Ghost Rider The Movie: Setting us back HOW far?

this just in from this morning's San Francisco Chronicle

The movie also, unfortunately, does a lot to undo the recent goodwill that "Batman Begins," "Sin City," "A History of Violence" and "V for Vendetta" have built toward this underappreciated genre of films. If "300" doesn't kick supreme butt next month, people might ditch "graphic novel" from their lingo and start calling them "comic books" again.

I mean, c'mon people, I just blogged about this a week ago! We gotta keep moving forward here!

Superman vs. Spiderman: Viva La '70's!

Oh Danny Boy down in Australia has a great article up about the story behind the Superman/Spider-Man team up from the 1970's. With interviews via phone and email with Neal Adams, Mike Esposito, Len Wein, Marv Wolfman and Terry Austin, he seems to have teased out all the behind the scenes stuff. Its been gone over once before in Comic Book Artist, I believe, but a nice condensation of the making of the book.

What is interesting to me is how amazed he is about the idea that diverse hands (Adams redrawing Andru's Superman figures for instance) seem to have touched the pages. I doubt that there is a professional out there that would be surprised by the "collaborative" process why which a book like this is made. There are a ton of books that have been made by "Diverse Hands" or "Crusty Bunkers" that would turn up all sorts of interesting names in a panel by panel breakdown.

I personally love the story of the tier in Master of Kung Fu #39 that was inked by Steranko on a book that Dan Adkins get the published credit on. Adkins had received the pencils and but had just started the job when Steranko was visiting. Jim, apparently loved the tier with some asian gangsters gambling and grabbed a brush and started inking it. Given Paul Gulacy's style, it was a perfect fit.

How about The Claws of the Cat #4, with Alan Weiss and Jim Starlin each drawing different characters throughout the entire book (Alan The Cat and Jim the Man-Bull)? That was one weird book. I never figured out the credits until Alan told me the story years later.

Got a favorite Jam story? There are a million of them. Lets not even bring up Secret Wars. Really.

the cartoons that ate Europe: Muslim Cartoons at Cambridge

Continuing the story of the cartoons that have practically destroyed a religion:

MUSLIMS in Cambridge have demanded a public apology from a student who printed anti-Islamic material in a magazine.

The material included a cartoon depicting the prophet Mohammed which sparked worldwide outrage last year when it was published in Denmark. It is thought this is the first time the cartoon has appeared in a publication in England.

Asim Mumtaz, president of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Association, said: "I'm horrified and shocked. In such a seat of learning, I am horrified that things could stoop to this level.

"I'm actually shocked that intelligent people know how offensive this cartoon is and that they have decided to reprint it in such a horrible manner. It's disgusting."

The cartoon was reprinted in Clare College's student magazine in a special edition on religious satire. The 19-year-old student who printed the cartoon has since gone into hiding and the college has called a rare Court of Discipline to decide how the student should be brought to account.

wait, you say, Muslims haven't been destroyed by the cartoons? There are still some in the world? Well you could have fooled me. The way that they act, you would think that the artwork alone have physically killed any number of innocent children. These cartoons must be the real world equivalent of Monty Python's Killer Joke. The joke was so deadly that while being translated into German for use in the second World War, no one person was allowed to see more than a few words of the joke for fear of injury. Same here clearly.

And Cambridge, well, what can we say about this learned institution, this bastion of higher learning? They have the backbone of wet tissue. A student uses something controversial in an appropriate manner in a paper on religious satire and the student has to go into hiding. Way to get her back Cambridge. And worse, considering the student will probably face persecution when they, if they return at all, they will potentially face a Court of Discipline for writing and publishing a paper.

The Cambridge Press, which shows what a poor journalism school they are, has quotes showing only one side of the argument, and nothing that might point out that disparity between religious fanaticism and academic research, and the potential incompatibility of letting easily offended religious extremists set your academic agenda.

For shame Cambridge. For shame.

Entertainment Weekly: Friends of Comics

Lets all thank our lucky stars for the internet, and for the ability to actually get noticed by the real world at large and not just those with complete books of Marvel Value Stamps: Wook Kim has a blog rolling column over at Entertainment Weekly, and gives a nice plug to Devon over at Seven Hells as well as cluing the rest of the entertainment world that real writers write for comics:

Attention EW.com readers! There are a bunch of talented authors — who write real books and everything! — currently working on comic books. Like Jodi Picoult, whose Wonder Woman should be in stores sometime next month, and Tad Williams, who wrote the six-parter The Next, and is now at work on Aquaman: Sword of Atlanti

The very fact that EW has made a point of running a graphic novel bestsellers list and keeping focus on comic related projects (The link on the side of the Blog Roll column mentions Kate Beckinsale starring in "Whiteout"), which to me is just huge. Huge huge huge. This is what has been missing for 20 years: actual coverage of our media.

