Comic Book Rant - Warren Ellis Off Thunderbolts, Still Egotistical Prick

You'd think after Warren Ellis made a complete ass of himself after it was announced Heath Ledger died, which, if you remember, he made several crude and false accusations about the circumstances of said death, he'd try and keep a lower profile. Sadly, no.

Today, Ellis had a little post on the Freak Angel's White Chapel Discussion Board concerning his leaving Thunderbolts. Not content with the typical goodbye post, Ellis felt the need to berate any and all creators that work for Marvel, DC or do super hero based comics in general.

He goes on to compare himself to well known creators, such as Matt Fraction, Ed Brubaker, Brian K. Vaughan and Grant Morrison, trying to imply that he and these creators are only good because they do creator owned work and shun Marvel and DC and that all other creators are either with them or against them, throwing down the gauntlet in some imaginary war he's made up in his mind where the quality of writing is dependant on not doing work for hire. Full transcript of his posts and more after the jump.

The tenor -- and, frankly, the informedness -- of online comics conversation over the last five years has changed to the point where I probably need to explain once again why I don't stay long on company-owned works.

It's as simple as this -- if I don't own it, I'm not going to spend my life on it. Joe Quesada and Dan Buckley know that, they're fine with that, and they hire me on that understanding.

Or, if you like: you can only paint someone else's house for so long before you start thinking that it might be nice to own your own house one day.

I'm okay with painting other people's houses for short periods, because I'm good at it and it pays well and on nice days it's fun. But I never ever confuse painting a house for owning that house. And if I spent every waking hour painting other people's houses, I wouldn't be able to build houses of my own.

The more creators who only took on housepainting as a part-time gig, the healthier this medium would be.

For those of you who harbour a wish to write comics, consider this today: you're either on this side of the line, with me and Brian K Vaughan and Garth Ennis and Grant Morrison and Ed Brubaker and Matt Fraction... or you're not.

The problem with this little comparison is that all those writers he listed are predominantly work-for-hire writers. Brubaker is doing Criminal with Marvel's Icon imprint, but the majority of his work has been with DC and Marvel for the past decade. Fraction is Marvel's new go-to guy for most books these days and I can only think of Cassanova off the top of my head for his independant work. Morrison has been the guiding hand for DC's universe since 52 and is set to take it to the next level with Final Crisis. I can't remember the last major creator owned project he did.

Of those listed, BKV is about the only one that would qualify in this mythical independant / creator owned faction Ellis is holding above all the other writer's heads and using as a scape goat for quitting Thunderbolts after running out of ideas, like he's done with every major work-for-hire project he's done.

On top of this, he outlines the exact reasons he's leaving Thunderbolts - he made enough money off the fans that bought it and is going back to creator owned work. His creator owned work wasn't selling as well as he'd expected, so he came back to Marvel and new readers liked his Marvel work and picked up his creator owned stuff. He noticed a nice spike in sales of his Transmetropolitan trades, so milked the mainstream stuff a little longer and is now giving everyone the big F-U and going back to creator owned. Her's the follow up post.

In hindsight, there is one thing that needs to be recapitulated here, as I guess memories are short:

I actually had no intention of going back into WFH (work for hire). The creator owned stuff was selling to expected numbers and things were ticking along fine.

What happened was that Mark Millar and Brian Bendis got in touch -- they'd hit a scheduling wall and weren't able to service twelve issues of ULTIMATE FANTASTIC FOUR, and asked me to help them out. And when your friends ask you for a favour, you do it, you know? So I said yes, and got to work.

That's how I ended up doing more superhero comics.

