Roger Langridge Gonzo From Marvel, DC

If you’re a casual comic book reader, you probably have no idea who Roger Langridge is. Here at the Crisis On Infinite Midlives Home Office, however, we are big fans, mostly due to his work on Boom Studios’ The Muppet Show comic back around 2009, when a Muppets movie revival was only the bulge in Jason Segal’s BVDs, and when reading a comic based on a childhood favorite TV show was a pleasant diversion from our constant morning joint pain.

(Digression before the meat of the story: if you are a Muppet Show fan, you owe it to yourself to find those issues. I don’t know how Langridge did it, but he distilled a visual show with a heavy musical element into a standard comic book, and he captured the tone flawlessly. Disney buying Marvel, meaning Disney suddenly had their own comic publisher for the Muppets and therefore could pull the license from Boom, has been, to us, the biggest tragedy of that merger to date).

Since that book folded, Langridge has been doing some work for Marvel on their John Carter books (See? Goddamned Disney merger fucks up all kinds of shit…), but no more. Following in the footsteps of Chris Roberson and announced, via the Internet, that he will no longer be working for either Marvel or DC due to “individual conscience”:

Everyone Is The Hero Of His Own Story: Stan Lee On Creators’ Rights

History is written by the victors, and Stan Lee is nothing if not a winner.

At least co-creator of Spider-Man, The X-Men and The Avengers and a fistful of other lucrative and profitable properties (as I’m sure they are referred to in the Disney front office), Stan started as a simple editor, moved into writing, somewhere along the line in the 1970s became the head cheerleader for Marvel Comics, both in the comics themselves in his Stan’s Soapbox column and in the mainstream press, and wound up making himself a deal skimming fat bank off of Marvel for not doing much of anything at all… probably because no viable corporation wants their head cheerleader to start yowling “Marvel fucked me without lube!” in the public prints.

So Stan lucked out, put himself into a good negotiating position and Got His. And while I stand by my continuing opinion that any comic creator – hell, any human being – who doesn’t want to get fucked by a major corporation probably should make sure their contract contains an anti-fuckery clause before signing it as opposed to bemoaning it afterwards, I have always wondered how Stan feels about guys like Kirby and Colan and Ditko, who were at the very least in the room when these icons were created, and rather than winding up with cameos in the multimillion dollar movie adaptations instead wound up humping an empty table at Artists’ Alley, a premature coffin, or worst of all, an Ayn Rand novel.

Well, wonder no more… or at least, wonder no more how Stan would kinda deflect the question if he was asked. Because Alex Pappademas did an extended piece that includes a short interview with The Man for Grantland. And that interview includes a question to Stan how he feels about the recent uproar over creators’ rights:

Todd McFarlane Leaves Bankruptcy, Miracleman Fighting Valiently To Remain Dead

Hide your baseballs, kids: Todd McFarlane’s out of bankruptcy.

Todd’s company, Todd McFarlane Productions, voluntarily declared bankruptcy back in 2004, and only an irresponsible fool would imply that it had anything to do with Neil Gaiman’s lawsuit against Todd over the rights to Medieval Spawn, Angela, and Cogliostro. That suit was reportedly settled back in January, so all that was left to put the company back into the Black Ink was to pay some assorted costs to cover odds and ends totalling $975.

Oh, and an afterthought check to Gaiman for an even million-one.

Brain Bleach – Wolverine Gets Mercury Poisoning Edition

Hey, remember that time when Wolverine and Freddie Mercury teamed up to fight crime? Yeah, I don’t either. However, Crisis On Infinite Midlives own Lance Manion has passed along this wacky comic pitch that has recently gotten renewed play on both IO9 and Rolling Stone. While it didn’t get the unnamed artist a job with Marvel, it did get the attention of bullpen member, Steve Bunche, as he noted on his own blog:

During my years in the Mighty Marvel Bullpen (February 1990-October 1998), one of my favorite pastimes was collecting the frequently wacky and often downright insane letters and submissions sent in by Marvel’s readers and eager hopefuls who aspired to join the ranks of Chris Claremont and Frank Miller as comic book storytellers…Seriously, how the fuck does someone even make the leap in narrative logic from depicting Wolverine stalking through the forest to having him run into Freddie Mercury of Queen for no apparent reason? That, dear readers, is a sign of true creativity.

Indeed. I would like a kilo of whatever that kid was smoking to come up with that idea…and a crate of whiskey. Stat.

Meanwhile, for your viewing pleasure, here are the Muppets with their cover of Bohemian Rhapsody. Enjoy what remains of your weekend!

Winning Friends And Influencing People: Grant Morrison On Batman

Grant Morrison was in Playboy this month. He was young, he needed the money. Thank you folks; I’ll be here all week… I live here.

But seriously: one month after featuring Michonne’s origin story from The Walking Dead, Playboy’s latest issue features an interview with Morrison that’s based around short blurb quotes about characters Morrison has written. Playboy seems to have a sudden enthusiasm for comics these days; perhaps Hef has realized that comic book fan are amongst the only people actually buying printed periodical magazines these days… although it’s more likely that he saw a picture of Rogue by Jim Lee and wheedled, “Get that big boobed girl for the centerfold! And someone change my diaper! We are at full boom-boom alert!” But I digress.

