Coming Out of the Closet

So DC is going to make an established, supposedly iconic, character gay in a storyline starting next month. I applaud the decision and I think we'll see one of the male characters come out because we already have a fairly well known lesbian in Batwoman/Kate Kane.

Will it make me want to read a book I'm not currently reading? I doubt it, because I still have problems with the new reality. It's just new for the sake of change/mixing things up. I don't see that it's radically new or different than the same old same old that predated the new DCU. And as welcome and needed as this move is, it doesn't negate how little respect female characters get in relation to the male ones or how little respect female readers and older readers get. I'm not the demographic they want.

Now This is Depressing

A review of the current storyline in Wonder Woman that makes me really glad I stopped reading it and most other DC Comics after the New 52 launch. Women, who form half the population, still don't get equal respect to men. I'm not going to get into real-world politics here. I'm just sad that things seem to be going backward in the fictional realm, too. Based on the current events in Wonder Woman, DCnU sounds like a sad place to me.

Comics Website

Just poking my head out to post this link to a cool site, Just the First Frame, which allows you to see/sample a comic yet by posting only the first frame, doesn't violate copyright the way so many sites do.

I haven't otherwise posted here lately because I still haven't been reading comics and therefore, haven't had anything to talk about.

Quick Post

I so love these animated covers.

Yeah, I'm still here. Just haven't been reading comics lately. The stack is growing, despite my getting only a few a week now.

Full of Awesome

These animated comic book covers are amazing. So clever and well done. I followed a bunch of links to get to the source and forgot to leave bread crumbs to mark the trail. Sorry. But thanks to all who posted about these.

The Addams Family

Yeah, I'm still here. Just haven't been reading comic books. Not for 2 months! That's what DC's done to me, killed off my interest with the DCnU. Well, no, not really, but my enthusiasm has waned a bit. I'm still buying and now that I'm -- tada! -- retired, as of the end of 2011, I should start to be able to catch up. Anyway, Google caught my eye with its latest logo doodle, and since it's comics related, I realized it would make a good post to kick off 2012 here.

So, thanks to Google, I know that today is the 100th anniversary of Charles Addams' birth.

Google Doodle

I've adored the cartoons of this cartoon genius since I was a kid. My father had briefly worked in the stock room at Doubleday following his discharge from the navy after WWII and was able to buy a lot of books. Lots of non-fiction, some fiction, and a lot of cartoon collections. I bought my own cartoon collections over the years and a few years ago, my father gave me his because he knew how much I coveted them.

Charles Addams Collections

The one with the plain cover is Drawn and Quartered. Its dust jacket fell apart many years ago. Favorite Haunts still has its dust jacket, which is in remarkable shape. And Monster Rally is a softcover I was able to find on my own. A number of Addams cartoons are also in the bigger anthologies that collected works of many wonderful cartoonists. But none were quite as perverse as Addams was, though many cartoonists who followed him brought their own brand of lunacy to the genre, ie Gahan Wilson and Charles Rodriguez, both of whom contributed to the National Lampoon.

But back to Addams. I supposed my favorite of his cartoons was the skiing one. I'm too lazy to go find and scan it, but it's classic: a tree with one set of ski tracks that run up to it, around it on both sides, then rejoin in front of it to continue on. There's no caption; none is necessary as we're left to scratch our heads in puzzlement, and wonder about the nature of the human/creature who left those tracks.

I grew up reading all those cartoon collections over and over and over. I traced the art. I practiced drawing by copying them freehand. Cartoons, as much as comic books, were a vital part of my childhood and now, my adulthood. And the cartoons by Addams feel as fresh today as when I first read them 50 or so years ago.

By the time The Addams Family premiered on TV, they were all familiar to me, as well known to me as my own family, though far more entertaining. And were brought to life by that amazingly perfect cast led by John Astin and Carolyn Jones.

So, here's a toast to Chas Addams, as he signed his cartoons... one of the very best to create a world with pen and paper and a deep imagination.

DCnU Not So New

Read issue 2 of Voodoo and issue 3 of Grifter and I'm not feeling the love. I don't hate them, but I'm not seeing anything special in them, either.


Voodoo has a lot of sex in it, so far, which doesn't bother me, as Pris is using her sexuality more than being exploited because of it and even exploitation doesn't bother me if it's part of a larger story, but the thing here is, even allowing for a snail's pace of revealing the backstory, precious little is happening here. Yeah, there was some action, but I don't feel anything is really building here as opposed to wandering. I'll stick with it for another couple of issues, but I suspect I'll be dropping it. The tease of a Green Lantern appearing next issue is not helping as I've been avoiding the regular DC characters, except for Batwoman.

Grifter started out with an intriguing mystery, and while it's not meandering the way Voodoo is, it's not exactly great, either. The art is fine, but there's nothing that feels new here. And rather than letting me get into an alternate version of Cole, I'm finding myself missing the original very much. The reason for him wearing the mask, even what it looks like, is rather silly. Cole was my favorite Wildstorm character, but right now, I don't really care about him. I did in the first two issues, but this third one has squandered the emotions it built up. And visiting Seattle, home of Green Arrow, next issue? Oy vey!