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[Zaratustra]

Just read Action Comics' Vyndktvx arc, and bloody hell, Grant Morrison really perfected a way of telling stories where he makes a story for 12 issues, then throws everything away except for every third page. I really hope his Wonder Woman is not this tangled.

[Thad]

So okay.

Joshua Fialkov quit two GL books.  BleedingCool ran a story today alleging that it was because DC was planning to kill off John Stewart.  And then another story five and a half hours later saying that DC changed its mind due to the immediate backlash from the rumor.

I'd say there are pretty even odds here on "DC editorial almost did something really stupid but then flinched within hours of fans getting pissed off" and "Bleeding Cool just made the whole thing up."

[Thad]

So this could be interesting: online course on gender roles in comic books.  (Nominally it's free but there's a note on the side that says "Requires the purchase of a textbook or other course materials" -- don't know if that just means comics?)

Looks like, yeah; Bleeding Cool has a list of the comics assigned for the course, which Comixology is offering at a discount -- even if you aren't taking the class.

[Thad]

Quantum and Woody not being written by Priest or drawn by Bright.

That news deflated me pretty significantly from "this is the most excited I have been in years" to "well I guess I'll pick up #1 and see if it's any good."

And then this explanation from Kevin Maguire in the comments section dropped me down a lot farther from there:

We Acclaim creators signed contracts before we started working on our projects that had a clause saying we could buy the rights to the material back for half the profits the material made in the previous 3 years. Several years after Acclaim went under, Priest and Bright tried to get the Q/W rights and were told that the contracts we signed were never submitted to a different division of Acclaim and were thus considered invalid. Someone else came in and bought up all the Valiant/Acclaim leaving us with nothing. I've been following what Priest/Bright were doing because I wanted the rights to Trinity Angels back. But the legal fees it would cost to get it back would just be too much for us. I'm pretty sure Priest/Bright are not pleased with the new Q/W, but I don't know that for a fact. As I said, I know if they went in and re-vamped Trinity Angels, I would be furious.

To summarize how I feel about hearing there was new Quantum and Woody, and then hearing Valiant yanked it out from under its creators and put another team on it, I give you this bad cellphone video of an old episode of South Park.

Southpark Chef on God

Also, it bears adding, one more time, that every single person who responds to a creators' rights thread with "Wull they shoulda gotten a lawyer and signed a contract!" is an asshole.  It should be abundantly clear by this point that contracts are merely speed bumps and that publishers will find a way to fuck creators out of their rights no matter what agreement they signed.

I'm hoping to hear what Priest himself has to say on this, see if he can confirm or deny what Maguire said -- and on top of that, whether Valiant ever approached him, whether he's at least getting royalties for the characters even if they cheated him out of ownership, and so on.  There's an interview with Valiant's CEO/CCO at CBR where he claims he's been in contact with Priest and that they're working on some projects together, but he repeatedly calls him "Chris", which suggests he's never spoken to the man in his life.

[Thad]

...so what would be worse than if Priest and Bright weren't being compensated for the new Quantum and Woody?

If Priest and Bright weren't being compensated for the OLD Quantum and Woody.  The ones they actually wrote and drew, which Valiant is selling on Comixology.

Kevin Maguire says he hasn't been paid for the Trinity Angels back issues on Comixology, and Valiant hasn't responded to his E-Mails.

My not-a-lawyer self has spent the afternoon reading up on bankruptcy law and it DOES seem that it's possible for a buyer to buy up copyrights from a bankrupt company without assuming the contracts associated with them -- and that this is legally considered a breach of contract but that the bankrupt company, not the buyer, is legally responsible.

Any Actual Lawyers are welcome to chime in and tell me if I'm right or wrong in that interpretation.

And this one: the possibility that Valiant may not actually have any legitimate stake in Q&W at all because it wasn't Acclaim's to sell.  Priest and Bright invoked reversion; Acclaim told them their contract was invalid because Acclaim Comics failed to submit it to the correct department in Acclaim Corporate.

