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[Thad]

Good news: you can GET all the covers!

[Thad]

So Chew just celebrated its halfway point by getting SERIOUSLY FUCKING GRIM.

Like, [spoiler]tied to a chair, multiple limbs hacked off and eaten, tortured and interrogated[/spoiler] grim.

I mean, this is a series that has relied on cannibalism for laffs since the very beginning.  But this issue?  Not so much with the laffs.

Not sure what to make of [spoiler]Toni's final taunt that she's going to help Tony kill Vampire Man.  My first thought was the not-altogether-pleasant idea that Tony was going to have to eat his dead sister's flesh, but then I remembered oh right, she's so saturated with beets that that's not going to help.  (Which I guess leaves the even LESS pleasant idea that he might eat her flesh and then discover it was for nothing.)  So that leaves some other beyond-the-grave implication -- could be she comes back as a robot, or somebody has an as-yet-unrevealed food power that allows them to talk to the dead, or...at any rate, the good news is I don't think we've seen the last of her.[/spoiler]

But it DID get an involuntary "Oh, FUCK" out of me when I hit that page.

On the whole not as nerve-wracking a read as Walking Dead #100, but probably the most affecting book I've read since.

Quantum and Woody pulled a similar trick, right around #13 if I'm not mistaken.  All fun and games and then bam, someone dies tragically and shit just got real.

...reminder: you can buy Quantum and Woody.

(Apparently there was a Black Friday sale for all Valiant books but I didn't hear about it until it was over.  Damn.  But still, two bucks an issue is pretty good!)

[Thad]

Masks: It's an entire comic painted by Alex Ross.  Man, it's been awhile.  (Has he done any since Justice?)

It's a big 1930's pulp hero teamup book -- this issue focuses on Green Hornet, Kato, and the Shadow, but introduces the Spider at the end and also alludes to Zorro.  (Does Dynamite still have the Lone Ranger license?  Because the original lore had it that he was Britt Reid's great-uncle.  He'd be pretty long-in-the-tooth by now, but I could dig him as a Dark Knight Returns-style coming-out-of-retirement character.)

The premise is...pretty 1930's pulp.  Organized crime manages to take control of the government of NYC, and institutionalize protection/enforcement as the law of the land.  The Green Hornet, chasing a low-level crime boss up from Chicago, runs into the Shadow, who explains what's happened.  There's a bit of back-and-forth about the difference between the law and justice (Shadow gets it; Hornet originally protests that they're the same thing, which is a little silly coming from a guy who goes out in a mask and a trenchcoat and metes out vigilante justice while pretending to be a crime boss himself, but okay, we'll go with it).  There's also a Mexican artist with some connection to Zorro, who gets arrested for being a Mexican, and a DA who refuses to prosecute him for being a Mexican.  I assume the DA is another pulp hero but I don't recognize him.

There are some pretty solid action scenes but also rather a lot of talking-head scenes -- the courtroom, for one, and a lengthy restaurant conversation between Britt Reid and Lamont Cranston.  Ross does some neat things with angles, and his characters are expressive (Margo Lane is a highlight), but there are definitely places where it's all a little too mundane and feels like a waste of his talents.  I like Roberson but his pacing gets a little deliberate for my tastes.

Still and all, it's an interesting book, and a good premise (let's take the 1960's idea of the Big Superhero Teamup and apply it to prototypical superheroes from the 1930's).  And I still love Alex Ross.

Also: I don't know who his model is for The Shadow, but I just kept thinking of Frank Miller as the corrupt cop in the TMNT Annual.

[Büge]

This is cute: Neil Degrasse Tyson guest stars in Superman, adds real science

[Thad]

Karen Berger leaving Vertigo.

Shit.

DC's been gradually dismantling the imprint over the past decade with a less and less creator-friendly bent, and dismantling it much more quickly over the past year and a half with the removal of Swamp Thing and John Constantine from the Vertigo line in favor of the DC Universe proper.  Without Berger I fear the writing is really on the wall at this point.

Fables isn't going to go away or change in any significant way -- it might have a little "DC" logo in the corner instead of a "Vertigo" one, but I expect it to keep on going without much interference.  But I don't think any other Vertigo book has that kind of job security at this point.

(Well, Sweet Tooth.  Because it's ending this month.)

[Büge]

Gail Simone fired from Batgirl.

[Mongrel]

Gail Simone fired from Batgirl.

Interestingly, when a follower tweeted at her, "Did you not put enough women in refrigerators or something?", referring to her coining of the phrase about the treatment of women in comics (Kyle Rayner's girlfriend was murdered and stuffed in his fridge). Simone simply replied, "Funny you should say that."

[Thad]

It's not as seismic a change as getting rid of Berger, but yeah it's just one more sign of how management is running DC now.

There are still some great books out on the fringes, but the closer you are to one of the main DC books -- ie anything with "Bat" in the name -- the more they seem to want to micromanage.