The first odd thing happened after the first issue came out. Now, remember, I'd been doing mostly original material for the previous few years, and doing fine. But I was suddenly flooded with email from kids -- teenagers -- who had never heard of me before. What was happening, it turned out, was that I was reaching seven or eight hundred stores at maximum, and there was anything up to a couple of thousand stores who just weren't ordering my stuff. I remember talking this over with people at Marvel and particularly DC, and it turned out that this was in fact the case -- that two thirds of comics stores really don't order much other than superhero comics and a few licensed books. And in those years of doing my own thing, the audience had turned over to the point where there were people who'd never read a thing by me. It hadn't been all that long ago that I'd been selling 200,000 copies of DV8 and 150,000 copies of WOLVERINE, I thought...

The second really odd thing came in some months later. Sales of TRANSMET TPBs spiked massively. And the only thing that had changed was that I was writing UFF. What had happened was that these new readers had liked UFF, gone looking for other stuff by me, found nothing in their local store, gone to Amazon or bookstores, and picked up TRANSMET books. A few months later, I saw numbers on all my other creator-owned TPBs pick up too.

And now we can sell more than 12,000 copies of CRECY in a matter of months.

And what's REALLY strange is that I discovered Marvel under Joe Quesada and Dan Buckley is in fact a really nice place to work.

This would be fine on its own, but he's pretentious enough to try and mask this all behind some imagined moral high ground and trying to divert any negative comments towards the other writers that don't do creator owned work instead of manning up and taking his fan tongue lashing for leaving a popular book like man.

The man has done more pages of work-for-hire in his career than creator owned, yet still goes off on this little hissy fit tangents every three or four years where he blames people that work for Marvel or DC for all the problems with the comic industry, claims they aren't real writers because of this and screws over any fans that were following his current work as he goes off to write creator owned for a couple years. Then, his work doesn't sell to his satisfaction and he comes crawling back to Marvel and DC for more work and the whole process repeats again.

It's time Ellis grew the fuck up and realized doing creator owned work and work-for-hire are not mutually exclusive. The simple act of writing creator owned work doesn't make you a good writer. Yes, Ellis is an excellent writer in his own right, but he's far from the greatest writer in comics today and he'll always be that 'other guy' when people are talking about writers like Ed Brubaker, Grant Morrison and the various others he listed as being on "his side" of this comic book writer Civil War.

In the end, Ellis comes off as a hypocrite who's ego won't let him see the fact he's not an indy writer and is about as mainstream as it gets. It's obvious by the very same creators he lumped himself in with, all of which are writing multiple Marvel or DC titles and have been for years, that he can't come to terms with the fact he's the very thing he hates and instead of accepting this about himself, he lashes out at everyone else, fans and colleagues alike.

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Comic Book Rant - Sorry Frank, Tie-ins Are Not Necessary

Before I start, this little rant isn't a rant against Frank Tieri or even a declaration that his work is no good. It's just Frank Tieri's comments sparked it when he recently had a chat with Newsarama concerning his Lord Havok & The Extremists mini-series for DC and, as you probably know, it's a tie-in that spun out of Countdown several months ago. Here's a brief snippet of the pertinent dialogue from their conversation:

It was something I saw in the Dan DiDio interview you did a little while ago– this question of whether or not a series like Lord Havok and the Extremists is “necessary” or “important”. You know, I’ve been involved in a number of these big company-wide events now, from Countdown to World War Hulk to Civil War, and I’ve seen this way of thinking before—people so worried whether a tie-in is necessary/ not necessary to the event in question—and honestly, I really think those people get too caught up in that nonsense. I think they’re missing the point. Simply put, a series like Lord Havok exists because we think the characters are interesting and we have an interesting story to tell. That’s it-- not much more complicated than that.

Regardless of whether or not you enjoy the book, I think we can all agree that it actually is completely unncessary in every sense of the word. It adds nothing to the Countdown story, it's taking place months after the actual events the book is building up to and, finally, the characters are all dead as of the most recent issue of Countdown, rendering the entire storyline moot, as it will have no lasting effect, will reveal no new pertinent plot points and, eventually, will be barely remembered by the few that are bought it.