Now, am I correct in understanding that:

1. a contract signed by both parties and a witness is legally binding even if the corporate party fails to submit the proper paperwork to its corporate parent;
2. if Priest and Bright invoked reversion and Acclaim illegally refused to sell, the sale to another party (who eventually sold it to Valiant) was invalid?

Still no word from Priest or Bright themselves.  Hope they work something out one way or another.

[TA]

Hey, Thad, you're pretty plugged in to the comics world.  Have the Mystery Hipster Cops been solved yet?

[Thad]

Not that I know of.  I'd forgotten all about them and had to do a search to remember what you were talking about.

[Thad]

DC's most-recently-announced digital-first series is Batgirl Beyond.  And the new cover DOES seem to suggest Barbara in a mentor role.  Which would probably be a little hypocritical given all the shit she gave Bruce for training a successor, but I guess if someone shows up using her name she's got to make a call on that.

The writer, Scott Peterson, was involved in the Batman Adventures series of the 1990's, including Mad Love, plus the Cassandra Cain version of Batgirl.

And Batman Beyond is changing creative teams, which could be a good thing; I didn't care much for Beechen's original miniseries and never bothered picking up the main series.

[Sharkey]

I pretty much never read superhero comics, but Glory caught my eye. It's only a twelve issue series, and the last one just came out so, yeah.



That gets my attention. And not in an Amazon fetish way. I pretty much never see the cover of a superhero comic and think "Whoa! That's new." And hey, it turned out to be a pretty great series, with memorable characters, a good yarn moving it along, lots of surprisingly quiet and touching character moments, and a huge angry lady cutting monsters into tiny bits and literally biting someone's face off once in a while. So... pretty much everything I like.

Which stands in perfectly, hilariously stark contrast against the original character it's reimagining here.



Yeah. Liefeld. No, really. Fucking seriously here. You can't make this shit up. I'm holding this



next to this



... and my brain just keeps shorting out. I mean...



Though it a way it seems fitting that the best thing Liefeld has ever done in his career has been giving his go-ahead to redo one of his characters as essentially its perfect anti-particle.



Anyway, it's a good read. The absolute meanest thing I can say is that there are a few places where the dialogue is a little awkward, and one point where they do that "horde/hoard" mixup thing which happens to make me fucking nuts (it comes up pretty much constantly in game writing, and fucking nobody seems capable of getting it right.)

Hell, I could probably drop this into that old "let's yell at each other about misogyny" topic, but... yeah, let's not. It only ends up making me wish I could educate people I otherwise like by punching them a lot.

[Classic]

Most of us will probably try to punch you back though.

[Mongrel]

That's a scholarly debate!

[Thad]

I haven't been reading Glory, but you need to check out Prophet, the other recently-relaunched-and-completely-subverted Liefeld book.  It's this wonderful surreal Heavy Metal-style SF epic.  I don't know what the fuck's going on most of the time but I really am enjoying the shit out of it.

[patito]

Yeah, don't Liefeld characters have a history of getting better once Liefeld is miles away from them.

[Zach]

That's a scholarly debate!

Tales Designed to Thrizzle, Volume 1

[Zaratustra]

Yeah, don't Liefeld characters have a history of getting better once Liefeld is miles away from them.

Mostly because they're such generic pastiches that later writers can take them in any direction DC refused to let them take Superman into.

[Sharkey]

That's a scholarly debate!

Tales Designed to Thrizzle, Volume 1

Can I just say that...

right now... for this brief instant...

I love you. So much.


... ow fuck I tripped on a haiku. Who has been leaving these things lying around? Someone's going to break their damn neck. Hell, if it included a proper seasonal motif it would have pierced my heart. If there were cherry blossoms in this thing it would have killed us all.

I see you in the back. Brentai or whoever. Don't you dare translate that shit into Japanese, you young bastard. You'll be lucky if you keep any of your fingers.