Lets face it: perception is reality, and if people are continually being told "Comics are for kids" and "Graphic Novels are for adults", then that's what they'll believe. I heard mention on TV the other night, someone talking about a graphic novel, and I turned to my wife and said, "that means we've arrived. When someone on a mainstream TV show can say that without having to explain what a Graphic Novel is, then we''ve actually changed the public's idea of the product."

Spider Man, She Hulk and Abomination = Nasty

Is this true? Can it possibly be true? The Redhead Fangirl reports:

Marvel is really bonkers regarding Spidey these days. In Spider-Man: Reign, Peter finds he has killed Mary Jane with his 'radioactive fluid'. Really? I know Quesada and the editors at Marvel have been wanting to jettison the marriage-- but biohazard spunk? A new low for a beloved character, and Marvel. I think I'd like to add that fluid to the Cup-O-Joe.

and

I see that the She-hulk is up against Hulk villians, like the Abomination, and as a S.H.I.E.L.D agent. Now if there was anyone with a...um... liquid biohazard thing going on, it would be the Abomination (who, by the way, if you look at the original Gil Kane version, has actually grown more handsome over the years).

I guess that it can't possibly imagine a Herb Trimpe Hulk getting it on with the Harpy from back in the day, but I bet they did... heh heh.

And just what the heck is up with the Hero Clix? Why are people so ga ga over them? Please explain, someone.

In Praise of: Jungle Action #7 by McGregor and Buckler

Lost is much of furor about the other 1970's books are the accolades, the poetry, the sheer "different-ness" of Don McGregor's work. And while some may prefer his Killraven/War of the Worlds work, I personally find far more to mull over and appreciate in his Black Panther work. And there is no better place to start than at the beginning of Marvel's long lost epic, Panther's Rage.

What, you've never heard of Panther's Rage? Shocking, because this is most likely the least read, most forgotten, most ambitious piece that was attempted back in 1973. Don, in one of the most singular display's of hubris that I can imagine given the constraints of comics creation back then, decided that he could and would actually make the Panther relevant to the 1970s. Not an easy task considering race relations back then, combined with his interest in politics, sex, and trying to make superheroes work in the real world.

Panther’s Rage would pull T’Challa away from the Avengers (where Steve Englehart would be dragging Wanda and the Vision into cross-race allegories and adult jealousy with Mantis) and drop him down into Wakanda in the midst of complete turmoil. To top it all off, T’Challa would bring back a western woman, black, but western. And that doesn’t make anyone happy. If that isn’t enough drama, we have one more introduction.

Enter Erik Killmonger. In the age of badasses, where Frank Castle was just starting to holster his rubber bullets, Eric was the ultimate badass. And he removed the Panther’s one easy out: to physically beat up the villain. T’Challa was about to go through the wringer.

Over the next 6 or 7 issues, Don would push the envelope again and again, making the ugliest villains, Venom, actually have a heart; taking black on black race relations into new areas, and pushing the letterers on the book to find new corners in which to cram text block after text block after text block. All within the context of Marvel 1970’s melodrama. Fun stuff.

I will say that the ending of Panther's Rage was one of the only disappointments that I can recall, as it ends on the fringes of Wakanda, in wastelands that we had never seen before, and far from the social/political center that McGregor was using as a counterpoint to whatever his point was that issue. While compelling, it divorced T'Challa from his Wakandan center, one that Don was just in the middle of finding. I sometimes get the feeling that the story got away from. And while I've met Don a few times over the years, I don't know him well enough to ask whether or not this is true.

There really are two Marvel Comics epics that deserve to be reprinted from the 1870s that haven't been done yet: Moench and Gulacy's Master of Kung Fu series, which will never be collected due to reprint rights with the Sax Rohmer estate, and this, Panther's Rage from the bowels of the forgotten Jungle Action book.

