online negativity

Last Wednesday I had a blog entry about the Diamond retailer summit and mentioned that the highlight of the summit for me was Billy Tucci's SGT. Rock presentation. I prefaced talking about Tucci's upcoming SGT. Rock by relating how I wasn't a big fan of his previous comic work. Whether I liked or didn't like Tucci's previous comic work wasn't really relevant to his great presentation at the summit and in retrospect I wish I didn't include that digression within my entry last Wednesday. Originally I wrote the entry with the digression on my thoughts on Tucci's previous comic work in an attempt to illustrate that I was wrong about his commitment to the comic book medium, but ultimately I think I just ended up contributing to the flood of negativity that exists online.

Since starting my blog over a year ago I've tried to stay away from negative entries about the comic industry and events as I see them in the world around me. This may come as something of a shock to people who don't know me real well, but I'm kind of a negative person. I try not to succumb to negativity though and try whenever possible to focus on positive things. I can't say that I won't have more blog entries in the future that have a negative slant, but I do think it's too easy to give in to negativity and thus instead of talking about all the bad comics that are being published or goofy things that go on in this industry, I made the decision to mainly talk about the good comics that do exist and bring attention to them. Certainly there's more bad comics then good comics, but this is true of any form of entertainment. This doesn't mean that I won't give my opinion of a comic that I thought was bad if someone asks me what I thought about it here in my store, but I will often preface my opinion with the saying "one person's treasure is another person's trash", not to come across as Mr. Neutral, but to illustrate that just because I liked something doesn't mean everyone will (although I have read quite a few comics over the past few decades so I'm more right than not (grin!).

Too many people will write / say things online that they wouldn't say when talking to an actual person on a face to face basis and will post things not really thinking about what they've just stated, kind of like letting one's id out without any restraints. Comic messageboards are full of mostly negative comments and if the people who just post negative comments would put just a tenth of their energy into promoting or doing something positive, the internet wouldn't be anywhere as noisy as it is.

Having said the above here, I'm not saying that blogs or reviews that are largely negative with regard to their content are not worthy of reading from time to time or that people making those reviews or statements don't have valid viewpoints because I do enjoy reading sites like Brian Hibb's Savage Critics (as they can be especially scathing and intelligent at the same time), I'm just not going to air my negativity out on my blog on anywhere close to a regular basis because there are enough good comics to talk about (and or other topics) that any negative entries I post would take away time I spend on the positive. BUT if McCain wins in 50 days, all bets are off and super dark negative Ralph will take over and I'm probably going to have to change the name of my blog to "Holy Crap The U.S. Is Going Down The Crapper, Man Am I Glad I Don't Have Kids!" I say the preceeding only half-jokingly and while there are those that say people shouldn't wear their politics on their sleeves so as to not offend any of their audience, I really feel strongly about how wrong it would be for there to be a republican president for another four years. Now I have to find a good comic to read to purge these negative thoughts from my frontal lobes!

Unknown Soldier - upcoming

Yesterday I was excited to have gotten an envelope from the desk of Vertigo executive editor, Karen Berger, that contained the advance black and white pages of the first two issues of Unknown Soldier, a new Vertigo series written by Joshua Dysart and illustrated by Albert Ponticelli. I have to admit that getting to read some comics before most people is one of my favorite things about owning my store. Advance copies are not sent out though just to satisfy my desire to be the first on my block to read something before anyone else, companies and creators do this so that retailers can make better ordering decisions and to help the title find an audience. I think sending advance copies out of upcoming titles is a great marketing tool, but it's actually pretty rare for any retailer to get advance copies partly because of the fear of spoilers appearing online and also because most titles have such narrow windows in their production process.

The Unknown Soldier has had a long, scattered history as a comic book at DC. Originally the character was created, written and drawn by Joe Kubert and was set during WWII. The concept has gone through several incarnations and has been set during different time periods, with one of the best being Garth Ennis and Killian Plunket's 1997 four issue Vertigo version which was a particularly dark interpretation (and I hope the trade paperback is brought back into print even though it doesn't have anything to do with the new Unknown Soldier).

I was glad to have gotten two issues of the upcoming new Vertigo Unknown Soldier because while I was sold after (actually during) reading the first issue, with the second issue the reader can see where Dysart and Ponticelli are going and why this book is titled Unknown Soldier. This Unknown Soldier is set in the turmultous region of present day Africa and just based on having read the first two issues, Dysart and Ponticelli aren't sugar coating the horrendous events that are taking place in that country. If you read comics purely for escapism, Unknown Soldier isn't for you, but if you think one of art's reason for existence is to create awareness and cause you to look at the world differently, then Unknown Soldier is a new title to look out for. Unknown Soldier will be debuting in October from Vertigo and will be in color with covers by Igor Kordey.

