My comic book life

Like usual, I got behind in my reading, so this weekend I ended up reading the recent milestone issues for both Superman and Wonder Woman.  Like the Batman milestone before them, they consisted of a collection of short stories, written and drawn by various people, many of whom have a connection to the series.  At best, all three of these issues were mediocre, featuring unimportant stories as well as serving to introduce new teams (in the case of Superman and Wonder Woman) and whole new series (in the case of Batman/Batman Beyond).  It makes me long for the Silver Age, when milestones, anniversaries and annuals featured special stories, ones that needed the extra pages that were always given to these types of occasions.

Take Action Comics #544.  A true anniversary issue, it celebrated Action Comics' 45th year by introducing changes to both Lex Luthor and Brainiac in the form of a power suit for Lex and a whole new body for Brainiac.  Admittedly, this issue did have multiple stories (two, as opposed to the recent milestone books having three), but they weren't serving as prologues for new series, nor were they introducing new creative teams: three of the four creators were the regular writers and artist of either Action Comics or Superman.  What was special about these stories was the changes they introduced.  Lex had been relatively unchanged since the '40s, and Brainiac was unchanged since near his introduction in the early '60s.

How about Brave and the Bold #200? This milestone issue teamed up Batman with, well, Batman, umm, sort of.  The first part of the story, with art meant to invoke a Golden Age style, chronicled a showdown between the Golden Age Batman (of Earth-2) and one of his villains.  When that villain is defeated, he takes over the body of his Earth-1 counterpart in our present, facing off against the modern-day Batman.  By this time, the Golden Age Batman was long-dead, so stories starring him were rare, and Brave and the Bold was almost the only place outside of Justice League of America where we could get stories of Earth-2.  Admittedly, this was the final issue of the series, and it had a "pull-out preview" (a bit of a joke, since the book was perfect-bound, meaning that pulling out the preview was nearly impossible) for the series it was effectively becoming, Batman and the Outsiders, but the star of the issue is truly the "team-up" story.

The early and mid-'80s also saw the return of the annual at DC Comics.  And those early annuals were special.  Take All-Star Squadron Annual #1.  In it, Roy Thomas linked together the origins of three golden-age heroes with boxing in their pasts, retelling their origins along the way.  Such a large story demanded the space given in an annual in order to tell its story.  And Legion of Super-Heroes Annual #2 featured a marriage between two long-time characters.  Justice League of America Annual #2, for better or for worse, featured a new direction for the team, bringing them back down to Earth and moving the team to Detroit. 

One thing to notice about all of these annuals is that they featured the creative team of the regular book.  There was also little "padding" in these books.  There were few, if any, pinups or backup stories or diagrams of headquarters.  They just had a great, important story that seemed like a special issue of the regular series.

I miss these events being treated as they used to.  I believe the recent special issues could have been so much better if they had focussed a bit more on one special story, rather than the three each that we were given.  It would also have been nice if the books celebrated the milestone rather than the fact that the books can't keep a steady team of creators.  Hopefully, DC and Marvel will one again treat these issues as the grand occasions that they should be, but until then, seek out earlier special issues.

Wow. Another great episode written by Stephan Moffett, though I had a few quibbles with it.

Building on so many plot threads of the season, the Pandorica was first mentioned in the Weeping Angels two-parter by River Song.  Supposedly it contains the worst creature in the universe, a creature that frightens even the worst races of the galaxy, such as the Daleks, the Cybermen, and the Sontarans. As a side note, I don't know how the Sontarans are considered among the worst.  It's not like they can hit anything with their weapons.  Of course, the same can be said of the Daleks and the Cybermen, so maybe worst means worst shots.

At any rate, when River mentioned the Pandorica, the Doctor blew it off as a myth, but this episode shows that it is no children's story.  The episode ends on quite the cliffhanger, with the revelation of what's in the Pandorica, and River trapped away from both the Doctor and Amy, and with Amy's fate revealed, we are going screaming into the series finale.

Now, my quibble.  I knew something had been bothering me when I watched the episode, but it took a comment by someone else who'd seen the episode to make me realize what it was.  River, in searching Amy's house, found a picture of Amy standing with Rory who was dressed up for Halloween or a fancy dress party or something like that.  Given what's happened to Rory, how could that picture be there?  In addition, how could she remember Rory's last name later in the episode?  I trust Moffatt, so I'm sure there's a reason.  Moffatt seems to be inclined to make the Doctor more fallable, so I suspect it will turn out that the Doctor is wrong as to what happened to Rory and that will explain my problem with the episode.