Fantastic Four #102: Lost and Found

Over on the TwoMorrows blog is a great post about the recreation of FF#102, which was Kirby's last issue on the title. Rejected, the artwork was cut up and used, in part to create FF #1o8. Well, it looks like we'll finally get the chance to see it in this form:

Enter Tom Brevoort, who got the inspired idea to have Stan finally dialogue Jack’s pencils, and Joe Sinnott ink them (I’ve seen the new inks, and man, Joe hasn’t skipped a beat in the 37 years since he was inking Jack on the FF). Tom’s also getting a current Marvel writer and inker to do their interpretations, and both finished versions (plus Kirby’s uninked original, and a short article about it by your’s truly) will appear in the one-shot special.

This great news, just the finally get the director's cut of the issue the way that it should have been done. Kinda like getting to sit down and read those old Strange Tales with the Torch and the Thing, and its discovering a whole parallel universe to the regular FF book. Finally Kirby's bow out on the book he helped to create will see the print the way that it should have been done back before his jump to DC.

TwoMorrows while I don't always agree with their editorial position on everything, generally does a great job with their publications, very classy, and I am quite happy to own more than a few issues on the shelves of my studio.

A Few Thoughts: French Trial Over Muhammad Cartoons

Just wanted to bring this to some people's attention. The New York Times has this article, fairly succinct in bringing the rest of us up to date on what the charges are, and how the trial might go.

The Paris Mosque and the Union of Islamic Organizations of France contend that the newspaper, Charlie Hebdo, and its director, Philippe Val, are guilty of slander, an offense that carries a possible six-month sentence and a fine of up to 22,500 euros, or about $29,000.

“If we can no longer laugh at the terrorists, what weapon is left for the citizen?” Mr. Val said at the hearing, according to The Associated Press.

“These drawings are about ideas, not men, about ideas defended by men who commit violent acts.”...

The issue of whether revisions to the 1901 law separating church and state might be needed has become a topic of discussion in the presidential campaign.

In recent decisions, French courts have largely ruled against religious groups that contended that their faiths had been insulted.

Please note the last paragraph in the quote, which is also the last paragraph of the article. It sums up faith, at least to me, that the trial will end with the law of the land in France being upheld: that there is a distinct separation between church and state.

Personally, as a westerner, I think that the arguement boils down to this: modern western thought provides a separation between church and state and a freedom of speech that allows for satirical content of just about anything. In fact, many societies would agree that the very basis of a free society is the ability to satirize just about anything as need be. Keeps a level playing field. In a non-secular society, you have very religious people who feel that respect for God, their God usually, sadly, trumps all, and that forms the basis for their law and customs. And I, personally, don't think that you'll ever bridge the two.

Now, being able to publish cartoons that might offend the deeply religious may not the most prudent thing to do, as the riots about the danish cartoons show, but it is odd how the international religious press went off more against the publishers for a lapse in judgement then against the rioters. Funny, I would have thought that actual physical violence should have garnered a greater backlash from the world's community. But with religion in the mix, its a whole different kettle of fish. You have people who bent over backward to accomodate the rioters on the idea that offensive cartoons are so dangerous as the validate violence, violence that even ended in death. Is that right? My western approach is to say no, the rioters are the guilty, and the Danish publishers broke no laws. But a muslim who feels so strongly about the rules against depicting the prophet regardless of message would very clearly disagree with me and probably feel quite justified in the correctness of his position.

I while he and might agree on a great many things, I doubt that we would ever come to terms on this issue no matter how long we talked. As I doubt that the western courts will reach a decision that will placate or satisfy both sides in France.

Newsarama: KISS Meets the Phantom of the Vishanti

When it comes to stuff like this, I just have to say something. This from a Newsarama article/interview with Simmons and Stanley of KISS about the new comic coming out:

GENE SIMMONS: (When it comes to comics) We can quote psalm and verse. For instance, I can tell you just about every title that Steve Ditko drew and inked, including how he also inked Jack Kirby’s Hulk.

Unholy was our idea about a malevolence that is kind of a next door neighbor to Steve Ditko’s Nightmare from Doctor Strange, maybe he also has a little Baron Mordo and some Eternal Vishantu with some Hoary Hosts of Hogarth.

Yes, thats right. The Hoary Hosts of Hogarth. Not Hoggoth like the Vishanti would like them to be called. But the Hoary Hosts of Burne Hogarth, Tarzan artist extraordinaire.

What is scary is that Simmons and I know the difference, for Dormammu's sake, but Newsarama doesn't.

Up From the Catacombs: Beer and Tavern Monthly #2

When Beer and Tavern Monthly approached me about a cover featuring Ben Franklin, I jumped at the chance, not only because I needed the money, but because here was a subject that actually fit the monthly periodical to a tee.

