What the Shea

Got that sunshine bright-eyed California cotton candy taste.

  • 15th September
    2012
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  • 18th July
    2012
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dccomicconfessions: “I miss Wally and the love he had for Linda Park. In my opinion, it outshines any other relationship in the DCU. Including those who are “destined lovers.” They were a lightning rod for each other and no matter where Wally disappeared to— another world, time-line, or universe— Linda always brought him back. Here’s to hoping the 52 will feature those two again!”

dccomicconfessions:

“I miss Wally and the love he had for Linda Park. In my opinion, it outshines any other relationship in the DCU. Including those who are “destined lovers.” They were a lightning rod for each other and no matter where Wally disappeared to— another world, time-line, or universe— Linda always brought him back. Here’s to hoping the 52 will feature those two again!”

  • 25th June
    2012
  • 25

I will forever use David Foster Wallace as intellectual justification for my love of superhero comic books, and I’m not sorry.

[On a Stakeout - Harseik]

A couple months ago, a writing professor whom I respect greatly, whose teaching I enjoy so much that I’ve taken three classes with him, in a row, told me he never would’ve pegged me for a comic book lover. By this point I’d made my interest in the medium quite clear, through both fiction and nonfiction pieces alike. Still he expressed surprise, and when I asked him why, he told me, “Well, you’re very intelligent.”

My first reaction was to be flattered beyond all reason or measure. Understand that I pretty much worship this man, and his opinion of me means the world. But even so, his reaction stuck with me long after my internal gloating had subsided. Now, it must be said that this professor is an older gentleman. A real American Frontier sort of writer, who loves himself some Rick Bass, some Anne Proulx, that sort of thing. His idea of a hero is someone who owns horses and a gun. An alien in spandex? Not so much. 

So I set about trying to figure out what exactly it was about superhero comics that I loved so much from a more cerebral standpoint than my usual “OH MY GOD DID YOU SEE THAT AWESOME PANEL WHERE STARLING FUCKING DESTROYED THAT GUY?” I wished to be a little more meticulous this time around, just a hair more surgical in my analysis of the role of superhero comics in my own life. What was the draw for me? What was my trigger? What had me going back to New England Comics week after week and blowing money on Batwoman and Birds of Prey and Savage that I should’ve been using on groceries?

The answer, I’ve found, lies in the picture above (which I’ve already reblogged on my tumblr, but I just love it so much). On a Stakeout, it’s called, by an incredibly talented deviantart member who goes by the name of Harseik. In case it’s unclear, the artwork depicts Batman and Superman sitting on a street corner indulging in some fast food and soft drinks together as would you or I. But both the title of the piece and the duo’s costumes imply that they’re not just grabbing a bite because they happened to have the evening free. They’re on the clock, so to speak. Performing their vigilante duties. But superheroes, like everyone, get hungry — even when they’re supposed to merely be super. 

Superhero comics have evolved over the years. Where once they were just the action-filled adventures of incredible beings doing incredible things, said beings have now developed friends and families and ties to the world that don’t just involve keeping it from going boom. Heros are no longer confined by four-panel comic strips. They live in a lush and developed universe that, yes, is overflowing with physical battles of might, but also punctuated by everyday human interactions. Sarah Johnson’s both adorable and clever Ordinary Batman Adventures is a variation on a theme — in which Batman interacts not with people, but a world that is often more mundane than not.

And therein lies my fascination. I love the little conversations as much as the explosive fights, the quieter moments in between the never-ending war between good and evil. Seeing The Flash hold Linda’s hand during her ultrasound is equally if not more powerful than when he takes down Gorilla Grodd just pages later. Because there’s more to him than the fight, more to all of them than what we typically ascribe to a superhero story. At the end of the day, they’re not just superheros — they’re people, too. The Flash’s name was Wally West, and Wally held his wife’s hand through the ultrasound of their twins Jai and Iris.

This is why I’m so enamored with “downtime” issues of superhero comics or episodes of superhero cartoons, the times when there’s not really a mission going on and everyone’s just kind of…stuck being themselves for the day. Not to get all “college writer’s workshop” on you, but it humanizes them, and humanizing is essential when you’re writing about beings that are so supreme that they border on unrelatable.

