Warning- political rant ahead

I woke up today to find out about the shutdown of the Internet and cell phone communications in Egypt. Aghast at the situation, I kept a window to the live stream of Al Jazeera all day and followed the events.  The riots were strange and weird to watch. For example, the rioters would set fire to police vehicles, yet they would cheer for the army tanks that moved in to keep the peace. I watched President Mubarak’s head-scratching speech, and wondered how anyone could think that his actions would calm the situation. But that wasn’t the most disturbing thing I saw.

I’m really surprised at how American officials are acting today in response to the Egyptian situation. I’ve seen Obama, Hillary Clinton, and John Kerry come off as anti-democratic thugs in live interviews and press conferences. We’ve seen a country turn off the Internet and cell phone service just to make protesting hard (a completely bone-headed move that no rational government would think work), and yet, just because Mubarak has “fired the government”- which of course, he’s only shuffling the decks- we’re telling Egyptians to go home, respect the government, and don’t be violent. (Of course, the protestors aren’t the ones who fired tear gas into a group of people praying in the streets- I saw that today live).

I know we have deep relations with Mubarak and Egypt, and I know it’s important to keep that country on our side. But this isn’t the way to do it. The citizens of Egypt will remember how we acted today, and it will just make them harder towards us. We need to help make Egypt into a real democracy, not prop up a dictator who runs fake elections and jails dissidents. What we’re doing runs contrary to real American ideals, and it makes me sad and a little bit sick.

Sorry for the political rant, but I had to express how I feel.

I’ve long been a big fan of Joe Quesada’s decade-long run as Editor-in-Chief at Marvel. A lot of great comics came under his watch- Grant Morrison’s New X-Men, Brian Michael Bendis’s Ultimate Spider-Man and Alias, Greg Pak’s Planet Hulk, and Garth Ennis’s Punisher run are four notable examples. Over the years, as Marvel recovered from bankruptcy and became a media powerhouse again, he’s been given more responsibilities, including the title of Chief Creative Officer a few years back. He’s been more involved with the animation and movie arms of the company, and even designed some of the packaging for the toy line.

Something had to give, and today we found out it’s his publishing responsibilities. As Quesada’s corporate responsibilities grew, he came to rely upon Axel Alonso and Tom Brevoort, his chief lieutenants, more and more. Today, Marvel named Alonso his successor as Editor-in-Chief. Brevoort now becomes a senior VP of publishing.

Alonso came to Marvel from DC, where he was an editor at Vertigo. He was most notable for overseeing such hits as Preacher and 100 Bullets. At Marvel, he eventually took over the Marvel Knights and X-Men lines. It’s long been assumed that either he or Brevoort would eventually be named Editor-in-Chief, and it looks like Alonso won the coin toss.  (I do wonder how Brevoort, who’s been at Marvel for nearly two decades, will take this situation, but that’s pure speculation on my part. As a fellow University of Delaware alumni, I hope he’s happy with the promotion.)

So a hearty congrats goes out to both Alonso as new EIC and Quesada, for being the longest tenured EIC in company history. (And before you say, “What about Stan Lee?”, I don’t believe that’s a title Lee ever held. )

Today’s links:

Information for men about Weight Watchers. I know WW is primarily viewed as a diet for women, but I’ve found it tremendously useful, and this sales pitch for WW for men has some interesting info. Also, the men of Bleeding Cool talk about weight loss.

Neil Gaiman and Amanda Palmer get married. Awwww…congrats to them both!

Flex Mentallo finally is being collected in trade! Proof that if you live long enough, you’ll see plenty of miracles.

“Whattaya like? Spider-Man? X-Men? Superman?”

Usually the answer is “if the story’s good, I like the story”.  I sidestep the question, rather than insult the questioner.

But if you go “Batman?”…well, hell no. I do not like Batman.

I’ve liked Batman comics, mind you. I’ve liked some of the movies. I’m sure there’s an action figure I like. The first animated series is on? Heck, I’ll watch. Got some bootleg Adam West action? Yes, please.

But Batman seems to intersect in my life in weird ways that just irk the heck out of me. It’s a strange anti-synchronicity that just lingers like an infection. When Batman- not the fictional character, but the concept, the business entity, the corporation (not to be confused with Grant Morrison’s new Batman Inc. comic- intersects with the real world, bad things happen.

Case in pont: The Saboteur, a video game I’m in love with right now.

The Saboteur is a sandbox game for the Playstation 3 and XBox 360. The game is set in Paris during the Nazi occupancy in World War II. You play Sean Devlin, an Irish race car driver who seeks revenge on a high-ranking Nazi for killing his friend. You can climb Parisian rooftops, blowing up sniper nests, propoganda speakers, and anti-aircraft installations. You can race in the countryside, or try to outrun German motorbikes in the street. You can even take in a sexy burlesque show (if you have the downloadable content, which came free in my copy of the game).