Really. Ben loved his beer, just like he loved his ladies. And I got to do a woodcut style illustration that was a lot of fun to do.

I loved this one, and held on to the original ever since.

the Angelic Supergirl

Take a breath, and appreciate the beauty of this version of Supergirl by Dean Trippe. I would buy a comic of her that looked like this in about a second. I would buy multiple copies.

Just gorgeous. Thanks Dean.

Supergirl and Paris Hilton: separated at birth?

Or just separated by photo reference?

This little comparison chart over at Live Journal is worth a scroll down, but be warned, it will likely hurt your brain for a day.

Or more.


More and more, with two daughters growing up in this society, I appreciate that my 6 year old is seeing the zoftig Wonder Woman from New Frontier, and the angular one in Justice League Unlimited. I have no desire to have her read the new SuperGirl series.

(Besides, Superman's logo just doesn't work with boobs. That much is clear. No wonder the Marty Pasko version of the 1970's moved it into a small shoulder logo.)

Damn right they're not... er..funnybooks!

Mike over at Progressive Ruin has this little item up a while ago:

So I was doing a little internet searching, and came across several links to a review of Blood and Chocolate (such as this one), which relates this exchange between two of the lead characters:

"Maybe she's impressed by what Aiden does for a living. 'I write graphic novels.' 'You mean comic books.' 'Noooo. Graphic novels.'"

Are people really uptight about this? I've never noticed in among my customers or my circle of comic-reading friends a tendency toward correcting folks who dare to call graphic novels "comic books," but I've seen or heard this sort of thing referenced in the media before. It's like the new shorthand for establishing someone is a geek..."oh, isn't it cute how he refers to his comic books as 'graphic novels,' like they're real books or something."

I don't know...I call 'em "funnybooks," because I'm a bad person.

Yes, you're a bad person. ; - ) While the rest of us are busting our butts to come up with innovative stuff that adults might want to read, we have 80 years of cultural baggage that we're trying to overcome and its not that easy.

On the other hand, the label "Graphic Novel" has finally taken hold as far as I'm concerned. I was watching the TV and some mainstream show had a reference to a "graphic novel" and no one blinked an eye. Clearly in the years since "A Contract With God" and today, we've made the term acceptable.

Yay.

Up From the Catacombs: Beer and Tavern Monthly

Another oddity from the archive box: Beer and Tavern Monthly (does anyone know if Beer and Tavern Monthly is still around?) had me do a number of covers for them back in the 1990's. My favorite of them all is this one.

King Kong, astride the Empire State Building, surrounded by flying beer bottles.

Art Director asking for a low budget remake of King Kong: $100.

Art Director asking for flying beer bottles like "windows toasters from the screen saver" from one of my favorite breweries: Priceless.

Unseen Art: J.G Jones and Yoakum Wildcats

Was digging through the files for something and ran across the "what the heck do I do with these" section that I keep. Plenty of oddities that I've built up here, but a few little gems as well.

Thought that some people might like to see this one, part of a three page WildCATS piece that JG Jones and I did back in the mid-90's. Jones' pencils, my inks and tones. This was the third page, and the only one that I didn't finish as you can see.

Kinda fun. Shows that before he became a big star, JG was already a huge talent. It just took years and years of work for people to catch on so that he could become an overnight success. Funny how that works isn't it?

Also funny to see the twin towers as the focal point on this page. Never thought that those two buildings that I didn't really like would be a such a generational touchpoint, because they always will be for this ex-New Yorker.

This is Just Wrong: The Return of Captain Marvel

Perhaps I can paraphrase our friends over at live journal:

Fuck you Marvel.

There, is that succinct enough? This image comes from a pulled preview that was saved and put up on Live Journal and Photobucket. This is the image that completes the evisceration of the Marvel Universe that began with Civil War screwing up the Fantastic Four.

Not just bringing back Mar-Vell, no, since Thanos has long since been resurrected I suppose that we should have expected this, but the manner of which its being done, the position that Mar-Vell supposedly now holds, which is commendant of the Negative Zone prison, is so, so, SO COMPLETELY not the man that he is that I cannot even think about it straight. It warps my head around like trying to figure out the beginning of an Escher drawing.

There is nothing here that makes any sense. I could be thinking Clone maybe, but I doubt that that will be the case. The most meaningful death in the Marvel Universe (since they long since messed up Jean's sacrifice in X-men #137) has been hedged around: Mar-Vell appearing as an apparition in Silver Surfer years ago, the alternate earth version from Earth X, his "son" Genis, and others that I've not followed completely, but the actual man himself has been left alone.

