The Best _____ This Week for 8/3/11: A good week to be bad

Since it doesn't really come up in the superlatives, I'll talk about it up top here: I am real excited for Miles Morales to be the new (Ultimate) Spider-Man. I will be even more excited once I see enough of him to establish him as more than a palette-swapped Peter Parker. I picked up Ultimate Fallout #4 in spite of myself, just because I got swept up in the wave of (positive) hype and wanted to get a taste of the character. And a taste was about all it was, seven pages of him fighting Ultimate Kangaroo. Calling him a copy of Parker is a bit of hyperbole, especially given so small an amount of time to differentiate himself, however, he is not so different from what came before that, if you weren't aware of what led up to this, you might not even notice a difference. The differences are present, however; he definitely seems meeker and less sure of himself than Peter ever did in the suit.
It seems the intended impact of the reveal at the end, which may have worked if it wasn't all over the newsoblogosphere, was removing the mask to reveal a non-white kid, but I kind of hope this was not the case. Especially with as many eyes turned to diversity in comics as there are right now, that we have a non-white character to be carrying his own book, especially as high a profile character as Spider-Man, regardless of universe, is inarguably a good thing, unless you are a Horrible Person. However, to make the reveal "Oh we have a (half-)black Spider-Man, BET YOU DIDN'T SEE THAT COMING" (although I think everyone did) smacks of sensationalism and glamour, and putting that diversity up on a pedestal strikes me as more of a public relations move. Maybe that's unavoidable right now, but I think artist Sara Pichelli said it best, "Maybe sooner or later a black or gay — or both — hero will be considered something absolutely normal." In the meantime, it's a talking point.
What I did actually like, however, was the age. He definitely looks young; I believe it was announced that Miles is thirteen although I couldn't really source that beyond Miles' own unofficial Twitter account. That would probably place Miles in middle school, substantially younger than Peter ever was in any iteration of the character, I think. If accurate, how Bendis uses this is one of the aspects of the story I'm most interested in; it'll certainly be a fresh take on the character and how he manages to pull off the superhero lifestyle.

And while on the subject of diversity in superheroics, I really have to question what I read versus what I saw in Flashpoint #4. In this issue, Element Woman, aka Emily Sung, joined the team of freedom fighters. As far as I'm aware, Sung is almost exclusively a name of Korean or Chinese origins. To look at her in the issue, she does not appear particularly asian:

Flashpoint #4, written by Geoff Johns, art by Andy Kubert, inks by Jesse Delperdang, colors by Alex Sinclair, letters by Nick J. Napolitano

Granted, I'm just going on the name, and for all I know she's not meant to be, or she is meant to be and I'm just interpret ting the art wrong (speaking of Kubert specifically here but she still looks similarly Caucasian to me in Jim Lee's JLA promo art). That weirdness aside, I do like this character so far and hope she retains her manic personality through the relaunch. And hell yes, I want a juice box.

Now, onto the Best Whatever I Read This Week:

The Best _____ This Week for 7/27/11: Conventional

Didn't grab a whole lot of comics this week, at least not new ones, so unlike last time I don't have a whole lot to talk about. As such, in lieu of the usual first round of superlatives I'm just going to do a special first round of announcements that came out of SDCC this past weekend. Since I wasn't in attendance, this is all just the news that filtered down to me, and then managed to catch my eye, which is fairly impressive as overall the

Best News From Comic-Con International (In Not-really-particularly-ordered List Form)


4. The Amazing Spider-Man panel
Now if you read my post about the Amazing Spider-Man trailer, you know I wasn't exactly won over. The panel went a long more to alleviate my worries, hearing Spidey described as "quippy" and the Lizard looking Ditko-esque (or like Killer Croc, depending on who you talked to). But I think the highlight, or at least the thing that got the most buzz, was Andrew Garfield (Peter Parker)'s entrance to the panel:

And if that wasn't enough, the Lizard's human half, Rhys Ifans was arrested after the panel for his apparent drunken and beligerent behavior as he tried to enter the hall. Though I suppose if he really wanted to channel his inner Lizard, he really should just eat some kids.


3. The book announcements
Aside from DC, who had announced pretty much all of their upcoming books before the con, most major publishers had something to showcase. As for what stuck out to me, amongst their Fear Itself fallout titles, Marvel announced of a Defenders book from Matt Fraction, and Jason Aaron taking over The Incredible Hulk. IDW talked about a Dunwich Horror adpatation that should be "more action-packed and exciting than Lovecraft readers might expect". Dunwich being one of my favorite Lovecraft stories, I'll definitely be picking up this four-issue mini. They'll also be putting out a crossover of their Star Trek licensed comics and DC's Legion of Superheroes, and splitting the license for KISS comics with another company, which will result in the craziest crossover announced during the con: KISS meets Archie.

Among the top picks for me, however would have to be Archaia Comics' Cow Boy, by two of my favorite creators, Nate Cosby and Chris Eliopoulis, about a ten-year-old bounty hunter in the old west. You can see a few preview pages over at the books' Tumblr now. Also, Image had their share of promising announcements, including a Chew spin-off Secret Agent Poyo, about the continuing adventures of the deadly fighting chicken, the squee-worthy news of another Witch Doctor series coming down the line from the Skybound imprint, and Brian K. Vaughan's new creator-owned series Saga, including art from the incredible Fiona Staples.