Problem aside, this was a great episode and does nothing so much as make me anxious for the finale.

The fifth series of the return of the Doctor is nearing its end.  We have two episodes to go, and more than a couple plot-lines to wrap up.  This series introduced a new actor to the role, Matt Smith, and to be perfectly honest, I was worried how he'd do.  I'd never seen him in anything, and the roles he had done seemed like nothing that might prove him to be the kind of actor I'd prefer to play the Doctor.

I should have known that the show was going in the right direction when they chose Stephan Moffatt, the man who has written all of my favorite episodes of the newer series, to guide the show when Russell Davies stepped down.  His best, in my opinion, was Blink, a story that used time-travel very well, and showed that Moffatt could take something ubiquitous like stone garden angels and make them creepy and down-right frightening.

At any rate, since I like Moffatt so much, I should have trusted his choice of Smith.  And to a point I did, but Smith has far exceeded my expectations.  The first episode, Eleventh Hour, showed that he could be funny and warm, but still have a touch of menace.  The episode showed the kind of Doctor that Smith was going to be: Protective of children, curious about everything, and not one to take weapons or threats lightly.  Moffatt, who wrote the episode, also has a sequence that effectively passes on the role to Smith, with a montage of previous Doctors through which Smith walks at the appropriate time.  It was nice for them to acknowledge the previous Doctors, especially the eighth who seems to be ignored or forgotten most of the time.

The next episode, The Beast Below, was a bit of "more of the same."  They again show that the Doctor can't stand children being threatened, as the Doctor and his new companion Amy arrive in a future where the whole of humanity has taken their cities and lifted them off the Earth in search of a new planet to call home.  Children have started to go missing from the flying Britain, and a mass of clockwork creatures is suspected.  It turned out to be nothing of the kind, and Amy saves the day, which to me made the Doctor seem a bit, well, weak for not figuring it out himself.

The return of the Daleks is next up, with the Doctor trying to help out Winston Churchill with a Dalek problem he didn't even know he had.  The episode results in the evolution of the Daleks into what we are lead to believe will be much more viscious enemies for the Doctor.

Stephen Moffatt brings back his Stone Angels in a two-parter, The Time of Angels and Flesh and Stone.  These episodes also saw the return of another of Moffatt's creations, Professor River Song, who is a future companion of the Doctor.  Like Blink, this episode used time-travel really well, with River leaving a message in a place that she knows the Doctor will visit in the future, telling him when to return to get her out of a sticky situation.  From there, the Doctor faces a ship full of Stone Angels and a crack in time that causes people caught in it to be completely removed from time.  The crack is a running plot point this season, appearing in nearly all episodes.

Nowadays, all shows must have a vampire episode, and apparently Doctor Who is no exception.  Vampires of Venice tells the story of a shapechanging race who need human blood to survive.  I had more than a few problems with this episode, not the least of which was the ending where one of the shape changers removes clothing that we have been shown is part of her metamorphing.

In Amy Choice, the Doctor and Amy, along with Amy's fiance Rory, are trapped in a dream by the Dream Lord.  Or is it a dream?  From one point of view, Amy and Rory have been married for five years and are expecting their first child.  From another, the three of them are trapped on the TARDIS heading for a cold star.  If they die in the dream, they return to reality.  But which is the dream?  I found this one to be entertaining, but I knew what the final solution was fairly early in the episode.

Another two-parter, The Hungry Earth and Cold Blood, brought back an enemy of the third Doctor, the Silurians.  Once again, the Silurians are angry at the surface humans for "invading" their world by drilling.  The basic plot is practically a direct retelling of third Doctor episodes, and for me there were no surprises, as all of the characters were fairly one-dimensional.  Only the heart-breaking ending mattered much, but I'm pretty sure it's only a plot point that will be reversed or at least resolved in the series finale.

In order to cheer up Amy, the Doctor takes her to an exhibit of Vincent Van Gogh's paintings in Vincent and the Doctor.  The Doctor notices a monster in one of the paintings, and he and Amy go to help Van Gogh defeat the creature.  My problem with this episode was that they spent far too much time having Van Gogh gaze mournfully at Amy and almost no time on the creature.  The actor who played Van Gogh did look just like the painter's self-portrait, though, so that was at least interesting.