Tellingly it was a paucity of imagination that led to the death of Mar-Vell. After a fairly interesting run by Doug Moench and Pat Broderick in his own book, Mar-Vell his cancellation and character oblivion. Marvel honchos from that era, perhaps Shooter, (I don't know as I never asked) went to Starlin and said, "We don't know what to do with him." Jim apparently said, "Well, let me kill him." and there you go.

Mar-Vell, the way that Starlin, Englehart, and Moench wrote him, was one of the noblest characters in comics, the universal protector, someone who had made bad decisions in the past but lived with his regrets of being a soldier for the Kree and did the best that he could. His best was very, very good. Defeating Thanos, the Destroyer, standing up to Issac the mad computer and the Watcher, battling Megaton the Nuclear Man (heh heh), he was a hero in the classic Joesph Campbell mold: one that had come by his nobility the honest way: through real trial and error.

That Mar-Vell would never have been involved with the Pro-Registration forces in the Marvel Universe, much less get himself sucked in the Negative Zone ever, ever, EVER again. If you know anything at all about the character, the last place that he would be would be in the Negative Zone.

Perhaps it should be an even bigger deal that the Fantastic Four, lets say this again, THE FANTASTIC FOUR, the moral and physical cornerstone of the Marvel Universe, has been ripped apart with such incorrect characterization of Sue, Reed, and Ben that we shouldn't be shocked by anything anymore, but, yes, I am.

I am shocked.

This. Just. Sucks.

Storytelling Decisions: The moment or the moment before

Away from the scanner, so I'm not going to pepper this with any images, but the verbal will have to suffice.

So there are more than a few thoughts on the art of storytelling that I have as I work my way through the story of Pistoleras. And I recall an article by Jim Steranko many years ago, accompanied his pre-production painting from Raiders, where he made a point that while other artists preferred the moment of the balloon exploding, he prefered the moment just before the balloon exploded, the pregnant pause.

I've thought a lot about this over the years, and nowhere is it more interesting that trying to decide how to use a panel that shows a passage of time, perhaps during a conversation. I think that usually we see a panel isolate a moment in time, where Peter Parker expresses an opinion to Mary Jane, but there are other examples where, in a two shot, the Ben Grimm will ask Reed Richards not to do something, and Reed Richards will press the button opening the negative zone anyway. Fairly straight forward, but the image will be of Reed pressing the button. So we, as a reader, are asked to ignore the right side of the panel with Reed pressing the button and we need to read left to right and only pay attention to Ben gesticulating in the right side of the panel. Kirby was the master of making sure that we could read across properly to "get" the pacing of the story. Eisner was great about that as well, obviously.

So how much do you compress the story, and how much do you expand?. Bendis is considered the king of decompression in these modern times, a storytelling method that I tend to find almost a "tick" and stylistic choice, and one that I enjoy in Powers tremendously. The compression inherent in, say, the early Justice Leagues by Sekowsky and Fox, is so tight, that it almost offends my modern sensibilities. Hey, the original Starro attack on the JLA would at least have been worth two issues of the Avengers as layed out by Kirby and drawn by Heck.

I enjoy the decompression of the Manga that I get in Genshiken (my favorite manga of all time), but it would be foreign to me in, say, Spider Man or Fantastic Four. Pistoleras is as much a story of place to me as much as it is the story of the four girls and feminine empowerment. I want people to feel the heat of the desert of Mexico, and the crash of waves. I want them to get as much as they can in black and white and grey.

There are as many approaches to this as there are stories. Given a little more time and my scanner, I'll post some different examples. Any thoughts?

Alex Ross: Wizard Interview follow up

I was quite happy to see Ross very quickly and very publicly respond to a number of posts, mine included, that suggested his initial comments could and were being perceived as homophobic. I thought that his remarks, which I have linked to, are worth reading in their entirety, which is why I've not exerpted them here.

Ross addresses all the points that have been raised by others, which is nice to see. He was paying attention. Yay.

Geoff Johns has also responded, and while I don't have to link to it, it was nice to see calming words on his side as well.

The problem here, and why I think that this really deserves a follow up is that the internet is pretty much forever. You make a comment that gets mis-interpreted and no matter how many denials its going to float around google and yahoo in cached server pages forever. Ross has certainly addressed all the points that were leveled against him and refuted them well. I would hate to think that people can google "Alex Ross Homophobe" for the next decade and get my first post without getting any of the follow up. Not fair to anyone. Period.

