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:

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?

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.

Cognitive Dissonance: Mark Waid on Digital Comics

Sometimes people ask me why Amanda, Trebuchet, Pixiestyx, Lance and I bother to run a comics Web site when not only is there no money in it, but when it takes so much Goddamned time on top of our day jobs that actually pay for the comics (and liquor) it takes on a daily basis to endure said day jobs.

Until recently, I could only briefly stop and consider how I might possibly articulate my 35+ year relationship with comics, shrug my shoulders and thell them to fuck off and mind their business. However, now I can refer them to this recent video by legendary comics writer Mark Waid, who describes what it was like to be a comics fan growing up in the pre and nascent direct market world.

Crisis On Infinite Comics

A couple of weeks ago, Marvel Chief Creative Officer Joe Quesada posted a few cryptic and interesting tweets, starting with, “The future is ∞”. Initially, we at Crisis On Infinite Midlives didn’t pay as much mind as many did because we figured Joe had just looked at our Twitter profile and suddenly realized you could use the ∞ in tweets (about an hour before Joe’s tweets, we had just gotten into a Twitter exchange with Marvel exclusive artist Mike Deodato, after all).

Speculation on the meaning of the tweets ran rampant, from the start of a new line of comics from Marvel, to a New 52-style reboot (But Marvel doesn’t reboot! And Miles Morales has always been at war with Eastasia!) to a baffled suspicion that Joey Q just found Wingdings in his font list, thus officially moving boldly into the state of the art digital technology, provided it’s 1996.

However, at this past weekend’s South By Southwest festival in Austin, TX, Marvel announced what Infinite Comics really means: three digital-only comics, written by Mark Waid and co-written and drawn by Stuart Immonen, tying into the upcoming Avengers Vs. X-Men event.

Well, just calling them “digital-only” comics is selling the thing a little bit short… or hyping them a little bit too much.

Nerdpocalypse Begins: San Diego Comic-Con 2012 Passes Sold Out

Let me tell you a story: in March 2006, hotel sales began for that year’s San Diego Comic-Con at noon eastern time. I logged into the sales Web site, picked a few likely hotels, went out to lunch, called Amanda to get her opinions on where we might like to stay, returned to the day job and attended an hour-long meeting, and booked the room at about 3 p.m. Flip ahead about two months, when I realized, “Huh… if we’re gonna actually do this, I should book a flight and get, you know, passes to the actual Goddamned convention…” and I logged in and got four-day passes without a hitch.

That was 2006, and our first SDCC. It is now 2012. Passes for this year’s SDCC went on sale yesterday at 11 a.m. eastern time. By 11:30 a.m., all four-day passes were sold out. By straight-up noon? Tough luck, Charlie; yer either in or yer out.

The State Of The Superheroine Addressed

Yesterday on Comic Book Resources, Robot 6 announced that Wonder Women! The Untold Story Of American Superheroines would receive its world premiere in Austin, Texas at the South By Southwest Film Festival on March 10, 2012 at 7pm. According to its official Web site this is a Kickstarter funded documentary, which:
 

…traces the fascinating evolution and legacy of Wonder Woman. From the birth of the comic book superheroine in the 1940s to the blockbusters of today, WONDER WOMEN! looks at how popular representations of powerful women often reflect society’s anxieties about women’s liberation.

WONDER WOMEN! goes behind the scenes with Lynda Carter, Lindsay Wagner, comic writers and artists, and real life superheroines such as Gloria Steinem, Shelby Knox and others who offer an enlightening and entertaining counterpoint to the male dominated superhero genre.

Check out the official trailer after the jump and read on for some separate, but related material, also posted to Comic Book Resources, by Kelly Thompson that questions just how equally men and women are portrayed in the comic book medium.

Eric Powell: “Goon Film Is Still On The Table”

We’ve discussed the possibility of Eric Powell’s The Goon as a feature length film here before.

This past Thursday, Powell updated his blog to clarify the status of the project and quell any rumors that the movie was dead in the water:

David Fincher and Blur still have the option for the Goon film and are still actively looking for funding. Recently some sites have been saying the Goon film has been nixed based on comments from Paul Giamatti saying he didn’t know where the film was at and we must have ran out of money. Let me assure you we have not run out of money… because we never had any money to run out of…Trust me, when someone steps up and we get this slated I will be screaming it from the rooftops. And if Fincher and Blur decide to pass, I will also let you know by posting something on thegoon.com. But there is zero change right now. We all remain dedicated and confident that we’ll get this thing done.

Fincher passed along to Powell that he is working to get the movie through the Hollywood development process and “emerge with our dignity and YOUR (Powell’s) hard fought independent voice intact.” So, what more could be done to help move this process along?

How about signing a petition?

More on the petition after the jump!

Catwoman Vs. The Red Fox: Fox Affiliate Calls DC Comics “Playboy For Kids”

So it’s 56 years after Dr. Fredric Wertham dumped Seduction of the Innocent on us, driving EC Comics all but out of business and forcing the Comic Code Authority on us, guaranteeing that I would reach adolescence without having to see an awesome zombie eat some whiny teenager’s face, and now we have this shit:

Most people think of comic books for kids, but many of today’s comics are anything but that. Turn the pages of DC Comics now and you will find plenty of blood, sex and violence.

Ah, from Fox! The network that brought us Married With Children, 24 and Temptation Island! What else do you have for us, Washington DC Fox Washington DC affiliate WTTG General Assignment Reporter reporter Sherri Ly?

“It’s sort of like a fictionalized Playboy for kids at its worst,” said Neil Bernstein, Ph.D., a child psychologist and author of “How to Keep Your Teenager Out of Trouble.”

Critics worry the once family friendly genre has gone too far. Psychologists point out the overexposure to sex and violence for young children can encourage aggression.

“I think too many kids would be put in harm’s way or at risk,” Bernstein said.

Ah, where to begin… since I’m a dick, how’s about that first sentence (And I won’t even spend too much time pointing out the vile structure of that compound sentence, since I am one classy motherfucker)? “Most people,” huh? What’s your source? Some study? A survey? Your mom? No, I’m guessing your editor, and considering he let that first sentence through, I wouldn’t trust his judgment. Seriously, if you tried to submit that sentence to my journalism professors, they’d recommend you switch to a psych major just to save the red ink.

Hitler Reacts To SOPA

This video (via Aaron Colter at Comics Alliance) explains everything you need to know about why SOPA, Stop Online Piracy Act, is a bunch of bullshit written by politicians in the pocket of corporations. Also, Hitler says “George Orwell would turn over in his grave” which is kind of awesomely ironic, ‘cuz, you know, Hitler.

More on why SOPA bites the bag, as well how you can help, after the jump.