None of that would matter if this story was being released as a Lord Havok & The Extremists story. However, DC is marketing this as a Countdown tie-in, one that we must assume has a bearing on or tangential relation to that event, and, thus, this book becomes a tie-in by default and, as the story is only marginally related to the events of Countdown, renders it completely unnecessary, for all intents and purposes.

Frank continues on his tirade over his book being labelled a pointless tie-in by saying the following:

And if I had to compare the Extremists to another project, it would be Marvel’s The Hood. Now, I really don’t remember, but I hope people didn’t get caught up in stupid stuff like this when the Hood came out because if they did, they would’ve missed a fun series, not to mention the fact that…

It’s pretty $%^&in’ “important” now, don’t ya think?!

He compares the Extremists to the Marvel MAX title, The Hood, which was conceived in a bubble by Brian Vaughan and is in no way, shape or form related to any Marvel event, character or other title. Seriously, WTF? The Hood was a standalone title that told a relatively complete story (it had some plotlines left dangling at the end) and was later picked up on by Brian Bendis for New Avengers. There was no reason to call The Hood a pointless or unnecessary title. It was an original graphic novel for the most part. Extremists requires Countdown to validate it and its story is neither required nor consequential to the events of Countdown.

While people may or may not have enjoyed any one of the dozen or so Countdown tie-ins, none of them are necessary. We could argue no story is ever necessary and they should all be read based on their own merit, but many of these tie-ins have no other merit than to cash in on the main event.

While this has been DC-centric, Marvel is not innocent of the pointless tie-ins either. Again, Tieri's comments sparked this little rant, so it's focused more on the content he was trying to defend.

In a perfect world, every comic, whether it be an event, series or tie-in, would be read by everyone and we'd all be able to enjoy as many comics as we like. However, life isn't like that and people need to make choices on what to buy and read. Everything we do in life gets categorized into what we want, what we can afford and what don't want and comics are no different.

When DC announces a million Countdown tie-ins, we, the fans, have a certain amount of money to spend on them. We want the entire story and we have to decide which parts are pretinent and which are rubbish, regardless of the quality of the book. DC, and Marvel when they do it, are hoping people will overspend in order to get the whole story and cash in on the readers.

So, in the end, while some creators would like to believe their book is worthwhile and necessary to an event, they are wrong. Almost all tie-ins are unnecessary and very few add any value to the event. The Tales of the Sinestro Corps War were about the only tie-ins in recent memory that have been a valuable and worthwhile addition to the crossover.

Sadly, having a few high quality tie-ins doesn't gouge the readers enough, so we're forced to separate the wheat from the chaff everytime a new event, and the onslaught of tie-ins, comes along. Thankfully, they are almost always unnecessary and we can safely skip just about every single one and those that wish are free to purchase any they feel they might enjoy, even though we know it's not going to be important.

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Comic Book Rant - This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things

So, anyone check out the recently released December comic book sales? Some interesting things in it. If you forgot, Ultimates 3.1 and the final part of One More Day were released in December. Care to hazard a guess as to where they placed on the chart? That's right, the two worst books in all of 2007, maybe even the last decade, were the top two selling books for the month of December.

This, my friends, is why we can't have nice things. Why do we support these books when quality titles lanquish at the bottom of the charts. This just tells Marvel and DC to keep throwing this rubbish at as and to reward people like Jeph Loeb, Rob Liefeld or numerous other "top" creators with bigger salaries and lots of high profile books that they just continue to drive into the ground. More after the jump.

I just can't figure out why people always buy these books. Something like Onslaught Reborn was pure shit vomitted onto paper and shipped to shops and it sold insanely well. Let me list off some comics that are outsold by books like that on a routine basis:

Nova - mid-80's sales rank
Black Adam - mid-80's
Annihilation Conquest - high-70's
Immortal Iron Fist - mid-70's
Fables - 100's
Checkmate - did not rank
Blue Beetle - did not rank
Catwoman - did not rank

All of those books and more were outsold by the likes of X-Men: Emperor Vulcan, Ghost Rider, Death of the New Gods, Search for Ray Palmer Specials, Exiles, Countdown, Supergirl and so on. I'm sorry if you like some of these books, I know I've loved the occasional clunker, but the ones listed above are much better than these, regardless of how much you like them, and many more in the upper echelons of these sales rankings.