Unlike other sandbox games I’ve played, the optional missions actually play a part in the overall game. You get contraband for your accomplishments, which you use for weapons, ammunition, explosive, and other perks. And while you’re playing, jazz vocal music from such luminaries as Nina Simone and Ella Fitzgerald wafts through the air. The art in the game is gorgeous, and the color palette actually changes depending on whether or not you’ve freed an area from Nazi rule. It’s one of the best games I’ve ever played.

It’s also the last game released from its developer, Pandemic Studios. And this is why I hate Batman today.

According to numerous reports (including this Kotaku story), the parent company of Pandemic, EA, secured the rights to a tie-in game to the Batman: The Dark Knight movie. However, the rights would expire in eighteen months. Miscommunication led to a forced revamp of the project a few months in, and despite a scramble to finish on-time, a sellable game was never completed.  As a result, the company was eventually closed by EA during a round of cost-cutting.

So, because of Batman, I’ll never get to play The Saboteur 2. And that’s a damn shame.

Damn Batman.

Today’s links:

Bill Sienkiewicz breaks the silence about Big Numbers #3. Fantastic scoop by Pádraig Ó Méalóid.

Colleen Doran talks about the success of the Distant Soil webcomic. You ARE reading A Distant Soil, aren’t you?

Heidi McDonald talks about her struggles with the technology that powers one of the best blogs about comics today, The Beat.

Wired Magazine got every prediction right about 2010. At least they THINK they did…

Dueling Analogs perfectly sums up my feelings about most videogames. (But not The Saboteur, because that’s just awesome.)

Don’t be down about 2011, says Charles Stross.

Tom Spurgeon interviews the curator of the Comic Art Museum, Andrew Farago.

Finally, an interesting look at sales of Jamie Hernandez original art.

On the way home from Sunday shopping, I noticed a big “STORE CLOSING” sign on the Coconuts music and movies store in Toms River. I wasn’t surprised by its impending doom; I haven’t set foot in any of their stores in years. In fact, I wondered why it had stayed afloat for so long.

Clearly, according to the stock price of the parent company, Trans World Entertainment, I’m not the only one. When a company sells for less than $2 a share, the thought is that it’s close to bankruptcy. A quick look at a few press releases shows a number of money-losing quarters, and you can’t stay in business long if you don’t make money. Since TWM had already filed bankruptcy once (in 1996), you have to wonder if this company will live to see the end of 2011.

If it is a doomed company, it’s not the only media dealer in trouble. According to a Publishers Weekly story last week, the book retailer Borders has stopped making payments to certain publishers, and one unnamed major publisher won’t ship more books until the payments resume. Borders is now trading even lower than TWE, and many analysts feel the end is near.

Truthfully, my heart doesn’t bleed for TWE or Borders. When I worked in Manhattan a few years ago, I had so many bad experiences at the Borders at Penn Station that I vowed to stop shopping there. But my heart does bleed for my old college haunt, Rainbow Records. I spent what feels like whole semesters rooting through used CDs at their location on Main Street. Now, the store has cut hours, and will give up half its retail space in the next few months.

Is any of this a surprise? Of course not. We buy MP3s indtead of CDs, and we buy them from a handful of online stores (iTunes, Amazon, eMusic) for the most part. Amazon controls over 75% of the book market, and even that is rapidly becoming an ebooks market. Blockbuster’s nearly gone, and its successor, Netflix, is rapidly becoming a streaming company instead of a distribution company for DVDs and Blu-Rays. Video game sales are dominated by a handful of big companies, led by Gamestop, and even that business is moving online. Even comic books are going digital; Marvel and DC both have iPad stores, and the independent Comixology application has moved over a million digital comics.

We no longer have a crying need for physical media in our life. I’m not complaining about this- I love my iPod, my Kindle, and my networked PS3 like any red-blooded American male. But I do miss what Cory Doctorow wrote about in his short story, “Craphound“- the hunt through back issue boxes, used CD stacks, piles of books in the back of the store, garage sales, and later eBay listings. I spent a lot of my 20s this way- traveling to flea markets for old Atari cartridges, bent over quarter boxes in dusty comics stores, or driving around going to that *one* store 100 miles away with a copy of some desired story or song.

I got exposed to a lot of neat stuff through those hunts- Matt Feazell comics, Los Bros Hernandez, Peter Bagge, funk music, and so much more. I once scored from a dealer in South Jersey three boxes of indy 80s comics for $10 per long box, and ended up with mostly full runs of Nexus, Grimjack, and other First and Eclipse comics; from another dealer, I got the entire fun of Marvel’s New Universe, which had its moments in its later years. Through record store cutout bins, I was exposed to Joe Jackson, one of my favorite musicians to this day.

