Heroes and Villains

Hero of the Week: Max Allan Collins for announcing in a recent Bookgasm interview that he’s writing a new mystery series set against the history of comic books. I don’t know any more than that (yet), but the idea of Stan Lee solving crimes for a couple of hundred pages makes my mouth water.

Villain: Rosario Dawson for not making her debut into comics creation terribly original. God bless her for loving comics and wanting to help create them, but does the world need another story – in any medium – about a hunter of the supernatural who does what she does because of something tragic that once happened to a family member? And Occult Crimes Taskforce just sounds like the latest addition to the Law and Order family. Celebrities bringing their names to comics is a good thing, but the comics themselves need to be at least as exciting as the celebrity.

Hero: David Fincher for signing up to direct Bendis’s Torso. The director of Seven, Fight Club, and Panic Room is the perfect guy to helm a dark, true-crime film about Eliot Ness’s trying to track down a serial killer.

Villain: Marvel, not for changing Spider-Man’s costume, but for trying to make a news story out of it as if it’s going to matter a year from now.

Hero: Andi Watson for starting that whole, wonderful Batgirl lovefest on LiveJournal. It does the heart good to see so many artists expressing their love of comics in such a spontaneous, joyful way.

Villain: Robert Leiter of Jewish Exponent for dismissing graphic novels as “just extended comic books gussied up by some promotional idea that touts them as ‘novels.’ And this includes Spiegelman’s Maus books and any of the others created by the so-called pioneers of this genre.” He goes on to say, “I used to be crazy about comic books. But I really can't figure out why anyone would pay good money for such supposed ‘adult’ versions of the stuff I read back then, or why reams of words have been wasted explicating such ‘books.’”