Born to a destitute existence,
J.Hues quickly rose to the prominent level of uncomfortably poor. His real name
is shrouded in secrecy but if you ask him he might tell you it's Jason Hughes
(Dammit!).
Nothing much happened until he
graduated from college with a completely useless degree in English, and then...
nothing much continued to happen. Subsequently, J.Hues found himself working
at a toy store. Later, through some strange accident he fell sideways into the
IT field and has been trapped there ever since.
To keep his sanity, he writes:
novels, poems, comics, grocery lists, checks (too many checks), fake doctor's
notes... Maybe someday he'll get paid for all this.
A genius in his own mind, J.Hues
uses various grammatical no-nos to mask his complete and total inability to
craft a single genuine or unique idea. He's never happy unless he is blathering
on with his own obnoxious opinions and ideas. Wait, are you still reading this?
Read the damn column already!
“They always say it pays off in the end, but I just don’t see death as all that great of a payoff.” —me.
CLEARING MY HEAD
What the…?! Who’s gonna…?! Stan may sue Marvel? Joey Zerbo, who was just promoted to Sr. Marketing Manager to replace the outgoing Bill Rosemann, is suddenly gone the day before Bill’s last day? Ultimate Venom? I need to get my people to call down to hell and see if the temperature is dropping. Okay, but before we delve into that, I must find my chi. Here, chi. C’mere boy. Chi is my chia-pet. Lost the damned thing. Probably all overgrown now and looks stupid (because, you see, it looked really cool once upon a time). It was standing next to my lava lamp, which was helping keep my Sea Monkeys warm. Damn you’re jealous of me!
Remember last week (I know, I’ve slept since then too, but that’s why we have vodka in the mornings… or is that Corn Flakes?). Remember when I said you were gonna get a two-fer in the reviews department. Well I weren’t lying kiddies! These fine folks were kind enough to send me free samples of their works and what can I say, if you send me free stuff to look at I’m gonna look at it and talk about it. Something about free stuff compels me to share my infinite wisdom, or lack thereof. Luckily I’m in an infinitely wise mood today. In other word, send me your crap and I’ll talk about it right here. Don’t send it and it’s a crapshoot. I might talk about it and I might not.
Jane’s World Now let’s talk some lesbian comics. It’s so hard to get through the day without talking lesbian comics, but luckily, today we don’t have to. Okay, to start off I’ve already been unfair (bad hues!). This isn’t a lesbian book. Hell, Strangers in Paradise is more of a lesbian extravaganza than Jane’s World, and you know how lesbo-heavy that is (as in not very at all). No, Jane’s World just happens to have a protagonist who just happens to be gay and it never really (at least thus far) seems to play a huge factor in the book itself. It’s about as significant as Clark’s heterosexuality is as a plot device in the Superman books.
What Jane’s World is, is a look at the foibles of modern life and the frustrations and humor to be found in everyday things. The first two issues spotlight pretty heavily on Jane and her ‘arch-nemesis/bizarre crush/coworker’ Chelle. Issue one establishes their relationship and issue two further explores Jane’s mixed feelings toward this Matrix-esque bad girl.
The pacing is frenetic as this is basically just a recompilation of the online strips, as have been appearing on JanesWorldComics.com for years. Paige Braddock, the creator, has crafted a delightful online daily feature and I thank her for sending me the first TWO issues of the new comic series. I say this, because I thought the first appeared awkwardly assembled and the constant intrusion by the author to gloss over all the strips and material we’ve decided to skip over only further breaks the stride (plus pisses me off as it appears the extensive archives of the website have been removed in favor of the capitalistic hype and advertisements for subscribing to the monthly JW comic. Well, that’s all fine and dandy IF the comic is going to give me, eventually, ALL of the archived books. Liberty Meadows is giving me all the archives and then some. I demand more!
Luckily, by the second issue, the pacing has improved and there’s also a lot less herky-jerky as we go from punchline to punchline, always a problem with sequential daily strip comics. Well, in the second issue we get an extended ‘amazon inhabited paradise island’ sequence that reads quite smoothly. Jane’s world is filled with laughter and humanity and I truly enjoyed my stay there. Paige’s art style is kind of kinetic and almost sketchy at times, but remains consistent and solid in conveying the warm humor and sweet insanity of this delightful world.
I’m not a lesbian, well maybe I am I mean I dig chicks they dig chicks of course they are chicks who dig chicks so that complicates things I mean I guess I could get a sex change so that I could be a chick who digs chicks but I don’t wanna really BE a chick so maybe I’m not the lesbian I think I am, but it really doesn’t matter as Jane’s story speaks to everyone. It’s the story of a young adult struggling to find herself and protect her favorite coffee mug. I think that’s a struggle we can all relate to.