2. The TV announcements
I think I came away from this con's news cycle more excited about the TV news than the comic stuff, and especially where the two intertwined. Marvel had a lot of news, with live-action Hulk, Jessica Jones, Mockingbird and Cloak and Dagger series coming to ABC, as well as Ultimate Spider-Man and a Hulk-family series, Agents of SMASH coming to the animated front. DC did not have as much, but they did release an extended preview of the new Green Lantern series, which I am slowly warming up to:

The animation... is not pretty, the broad Timm-ian character designs don't translate terribly well into that medium. and besides when they're in the void of space the backgrounds are textureless and lackluster, reminscent of computer-animated series from twenty years, which is something I'd have hoped we'd moved away from long ago. Once you get accustomed to the point that you can tolerate it, however, the rest of the show shines through. The acting and plots seem fine, albeit obviously targeting a younger audience, much in the same way The Brave And The Bold does, and that is one of my favorite animated series in years.

My absolute favorite animated series in recent years, however, is without question Avatar: The Last Airbender, so I was already excited knowing there's a new series coming to continue the series. The trailer for The Legend Of Korra released at the con, though, managed to blow away every expectation I had.

It looks like they've ramped up everything from the original series, from animation quality to action, and for the hell of it dumped in a dose of prohibition-era American gangster film. I've honestly lost count of how many times I've watched this trailer at this point.

Additionally, it was announced Cullen Bunn's Sixth Gun will be getting a series on the Syfy network, which I'll remain cautiously optimistic about until something more has been released about it, and an extended trailer for Walking Dead season two was released:

1. "Retractable pants"
I'm assuming when Cliff Chiang said this at one of the New 52 panels DC held throughout the con it was as a joke, but that doesn't make it any less awesome a phrase.

And now, onto the regular comic superlatives:

The Best _____ This Week for 7/20/11: In the details

Small pull for me this week, tricking me into thinking I should branch out some more until I remember last week by comparison. It's seemingly even more myopic of a cross-section of books because one title basically sweeps the superlatives here. I think the most surprising thing is half of what I grabbed is Fear Itself tie-ins, as the two I actually want to read both came out (Deadpool and Fearsome Four), and the books I'd be reading otherwise are into or kicking off their tentacles of this particular eventopus (Herc, Hulk and Huncanny X-Men).

Similarly weak this week was the digital pull, which is a damn shame because I just upgraded my reading experience. I had up 'til now been reading my digital comics either on my phone or my iPod Touch but this week I finally broke down and picked up a tablet (the Acer Iconia, if curious) and I have to say, suddenly I get it. That is to say, presented in this format, digital comics seem like at least a viable alternative, albeit not a preferable one, to print. The forced use of Guided View on ComiXology on the smaller devices was infuriating  and browser viewing never felt quite natural but with a screen roughly the size of a normal comic that I can read normally, or browse and zoom when so desired in ways that feel intuitive. I still prefer my hard copy to the digital, and this doesn't eliminate issues like the licenses or price points, but I can see ways this nascent format may come into its own somewhere down the line. But this could be its own post, instead let's look at The Best Whatever I Read This Week.

Amazing Sadder Man

Trying not to nerd-rage about this, but I think I'm going to have to, for my own sanity: the Amazing Spider-Man trailer looks atrocious.

I'll emphasize, the trailer looks atrocious. I am well familiar with the concept of a trailer setting a particular tone that may not reflect the film itself accurately for marketing purposes, so I understand trying to make you film look like a parkour-infused Twilight, that is a fresh source of disposable income to tap into for your film. But this isn't the week to do that. With San Diego Comic-Con kicking off, if you have anything true to your character, frankly any fun at all in your movie, this is when you'd need to showcase it. Instead, this reeks so heavily of Team Edward's influence that I wouldn't be surprised if a glitter-dipped Morbius showed up. The appeal of Spider-Man for me has always been overcoming the angst and the drama, not wallowing in it. Peter here is so dark and brooding he comes off more as a villain than a hero, for all this trailer puts forward this could be a reboot of the Fly instead of Spider-Man. This is a trailer so devoid of fun and whimsy that even the webswinging, once a beautiful, soaring sequence in the earlier films, feels flat and spiritless here.

I can't debate that Spider-Man 3 was not a very good movie, but to go back to a time before we knew that, to watch the trailer still provided some hope in the movie being good:

In hindsight certainly, the clues that this was going to be a muddled mess were all there, but at the time it had the uplifting tone, the humor and the action I wanted from the series. And for the record, muddled mess though it may be, SM3 was not devoid of its good parts. Like the equally-maligned X-Men Origins: Wolverine, there was a lot of good elements to the movie. It just happened that what wasn't good in it was instead so bad that it became toxic to the rest of the film, destroying the good will built up by what had been working. The Amazing Spider-Man crew could be going in another direction with their movie, tonally, and that's fine for the people who'd want to watch that, but for my personal taste that doesn't bode well for my enjoying the film at all. And as a lifetime Spider-Man fan, having to wait another couple of years for the next reboot cycle to come around and maybe undo what was done will just be wearisome.

The last movie that completely ignored the source material's light-hearted and fun side in favor of a more serious, dramatic storyline? The Last Airbender. I'm not saying it's going to be that bad, but for now this has made me retroactively come to the defense of Spider-Man 3, and both it and I are going to have to live with that.

The Best _____ This Week for 7/13/11

Man, I would seriously love to write on here more than once a week, especially something more original than this. Doubly-especially since I got kinda-mentioned on Awesomed By Comics this week and it's basically the same thing they do (I'll readily acknowledge this, although I tried to make it somewhat different where I could there were some frantic IM sessions with friends while I tried to assuage myself that I wasn't biting as hard as I presumably am). Time has not been kind to me lately, however and among where I've split my attention I've been focusing more on drawing than writing or even reading the comics in the first place. If you've been following the Tumblr (which as intended I do manage to update far more frequently, albeit far more inanely), you may have seen some of these, such as my recent obsession with pants and Darkseid.

That said, let's move on to the superlatives.