parakkum

We picked up all the back issues of Danny Fingeroth's Write Now at Wondercon. The first issue has interviews with Bendis, Stan Lee, Mark Bagley, Joe Quesada, Tom DeFalco and J.M. DeMatteis.

The first issue very much showed off Fingeroth's belief that comics "these days" (in 2002) are aimed too much toward adults, and are written too much as if they were movies. His questions often revolve around "why don't we write for kids" in this issue. You also see his love for the pamphlet form of comic book, which I have been converted away from at this point. As Littlestar points out, trades just shelve better, are easier to walk around with -- and, notably, are much more amenable for book store sales, which is critical.

Notes in the extended.

It's been a while since I read the second issue of Danny Fingeroth's Write Now!, but I hadn't yet put up a review. I'm in the middle of reading issue #3, which I like a lot so far.

This issue has some great interviews with creators from those odd, overlapping fields of comics, animation and genre work.

Notes in the extended.

One of the handouts in the goodie bag this year was the zero issue of "Blackest Night," which I gather is DC's latest event (and there were panels about it, too).

Having read it just now, I'm really nonplussed.

Rather than go on at length, let me point you at my more extensive complaint about sticking to continuity at the expense of good storytelling. Let me quote the Flash from this very comic:

That's my point. Death isn't necessarily the end. Not in this line of work. You. Me. Clark. Ollie.

Indeed, somewhat ridiculously most members of the Justice League have died and come back. This is the superhero comics version of the soap opera "everyone having sex with everyone" problem. All the rescinding of story points in service to never, ever resetting the world fundamentally devalues the stories, and it makes the whole thing a tasteless mash that I don't care for at all.

And this is independent of the writers. I like Geoff Johns. Still, I find nothing appealing in this "event."

I'd much rather see the DC universe reset, say, once a decade, than to see the stories devalued and the characters turned into hapless telenovela players rather than the interesting characters they honestly good be.

Or, more simply, I would pay to read a brand-new take on the Batman story every couple of years.