Is it still 1964? Is this a Philco?
August 8, 2012 7:46 AM   Subscribe

 
Very funny, but I have to say, I saw people watching TV on storefront TVs during Linsanity.
posted by Sticherbeast at 7:49 AM on August 8, 2012 [2 favorites]


Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh sick burn, Waid. I like it.
posted by Tesseractive at 7:51 AM on August 8, 2012


Can someone tell me what "Ben Day" and "SILH" mean?
posted by HotToddy at 7:55 AM on August 8, 2012


When I first saw this, I thought it was about 4 types of panels that Mark Waid uses all the time that never work. I have a hard time remembering who is the current comic internet punching bag and completely blanked that his Daredevil has forgiven Waid of any past sins.

But then I worked on my reading comprehension and it all made sense.
posted by robocop is bleeding at 7:56 AM on August 8, 2012


Yeah, just two days ago I saw a small crowd of people watching the Olympics on TVs that were in a Bang & Olufsen store window.
posted by vacapinta at 7:56 AM on August 8, 2012 [1 favorite]


IIRC, the Waid-penned Kingdom Come had a panel of Superman learning of a supervillain's doings by hovering before a multi-story column of television sets in his Fortress of Solitude, all of them showing news broadcasts from all over the world in their native languages - all of which he can presumably understand because the yellow sun of Earth also affects the language center of his brain.

So, you know, easy there, fella.
posted by Egg Shen at 7:57 AM on August 8, 2012


Maybe the Times Square television does have speakers on Earth-616.
posted by Faint of Butt at 7:58 AM on August 8, 2012 [4 favorites]


TBH I find 2&4 forgivable as shorthand if your setting has no particular time period.

I have seen way too much of 1 and 4 lately. And I'd say 4 actually stopped being shocking about ten years ago.
posted by Artw at 8:00 AM on August 8, 2012


I have seen way too much of 1 and 4 lately. And I'd say 4 actually stopped being shocking about ten yea-

(ARTW brays in agony as none other than TURNER D. CENTURY has impaled him on his WEAPONIZED CANE!)
posted by Sticherbeast at 8:07 AM on August 8, 2012 [13 favorites]


MOTHERFUCKING STEAMPUNK!
posted by Artw at 8:13 AM on August 8, 2012 [5 favorites]


Note to HotToddy:

I'm not sure, but I think 'Ben Day' is a reference to certain kinds of halftone dots created in older comic book printing methods. 'SILH' is just an abbreviation of silhouette, I believe.
posted by KHAAAN! at 8:14 AM on August 8, 2012


The Geoff Johns panel is exactly why I don't read Green Lantern comics anymore.
posted by The demon that lives in the air at 8:18 AM on August 8, 2012 [1 favorite]


Turner D. Century will never, ever stop being awesome.
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 8:18 AM on August 8, 2012 [2 favorites]


Turner D. Century

That probably makes my DC universe nemesis Crazy Quilt or something.
posted by Artw at 8:22 AM on August 8, 2012 [1 favorite]


Over 150 hits!
posted by Scattercat at 8:25 AM on August 8, 2012


If you really need to have a wad of text in your comic I figure you should cut the pretense and give it a page. Comics already have forewords and afterwords these days, why not do the exposition the same way? You're practically doing it already, just move it into the story proper.
posted by LogicalDash at 8:30 AM on August 8, 2012 [1 favorite]


The Geoff Johns panel is exactly why I don't read Green Lantern comics anymore.

So here's the thing. I grew up on 2000ad, and am devoted to it now. If you've got an iPad I urge you to download the app and the 69 page sampler, and you'll note that as well as being awesome its pretty damn violent. Sometimes seriously, sometime comedicaly, but hyperviolence has been a thing with it from the start and I grew up on that.

But somehow when you take something as silly and fun as superheroes and make it all about that, and you're doing that in order to prove how "serious" the silly things are... Ugh... Something about that really bugs me. And TBH it makes them dull and unimaginative compared to the comics from before when falling back on that was an option. I adore Moore and Miller, but their influence has done terrible things to Superhero comics.

Or maybe I'm just pissed because the "mainstream" DC comics of the moment are something I'd want to hide from my daughter even though she's really into the cartoons.
posted by Artw at 8:34 AM on August 8, 2012 [4 favorites]


Comics already have forewords and afterwords these days

Ugh. Always skip those.
posted by Artw at 8:35 AM on August 8, 2012


Or maybe I'm just pissed because the "mainstream" DC comics of the moment are something I'd want to hide from my daughter even though she's really into the cartoons.

Is it the blood, guts or decapitations?

I am kid-free, but I'd not let kids of mine read comics these days. Violence is fine, but.... ugh.
posted by Mezentian at 8:38 AM on August 8, 2012


DC has actually done some great "All ages" stuff, and I read those to her all the time, but mainstream DC mostly has this icky pretentious teenager vibe to it.
posted by Artw at 8:44 AM on August 8, 2012


Super Villan Concerned Technocrat to-do list:

1. Steal Acquire power source from LHC in Geneva
2. Build doomsday device "matter re-organizer"
3. Identify global targets points of intervention
4. Prepare list of demands key recommendations
5. (new) Surreptitiously install speakers on Times Square Jumbo-Tron
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 8:45 AM on August 8, 2012 [11 favorites]


Yeah, someone on twitter put up pix of people in a Scottish branch of House of Fraser standing around the televisions to watch the Murray tennis final in the Olympics
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 9:06 AM on August 8, 2012


Kinda surprised Waid would call out Johns so directly. If this is the kind of joke going around among DC writers, is it possible DC (or even Johns himself) is realizing the seriousbusiness ultraviolence is completely played out now?