I won’t complain about the modern world. I love deliveries from Amazon. I get my comics from a mail order company, DCBS, at fabulous discounts. I get great customer service from these companies and others. But I do miss the thrill of the chase for the obscure, the surge of happiness when you found that comic, that CD, that old book… but alas, the thrill is gone.

Today’s links:

Johanna Draper Carlson goes through the dross of January’s Previews catalog to find the graphic novel gems.

Saccharin’s mostly sweet following- a great article in the LA Times about the primary sweetener in Sweet and Low.  (I also highly recommend Sweet and Low: A Family History by Rich Cohen.

I don’t feel forty. I’m still the same guy with a desk of Marvel Super Hero Squad action figures, still wearing goofy t-shirts every chance I get. But there’s no denying it- I’m biologically starting my fourth decade of existence.

It’s also the start of 2011, and while I usually don’t make resolutions, I think there’s two I need to do.

I’m going back to blogging.

I’ve let this blog lapse- and I’ve done it many times before. I’m like most non-writers: I have ideas, man!!!, but not enough self-discipline to pull it off. Well, the only way I know to build self-discipline is to do the same thing over and over again. So that’s what I’m going to do- log in to the blog, write something, and do it again every day until I can’t imagine a day without blogging.

I’m going to the gym.

Notice how there’s few photos of me on the site? Here’s why- I’m fat.

Now, I am less fat this year than I was last year. Thanks to my wife, I joined Weight Watchers. I’ve been posting about my WW progress on Facebook every week, and I’m going to do the same here. I started in the beginning of September at (ugh) 316 pounds. I’m down to 285 pounds, down 31 pounds. My eventual goal is to get back to my high school weight of around 175-185 pounds.

Now, 30 pounds in four months sounds really good, but there’s a catch- I’ve plateaued. I weighed 286 on December 4, and 285 on December 31. Despite staying within my diet, I didn’t lose any weight. I’m making some changes in my diet again to get back to where I was before, but I’m also going to get serious about working out again.

This isn’t going to be easy. Because of some problems in my back, I’ve always had problems with creating a workout routine for myself. I’m clueless about the gym. I can use the treadmill for a half-hour, but other than that, I’m really outside my comfort zone. So I’m going to get some personal training at my gym, and also take some time to educate myself on a beginner’s workout routine.

And maybe if I do this long enough, I’ll feel good about posting pictures of myself. (Naaah…)
—

Stuff I liked on the web today:

Halo Jones

A Moment Of Moore: A daily blog about Alan Moore. Looks like a daily image dump of random Alan Moore panels, but what’s wrong with that?

Bleeding Cool- Visual of the Year: A nice look at some of the more famous (and infamous) images in comics from the past year.

NJ Woman Charged With Setting Her Boyfriend On Fire On New Year’s Eve: Ah, New Jersey, my home sweet home.

2. I made my feelings on the lack of comics publishers known in the last post. There’s no Marvel, DC, Dark Horse, Image, Boom!, IDW…no one. The biggest publishers here are Zenescope and Avatar.

3. There are a LOT of heavy people here. Wow. A bariatric surgeon could make a killing here. (Note- I’m also fat.)

4. Booth babes are back! At least one “artist” in Artist Alley has scantily clad women in an effort to hawk wares (I have no idea what for). And the Suicide Girls are here.

5. Big front-and-center booth? It’s for a phone.

6. LOTS of costumes here. All varied, too. Everyone’s getting into the game.

7. Lots of women here, too. Most varied crowd I’ve seen, and a lot of families, too.

8. Much bigger crowd than yesterday. Long lines for the advance sales, near-empty lines for one-day sales. Lots of anger over the wait for those in the advance lines crowd.

9. Wizard’s business strategy is now readily apparent. “Here’s some B-level sci-fi celebs from TV from 20 years ago. Here’s some wrestlers. Over there is an artist’s alley. We put some tables in the back. Have fun. Walk around. Eat some overpriced pizza. That’s all you’re getting. Now pay up.” But it’s working for them, at least today. You’ll get to see Stormtroopers and Jedi and nubile babes and t-shirts and action figures and wrestlers.

Will you get to see the best of what’s in comics now? No. Not even close. But a big portion of this crowd doesn’t seem to care. They’re happy as is.

Maybe Wizard’s smarter than we thought. We’ll see.

I’d like to tell you I’m looking forward to it. But I’m not sure I’d be lying.

