea of seeing this series on a regular basis makes me happy. Its okay for "funnybooks" to be, well, actual funny books, now and again. (Now I'm considering finding out if the Muppet Show is on DVD somewhere...would be an excellent companion to this series, no?)
- Nation X
Matt Fraction's X-Men has been great IMO thus far, so I'm still riding with him as we enter this upcoming big story, which will be the first story for X-Men coming out of the Dark Avengers/X-Men crossover. Details are scarce, but its being described as a part of Scott Summers' (coolest mutant ever now) master plan, and also touted as the first confrontation with the X-Men since last year (which was just a one-off appearance and not a big story). Its always nice when they downplay a huge villain before they let him come back to the forefront to start some shit.
- Justice Society of America & JSA: All Stars
Bill Willingham and Matt Sturges are two incredibly talented writers who've done work on both superhero and non-superhero projects. And I STILL pity them for having to follow Geoff freaking Johns' run on the JSA. Still, it helps to have them do this, expanding the first super-team into a geniune franchise (which seems to be the thing to do in comics right now). Between these two titles and Power Girl, a post-Johns JSA could actually be fun. Now if we can only get an Hourman/Liberty Belle book...
- All-Flash
The preceding mini-series for this was on last year's Comic-Con list. Geoff Johns begins his first arc on the rebooted Flash franchise, alongside writer Sterling Gates for Kid Flash. I...question the decision of a Kid Flash book, but giving it some thought just now, it says something that they're willing to put forth the proverbial olive branch to all the people thinking that they're just throwing Wally out so that Barry can be the main guy, it takes a lot to say, "Hey, we're not even giving Barry his own book. The only guy getting a title is Bart." I'm glad to see that, and also glad we're finally getting the Flash series underway. Hopefully we'll be seeing just what sort of stories can be told with the Flash as the "guardian of time", as Geoff has often put it.
That's it, methinks. Six projects, one of which I learned of prior to CCI 2008, and 2/3rds of the rest are just ongoings of minis on last year's post.
Not Don't want to get pointlessly negative, so I'm going to state my problem in a way where you can conceive how DC and Marvel could have fixed it:
They treated the San Diego Comic Con, the biggest comic (or any other) convention of the year, like they would any other convention. That's the problem. This isn't a Wizard convention, or WonderCon. Its not even NYCC. Its the San Diego Comic-Con. The big fish in the convention pond. There are some people that don't even show up for this one since its so huge they're aware they won't even get noticed. But these are the two biggest publishers in comics.
I heard far too much, "we'll be telling you about that in a couple of weeks". This is the biggest con of the year. Announce everything NOW. Don't wanna hear from you for weeks after that.
And to give you an idea of what I want to hear, I really feel like it should be the way I told my friend weeks before the con: "Comic-Con is like E3 for comic books. None of the stuff you hear about is really coming out until next year." There's a reason for this thought pattern. Thanks to solicitations, which a lot of comic book fans that visit cons follow, we know about comic stories at least three months in advance. And since SDCC nearly always occurs after the solicits for that month have been released, we already know what comics are coming out all the way up until October. You can't have a con where you purely talk to us about projects in the two months left. (Granted, their con was more like they were pretending we hadn't seen the solicits...I guess there's some merit in going that direction.)
Okay, so with that out of the way, what did I really want to hear about? Glad you asked!
* First thing was definitely the big company crossovers for 2010. I hate the way they try and pretend like every event is going to be the last one ever because our guys aren't gonna make it through, like the writers and artists suddenly WON'T need to be paid next year. C'mon, you know what's up. Knock it off.
No, I don't want to know EVERYTHING in the company crossover. Just a tease, to get us all hyped. This was unnecessary in '08. The big crossover was already out there--Blackest Night. Geoff wrapped up Sinestro Corps War and then hit us with the tease for the last bit of the GL trilogy he'd been crafting, so we knew what was coming.
Now however, we just have vague ideas. Nothing concrete, but there are rumors:
For DC, the biggest event of 2010 is either one of two things:
- The Superman series has got a big story they're building to that's been coming since 2008's New Krypton. Everything's set up to be Earth versus New Krypton, with all the DCU heroes caught in the middle. This COULD be contained in Superman's books, except the Superman: Two Worlds panel let us in on the fact that the Thanagarians (Hawkman/Hawkgirl) would be popping up as the Kryptonians once conquered their race, and the race on Saturn would ALSO be laying out some warnings after NK began shuffling moons around like the galaxy was their living room. With other planets already confirmed for involvement, one could easily see this growing into being THE event of 2010.