The Science of Superheroes I really wanted this to be so much more. Don’t get me wrong, it is entertaining, but I was hoping for something MORE.
Lois Gresh and Robert Weinberg have taken a really ambitious idea and almost got it. If it sells well enough, it could maybe grow into a Second Edition and they could beef up the science quotient and add some pictures. Good god, any pictures. A book about comic book superheroes and science with no pictures (comic book shots or science diagrams) seems astoundingly lacking in something. I know the licensing and cost may have been prohibitive for having shots of Hulk smashing or whatnot, but it really would have added some substance to the book.
Plus, as this book is the SCIENCE of superheroes, I felt there was just too much time spent on the history of the characters. The book needed more science and less superhero. It is enough to know the basic concept of Superman and what his powers and origin are supposed to be. That’s it. The other problem I had was that they spread themselves too thin. With over a dozen different characters to explore and less than 200 pages total to do it and those ‘necessary’ historical looks at the character’s publishing history. There was far too little time to fully explore the scientific examinations of these so-called super powers to discern their plausibility. It felt as if we were just beginning to get to the meat of something and we were rushing on to the next chapter, character and scientific concept. Perhaps they would have been better served to have a full-fledged scientist on board. Look, I’m not trying to knock the book to death, because I found it to be a great deal of fun to read, but I had almost more fun imagining how much MORE they could’ve done with the premise. The could’ve probably done an entire book on the Man of Steel and his many villains and his story that would’ve felt much richer and fulfilling. As it was, this almost read like a Cliff’s Notes of a much more comprehensive, illustrated, ambitious and far better product.
ROUND 1
Somehow using a canceled book to promote and upcoming book doesn’t really make sense to me. This is the infinite wisdom creeping out again. See, Thunderbolts is starting a whole new direction with John Arcudi at the helm and a whole new cast of baddies with issue #76. And in the hype for this, over at our ever (if you ever mention a story that I even mentioned in an aside you’d better drop me a link and praise Allah that you even work on the same planet as me) friendly rival’s site Newsarama, they’ve got a quote that those who loved the ‘cult hit’ Major Bummer will love this new direction. Okay, but wasn’t Major Bummer canceled because not enough people were interested in it to keep it afloat. Help me out here? You’re hoping to market this book to that same small number of people so that they can also not be enough to keep TB alive? Hey, DC if you’re listening, you’ve clearly got it all wrong. You should hype Generations III by saying… ‘From the man that brought you Lab Rats and redefined Spider-Man for a whole new generation in Spider-Man: Chapter One so that you can recapture all the legions of fans of those two works.
Oh and on a side note, we all know how great it is that Newsarama gets all these exclusive stories, but in this story you reference all your quotes to the ‘published’ or ‘publisher’ until the end when you say, ‘continues Lis.’ But you forgot to ever mention Lis before this. Thus using his last name like this as if a continuation and reaffirmation of previous mention makes you look asinine. Hey, we’re all friends here. Just try’n’a he’p a brutha out! Keep’n ‘t real, you know’wha’m’say’n. Peace!
On another side note, the final issue of the aforementioned Lab Rats came out this week and I would try to not spoil it for you but who am I kidding, I bet it’s only me and Mrs. Byrne that actually read the damned thing so I’ll tell you now that all those kids died. And they took a piece of me with them. Ah, spunky kid and rebel kid and brainy kid and token black kid and misunderstood quiet girl. Ye became like unto a piece of my eternal spirit and thine ember shall ever burn brightly within my bosom. You know, I spent $20.00 on that series. Next time, I’m going to drop that $20 in the box of that poor homeless fella on the corner so he can ‘feed his family’ by going to the liquor store and buying some Jack and spending his morning vomiting into a urine-encrusted sewer grate. Ah, it is so good to know that I have bettered the life of a fellow-man. Why without me, he wouldn’t be able to do with the vomiting and the grate. If you need me, I’ll be wearing black this week with a special commemorative armband with a bloody LR8 on it. This will forever be known as ‘Black Wednesday.’
ROUND 2
So Marvel is happy as long as Stan doesn’t think about how much money he enabled them to make and isn’t making. See, on the 60 Minutes II bit about comics when asked if he thought he got his fair share of the Spidey and comics pie from Marvel, Stan didn’t say “Make mine Marvel” or “Excelsior!” or “Go team!” or anything like that. No, he said “I try not to think about it.” How many ways are there to interpret that. I can’t think of many. So Stan filed a something-or-other legal document demanding 10% of the profits from such minor ancilliary uses of his creations as the Spider-Man movie, other movies, television shows and everything else Marvel is using to make money.