Much in the same way, David Foster Wallace writes about sports stars, and why he enjoys their memoirs so much. Here is an excerpt from his essay “How Tracy Austin Broke My Heart,” featured in Consider the Lobster:

Here is a theory. Top athletes are compelling because they embody the comparison-based achievement we Americans revere — fastest, strongest — and because they do so in an totally unambiguous way. Questions of the best plumber or best managerial accountant are impossible to even define, whereas the best relief itchier, free-throw shooter, or female tennis player is, at any given time, a matter of public statistical record. Top athletes fascinate us by appealing to our twin compulsions with competitive superiority and hard data.

Plus they’re beautiful: Jordan hanging in midair like a Chagail bride, Sampras laying down a touch volley at an angle that defies Euclid. And they’re inspiring. There is about world-class athletes carving out exemptions from physical laws a transcendent beauty that makes manifest God in man. So actually more than one theory, then. Great athletes are profundity in motion. They enable abstractions like power and grace and control to become not only incarnate but televisable. To be a top athlete, performing, is to be that exquisite hybrid of animal and angel that we average unbeautiful watchers have such a hard time seeing in ourselves.

So we want to know them, these gifted, driven physical achievers. We too, as an audience, are driven: watching the performance is not enough. We want to get intimate with all that profundity. We want inside them; we want the Story. We want to hear about humble roots, privation, precocity, grim resolve, discouragement, persistence, team spirit, sacrifice, killer instinct, liniment and pain.

Now exchange every reference to athletes with “superheroes,” and you’ll begin to see my point. The grand stands and elaborate battles aren’t enough for us these days. We can’t just know that they win the big fights, we need to see them struggle hour by hour. Day by day. We crave their tribulations just as much as their triumphs, because it makes them like us. More powerful, perhaps, capable of more, but still enough like us when they come home from flinging a nuke into another dimension.

Of course, the moments in between aren’t the only reason I love superhero comics. I get an adrenaline rush from the fights, cry over the deaths, and lose myself in the sensationalized and, frankly, super quality to all the stories they tell. But I think that sometimes it’s just nice to think that when Superman goes home for the night, Lois might be a little irritated because in between all the world-saving he just did, the Man of Steel himself forgot that he was supposed to cook dinner. And so they cook the meat he left marinating in the fridge together, Superman and Lois Lane, teasing one another and eating their slightly overcooked pork chops and drinking wine and laughing late into the night.

And that, my friends, is why someone as supposedly intelligent as myself has maintained an eight-years-and-counting love affair with all things super heroic. I like “powers go boom” as much as the next person, but there has to be depth of character and a whole lot of pedestrian humanity for me to truly care, and comics are so kind as to provide a lovely blend of both.

  • 20th June
    2012
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Anyone who loves comics even a little should go here immediately and download Insufferable, Mark Waid's new comic book/webcomic hybrid.

Allow me to wax poetic for a moment, if you will.

Mark Waid is one of my top three favorite comic book writers alongside Marv Wolfman and Gail Simone (an all-star trio that is delightfully notorious for treating their comic book characters as people first and superheroes second). This is the man who reinvented Wally West, made a him a better Flash and, more importantly, a better man who would eventually become my all-time favorite character of the DC Universe when I got around to discovering his existence. Waid blew all our minds with Kingdom Come (alongside the staggeringly beautiful art of Alex Ross), then went on to write several other acclaimed runs for titles like Fantastic Four, Daredevil, JLA, Impulse, Legion of Superheroes, Spiderman, 52, and his own Irredeemable and Incorruptible. The man is as brilliant as he is prolific, and I think you’d be hard pressed to find a title that wasn’t vastly improved by his presence on the writing team.

My frenzied fangirling aside, I’m not fucking kidding when I say that everyone needs to download and read Insufferable, his most recent endeavor, like, yesterday. I’m about eight weeks late on this party train, but whatever, better now than never. The writing is, of course, sensational. This is Mark Waid we’re talking about, so it’s not like there was ever any doubt. But it’s the construction of the comic that’s truly breathtaking, the experimentation with comics and new media that has me really foaming at the mouth.