I remember the first Wizard World convention very well. It was a happening, a big comics convention in a region starved by years without big cons. Philly is a big comics town, but after the bust of the comics market in the mid-90s, there were hardly any comics conventions anywhere other than San Diego and Chicago. That first year, Marvel and DC showed up. Marvel didn’t have much of a booth presence, but all the big names from Marvel were there. I met Bill Jemas there, and he was explaining to his staff the intricacies of some Marvel collectible card game. He was so excited over this that I could see why there was so much buzz over what was then known as NuMarvel.

There was a ton of energy at that show. Lots of young, hungry creators going to the Wizard World classes and trying to break out. Artist Alley was packed. There were a lot of dealers and comic publishers. The show was a huge hit, and I believe the success of that show was one of the early indicators of the big comics boom of the last decade. Had that show flopped, maybe we never would have gotten the now-titanic New York Comic Con and all of the other cons that seem to run every week during the summer.

But Wizard World hasn’t continued to have the same type of success over the past decade. Its flagship publication, Wizard, has suffered a big dropoff in circulation (in fact, last month, it fell behind sister publication Toyfare in sales). The convention side of the business has made some dumb moves, trying to buy up as many other conventions as it can while not focusing on the core successes of the existing conventions. In particular, its handling of the Philly con has been nothing short of disastrous.

A few years ago, Wizard World tried to muscle out a competing convention, Charlotte’s Heroes Con, by running Philly on the same weekend. WW figured that most of the comics community would attend the Philly show, but the exact opposite happened. Heroes Con has long maintained an excellent reputation with comics creators and publishers, and most of them chose to stay loyal to Heroes Con while abandoning Philly. Last year, most of the big names chose to appear at Charlotte instead of Philadelphia. It seemed that only talent local to PA, NY, and NJ stayed at Philly, while the rest of the comics universe went to Charlotte.

Even though Philly now runs the weekend after Charlotte, the damage seems to have been done. For the first time in show history, there is no official Marvel or DC presence at Philly. In fact, the biggest comics company exhibiting at Philly might be the comics retailer Mile High Comics. The biggest publisher might be the relatively small Avatar Press (although they publish book by big-name writers Warren Ellis and Garth Ennis). The panel programming reflects this change; instead of big displays by comics publishers, the panels are now largely interviews with B-level sci-fi TV stars. I have nothing against actors like Bruce Campbell and Patrick Stewart, but when they are the biggest stars at a comics show, you have to wonder if the show has lost its aim. There are a few comics-focused panels, with well-known artists such as J. G. Jones and Ethan Van Sciver giving instructional talks, but these were always a smaller part of the comics programming. Now, they make up just about all of the comics programming.

Last year, there were many whispers on the con floor that attendance was down, and that Philly might not even have a show this year. Well, there will be a Philly show, but it really won’t be a comics show, not like it was in years past. It’s a shame, because Philly really is a great comics town. I’m hoping that this is a great show, and that we won’t see a repeat of the comic con drought of the 90s. But if this is the sort of show we’re going to get, I worry that the situation will only get worse.

That is all.

• 100 Words: No way out but death
  Source: scribbles and lies
• Today in Philly Sports History: Cedric Maxwell Says Hi to the Fans at the Spectrum, 1981
  Source: The700Level.com - Philly Sports & Minutiae
  Pretty amazing footage of a fight started by a fan. Check out the hideous jacket. And they started play two minutes later!
• 26 Essential Social Media Resources You May Have Missed
  Source: Mashable!
• Swipe File: Grant Morrison And Batman
  Source: Bleeding Cool Comic Book News and Rumors
• Vintage PCs on the set of The IT Crowd, season 4
  Source: Boing Boing
• Star Wars Google Ad
  Source: Geeks are Sexy Technology News
• Shelf Check #393
  Source: Shelf Check
• Comic for Friday, April 30, 2010
  Source: Gunshow comic feed
  Beautiful tribute to Gary Larson.
• Comic for Friday, April 30, 2010
  Source: Gunshow comic feed
• April 30, 2010
  Source: Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal (updated daily)
• The Devil Went Down to Wall Street
  Source: Abstruse Goose
• PHOTOSHOP
  Source: Very Demotivational - The Demotivational Posters Blog
• Geof Darrow's Conan Cover
  Source: Comic Book Resources
  Oooooh...pretty.
• Soldiers in Afghanistan Remake Gaga’s Telephone
  Source: A Distant Soil by Colleen Doran
• Sad Puppy
  Source: scribbles and lies
• Philip K. Dick's Exegesis To Be Published In 2011
  Source: Slashdot
• BREAKING: HP to Acquire Palm for $1.2 Billion
  Source: Mashable!
  Well, that's a surprise....
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