Criminal!

This week the newest issue of Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips Criminal came out with the second part of a four issue story called Bad Night. There are presently three Criminal collections out, Coward, Lawless, and The Dead and the Dying. There aren't recurring characters in Criminal and most issues are self contained and easy to pick up on as to what is going on so any issue a reader picks up of Criminal will give them a sense of what Brubaker and Phillips are doing with this title.

Brubaker and Phillips also worked on the excellent four volume Sleeper, which is sort of in the crime fiction genre except it features some Wildstorm characters with hard boiled edges. Criminal is crime fiction comics at its finest with great nasty characters, crazy scenarios, great moody art (with coloring that isn't monotone), and great dialogue and pacing. The newest storyline, Bad Habits, about a cartoonist with a shady past who gets forced into doing some ID forgery and other crimes, is my favorite so far and I can't wait to see how all of this plays out.

Every issue of Criminal also has a back up usually guest essay on something related to the crime fiction genre like movie or novel recomendations and this issue jas two essays, one by Steven Grant (who's written many great crime fiction comics such as Badlands) and the other by Marc Andreyko (who co-wrote Torso with Bendis and presently writes Manhunter for DC). Andreyko's essay is on the excellent movie from 1992 called One False Move, directed by Carl Franklin, and featuring actors Bill Paxton and Billy Bob Thorton. Reading that essay makes me want to watch that movie again because it really is full of surprises and just really good story telling. Steven Grant's essay is on crime fiction novelist Eugene Izzi and I want to tip my non-existant hat to him for attempting to introduce Izzi to a new audience. I used to follow (read) a lot of crime fiction novelists including Max Allan Collins, Lawrence Block, Warren Murphy, and Andrew Vachss. Andrew Vachss (his first novel, Flood, is especially excellent and will have you seeking out other books by him), a crime fiction novelist from Chicago, was the writer who turned me on to Eugene Izzi, also a crime fiction novelist from Chicago and as brutal as Vachss' writing often was, Izzi's writing was maybe even more so. As Grant writes in his essay, Izzi always struggled with finding a larger audience and he was found hanging at the end of a rope on Decmber 12, 1996. Eugene Izzi's hanging was ruled a suicide, but many are not convinced that that was what really happened. Off the top of my head I rember especially liking Izzi's Invasions, King of the Hustlers, and Tony's Justice.

American Widow; a 9-11 memoir

This week finer comic book stores and "regular" book stores everywhere received the new graphic novel, American Widow, by Alissa Torres (with art by Sungyoon Choi) about how her husband, Eddie, who had just been hired by Cantor Fitzgerald on September 10th, died the next day on the attack on the World Trade Center of September 11th, 2001. The book is also about how Alissa (who was also pregnant at the time of her husband's death) had to put her life back together afterwards and all the hurdles she encountered. I've already blogged bout this book in early August after getting an advance reading copy, so regular readers of my blog (thank you) will already know that I think American Widow is excellent. One error I made in my review though was assuming that the artist, Sungyoon Choi, is male, which was corrected for me in a great interview with Alissa Torres up on Newsarama.com today.

Diamond Comics retailer summit

This past weekend (actually Sunday-Tuesday) Diamond Comics had their annual retailer summit at Ballys here in Las Vegas. Diamond Comics is of course the distributor of over 95 percent of all of the comics that comic stores receive. I hadn't been to one of their summits in a few years as they've been in Baltimore. Anyway they had one here in Las Vegas this year so that more of the West Coast stores could attend. These summits exist to allow retailers to communicate with Diamond's upper management on a one to one basis, allows publishers to give presentations of upcoming projects (actually this aspect of the summit is less and less valuable in this internet age as publishers can't talk about things that they don't want spoiled five minutes later online), and a great way for retailers to talk amongst themselves and maybe take away new things that would work in their shops. Probably the biggest benefit for attending these summits is the workshop panels upon which stores can hear ideas about how to improve their stores and or do better outreach.

On Monday night Marvel had their upcoming publishing presentation and as their special guest they had Brian Michael Bendis. Brian was very entertaining with his teases on what's going to happen to the Marvel universe post Secret Invasion (and all that was talked about was already on Newsarama yesterday morning). I'm actually not "feeling" Secret Invasion so I really hope it does have the strong ending that they're saying it will and not just be a lead in to their next event. I'm especially awaiting Bendis' and artist Alex Maleev's long awaited Spider Woman series as their four year run on Daredevil was excellent.