Insufferable is a superhero comic book/webcomic hybrid. And I know that there are tons of those floating around out there, but this is the first I’ve seen that truly takes advantage of such a new and unique medium. Take, for example, this sequence:

I’m reading Issue #1, flipping pages with my right arrow key as you generally do when reading comics on your computer, when suddenly instead of a full page, I’m greeted with just a single panel:

Odd, I thought. Interesting use of white space, I guess, but I feel kind of like I’m missing part of the page. Well, turns out I was, because the next time I hit my right arrow key, this is what I got:

And then:

And then:

Then:

And finally:

I’m not sure it’ll look like much all in a vertical row like that, but think about seeing it happen horizontally. Sequentially. Bam, bam, bam, bam, one right after the other. I felt like I was physically being moved through the action of this scene. This is technically six separate pages of comic but, in webcomic form, felt as though they were carefully woven together to make one.

Talk about mind-blowing.

And that’s it! I’m in. I’m committed to this story and this medium and, well, let’s be honest here. I was always committed to Mark Waid. And you should be too. He’s pushing the evolution of comic books as a storytelling medium, and I look forward to seeing where this goes, as well as what other fun and engaging stunts Waid will pull in the pursuit of telling the best story he can in the best way he knows how.

So check dat shit out, because you’re not gonna want to be left behind.

  • 19th May
    2012
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  • 14th March
    2012
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  • 17th January
    2012
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  • 1st December
    2011
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  • 26th November
    2011
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  • 10th November
    2011
  • 10
APE IN A CAPE: Question Of The Day

gailsimone:

Okay, here is my question for DC readers.

If you got to choose five DC titles, and that’s it, period, to have sent to you each month while you are stranded on a desert isle, what would they be? You can choose any books as long as they have existed as a title at one point, whether they currently are running or not. So if you pick a team book as one choice, you can pick which era of the team, as well. It is assumed that these are all new stories by great creative teams. If you pick,say, Flash, you can pick WHICH Flash. All dc imprints are in play.

What gets sent to you on your deserted island each month?

Ooh, now THIS is a question.

  1. The Titans (1999 - 2002)
    Oh, Titans. My beloved Titans. The ones that started my ongoing love affair with comic books of all shapes and sizes. I loved their 60s incarnation, I died a thousand times over their 80s incarnation, but I think that, if I had to choose one period of my favorite characters ever to read for all eternity, it would have to be their post-Technis Imperative team. They’re a little older, a little wiser, and a whole lot more tangled up in one another’s lives (in both the best and worst possible ways). But friendship and history runs deep in all of them, and I wish there had been more than 50 issues to explore this team’s dynamic.
     
  2. Wally West-era Flash (1987 - 2009)
    It’s absolutely no secret (like, at all) that I will follow Wally West to the ends of the DC Universe and back again. Mark Waid, champion of everything ever, made Wally into such an endearing and wonderful character (with a whole lot of help from Mrs. Linda Park-West), and Geoff Johns carried on that tradition fairly faithfully, in my opinion. Wally’s absence in the DCnU has been slowly killing me, so give me my goddamn desert island and get those Flash comics to me yesterday.
     
  3. Kingdom Come (1996)
    Alex. Fuckin’. Ross. Need I say more? I probably should. Devastatingly beautiful artwork aside (like, there’s a reason I paid $75 for an Absolute version), I thought my favorite person ever Mark Waid explored some deeply engaging themes that left me thinking for days after reading (and rereading. And again). And not to fangirl all over everything, but Mar’i Grayson. And Ibn al Xu’ffasch. Teen girl hero and bad boy? C’mon. You know I’m all over that.
     
  4. Birds of Prey (1999 - present)
    I’m partial to the DCnU run (mostly because Starling is my new favorite character in anything ever), but I’d take any part of this wonderful, girl-friendship heavy series and be happy forever. I’ve annoyed literally everyone who will listen to my opinion that bitches are taking over modern media, and Birds of Prey was always kind of the saving grace that kept me hoping that girl friends would prevail.
     
  5. Gotham City Sirens (2009 - 2011)
    So I’m a sucker for girls teaming up, but whatever. The Ivy/Harley/Selina team up melted my brain in all the absolute best ways, but let’s be real here. Sirens’ cover art alone (about which I’ve raved all up and everywhere on this tumblr/in my life/etc.) is all the reason I’d need to request this run on my desert island for all eternity.

Runner Ups: Tiny Titans, Batgirl, Nightwing, Young Justice (regular and animated), Teen Titans Go!, New Teen Titans, Secret Six, Batwoman.

But mostly just everything Titans-related. Minus Team Titans, because fuck that.