- James Robinson is taking over Justice League. Having already been tapped to write the long-awaited mini-series Cry for Justice, it was only natural to pick him for the job after DC noticed previous writer Dwayne McDuffie explaining it was DC's fault for making the book suck so bad. With the League selling far lower than its supposed to after so many false starts and half-hearted stories created to lead into one story or tie into another, they're definitely in need of something that will bring the readers back, so with so many rumors of the League becoming two books with one being written by either Greg Rucka or Geoff Johns, its certainly possible this would be the book to watch for DC's next big tentpole. (Of course, I'm not yet willing to say that Superman's current problems won't become so big they'll simply spill over naturally into the Justice League anyway. Interplantary war DOES seem like the sort of thing they would handle.)
As far as Marvel, there's just a bunch of rumors swirling around right at this point. Only thing confirmed is that "the third act to the story started with Civil War" isn't too far away. Other than that, all we have are hints and guesses. First off, writer J. Michael Stracynski leaving Thor due to an oncoming line-wide crossover. Second off, Cap writer Ed Brubaker is finally bringing back Steve Rogers. A tease during the last big con (Wizard World? Heroes Con? One of the two--both happened simultaneously) hinted that, maybe, just perhaps, after Steve was inserted into the Marvel U proper, he, Thor, and Iron Man might possibly all be on the same team when it was finally time to take Norman Osborn down. This is possibly the coolest thing ever, since we haven't seen the three on one team since Geoff wrote the Avengers back when I was an underclassman in high school and Thor left the team due to differences with Cap and Tony.
We don't know anything concrete yet though, and given that Matt Fraction is hinting that things get better, not worse for Tony following World's Most Wanted (more on that maybe in a different column, as I find it stupid, a bit), and one would think on the agenda for Tony after 12 issues of running from, well, everybody, as well as growing progressively more stupid, would be an arc involving getting him back to where he should be as a hero, hopefully getting a new armor in the process, particularly if he's about to join a team to take on the villains who're currently media darlings and running basically everything right now.
What it comes down to is that we should've found out SOMETHING about their tentpoles for the next year, no matter when they were debuting. We don't need to know everything about them--all I'm asking for is a poster, a title for the event and the creative team. Throw that up there and let us guess about the rest. Answer no questions. (Give NO interviews, too. If you're not giving out info, please don't take interviews solely so you can say, "I really can't talk about that right now..." Contrary to what you think, this kills hype.)
* The writer of Thor. I'm sorry, this really wasn't that big of a deal, and JMS's run is over before the year is even out. Someone ASKED about this and they literally said it was too soon to talk about it. So...when are you intending to talk about it? At a Cup O'Joe panel on CBR? It won't get even half the publicity it could have gotten at the con.
* When Grant Morrison is writing Bruce's (Batman's) return. Here again, we're not looking for major information. No need to spill what all is going to happen, but you and I all know Grant's Batman and Robin comic is only plotted for 12 issues, so we've got roughly a year between now and Bruce's return. (Ten months, essentially.) So tell me this: Why no info on this? Is it a mini or a part of Morrison's ongoing? What's the projected release date This isn't like Marvel with Captain America--you've got too many characters and books relying on this to stretch this out the way they have. (Reports say Brubaker originally only intended to keep Steve gone for four months.) Eight titles focus around or exclusively on Batman, so its highly doubtful a response strong enough to keep this going for longer than the original year will occur, so come on.
* Gail Simone's next big project. She's doing amazing work on Wonder Woman as well as the villains only book Secret Six, and there's been a third book in the works for her since last year, if my memory serves me correctly. Are we seeing the new Batwoman here, where we're going to be waiting on this project for 3 years? Hopefully not. Its supposed to be a "huge" project, so what better place to unveil than here?
* Kurt Busiek's next project. The guy just came out of Trinity where he roughly cranked out four titles a month. Still under contract at DC, so he's GOTTA have something, plus for all of us who saw the tail end of Trinity? There's got to be a HUGE project he's working on remaining under wraps right now, and it might have been the only way to pull the rug from under Marvel when they announced they got the rights to Marvelman. (Having read Alan Moore's version of Marvelman, Miracleman, I have to say that I could not be less interested right now.)
* The next weekly. This one's a gimme. No, seriously--Wednesday Comics is running for another two months and then they're done. The entire project was finished ages ago, so where better to hype the fifth weekly, launching in (hopefully) early 2010? By the way though, smart move guys. Give the weekly buyers a break for a few months. Diminishing returns (as well as it being insanely hard to top their initial series, which got all the top DC writers aside from Kurt Busiek on a single comic) has lead to lower sales on every weekly thus far--a break of 3-5 months is a brilliant idea, so when you start talking about the weekly comic project again people may be more willing to shell out the $$ for them.
What do you think faithful readers? Could I be unreasonable in my requests here, or am I right and this con was way underrated? I believe I'm on point this time. Even G4's coverage didn't pop up until TODAY, and there was only *one* day of it and its not even being re-aired.
Ah well. All-in-all, comics are telling some good stories right now--some might even say *great* ones, so don't think I'm being all down on DC and Marvel--I just want to know what happened.
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