The episode that aired last weekend, The Lodger, has the Doctor stranded on Earth while Amy in the TARDIS is unable to land due to something happening in the upstairs flat of the room the Doctor takes.  We discover that (no surprise) the Doctor is good at everything, from football (soccer) to sales calls.  An amusing episode, but one that suffered from not enough Amy.  Originally I thought that it was that there wasn't enough interaction between Amy and the Doctor, but I realized that in most episodes Amy and the Doctor split up anyway, so that the writer can use them both as POV characters.

If this sounds like I'm down on the series, I'm not.  I love Matt Smith as the Doctor, and I adore Karen Gillen as Amy (C'mon, cute and a redhead? I'm so there.).  I suspect that I know the cause of the crack that's become the super-story of the series, and I think I might also know how it's going to be resolved.  Having said that, Moffatt always surprises me, so no matter how I think it might end, I'm probably wrong and that's what will make the journey fun.

The last time I was in the bookstore, I discovered that one of my favorite authors, Robert Sawyer, had a new novel out.  Titled (in the US, anyway) WWW: Wake, Sawyer begins a new trilogy apparently about the emergence of an artificial intelligence on the world wide web.  Interwoven into that plot is also the story of the blind girl who is given sight and in the process discovers the new being and helps to teach it more about our world.

It was a good novel, though I wouldn't consider it among his best work.  It seemed like there were too many plots that had nothing to do with the main story.  In addition to the main threads about the blind girl, Caitlin, and about the emerging intelligence, there are sub-plots about a disease outbreak in China, China's disconnecting itself electronically from the rest of the internet temporarily, the plight of a blogger in China and his running from the law, and a painting monkey.

The disease outbreak is what lead to China's cutting itself off from the rest of the world in order that the citizenry not hear anything negative when the rest of the world discovers that China carpet-bombed the infected area, intentionally killing villagers.  China's cutting itself off is later referenced by the characters as the reason the intelligence finally gained enough "steam" to become self-aware.

China's cutting itself off is also what lead the blogger to try to circumvent the firewalls, and what lead to the blogger getting himself chased by Chinese law-enforcement, but so far that story hasn't lead anywhere, nor has the plot thread of a monkey hybrid who demonstrates the ability to paint objects from memory, implying that it has the ability to create abstractions of reality.  I suspect that these threads will get picked up in the next volumes, but so far they seem fairly pointless.

My biggest problem with the book has to do with Caitlin's father.  Throughout the book, a big deal is made over how he isn't particularly demonstrative, that he never gives her any reaction, never hugs her, never gives any of the reactions that she expects and even desires.  The reason for that is revealed about two-thirds of the way through the book, and I had a hard time accepting either it, or the reactions of the other people around him.

Other than that, as usual, Sawyer presents many different, interesting ideas and fuses them into an intriguing narrative.  His dialog never seems forced or artificial, and his characters are all fully formed and realistic (well, other than her father).  Bottom line: even a moderately good Sawyer book is better than nearly any other book you could be reading, and I'm looking forward to the next one.

I'm back from the convention, and overall I had a good time.  My wife and I went to Seattle, where we had a room reserved for us through my mom's travel club.  When we finally got there, we got checked in and the condo place asked us if they could pay us to sit through their sales pitch to join the travel club.  That was a bit of a mistake, as the sales guy, once he knew we weren't buying, began insulting us.  We did get a $75 credit card out of it, but I'm not sure it covers the abuse I took.

Once the sales pitch was out of the way, we headed over to the convention center to exchange our tickets and get our passes/badges.  Coming up the escalators, a helpful lady indicated which way to go for ticketing.  Unfortunately, it was across the convention center from where people we supposed to do the exchange, so we had to head back the way we came.  We got our passes and then made our way to the convention hall.

I had prepared by printing the map from the convention's website, and marking down the locations of the people I wanted to meet.  Fir on my list were the Comic Geek Speak guys.  I have listened to them since their first episode, and they were one of the main reasons I wanted to go to the con.  Four of them were attending, though only Bryan Deemer and his wife were at the booth at first.  Eventually another showed up, Adam Murdough.