Wonder how long Batwoman's going to be able to stay as good as it is.  Maybe having Wonder Woman show up for an arc was a concession to editorial.

Also wonder whether Simone will pursue other opportunities with DC or whether this is finally too much for her.  She's generally been very good about keeping any disagreements she's got with editorial quiet up to this point (like why she left Firestorm), so I expect she'll still be amenable to working for DC.  And I find it hard to believe they won't be willing to work with her anymore, either.

Would sure be nice to see her do creator-owned over at Image or somewhere for awhile, though.

[TA]

Wasn't her Batgirl book, uh, terrible?  That's what I've been hearing, anyway.

[Büge]

It might have been terrible, but it was selling well. That's the head-scratcher.

[Thad]

It had good sales: comichron has it at #17 for November -- the only better-selling DC books are Batman, Justice League, and Green Lantern; not to put too fine a point on it it outsold Walking Dead and Avengers by about 20,000, and was only a few thousand behind My Little Pony #1 and the much-ballyhooed Amazing Spider-Man #698.  Granted, its sales were most certainly boosted by the Death of the Family crossover, but it still outsold Batman and Robin, Detective Comics, Catwoman, Batman: The Dark Knight, Nightwing, and Red Hood (not to mention Batman Inc and Batwoman, which aren't part of the crossover).

It was also pretty well critically-acclaimed, for whatever that's worth -- I wasn't keeping up with it but consensus seems to be that, after a rocky start (mostly rocky because Simone didn't immediately explain how Barbara was up and walking around), it found its footing and turned out pretty good.  Like most of the DC books, people liked what she was doing with it and didn't like the stuff editorial was forcing on her.

But hell, you know, even if it HAD been terrible, there's no fucking excuse for firing a beloved creator via E-Mail.  Short of a Liefeld-level temper tantrum, anyway.  (And even then, I was pretty much on Liefeld's side up until he decided to blame everything on a low-level editor and insult him by name instead of putting it at the feet of Warner Corporate, who I think are the ones who are really responsible for everything from the New 52 to Before Watchmen to Berger's departure to the Sandman prequel...okay, that last one actually might be pretty good.)



EDIT: Going through her Tumblr:

I am not giving up on the idea of a major trans character in an ongoing mainstream title without a fight. I want a clear, unambiguous trans character in a prominent, unambiguous and unapologetic role THIS YEAR.

So it doesn't sound like she has any intention of leaving DC -- or if she does, it'll be to go to Marvel.  She's not planning on taking her ball and going creator-owned (at least, not exclusively; she DOES have a couple creator-owned books in the works); she's as intent as ever on being the person who reforms the industry from the inside.

I...have mixed feelings on this.  I think she's done an incredible job so far and DC and superhero comics in general would be poorer if she put her talent to use on original, less-prominent characters.  But there is a big, big part of me saying "Fuck them; let them all burn down and all the talent go creator-owned."

As it is, the most prominent trans character at DC is probably Shining Knight.  And Paul Cornell has been pretty vocal in his support of Simone today.

[Mongrel]

Simone didn't immediately explain how Barbara was up and walking around

How did they handwave that in the end anyway?

[Bongo Bill]

Gail Simone fired from Batgirl.

Interestingly, when a follower tweeted at her, "Did you not put enough women in refrigerators or something?", referring to her coining of the phrase about the treatment of women in comics (Kyle Rayner's girlfriend was murdered and stuffed in his fridge). Simone simply replied, "Funny you should say that."

I don't get it.

[Royal☭]

It sounds like editorial was pressuring Simone to kill someone and she kept saying no.

[Zaratustra]

Simone didn't immediately explain how Barbara was up and walking around

How did they handwave that in the end anyway?

She got wheelchaired, but recovered after a couple of years of physiotherapy. Much like, oh, Batman himself.

[Ted Belmont]

I thought Batman recovered by having magic sex with Lady Shiva.

[Thad]

Simone didn't immediately explain how Barbara was up and walking around

How did they handwave that in the end anyway?

Actually, they still haven't.  Per Simone's Tumblr, the story of Barbara's recovery was going to be her next arc, and now it isn't.  Even though she'd already finished writing it.

[TA]

Simone didn't immediately explain how Barbara was up and walking around

How did they handwave that in the end anyway?

She got wheelchaired, but recovered after a couple of years of physiotherapy. Much like, oh, Batman himself.

Batman was cured by magic.

[Ted Belmont]

Simone didn't immediately explain how Barbara was up and walking around

How did they handwave that in the end anyway?

She got wheelchaired, but recovered after a couple of years of physiotherapy. Much like, oh, Batman himself.

Batman was cured by magic.

I thought Batman recovered by having magic sex with Lady Shiva.

[Büge]

If only the AMA recognized magic sex tantra physiotherapy as a legitimate treatment, but they'll drag their feet on it like everything else. Look at how long it took to sanction chiropractors.