The Avengers have made their way online in full HD glory! First thoughts: Whedon’s snappy dialogue is in full effect, and is perfectly suited to Downey’s quick delivery. Still not enough Hulk for us though. What do you think?
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Here’s what we saw on day two of APE 2011 in beautiful San Francisco:
They started lining up early for the second day of APE!
Above: One of the areas for panels. Below: Some of the exhibition space.
The action in the galleries.
And the con floor.
You can find comics about anything at APE.
And I do mean anything.
A not-so-encouraging message from the show floor.
This was a bit more cheerful.
A sentiment we certainly can all agree with!
I know what you’re thinking: “That’s all great, but how was the babeage at APE?” Well, let’s look at that:
Mrs. Lower Mainland herself, illustrator Tara Nakano!
Browncoat girls are always winsome.
Ladylike... and mysterious!
Sweetly gothloli!
A harlequin shows off her style.
An exciting con like this will tucker you out! A couple of attendees take a rest between rounds on the floor.
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Here’s what we saw on our first day of the Alternative Press Expo 2011, at the San Francisco Concourse:
The grand entrance to the San Francisco Concourse
The main hall at APE
More of the main hall.
The NPC Comics table at APE 2011
A long view of the NPC Comics table, and the floor at APE
APE is such a friendly place that you can even add your own art to it!
Sage advice found at one of the tables.
Hmm... perhaps you should consider joining a different denomination
Mom? What have you been doing?!
Not quite Churchillian, but I still appreciate the thought.
Fail Win!
When I said I wanted to find some Chicks at APE, that's not exactly what I meant
Va va voom! Now that's more like it!
And another one - a cute girl in a cute dress patrolling the con floor
Very noticeable - there were a lot of iPads being used as digital artwork displays on the con floor. I spotted at least a couple dozen of them in use this year, whereas last year, I counted exactly one.
Also noticeable - a table offering free cupcakes! That's definitely the right way to attract an audience!
One of the more colorful tables at APE this year!
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After a summer hiatus of a few weeks, we’re happy to let you all know that we’ve just taped our latest episode, which should be posted to iTunes in the next couple of days. Tune in and you’ll hear our take on the new Star Wars Blu-rays, Peter Dinklage’s Emmy win, and Tommy Wiseau’s new internet show; our reviews of Burke & Hare, the new Thundercats, the end of Tiger & Bunny’s first season, and the beginning of Clone Wars’s fourth season; our rewind to Hong Kong Phooey; and even our new ending theme music!
Watch this space (and our iTunes feed)!
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Kyle here;
I have an admission to make. I don’t read comics. I haven’t for years.
It wasn’t always that way. I used to read them – a lot. In the 80s, the comics I read were The Nam, GI Joe, and Groo – all of them mainstream Marvel comics, and none of them superhero stories. Later I graduated to Vietnam Journal and Spawn, before finally discovering manga and leaving American comics more or less entirely. I’m one of those readers that the mainstream comics industry lost through its failure to expand the kinds of stories they tell. The circulation figures show that there’s a lot of people like me out there.
So what happened? Total artistic and creative stagnation at the Big Two. The base of the problem is that for many reasons, the Big Two have come to believe that they can skate by by continuing to to write the same basic stories about the same set of a couple dozen or so half-century-old characters forever.
Part of this is the fault of the companies for refusing to take chances and because of their fear of dealing with with creator-owned characters – but part is the fault of the fans. Well, not all of the fans – but a certain segment of the fans that is becoming an increasingly large percentage of a shrinking market. This is a segment that wants comics to be, better art aside, basically exactly the same as they were when these (now early middle-aged) fans were kids, and to never, ever change. Look, for example, at the negative reaction many fans had to Peter Parker and Mary Jane finally getting married after – what – 40 years? Plenty of people bitched and groaned that “Peter Parker should always be the lovable loser!”. In other words, that the character should never grow, change, mature, or even find himself in different circumstances. That’s the kind of attitude you’ll find in a lot of the hardcore base of comics fans.
The thing is, this becomes a vicious cycle. The more that comics sales shrink, the more that the comics companies listen to their remaining fans, and the more the comics they produce are written to appeal to – and often only to – those hardcore fans. Thus comics goes from an industry (and I’m talking about the comics themselves, not the related movies) with broad appeal to a large audience to increasingly being a niche market that appeals to a small but loud group of hardcore fans.
