Confessions of a Comic Book Guy is a weekly column by retailer Steve Bennett of Super-Fly Comics and Games in
One of the drawbacks of being an adult is you know the only one who really cares about your birthday is you (and, if you’re extremely lucky, maybe a half dozen others) but I’ll share this with you anyway. On Friday I’ll be 49 and I plan on taking advantage of the strange convergence that has placed it on the same day as the release of one of the most widely anticipated movies of the year. That’s right, I’ll be seeing Mamma Mia! (the things you do for love).
To put into perspective just how old I am, I actually owned The Zeroids toy robots Moonstone just announced they’re turning into a comic book series, proving my theory that if you wait long enough absolutely everything comes back (the last thing left on my personal list is a DVD release of The Magical World of Topo Gigio, the first movie I ever saw in a theater). But as much as I loved Zerek, Zobar, Zintar and their commander Zogg (if you weren’t there, trust me, they were uber-cool), I can’t even begin to imagine how they plan on creating a comic book series around them.
Then there’s the matter of who a comic based on such an incredibly obscure property will appeal to, besides me of course (If you Google “Zeroids” you’ll get information about a separate set of robots with the same name who appeared on a pretty obscure Gerry Anderson TV show called Terrahawks).
Boom Studios has announced the acquisition of The Remnant-- a creation of Stephen Baldwin, adding him to the list of celebrities with their own comics which includes Guy Ritchie, Ed Burns, John Mostow, Jenna Jameson, Nicolas and Stephen DeSouza.* The only real question is, do any of these celebrity brand names actually help them sell better than a comparable “unbranded” comic?
I realize in today’s market a comic based on a property or with a celebrity’s name above the title might give a customer more confidence to buy it than something made up by a couple of guys they’d never heard of. But personally the main thing I ask of a new unfamiliar comic is “why is this comic different from all others?”-- especially when it comes to a genre comic.
Let’s say the genre is a supernatural adventure about a woman who’s been chosen by fate to defend mankind against dark forces; they’re a dime a dozen at the moment, so if anyone wanted to create a new one it had better come with a twist or quality that differentiates it from the others and justifies retailers giving it a place on store shelves. And although I don’t consider “it has Jenna Jameson’s name on it” to be particularly good reason to buy a comic, to be absolutely fair, Jenna Jameson’s Shadow Hunter is surprisingly good, featuring some very nice art by Mukesh Singh and a script by Christina Z.
It came as a nice surprise to find screenwriter Malcolm Wong hadn’t taken offense at my snotty “screenwriter comic dabblers” comment from a previous column (see “Screenwriter Malcolm Wong on ‘Dog Eaters’”), and it gives me a chance to address another comment from it that I had made about neophyte comic writers who learn how to write comics on the job (i.e. by writing comics). When I wrote that, I had completely forgotten about Gerard Way; in his first attempt at writing comics he created The Umbrella Academy (a strong contender for my favorite comic of the year--so far anyway).
I read on The Comic Reporter Website that the new Kingdom Comics imprint from Disney is going to be a closed shop, a “by initiation” only sort of a deal, forcing me to give them my pitch here: Mary Poppins Vs. Peter Pan. Think about it; both are magical entities based in early 20th century
I know this is really self indulgent but it is almost my birthday. There are a lot of reasons why I love Golden Age comics but definitely one of them is every once in a while, among all the superheroes, magicians, detectives and jungle explorers you’ll find something sui generis, absolutely unique. Like Snowman, the lead feature of Tally-Ho Comics (partially credited to Frank Frazetta) about a snowman carrying a tomahawk that is mankind’s only hope against a bunch of trolls with topknots.
* Anyone who thinks celebrity brand name comic books is a modern innovation doesn’t know their comic book history. Back in the 40s and 50s, everyone from Alan Ladd to Bob Hope to Jerry Lewis had their own series.
The opinions expressed in this Talk Back column are solely those of the writer, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the editorial staff of ICv2.com.