I discovered that right next to the CGS guys was the booth for Jill Thompson, one of my favorite artists on the Sandman series.  She got there a bit late and was having trouble getting her backdrop set up, so I offered to help and managed to get the thing to open up. More on her later.

Next we moved on to Eric Trautmann and Greg Rucka, whose booths were right behind the CGS booth.  I've seen both of these gentlemen many times, as Eric's wife owns and runs a local comic shop, Olympic Cards and Comics, and Mr. Rucka visits that shop fairly often to do signings and such.  While waiting in line for Rucka, I chatted a bit with Eric, and took a picture for a fellow attendee of her and Rucka.  I had Rucka sign a couple of his books, and he made fun of me for bringing real books to a comic convention, to which I pointed out that he'd already signed all of my comics.

From there, we visited Mike Norton, artist on the All-New Atom and Green Arrow/Black Canary, and co-star of the Crankcast podcast.  I know from listening to his show that he doesn't take compliments well, but I couldn't help telling him how much I like his artwork and how much I enjoy listening to the show.  I picked up a real copy of his self-published 24-hour comic, The Curse.  If you haven't read it, take a look, but be warned that the language isn't for younger kids.

After that, we visited the creator of a web comic that I just adore, Danielle Corsetto, creator of Girls With Slingshots.  I had wanted to get her four trade paperbacks, but once I knew that she was coming to the con, I held off in the hopes that I would get to meet her and have her sign and sketch them for me.  It's been hard for me to read the trades, as I will sit down to read a page or two and discover that I've read ten or twenty when I had other things to do.

Next we headed over to the table of Steve Lieber, artist on Whiteout.  He kindly drew a sketch in the first volume and signed both of them for me.  I had already gotten the writer, Greg Rucka, to sign them one time he visited Olympic Cards and Comics.  It was interesting to watch him first sketch the rough lines, and then use inks to finish the line art and to fill in the shading.

It was around this time that I realized that I hadn't prepared as well as I should have, as I didn't check the list of guests as well as I should have and had forgotten about half the books I should have brought.  For example, I forgot the Strangers in Paradise and Echo trades for Terry Moore to sign, as well as the Starman Omnibi for James Robinson.  Next year, I will try to do better.

The last books I needed to have signed were the Essex County trilogy by Jeff Lemire.  When we got there, he had stepped away, so we decided to wait. While we were waiting, I saw Mark Waid walking by, got his attention, and made a total fool of myself before he excused himself. Oh well, another lesson learned: I'm not good at small talk with people I admire that greatly.

Jeff Lemire returned, and he quickly signed my books before stepping away again.  I barely had time even to express my love of his books.  I suspect he hadn't intended to return and only did so to sign our books.  Hopefully I'll catch him again next year if I love his new book, Sweet Tooth, as much as I suspect I will.

We returned to the CGS booth, where I finally got to meet the other two guys who came from Pennsylvania, Brian and Peter.  It was nice chatting with them, as Peter's reading habits as a kid tend to mirror my own, and Brian is a mostly-DC reader like myself.

Now that Jill Thompson was set up, we watched her draw a spectacular Sandman, with some incredible use of negative space.  We also purchased a copy of her Death book and after some prompting, we got her to sign it.  At the time I was bothered that it took some prompting to get her to sign it, but I suspect she was focussed on doing her commissions.

By this time, I had gotten all my books signed and seen pretty much every one I wanted to see, so my wife headed back to the hotel and I started to do my shopping.  Over the course of the two days, I ended up buying about 200 books, which is still somewhat disappointing to me.  I usually end up getting closer to 500, but I know that it's because I already own a majority of the books I want that would end up in a cheaper box.  It didn't help that my list was a bit broken, as I'm converting to a new inventory program.

At any rate, I ended up buying quite a number of 80s Superman and Action Comics issues, as well as the issues I needed to complete or nearly complete a couple of series from the 80s and 90s, including Catwoman, Deathstroke, Unlimited Access, and Star Trek.  I also picked up a bunch of the issues I was missing from Batman and Detective Comics from the 90s, and random issues of Showcase, Tarzan, Korak, and others.  I also discovered a Seattle comic shop that appears to run occasional sales like the shop I visit in Portland, so the con was probably worth it for that, if for nothing else.

It was great getting to meet all those great creators, and my shopping was good, if not as comprehensive as I'd hoped.  My guess is that I will be going again next year, and hopefully I will be a bit better prepared.