Can’t say that I blame the guy. Spider-Man: The Movie is one of the highest-grossing movies of all time and has broken sales records in both theaters and video/DVD sales/rentals. And Spider-Man was created by Stan. On the one hand it’s gratifying to see your creation do so well, but on the other hand it’s gotta be frustrating to know you’re not seeing all that jack. J.K. Rowling is making stupid money off of the Harry Potter movies and licensing and yet “The Man” is making next to nothing off of the X-Men, Hulk, Daredevil, and Spider-Man films, all of which would not exist had he not invented them.
Then you throw in the ‘work-for-hire’ way in which he worked and say that’s just the way it is, but things were different then. ‘Work-for-hire’ was the only option so it was either do it that way or don’t do it at all. Plus, who knew. And it’s not like Stan is asking for Jack from every dollar Marvel ever made off of his properties. He’s just asking for a piece of what’s rightfully his. Without Stan (and Jack but that’s a whole other can of worms) Marvel would not today be in business. A contract renegotiation to give some financial credit to their benefactor doesn’t seem to be out of the question. And it looks like the contract he signed when he left the company was supposed to do that and now Marvel isn’t living up to their end. This I don’t know about, haven’t seen the contract and wouldn’t want any of my ‘buddies’ coming down on me for not doing my research, but it would seem the man should be living HUGE considering the massive popularity of his creations. At the very least, Rowling large and likely much more so as she has only created one major character (and supporting cast) and Stan has created dozens.
Oh well, at least he’s the most well-known guy in comics, even known outside the medium. Corporate mentality being what it is, this may get ugly before it gets pretty and there’s something very unsettling about the very Stan Lee who ‘presents’ every Marvel comic allegedly threatening to sue the company he made what it is. We live in interesting times, my friends.
ROUND 3
You heard about The End right? And not the one your preacher keeps going on about at church either. I’m talking about Jim Starlin who recently underwhelmed us with another Infinity mini-series is concocting. Basically, he’s going to step into the Marvel Universe as it stands right now and end it. End of the world the Marvel Universe is through type of stuff. But is it really through? Could this be the ‘Ultimization’ of the Marvel Universe? Is Marvel stupid? Are they not making plenty of jack right now with two Marvel Universes? Why would they mess that up.
No, this is just a fun ‘What If…?’ type of story that shows what could happen if the Marvel Universe were to suddenly end. In the interview over at The Pulse, Starlin said that nobody but himself could properly write Thanos because nobody truly understood the character.
Personally, I hope he’s right and there should be a law written that nobody but Starlin is allowed to write Thanos. And then Starlin should promptly retire from comics and never write another word again as long as he lives.
Could you imagine? I don’t know what it is. Maybe it’s just that Thanos seems like a cosmic Dr. Doom designed like a ridiculously costumed Skrull knock-off whose characterization has become dated, trite quite frankly boring if not slightly annoying (as presented in the latest Infinity Fiasco: Please Dear God Let It Be The Final Installment), but I have less interest for following the exploits of this character than I do for watching lint grow in my navel.
ROUND 4
Is it wrong that every time I see a new issue of The Titans on the stands I start to yawn uncontrollably. Sometimes, I get so bored seeing it sitting on the racks that I just fall asleep right there in the store. Don’t worry, I take lots of prozac when I read it to make sure I can stay awake.
ROUND 5
So, is comics in a creative golden age the likes of which we’ve never seen? You know, I think only time will tell. Let’s face it, don’t we always say that about the era we’re living in. Do you think Marvel ran around in the nineties thinking, boy are we putting out some crap these days. Do you see this garbage we’re pushing off on people. It’s shameless and pathetic. I guess our golden days are either ahead of or behind us. At least, we’ll always have the unwavering and loyal support of our ‘founder’ Stan “The Man” Lee! D’oh! I bet they were saying the same thing they’re saying now. This is the best time creatively for Marvel comics. We have so many creative cover gimmicks and promotional specials and spin-off mini-series and did I mention the gimmick covers and the special promotional offers and the signed limited variant covers. This is a creative boom time. I mean that clear cover. That was pretty creative. Leather covers are creative. Plastic. Huh? Content? Hell, what does it matter, nobody reads these things, they’re collector’s items!
Ah, I miss the old days. At least it was easier to sell crap then. All you had to do was convince somebody of its collectibility. These days, people demand quality. Good art. Solid storytelling. It’s getting so a quality hack like Rob Liefeld can barely make a living anymore!
K.O.
disclaimer: the opinions expressed in this column don’t necessarily represent those expressed by any sane and rational adult; they barely represent the views of the author and they barely resemble coherency as it is; nevertheless this column is chock full of satire and parody (as protected by laws protecting such things) and as such don’t sue me. look at it this way, this is all for fun, don’t believe a word of it (even if it is true), don’t take it too seriously, and if you do take it, take it all with a grain of salt—better yet have the truck back up to your house.
