This and That

Man, I had this long post and my browser closed out on me. Oh well, I'll just hit the highlights then.

Jessica Alba's new movie, Into the Blue, came out yesterday, but I haven't gotten to see it. As you can guess I'm a huge fan (who isn't?) of the actress. But not just because she's a knockout. I have actually been a fan since she was on the new Flipper TV show several years ago. I'm glad she's finally getting her props.

Kirsten Dunst (Star of Elizabethtown, which takes place in my home state. Unfortunately all of entertainment, including comics, always seem to depict most Kentuckians as hillbillies, which is not the case) apparently leaked that the new villains for Spider-Man 3 would be Venom and Sandman. This is hard to believe considering what we know about the inclusion of Topher Grace and the rumors of The Chameleon. Guess we'll just have to wait and see. Man, this seems like Deja Vu. Have I mentioned this before? Anyway...

Finally caught an episode of Lost this season and I have to admit it's a decent show. Very mysterious and it keeps you on the edge of your seat with bated breath waiting to see what happens next. Great characterization as well. But if you are inpatient at all you'll probably lose interest.

Smallville opened up the season with a less than stellar episode in my opinion. Luckily the teasers for the rest of the season looked a lot better.

Finally on the TV front, Reunion seems to be on hiatus until November, which sucks since I have really gotten into the show. The bad thing about a hiatus like this is by the time it comes back on you've forgotten half of what happened. The show was only three episodes in. Why they would halt it like that I'll never know.

Well, it's October 1st and the next to last audition city for AI started giving out wristbands today. Unfortunately I am not there, which means if I want to audition at all I'd have to either drive for 30 hours next weekend to Las Vegas, the final city, or fly, costing me nearly $500.00 for the flight alone! This is my last year to try out as I will be too old next year. Still hoping for a miracle, as foolish as it may sound to audition. But I don't care what people think, so it's all good. :)

In this week's installment of Joe Fridays, Joe Quesada answered a question of mine in a decent amount of detail concerning competition, and what makes a decent competitor for the Big Two. You can read the entire installment at Joe Friday. Here is the snippet with my Q&A:

NRAMA: Moving on, “GonzoGoose” has another lengthy and multi-part, but interesting follow-up to a previous exchange in this space…

“You mentioned how bad you feel it is for the industry that there is no real competition, citing the past triumphs and ultimate failures of companies like Valiant and CrossGen. My question then is in three parts.

”First, what, in your opinion, would make a company successful enough to realistically compete with Marvel and DC? Is it just good stories, unique directions, or what?”

JQ: Well, first let me say a couple of things about those comments and a couple of apologies, because reading them back, I realized how much could be interpreted incorrectly or taken in a negative context. See, when we do these Joe Fridays, it’s a lot of time out of the day and most of the time a lot of questions. I try to answer them as quickly and as honestly as I can and sometimes you look at stuff as you read it back on the ‘net and go, “Shoot, that wasn’t very clear.”

When I spoke of Valiant having no name talent besides Barry Smith, I should have quantified that remark.

First, I was referring to Valiant after [Jim] Shooter, which is when the company began to truly take off commercially. Yes, much of it on the back of some stuff he created, but he was already gone at that point.

I also forgot about Bart Sears who was hugely popular at the time. And Valiant did have some established very talented creators like Don Perlin and Bob Layton, but as talented as they were, they didn’t have the type of marquee name that would guarantee a million-selling book. But the beauty of Valiant was that they were able to market their talent and ideas and make them into million sellers. They created true excitement around their product despite who was working on it. To this day I have never seen anything like it, unknown characters, relatively no superstar creators and in some case complete unknowns and yet people were very interested in what was going down.

And by the way, as someone who was there at the time, I still feel that some of those characters, had the company been able to stay the course, could have been as popular as some Marvel icons if they had had the time to gestate like so many classic properties have. To this day I still feel that Bob Layton’s X-O Manowar could have been a true classic given time and proper guidance.

NRAMA: “GonzoGoose” continues…

”Secondly, then would you not consider companies like Image, Top Cow, Devil's Due, Aspen, etc. real competition? I know they are not quite as big yet, but one can't ignore the success of Image and Devil's Due in particular, past or present. What would bring these and others to the forefront?”

JQ: Well, that’s where the second part of this clarification/apology comes in. All these companies have done well from time to time, but I still feel like there is a cohesive vision that is missing. Aspen may have that going on and I feel like they are poised to do it but they don’t have quite enough titles to do it just yet. Also, Mike [Turner] is doing work for DC and us, so it does lock up his time.

That said, they are a perfect example of a company that at least is aware of their message, they just need time to grow. This isn’t a slam on anyone and I don’t think it comes as a surprise to any of these publishers. Defining what you are or in some cases redefining what you are is the toughest thing that you can do. Devil’s Due I guess you could define as the license company, but that’s not exactly what I think fans are looking to hang their hat on when they want to make that investment.

Comic fans love universes, worlds that they can sink their teeth into. In that fashion, CrossGen was absolutely on the mark, unfortunately I just don’t think anyone was truly responding to the idea behind their universe. But when it comes to defining yourself to the market, CrossGen was the first company since Valiant that came out of the box and said, “Hey, here we are and this is what we do.” Actually when I think of it, it actually took Valiant about a year or two to truly define what they were, but you all get the picture.

NRAMA: The final part of “GonzoGoose’s” question serendipitously touches on that very subject. He asks…

”Finally, in order to be a truly competitive and successful comic company, is it necessary to have a cohesive universe, or do you feel creator owned companies can ever be realistic competition?”

JQ: I think inherently, that is the big problem with creator-owned universes unless you all decide to be creator-owned within one universe. Yes, I feel it helps, I think fans dig it and it allows you the flexibility to tell bigger stories when you need to. Sure, a guy like Frank Miller can do creator owned forever and he’ll be fine, but the world of comics is littered with people who jumped into the creator pool either to find out that it wasn’t for them or until they lost their shirts.

Look when the comic’s industry was at it’s deathbed six or so years ago, it wasn’t the creator-owned books that drug it out of the fire, it was the corporate icons (so to speak) that came to the rescue and started to bring in much needed revenue into the industry. It would have been great if a Spawn or Savage Dragon could have done it, but they just don’t have the clout of Spider-Man and Superman.

This is not a knock on creator-owned because I love so much of it, but the hard truth is that the industry needs all sides of it working properly to survive. Heck, we don’t even have to like each other, all we have to do is work at our highest level and things will be cool.

Not much else to say today. I was up half the night working on some lettering for an upcoming project of mine I'll elaborate in greater detail about later. I was also helping set up a store for Comic Avalanche. I'll also expound on that when it's ready to go.

The new design for my website, BrantFowler.com, is coming along nicely and better captures my tastes and personality I think, combining a metallic look with an artistic look, giving it the feel of someone who is both creative and logical/strong-willed, etc., which fits me. As soon as it's ready to go I'll announce it here. I may even have new artwork up there. I will definitely have new lettering, web design, logos, a forum and some other cool stuff!

And that's about it. If I don't post anymore today, CHECK OUT MY COLUMN TOMORROW! :)