I'm not exactly innocent here, as I bought Ultimates 3, Countdown and its many tie-ins and so on, but at least I do my best to pick up as many of these lower tier titles as I can afford. I also know that not everyone can afford to be as liberal as I am with my purchases. I can't really expect someone to drop titles and pick up random ones he's never read before, possibly wasting their money if they don't like it. It's hard to get around these constraints and I think both Marvel and DC have set it up that way when they go about their scheduling. Not sure where I was going with all this, but was good to blow some steam over something that really annoys me about the comic world.

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Comic Book Rant - Michael Turner Can't Draw

I hate Michael Turner. Seriously, I hate him. I'm sure he's a nice fellow, his family and friends love him, he pays his taxes, eats his vitamins and all that jazz, but the man can't draw to save his life. Human anatomy is a mystery to him and I cannot fathom (pun intended) how he manages to still get work in this industry.

"But Kirk, comic books aren't real. People can't fly or shoot laser beams out of their eyes. No one cares about realistic art in comics."

See, that's a fallacy. Basic anatomy and proportion do not require the comic to be super realistic. People like Mike Oeming, Francis Yu, Humberto Ramos and any number of other stylized artists do not draw "realistic" characters, yet I'm not bitching or complaining about their artwork. The reason? Even with their overly stylized artwork, they all show a basic understanding of anatomy and provide a consistent and identifiable groundwork for their art.

Their characters don't magically change proportions from page to page (or cover to cover in Turner's case). Their poses and panel layouts don't magically change shape so they don't have to draw certain basic body parts, like feet in the case of Mr Turner. They all maintain a certain level of basic artistic consistency that showcases a general knowledge of simple anatomy and proportions that Michael Turner does not.

Don't believe me? Hit the jump to see what I'm talking about as I do a rundown of the numerous covers Turner has churned out over the past couple years.

First off, credit to Joel Bryan of I Against Comics for the rightmost part of this image detailing the various problems with Turner's proportions. I'm not a professional artist by any means, but even I know the basics of human anatomy and anyone that looks at this image has to see that there's something wrong with it and, no, I'm not talking about the size of her breasts.

Just stand up and look down at your body. Note where 'landmarks' show up, such as the elbow and wrist, and how they line up with other pieces of your body, like the waist or hips. Armed with this simple knowledge, look again at this image of Power Girl. Her elbow lines up with her breasts. Her wrists are below her hips. The hair on both characters is about the only thing consistent between the two and even that looks like it was cut and pasted onto the characters. Wigs look better than those attempts at hair.

"Okay, okay, so what? A few pieces are off, it's his style."

Sure, elongated, lanky, stretched, misshapen bodies can be a style. Many artists distort physical features in their artwork. However, take a look at Black Canary. Her proportions, which are still wrong from an anatomy standpoint, are completely different from Power Girls and, again, I'm not talking about breast size. Where her elbows, wrists, hips and other body parts are located all line up in completely different spots compared to the other female in the same image! That is not a "style". That is an amateur mistake that would get most artists' portfolios thrown in the trash after the first couple pages.

"Okay, I get it already, he messed up on one cover. Big deal."

It wouldn't be a big deal if it was just "one cover". However, it happens on every cover. Take a look at this little annotated montage I've put together.

I count about 24 Marvel characters on this cover to an issue of World War Hulk. Most people have, roughly, two feet. Shocking, I know. However, how many are featured on this cover? Without seeing it, some might guess 48, two per person. Others might assume a few got cut off or hidden behind the action and guess 12-24 range. Would you believe there is only one foot on the entire cover? One. Even that solitary foot is cut off and barely visible from under Spider-Man's thigh.