Morrison has some interesting things to say about characters he’s had a hand in – particularly King Mob and Fanny from The Invisibles – but he saves his most… shall we say, interesting… comments for Batman:

But Doctor, I Am Pagliacci: Jim Lee on Alan Moore and Before Watchmen

This past weekend, DC Entertainment Co-Publishers Dan DiDio and Jim Lee attended the Los Angeles Festival of Books. Why attend a straight book festival when the perfectly good Boston Comic Con was occurring on the same weekend? I’m guessing because if you’re gonna be forced to answer difficult and uncomfortable questions about the upcoming Before Watchmen, it’s probably easier to do it when they’re not being asked by, say, Fat Hispanic Superman.

And, at the DC Entertainment Presents: Watchmen – It’s Not The End, It’s The Beginning panel, difficult questions were asked, specifically related to the commonly held perception that the stack of prequel miniseries were personally and intimately screwing Alan Moore in a way that makes American prison showers so inviting. Specifically, one panelist asked Lee how he reconciled Moore’s issues with the prequels:

Alan Who? DC Debuts Before Watchmen Interior Art At C2E2

This past weekend brought us the C2E2 convention in Chicago, “C2E2” of course being an acronym for “a convention that’s growing like a weed since it is now almost purely and theoretically impossible to attend SDCC.” And since DC Comics’s Before Watchmen titles begin dropping in June, several weeks before the Big Dance in San Diego, and since displaying comics-related righteous indignation would technically require Alan Moore to obtain a difficult-to-secure work visa, it was a perfect time for Dan DiDio to take advantage of the con to trot out the creators and show off some preview art.

Pretty much all the creators were on the panel – you can get a pretty decent first-person recap of the panel at Comic Book Resources – but two highlights were Nite Owl and Dr. Manhattan writer J. Michael Straczynski’s comments on Alan Moore’s… shall we say inchoate, snide rage over the entire project:

Man Down: Graphic.ly Closes Online Comic Store

Crisis On Infinite Midlives hasn’t been around all that long in the greater scheme of things, but almost since our first day, we’ve been skeptical about digital comics, at least in the formats and forms of distribution in which they currently exist. Custom apps requiring mothership server authentication when you want to read your comics and with limited download and archiving options seemed less like buying comics than it did paying someone for the right to read their comics. This is very much unlike the experience of buying actual physical books from my local comic store, where they know me by name and ask me to stop offering ten bucks for half an hour alone with the Omaha: The Cat Dancer books.

Until now, these concerns have been a moot point. After all, digital comics is still a young field, and no matter which platform you chose to buy your digital comics, they would still be around for a while, allowing you to build your collection while the hardware with which to read that collection get better, faster, and more easily able to maintain your books locally. Right? Sure.

Wait, what?

Fanboys Vs. Zombies #1 – Oh, It’s On Now!

Ok, so, you’ve got your Comic-Con pass. You’ve survived the ordeal of finding a hotel in San Diego that will take your money and probably not make you room with a meth dealer. Sure, July is still about 4 months away, but you’re already getting pretty excited about Nerd Prom, right.

Of course you are. You know what would make Comic-Con even better?

Zombies.

Behold, released from Boom Studios at the crack of tomorrow:

One is a decrepit mob of gurgling, ravenous fiends…and the other is a zombie outbreak. When there is no more room in Hell, the undead shall take over Comic-Con! A crew of feuding best friends find themselves trapped inside America’s largest comic convention transformed into a seething cauldron of zombies. Is a horde of starving brain-eaters any match against reflexes battle-hardened by video games, nerves tested by horror flicks, and courage crystallized by comic books? Find out as an unlikely band of nerds use their genre savvy to survive in Fanboys vs. Zombies!

Seriously! How cool is that going to be? Just take a look at this preview art by Jerry Gaylord, who will be drawing the book:

Best. Masquerade night. Ever.

Fanboys Vs. Zombies will be written by Sam Humphries (Our Love Is Real). If you, like me, are too excited to wait for the full issue experience tomorrow, check out this preview over at Comics Alliance.

Fanboys vs. Zombies – it’s on motherfuckers!

Scrounging For Mangers: San Diego Comic-Con Hotel Booking Aftermath

The mad dash for discounted downtown hotel rooms for the 2012 San Diego Comic-Con is all over, bar the cancellations. Registration opened – and closed – last Thursday, and yesterday – April Fools’ Day, purely by coincidence – confirmation emails went to people lucky enough to snag them, leaving many disappointed. Not us, however… at least not completely.

Let’s start with the positives about the experience; unlike other years, the Web server for submitting reservations appeared to be more robust than a Vic-20. Thursday at the stroke of noon eastern time, I was able to get the Web page with the Magic Green Button to bring me to the registration page to load almost immediately, with only a couple of presses of the F5 (or: “Goddammit!”) key.

The registration form page opened immediately, and I was able to get my form submitted in its entirety by about 12:03. It was painless, at least compared to the last time I tried to obtain a room through the convention (2008), when it took me about two hours to get the page to load and by the time it did, the Hyatt, Sheraton and Hilton – Holy Grails of many convention goers – were a distant memory, like the dodo bird, or times when it was easy and hassle-free to attend SDCC.