At very least, this feeds into the mentality of the current crop of editors at the Big Two, who simply can’t get over their own personal Silver Age fetish. You’d think that they might have taken a hint from the rise of manga (at least before that market got destroyed by piracy). If you want to attract new readers, you need to appeal to more people than simply your base of hardcore fans. You need to get new characters in new situations, and to expand the kinds of stories you do. I mean, when was the last time there was even a noteworthy war comic from the Big Two, or a science fiction story that wasn’t based on an already-existing property (Star Wars, Star Trek, Firefly, etc.)? The Nam, maybe?
In the end, deciding never to take any risks is in itself taking a risk. Yes, the Big Two can coast for a long time on their hardcore fans and on being intellectual property outlets for movies and animated TV shows. But they can never really grow or be what they were like that.
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Dave here with some updates,
Kyle and I have been keeping busy, watching movies, tv shows, and other such things, getting ready to bring you all more Geek Tragedy. Right now, though, we’re in a delay as we’re getting things set up for a new recording area. While we’re getting things squared away here, you can get a little dose of our geekery on the Knightwsie videocast at http://vimeo.com/27080036.
The reason why we’re setting up new digs in the wake of opening up the brand spanking new NPC Broadcast Studios has to deal with the congratulations that are in order. As those of you following us on Twitter know, Editor In Chief Jaimel Hemphil and his wife Emily welcomed their daughter into the world yesterday. Ilori Sarang Hemphil was delivered happy and healty, much to the relief of her mother, who was quite convinced by that the baby wasn’t going to emerge until it was ready for college. So, in order to let Jaimel and Emily be new parents, Kyle and I are letting them have the run of the new NPC Base.
So, without further delay, here’s the first picture of the latest addition to the NPC family.
She has her father's eyes...
Welcome to the world, kid. And good luck; you’re going to need it 
PS: We’ve secretly replaced Ilori with Voldemort, let’s see if the parents notice before she heads off to Hogwarts.
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Stream Now!
Geek Tragedy is back in action! after an extended break Kyle and Dave are back with a full show! Review of the new Looney Toons show, an all new Pick of the Week, some Stuff You Should Know About, and even a Saturday Morning Rewind with Galaxy Rangers! It’s Geek Tragedy, now with 11 vitamins and minerals!
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Kyle and Dave face off in the ultimate battle! Who’s better: Martin or Tolkien? A Song of Ice and Fire or Lord of the Rings? It’s a batter two centuries in the making! Also, Spider-man is sued, Heyman reveals a master plan, and Kyle loves Thankskilling! Yeah, we don’t get the last one, either….
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Stream Now!
Another week chock full of news, ans the Geeks review all that’s fit to print in the Worlds of Comic, Games, Movies, and of course… the cellar, where people who cursed us with Jar Jar beg for more roles… At night, we can still hear the screaming…
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Hey folks,
So, three things here: an explanation, a mea culpa, and a DaveRant (can we get that trademarked?).
So, like Kyle said, we’re backlogged because we’re putting the finishing touches on the new NPC Comics secret lair. And frankly, the bureaucracy of getting things up and running is really honking us all off. I mean, we’ve got the rottweilers, we’ve got the particle beam guns, and we’re still waiting for FDA approval to finish our ‘enhanced security corps’? Damn government paperwork. I thought this was America, not Stalinist Russia.
Second, yes, I did cave in and went to see Green Lantern with everyone else. So, I did prove the old adage about nerd rage being impotent. In my defense though, I went to go see it out of a sense of vindication and schadenfreude after reading the initial reviews. And really, I don’t have anything more to add other than what Kyle’s written and what reviewers have already said. Other than that Green Lantern dropped 21% between Friday and Saturday opening weekend, forcing Warner Brothers to grin and bear it while saying they were happy that it’s the 4th highest weekend opening for a DC film. But when one of the top 3 happens to be ‘Batman Forever’…
And now we come to the part you’re all here for, the DaveRant (seriously, why aren’t we trademarking this?). We were going to save this for the show recording this weekend, but this just needs to be said.
So, on Wednesday, July 22, Superman #712 hit the stands. Or, should we say, Superman #712b hit the stands. As Comics Alliance reports, DC pulled a last minute switch, so #712 is now a ‘lost classic’ about Krypto looking for Superboy in the aftermath of ‘Final Crisis’. Instead of the submitted, approved, written, drawn, inked, colored and fully completed story about Superman teaming with a Muslim superhero to fight intolerance.