I won't even go into the rather generic and featureless likenesses he has rendered of the various characters behind the Hulk. They resemble disproportioned blobs that are only recognizable by the colours and costumes of each character.

Also, check out the size of Hulk's head compared to the massive chest, arms and thighs (can't say legs since there are no feet).

Check out this beauty from Sub-Mariner #6. Obviously, there are no feet drawn. Heaven forbid. However, I draw your attention to his right arm. Namor is angled inward on the cover. His right arm is angled outward towards us, not quite head on, but definitely not angled inward. Also, it's currently bigger than Namor's entire torso.

Now, note the left arm in the background. Based on the elbow location of the right arm, standing straight up, the arm should bend just under his pectorals. Since the left arm is shown at a 90 degree angle, we must assume it is bending at the waist line, which is completely different from his right arm.

This Supergirl cover doesn't even try to cover up the fact he couldn't be bothered drawing the feet. He just ends the image at the ankle and submits it to DC. Don't even talk to me about the arms or legs.

Nice feet Superman! I think I'll just mash 'em together and have them "fade to black". Check out the angle of the chest in relation to the front on hips and legs at the bottom. And those forearms are ridiculous.

Yes, you can stylize super heroes with huge muscles and giant chests and so on, but when one arm is completely different from the other and the upper and lower torso doesn't connect properly, it stops being a style.

One foot visible from six people. Note Cassie's left leg compared to her right one. Also, check out Superboy's enormous forearm that connects to a wee little elbow. Starfire's torso doesn't look like it belongs to the hips and legs it connects to and the back just doesn't even match up with the hips. Her left thigh is thicker than her entire body. Even bent down, Superboy is barely taller than Starfire's hips? He's standing in a battle ready pose, not crouched like Kid Flash. Same thing with Robin.

Not even going to discuss anatomy or proportions here. I'm just going to point out how Turner decided to draw random grass sprouts, stuff you'd see in a child's drawing or some amateur doodle, covering the feet of Cable, Colossus and Rogue. Well, Rogue's feet are covered by random rocky hill cropping, but the point still stands. Iceman is conveniently tilted away from us so his ice platform covers his feet. Cyclops feet just disappear and never show up again and Jean's are missing behind her thighs for some reason. Excellent work all around. Seven people standing right in front of us, none of which are cut off by the bottom or side's of the cover, all lacking a basic human body part.

Two feet, both overlapping each other on Spider-Man, on this Civil War cover. Cap's legs and body are abnormally shaped, but hidden well enough behind that shield of his.

What happened to you Sue Richards? Did the Thing squeeze you too hard or something? Your waist and stomach area look broken. Also, no feet to be seen anywhere. Even Johnny, who is standing in plain sight of us, has no feet as they conveniently blend into his flames.

No feet. Anywhere. Even the giant leg of Deathstroke in the foreground lacks a foot. Don't even look at Hawkman's "legs" (I think that green smear is his legs). And Green Lantern's left arm? It ends at his knee if you line it up with the rest of his body. Also, what is Green Arrow standing on? Kyle is flat on the outcropping there. Ollie should be on the same plane as him or his positioning would be completely different. Finally, did someone squish Flash's left leg? I know that thigh is huge, but it doesn't explain below the kneecap.

Wow, he didn't even try to cover it up here. Just airbrush out everything below the knee please, thank you very much. Again, most people's wrists and hands line up with the waist or upper crotch area. Batman's arm, if he extended his fingers, would reach his knee. His left arm is longer than his right, which is closer to us! Yes, the Leaguers are progressively lowering as they fade to the background, but Batman is standing straight up and his wrist is even further down from the crotch, which doesn't angle downward with the rest of the Leaguers in his line.

Conclusion

Michael Turner can't draw. It's not a style. You can't blame it on the comic book medium not being realistic. It's terrible art that no one should be paid or hired to produce. I can't believe someone who doesn't know how, and openly refuses, to draw feet gets as much work as Turner. It boggles the mind. I'm not asking for much here, just some simple and consistent proportions, at least between characters on the same cover. Oh, and some feet. Most people have those. At least most people I know.

