I've got a Giant Sized Man-Thing for ya baby...

Noah Berlatsky and Tucker Stone are blogging their way through the classic Man-Thing series of Adventure into Fear and Man-Thing, and given that I was reading those front and center when they were coming out, I realized that someone had to go along and blog with them on this (especially since they're doing all the scanner work so that I don't have to).

First off, they have parts 1, part 2, part 3 and part 4 up already.

And lets face it, someone clearly dug through the half price trades bin at the con and picked up that Essential Man-Thing trade.

Of course, I couldn't wait to see what they said about the bizarre acid trip that is Fear #19 and Man-Thing #1. Here are the comments on Howard the Duck's first appearance:

Oddly enough, the Conan-stand-in [Korrek] seems to share my feelings, because he likes and respects him immediately as well. Considering that most of Korrek's speeches and actions so far have painted his character as an aggressive jump-first type of character, it makes Howard that much more interesting when you see him tell the barbarian to shut up. Why does Howard get to order around Conan and treat Man-Thing like a retarded golden retriever? Gerber doesn't say. He doesn't need to. Howard gets to do that stuff because he's Howard The Duck.

Now, this is the fun of revisionist history here, knowing that Howard became a media sensation, as well as getting spun off into his own book, but at the time, we were simply witnessing all weirdness that Gerber and Mayerik could come up with. Any you know what? It made as much sense as Crisis on Infinite Earths did all those years later. What is intersting is Gerber's take on the entire thing, which is to almost to admit that the insanity level would be so high that the rational being would basically have to either lose his marbles or just roll with the entire thing.

Tucker wonders why Howard is there at all. The answer is simple, as simple as Ben Grimm in the FF: someone needs to be the voice of reason and ground the whole frikkin' thing or it really does spin so far out of control that we, the reader, could really care less. Howard allows Gerber to have his cake and eat it too: all the weirdness that Gerber's right brain can come up with, his left brain can make a clever, Give me a fucking break." kinda comment, and thus the story moves.

As far as villans go, the Nether Spawn was pretty fun, even if he didn't have the snappiest lines of all time, he was rather sinister if you bought into the whole panethon that Dakimh did. Anytime i drive around California and see "Dog is my co-pilot" bumper stickers, i'm reminded of Man-Thing #1. After all these years, scary I know, but that's the way my brain works.

After basically lambasting Gerber for some real by the numbers issues of Fear, I'll be interested to see what Noah and Tucker think about the issues when Gerber finally gets his brain wrapped around the sorts of stories that he wants to use Man-Thing for. Man-Thing #5 is about where is gets good. Steve creates a level of Brechtian pathos that most comics would never even dare attempt, let alone create on page after page. The death of the clown? Either brilliant pathos or inspired lunacy depending upon your vantage point. Hard to say where they will fall.

Part of it, of course, is the art. Val Mayerik did a good job, but was always inked so roughly that it missed the mark of being anything classic. When Ploog comes on, things get better by leaps and bounds, even if they would never hit the high notes that Wrightson would hit on Swamp Thing. Brunner's Man-Thing covers hint at how devastating the creature could have been in the right hands.

Looking forward to the next post from Tucker and Noah...

After Watchmen: the DC marketing blitz

There is no question that DC Comics and Marvel Comics have finally broken a lot of the stigma of the "comics are crap" tag that was stapled to the American public's mind for so long. Not only are the books in more book stores than they ever used to be, but we have a number of very successful movies that have faithfully adapted the stories that we loved into all ages entertainment. So wither the comics? What did Marvel do the capitalized on the success of 3, count 'em, 3 successful Spidermen films? Or Iron Man? How could Marvel have let the Iron Man collections not be in the warehouse to ship out when the film broke (because they didn't!). There have been any number of us comic bloggers that were ready to rake them over the coals for not having a single marketing initiative in place when those films opened.

Now DC has finally put together a 32 pamphlet, that takes me longer to read than your average comic book by the way, directing people to other books that they may want to read. To which I say:

Duh.

It is marketing 101. And while it may be a small campaign (as I've not been privvy to whole scale of where they're putting it out there, although I'm damn curious), at least they're doing something. And, for some reason, Tucker Stone has a problem with that. Perhaps we're just looking at it from different angles.

Every comment section I've ever seen that follows the question "What should I recommend to my friend who just read ____ for the first time?" detoriates into the same thing: the answer is nothing, because the answer is everything.... That's not really the way you want a recommendation to work. It's the equivalent of going to a music store and saying "I really liked John Coltrane's Giant Steps. Where should I go next?", only for the clerk to smile and say "Buy anything in the store! They're all awesome and spectacular in their own way!"

And that is completely opposite to everything that I've seen in the last 25 years, and certainly now more than ever. First off, I love the music analogy, which is a perfect example. If someone I know admires Giant Steps in my CD collection, then I'm loaning them A Love Supreme and Miles Davis' Kind of Blue and some Brubeck and sending them on their way. For the rest of the decade of the '80's the answer to Watchmen was Dark Knight and then... nothing. Believe me the answer was not Camelot 3000 or Justice League Europe. Perhaps Ronin, but Ronin was a bit more genre soaked. Now? The answer, if you're forming one to stock up for party talk in the future should be fairly short (just like my jazz recommendations) so that they don't get overwhelmed. Here's mine: Sandman: Doll's House, Why I Hate Saturn, Blue Pills, Signal to Noise or Violent Cases. I'll pick 3 and put them out there. You may have your own choices, but the answer is not "everything". The answer is be selective and don't limit them to superheroes. I've blogged before about the number of Doll's House trades that I lost in the 80's and 90's to women who would never have read comics and who fell in love with Sandman.

It's unlikely that anybody at DC took the time to ask any decent swath of retailers what they thought about After Watchmen in the first place.

And that, sadly is probably quite true. DC and by extension, Time Warner, have their own little feifdoms of marketing that i doubt talk to each other that often since that is so very corporate. Bringing in new readers to direct market shops that are damn near impossible to find is going to be very hard, although i have no doubt that Watchmen will certainly result in at least some new lookers at comics, if not new readers. Thats good, we'll take them. But lets put Tucker's comment in a spin: specialty comic shops, used to doing their way of business for last 30 years, may be the last place you want ideas on where to get new readers. You may want to go as far away from them as possible so that you really do get to a new audience. After all, if they're going to the comic shop to begin with, aren't they already coverted?