Just…wow.
Chris Sims did a masterful job at deconstructing the deal in his article. And I agree with his assessment that this switch was done in response to the criticism DC faced from the extreme Right Wing (and certain comics fans, such as yours truly, who are far less pants-crapping insane than the extreme Right Wing), when Superman renounced his American citizenship. More than that, though, I think this is a sign of DC starting to enter panic mode.
This has been a rough year for DC. They’ve faced criticism for Batman and Superman from conservative outlets. The first month of Flashpoint has seen them loose market share. Apathy from comics fans abounds regarding the reboot in August. And their big ‘crown jewel’ this year, the Green Lantern movie, had to endure a lot of criticism from comics fans based on the trailers and the convention clip showings.
Like Chris Sims wrote, everything about Chris Roberson’s 712 was good up until the crap-storm over Action Comics 900 hit. Everything that was acceptable and worked within the ‘Grounded’ storyline from November through April was suddenly unacceptable in May. The switch was so sudden, DC didn’t even correct the synopsis of the issue on their own website by the day 712 was released. To me, this doesn’t seem like a planned decision; this was a gut ‘oh crap!’ reaction in an attempt to do damage control. Whether the decision came from WB or from the editorial council at DC remains to be seen.
Ultimately, I think this is going to further damage DC’s reputation among comics fans. A sudden switch like this to appease a lunatic right-wing fringe that doesn’t buy comics in the first place only further alienates a core audience that’s pretty much tired of DC’s antics. This has all the earmarks of a decision made by businessmen rather than creators. Loss of market share and fan apathy? Must be because those loud mouths that don’t buy our comics anyways are right; kill the feel-good Muslim story.
Beyond the fan alienation, this is going to hurt DC’s relationship with comics professionals as well. There will probably be some undeserved fan backlash at Kurt Busiek, since he wrote the Krypto story that is now 712. I say undeserved because a) Kurt is a generous, cool person, based on the times I’ve talked with him, and b) he probably wrote that story for a filler either during or right after ‘Final Crisis’ and DC sat on it; it’s not like Geoff Johns called up Kurt right after the decision was made to can 712 and asked him to fully script a comic within a week, so that there’s another week for art before going to press.
Also, DC has royally pissed off George Perez, a certified comics legend. Perez is scheduled to write Superman post-reboot and had drawn a variant cover to the original 712. The variant cover apparently was done in honor of a friend of George’s, and DC didn’t tell him that the issue (and thus the variant cover) was going to be scrapped. He found out once 712 hit the shelves. This is not making for a harmonious environment at DC when you treat the co-creator of Teen Titans and the writer you’re placing in charge of your corporate flagship like he’s some expendable fanboy artist. Make no mistake, George is a true professional, and he’ll devote 100% to Superman, personal feelings aside; but I wouldn’t be surprised if he makes his run as writer for Superman shorter than DC wants.
Then there’s this: the comics world is still dealing with the sudden death of Dwayne McDuffie earlier this year. This is a man who did more to bring true equality and diversity to comics than anyone else. At the WonderCon tribute panel a month or so after his death, people were not just morning the loss of Dwayne, but the loss of what he represents. Bruce Timm was asked what would happen to all the Milestone characters Dwayne had created and now being integrated into the DC Universe; he responded ‘I think the better question is what’s going to happen to diversity in the comics industry, since there are so few non-white professionals in the mainstream companies’. And now DC, a company Dwayne helped to diversify, helped remove the stigma of Sinbad’s Black Lighting joke bit from Saturday Night Live, helped change Vibe from a bad Rico Suave clone with powers into a three dimensional hero, and gave DC such an incredible and relatable hero in Static; now DC wants to bury a story about a Muslim hero facing prejudice in the name of quieting vocal criticism from people that don’t buy their product anyways.
The irony is so thick, not even Kryptonian heat vision can cut through it.
Ultimately, DC is sending a message with their handling of 712. And that message is ‘The CCA and the Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency have not died’. We all thought that once Marvel and DC dropped the CCA and went to self-distribution, such censorship in the name of grandstanding ‘think of the children’ politics was gone forever. Of course, in comics, no villain ever dies, especially when there’s no body left behind. Like some master villain revealed to be alive in a splash page at the end of an issue, comics censorship is alive and well in the 21st Century.
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