The highlight of the summit for me though was DC's presentation late Monday night and their special guest Billy Tucci. Before I get into why this was a highlight for me, I'm going to talk about my previous dislike for anything Billy Tucci ever did in comics (prior to his talk at the presentation Monday night). Billy Tucci's claim to comic book fame was a character called Shi which he wrote and drew starting in 1994. Actually I always thought that Shi was a poor man's Kabuki, which also started in 1994. I'm not saying that Tucci copied David Mack's Kabuki as I really do think that it was just a coincidence that they both came out at the same time, but I lament that Shi was always more popular. My problem with Shi was I thought it had potential (even though not on the personal level as Mack's Kabuki), but instead Billy Tucci hardly did any of the writing and art on Shi before he farmed it out to others and he always seemed to have his eye more on Shi happening as a movie than any concern for the comic (Tia Cararia was long attached to that project that never happened).

So a few months ago I was groaning upon hearing that Tucci was going to be doing an upcoming Sgt. Rock comic as I thought that character was amongst the farthest away from what he was capable of doing as a cartoonist. Well Monday night Billy Tucci sold me on his Sgt. Rock actually being good (and I'm thinking that maybe he was just young and inexperienced when he was doing Shi and the crazy Hollywood money or promises of such just distracted him). The Sgt. Rock mini series he's writing and drawing is subtitled The Lost Battalion and is based on the U.S. army unit during WWII made up of mostly Japanese Americans who in a campaign in 1944 saw huge casualties, but also was the most decorated unit in U.S. history. Billy Tucci even invited three of the surviving Japanese Americans (one of whom lives in Henderson) that were part of that unit to the Diamond summit and from hearing Tucci talk it was obvious that he was very passionate (and had done his research) about doing justice to their story in his Sgt. Rock mini series. The first issue comes out November 5th, about a week before Veterans' Day and I think it'll be great for a new audience to find out about that units contributions.

cosplay at AnimeVegas 2008 pt.2!

A cute Pikachu. Pika!














Stylin'













Two characters from Sailor Moon.











Robot!











So another AnimeVegas wrapped up this past Monday (Sat-Mon) and from my perspective it was another huge success. Before it started I was thinking that this year's convention would be smaller because there's been a lot of downsizing happening to various U.S. manga and anime companies. I still think that manga and anime in the U.S. is in a transitory phase which I think is largely due to people just downloading it online and not buying them when the U.S. editions hit the stores. I can understand the financial cost of following your hobby when you have other financial obligations or if you're a student and have limited finances, but at the same time because less people are buying manga and anime (because they can download it, read it in bookstores or libraries) less of their favorite entertainment is going to be produced when there's no finacial compensation to the creators and publishers of the actual content.

While I think how things continue to fall out for U.S. manga and anime companies for the remainder of this year and into next year will determine its long term health, as I said in my earlier blog entry today, AnimeVegas was much more successful this year than I thought it would be so I'm happy to report that things may not be as bleak as I'd thought. I'd say that attendance at this year's AnimeVegas was at least as big as last years (a little harder to tell with the smaller space). Kate had one panel and she helped out on two other panels and the attendance for the panels throughout the show was good. Early plans are already afoot for next year's AnimeVegas and while nothing is set in stone yet, I've heard that it'll be in a bigger venue close to the Hard Rock and that it'll be happening on Halloween weekend. I'd like to again say thanks to the king of the show / founder Richard Stott for organizing such a well run convention and for all the voice actors and musicians that came to the show. Thanks also to his legion of volunteers (or as they're lovingly called "minions") for all they do to keep the show running smoothly for everyone.

2008 AnimeVegas!

This is Izzy and Cat (I know their "real" names, but I've been sworn to silence as they are on the run from the law - grin!), a mother and daughter team cosplaying as characters from Clamp's Clover. Cat (the daughter, with the white hair) won first prize at the masquerade Sunday night and I was happy to hear that because they always put a lot of work into their costumes and looked especially great this year.

This was the 5th AnimeVegas here in Las Vegas (of course) and the fourth one I've attended with a booth. I always do really well at this convention and had a great time, as did seemingly everyone else that attended. I liked the new venue that was used this year and even though there were half as many dealers as in the past few years, it looked like people were buying things and the energy level of the whole dealers room was high the entire three days.
This gal (whom I've seen at all of the AnimeVegas' that I've gone to, but never have gotten her name - doh!) always looks great and also puts a lot of work and thought into her cosplaying. She usually has a least two diffferent costumes during the three days and her father has wore costumes as well. Generally the people into manga and anime are more into dressing up as their favorite characters than "regular" comic fans are.
These two people look very smashing (listen to me trying to sound British!) as characters from Fullmetal Alchemist (an especially great anime)!

Me with some great cosplayers doing characters from Spirited Away - they were especially popular with those wanting to take photos.