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Comic Book Rant - Comic Prices & The Canadian Dollar

For those paying attention at home, you will know that I am an evil canuck from my arctic stronghold somewhere "up there by Alaska", also known as a Canadian to some. Our Monopoly money has managed to crawl its way up out of the basement over the past couple years and is now worth a whopping $1.01 US! This week's release of The Absolute Sandman, Vol. 2 was probably the final nail in the coffin for me and set me off on this rant. Hit the jump for my full soapbox meltdown.


As I mentioned in the opening paragraph, Absolute Sandman came out this week. Retail price is $99.00 US. In soviet Canada book costs $120.00 CAD give or take. Doesn't seem too bad. It's such a long way across the border and we don't have any trade agreements since our countries have been warring over seal blubber for centuries. Wait a minute. That's just me and my neighbour Bob at war over seal blubber. We actually print the majority of comic books and ship them to the US. You'd think most comics would be cheaper up here or at least near par with the US counterparts.

Other atrocities in the price war are books like last month's Captain America Omnibus that I was interested in but could not purchase from my local comic shop as I am not insane. Retailing at about $74.99 US, this baby would set me back about $90.00 CAD plus tax, which is 14% where I am from. A $15 markup is ridiculous and I just went to eBay or Amazon.COM (not CA) where I got the comic for about $45.00 CAD. A 100% markup over the easier and cheaper options, even after factoring in shipping, is just plain sick.

This sickness is not just with trades though. As you can see, I read a tonne (screw your ton!) of comics each week. Buying these really set me back a lot, especially when I look at the US cover price compared to the CAD one. Luckily my shop gives me discounts for buying so many books. Otherwise, I doubt I'd be able to purchase nearly as many each month. US prices are listed as usually $2.99 US. The going Canadian price is $3.75! That's a 25% markup on EVERY BOOK and our dollar is worth MORE. Remember, we print a huge percentage of the actual comics each week up here in Canada and ship them down for US retailers. It is definitely not related to shipping expenses. This is just plain highway, or border in this case, robbery.

Now this isn't a new thing. For the past few years, our dollar has been worth fairly close to the US dollar. Typically, we'd be around 85-95 cents range, which isn't that big a gap to be honest. Even taking into account when we were down in the 70 cents range, these markups are ludicrous and make no sense other than to drive people out of the Canadian comic market. It's a wonder most comic shops in my area have gone out of business. It's hard not to feel hated by Marvel or DC when they stiff you this hard. Just a year ago, Marvel had some Omnibus collections that retailed for $99.00 US and $149.99 CAD. That was with a 10 cent difference and gave us a 50% markup.

Blah. I'm gonna get off my soapbox now. Just had to rant and vent for a little bit over this. I hate getting my pants pulled down over the price of my books each and every week despite my devout loyalty to the hobby. I find myself being driven to trades, all of which I'm forced to typically buy from eBay or other US based websites, just because the prices have skyrocketed despite the value of the Canadian dollar. These recent "Still Only 399 cents!" slogans on Marvel's useless wastes of space in the One More Day issues further exasperates me as $3.99 US quickly jumps up to like $4.75 CAD or more and all I get from it is a character bio and some sketches and more ads. That box slapped on each issue just serves to remind me how much I am being shat all over by the Big 2 each and every week. None of these make sense either when I can go down to the bank and trade in $3.99 CAD for like $4.03 US.

Sorry, even my closing paragraph ran off into a bigger rant. I'm sure even my US readers are becoming more and more annoyed at the rising prices of comics and I'd hate to be in the UK or Australia or other US comic receiving nations that probably get screwed even worse than us. Well, curious to hear how others are dealing with the surging prices lately with no end in sight. Any other suggestions on websites to purchase comics would be nice as well, aside from the obvious Amazon.com and eBay.com websites.

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