Watching the Comic Con From The Sidelines

Well unfortunately only Lee could make it to the Comic Con this year and in order to afford it he had to cut off his leg and have a sex change operation in order to get free tickets and a hotel room. The modeling gig he got from Tarantino and company help to offset most of his costs. Still it just shows you how far the management and staff here at Comics And... is willing to go in order to get the inside story. Hopefully they can reattached the leg, but otherwise Lee makes a fine looking woman. We hope to get stories from Lee on his undercover work at the Comic-Con.

It is funny how the "news" from Comic-Con is really nothing too earth shattering at this point in time. Still some exciting projects and creator shake ups are certainly being made.

Warren Ellis and Simone Bianchi on Astonishing X-Men strikes me as almost odd. First off Astonishing X-Men should be All Star X-Men as it appears that what happens in that books has no bearing on what is happening in current X-continuity. Marvel has almost segregated the X-Men into their own little world and what happens in the rest of the Marvel Universe has no impact there and vice versa. Now this was the franchise that made Marvel the incredible bloated beast that it is. A quick side note is a huge congratulations goes to Joe Quesada and Brian Bendis for making the Avengers the sales driving machine to rule the comics world. I mean they switched over to making these books the number one sellers, then Mark Millar and Civil War have now cemented Marvel at almost 50% of the market. Personally I'm not a big fan of Bendis and Millar and still think DC is better, but the sales numbers support these guys as the best marketer of comics. Okay so that was not a quick side note, but Astonishing X-Men has taken the best characters out of any impact in the X-Men or Marvel Universe, so will Ellis continue that trend or will he make an impact with these characters. Also will this book be published on a regular basis. I'll give Ellis a chance to make a believer out of me and almost every book Ellis has done for a while has been gold, so maybe this will work also. Still in recent history beating Morrison's run will be a tough job, too bad Marvel basically ignored every thing he did. PS - What the hell happened to Desolation Jones - did Ellis' Marvel contract make him stop this book?

Mark Waid as Editor-in-Chief of BOOM studios was a major surprise. I love how the "Lying in the Gutters" rumour column almost got this one right. His quote "I'm told Mark Waid is only writing four issues of the Flash series. Possibly before taking over some nice big fat exec role at DC." So it was pretty funny when the announcement went out. Also it was nice to read that he will continue to write the Flash and Brave & Bold. I really hope that BOOM succeeds as Chip Mosher is a friend of this blog and Mark Waid has always come across as a smart and creative person. I can see BOOM as becoming the next Dark Horse type publisher, but I hope that their energies continue towards complete mini-series stories of all genres and not too much of a focus on licensed deals.

Phil Jimenez and Marc Guggenheim signing Marvel exclusives was almost a yawn announcement. Personally Jimenez has become way too slow and I'm not sure what project he has lined up that will be a knock your socks off type deal. Also all of these exclusives get signed and then what happens to the work. Andy and Adam Kubert made a huge splash signing with DC and yet Adam is already off Batman and Andy has not delivered any assignment even close to on time. The buzz from these exclusives are meaningless until something is delivered. I am sorry to see Marc Guggenheim go to only Marvel as I enjoyed his DC work.

Dark Horse new project has me excited. The premise from the series writer Rick Remender: "The End League is a project where we can do everything we've ever wanted to do with superheroes. A merging of The Lord of the Rings and Watchmen, The End League follows a cast of the last remaining supermen and women, all familiar archetypes, as they embark on a desperate and perilous journey through a world dominated by evil, in hopes of locating the one remaining artifact that can save their world — the Hammer of Thor." Everyone seems to love the hammer of Thor as I have recently gotten into Stargate and watched seven seasons to date, they also had an experience with the hammer of Thor. The character sketch also looks terrific, so this is a book I will be looking to order as soon as it is solicited.

Final Crisis will be by Grant Morrison and JG Jones from DC. The actual title is lame as hell, but with those two creators on this book, I cannot wait. I hope DC delivers with actual status quo rocking changes. Still my disappointment with Countdown to date has tempered any excitement I may have for this project. Of course the funny thing is I think DC has a lot of really good ongoing series being made right now. Still they need to do something really major to make this work (i.e. replace one of the big three with a new person, Dick as Batman, Chris as Superman and Cassie as Wonder Woman would be cool, especially with the Multiverse to allow stories to continue with the original three. In fact it could be an "ultimate universe thing"). Now I'm still waiting to here what was the big project that caused Kurt Busiek to have to drop off Aquaman after he had redefined that character.