Marvel Trivia Game: A New Universe to explore

So Lis over at Kid Sis in Hollywood sends me a wonderful Chanukah present, the fancy-shmancy tin of the Marvel Trivia Game. I am, of course, delighted by the thoughtfulness of the present, and also quite sure that there are only about 2 or three people in my present universe that I can actually play the game with.

After all, this is not like pulling out Candyland or Scrabble. Likely, no one else but me is going to get a question about the Abomination, even if I can look up "abomination" in the dictionary and make two double letter and a triple word score out of it.

(One could make the case that reading Claremont's X-Men was a lot like playing Chutes and Ladders however. Almost done, almost to the end of a story... oh no, back to square two. You're now in an alternative universe. So sorry.)

However, once i start to look over the cards, I realize that what appeared to be a wonderful gift is, in fact, a curse! how could that be, you ask yourself, its just a harmless trivia game. And you would be right... on the surface.

Lets take a look at card 74 and you'll see what I mean.

The cards progress in difficulty as you read down. Question 1: What is Mr. Fantastic's name? Reed Richards. Fine, we're good there. Question 2 requires that you were reading West Coast Avengers of a particular time period to get the US Agent answer. Question 3 and 4 are pretty old school, but question number 5 puts us into knowing when that first Marvel Spotlight was published.

OK, so far so good. After all, we've had nicknames, secret identities, mistaken identities and publishing dates on one card. I'm 5 for 5. Then we look at another randomly selected card:
Well OK, I'm down with Mystique's adopted daughter, Rogue. Question 1, the easiest one down. Question 2: What team is M on? Huh? Who is M? M exists? How? I mean, I don't even know the character, how the heck am I supposed to know what team he's on?

Maybe this is an abberation, so I'll move to the third question: Tony Stark makes his million how? Well, as the long suffering Iron Man fan, I say Stark International as the answer, or making munitions to go all old skool and SHIELD on you. The card, however, has Stark Industries as the answer.

Now wait, you're going to have to start qualifying eras or I'm never going to get an answer right here.

Question 4: Who is Spider-man 2099's arch nemesis begs the answer: the 25 cent bin, which is not going to be on the back of the card.

I won't even go into the fifth question, which I thought was one of those Area 51s for Marvel: don't ask, they don't officially exist. you mean they actually did a story for the creation of Cap's shield? when? I'm not even sure that I would want to read it. I think that I'd rather there be some mystery in life, like the real origin of Wolverine. Some things Marvel is better off not doing.

The cards go on and on. You can see the problem here: there are just so many issues, so many that I don't recall reading, that I missed that I simply don't know about... its almost too much for my brain. It used to be that you could read the Avengers or the FF and actually keep continuity in your head AND YOU WERE PROUD OF IT DAMN IT! Now there are indestructible shield storylines and reboots and even New Universe questions and it's just too much.

Excuse me, I have some reading to go do....

Alex Ross and Obsidian: the Wizard interview

Sorry to have been absent, but the holidays have taken so much time away from important things like blogging and comic books. I did run across this almost bizarre Wizard magazine interview by Alex Ross where he goes off on the character Obsidian, who has come out of the closet. The oddity, if you read the interview, is Ross' choice of words when describing how the character has been "handled".

Now, not following the character at all, I would have read the interview and not noticed a thing, but over at superunderwearperverts' blog, we have a gay man who has a real problem with the interview, and once you read his points, I can certainly see why.

I have greatly admired Ross' technique and many of the pieces that he has done. I even own a single page from Marvels, which is a phenomenal piece of work, and it was worth every penny. But I've always had a bit of a problem with him thinking that he's the only one who "gets" a certain character, and that "he's taking the character back to their roots", when, lets face it, there are a lot of roots to follow on the JSA, the JLA, the Wonder Twins.

Now I can see how a gay man might really be offended by Ross' comments to wizard, using odd "code words" that seem to imply the Johns might agree with him (which is even worse, since Johns might not agree at all; we simply don't know) about how Obsidian has been "molested".

I don't know. Does Alex have a problem with a gay character? I wouldn't have thought so, but this is an odd interview. The internet certainly puts a premium on watching what you say.

Amended to add: Please read the follow up post here: http://inkdestroyedmybrush.blogspot.com/2006/12/alex-ross-wizard-interview-follow-up.html