Oh dear, I lost track of whether I was supposed to be a headmaster or a drill sergeant. Whatever. Works either way. Line up, maggots!

[Sharkey]

Yeah, don't Liefeld characters have a history of getting better once Liefeld is miles away from them.

Mostly because they're such generic pastiches that later writers can take them in any direction DC refused to let them take Superman into.

Give the man a ci-gar! The old backstory on Glory was essentially a 90s shitbox Wonder Woman. They actually kept that, stuck with the numbering, and then threw on some Incredible Hulk and an effective story I actually don't want to spoil for once, though it has its share of tropes and cliches. And as almost a happy accident, a bunch of very 90s characters get either maimed or outright mocked (I especially liked the inclusion of "Fourplay," "New Fourplay," and "Even Newer Fourplay.")

But mostly I'm just thrilled that this kind of thing ever sprang from something that in any way ever came into contact with Rob Liefeld. Every head exploding gif goes here. Maybe God does have some kind of plan for us all. If it means turning Liefeld's children into something that even begins to approach what Alan Moore did with Charlton's stable. Bravo, you incomprehensible murderous sky-man. Slow clap.

Hell, speaking of, Alan Moore did an issue of this thing back in its... don't say it.

Well, something else to hunt down.

... right after I read Prophet on Thad's recommendation. Liefeld-loving God damn you, Thad.

[Royal☭]

Well, Liefield's most famous character that became a great after he left is CableDeadpool, so there is a rich history of people taking Liefield's turds then meticulously polishing them. Glory also ties into Supreme, which was another Liefield creation that then became a launching pad for a series by Alan Moore for a few years. Maybe Liefield should just sit back, creates characters and hand them off to competent writers and artists and let the royalties roll in.

And yeah, I'll back up the 'Prophet is sooo good' recommendation. It's written by Brandon Graham, who is a great artist in his own right, but also just writes off-the-wall sci-fi stuff like Multiple Warheads and King City. Great stuff, all of it.

[Royal☭]

Also, in other comic news, Brian K. Vaughn and Fiona Staple's Saga #12 has been banned from the Apple App Store because of thumbnail-sized images of homosexual sex. Just another example of Apple's grip over different forms of publishing. And this in particular comes as a black eye to Comixology, which is getting over it's embarrassment at the Marvel mess-up awhile back. It's hard to make the case for buying digital when some other company can dictate what you can sell and what people can have on their devices.

[Thad]

To clarify, it's the latest issue of Saga, issue #12; I'm sure you didn't mean to imply it was the entire series but your comment could be read that way.

(Funnily enough I was just having a conversation over on Bissette's comments section where he brought up the disproportionate influence Apple has on the market.)

It bears noting that last month's issue started with...well, let's go to Thad from a week and a half ago for a recap.

When I first opened Saga #11, I was sitting in the lobby of Big-O Tires waiting for an oil change.

And I was like Wow, that sure is a giant splash page of two people fucking right on the first page.

So I quickly flipped to the next page. And on page two, it was naked people talking about how they'd just finished fucking.

So yeah it wasn't a very good comic to be reading in public so I put it back in my bag and read Bravest Warriors instead.

Now, I'll grant those shots in #12 are more graphic than last issue's sex scene.  But they're also a lot smaller and not on the first page.  (EDIT: One of them IS actually on the first page.  My bad.)

And you know, a previous issue had an orgy scene with on-panel (heterosexual) penetration.

And that's without getting into the giant with the huge sagging scrotum.  I'll grant that's not the same as a dude getting bukkake'd, but again, it was also significantly larger than a postage stamp and went on for more than two panels.

Point being, this is a stupid fucking place to draw the line and Apple is stupid for drawing it.

You know, the first time I ever used the iTunes Music Store, the fucking thing censored the title of Bitches Brew?  Apple is a company that has trouble with the idea that Serious Art can target adult audiences.

Anyway.  Probably did 'em a favor.  I love the hell out of Saga and if this makes more people go out and see what the fuss is about, then that's great.