Waid's one to talk about writers cramming in too many words. Kingdom Come is full of dialogue and captions that are either tediously telling things that Alex Ross's art is already clearly showing perfectly well or just splattering Bible verses all over the page like blood, hoping it will make everything seem grim and apocalyptic.
posted by straight at 9:15 AM on August 8, 2012


only 4?

I have done 1 before but only cause I had four pages of exhausting detail and splash paged before and a nice, simple panel of close-ups and talking is just to give the artist a freaking break.

I myself noticed a few performances from a wall of TVs in a shop window IN TIMES SQUARE, but even then I was thinking how retro and cliche it was. I have a shop window full of TVS in my latest but it takes place in 1957 sooooo....

Oh and 4? Also came up, do the point where I wrote a very detailed description of how you would stab someone like that in order to help the artist with the posing that got a "Okay, awkward." notice form the editor.
posted by The Whelk at 9:17 AM on August 8, 2012


Four panels that never work:

1. Liefeld panel.
2. Liefeld panel.
3. Liefeld panel.
4. Liefeld panel.
posted by Splunge at 9:20 AM on August 8, 2012 [4 favorites]


DC has actually done some great "All ages" stuff, and I read those to her all the time, but mainstream DC mostly has this icky pretentious teenager vibe to it.

I hope they do more - we walk by the comic store on the way home from daycare and my 2 year old often insists on going inside so he can say hi to the cardboard standees of Superman, Green Lantern, and The Flash.
posted by robocop is bleeding at 9:34 AM on August 8, 2012 [3 favorites]


1. Liefeld panel.

I've piled on Liefeld as much as the next geek, but I'm going to stick up for him to the extent of saying his panels, singly, often work. They may feature impossible anatomy, or otherwise flout correspondence with any remotely reasonable world, and we won't even get into the feet thing, but the one talent Liefeld really does have is for striking composition.

None of this is to say that the panels work in sequence to effectively convey story...
posted by Zed at 9:38 AM on August 8, 2012 [3 favorites]


Turner D. Century will never, ever stop being awesome.

He just really needs to make sure any given drinking establishment he frequents is listed in the phone book and has a clearly legible sign.

So it's obscure Marvel Humor Day here on MeFi, is it?
posted by Slap*Happy at 9:55 AM on August 8, 2012


None of this is to say that the panels work in sequence to effectively convey story...

Probably my biggest problem with them Storytelling wise they all take place in a formless void and there's not a great sense of connection between panels.

Also his faces and expressions are all the same, but that's more of a "bad art" problem.
posted by Artw at 10:01 AM on August 8, 2012


For some reason I'm fascinated by the ads in panel three.

BALLOO NIGHT

Koo! Ko!

TOO MUCH
posted by JHarris at 10:23 AM on August 8, 2012


Kinda surprised Waid would call out Johns so directly. If this is the kind of joke going around among DC writers, is it possible DC (or even Johns himself) is realizing the seriousbusiness ultraviolence is completely played out now?

Waid hasn't written for DC for several years now, so I doubt it.
posted by mightygodking at 10:50 AM on August 8, 2012


Saudis gone, Morrison is going, it's all Johns, DeDido and the new guys now.
posted by Artw at 10:55 AM on August 8, 2012


Morrison's off DC? Wasn't he responsible for fixing everything between Final Crisis and, uh, now?
posted by griphus at 10:56 AM on August 8, 2012


Yeah, just two days ago I saw a small crowd of people watching the Olympics on TVs that were in a Bang & Olufsen store window.

I wonder if they were doing it because they've seen it in movies so much?
posted by billyfleetwood at 11:02 AM on August 8, 2012


Slap*Happy: " So it's obscure Marvel Humor Day here on MeFi, is it?"

Well it is a day ending in "y"...

But seriously, please always make these jokes because 15 minutes ago, I did not earlier know about Turner D. Century, and I was a lesser person because of it.
posted by MCMikeNamara at 11:08 AM on August 8, 2012


Morrison has never said anything, but I think editorial dicked him around a lot on Final Crisis, in particular after he asked them not to do any New Gods storys in the run up to it they went and did exactly the opposite, and they tacked a whole bunch of unnesisarily stories by other writers onto it as they did with Batman RIP, a lot of them completly contradictory. Then Batman Inc got pushed back by Nu52 and it seems like they've done weird scheduling stuff with Action... So he's best off out of it I think. Batman Inc and Action are done by the end of the year then he's mostly on Image stuff.
posted by Artw at 11:20 AM on August 8, 2012


From what I've heard editorial failed to communicate Morrison's plans for Action to the other Superman family writers, leading to Superman and Supergirl books that had little to do with, if they weren't actively contradicting, the origins that he was setting down.
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 11:34 AM on August 8, 2012


Wow, at this point it sounds like Marvel and DC are going out of their way to alienate talent.
posted by griphus at 11:38 AM on August 8, 2012


This is the best Gutters that I've ever seen. It would be great if Waid did these more often, even better if Ryan Sohmer were cut out completely; I've never liked anything he's done.

And WRT Morrison leaving DC: if he had any illusions about the company that he works for being concerned with artistic integrity over short-term sales boosts, then he's been living in a fool's paradise, shockingly so for someone who's been in comics for as long as he has. Wait until they announce plans for Before Seven Soldiers.
posted by Halloween Jack at 12:07 PM on August 8, 2012


Metafilter: make everything seem grim and apocalyptic.
posted by herbplarfegan at 12:15 PM on August 8, 2012


He almost seems to embrace that sort of thing at time, with all his talk of iconic characters being their own thing living off in hypertime waiting to be channeled or whatever. Which worked fine when he was favour if the month at DC and they were doing an effective job marketing, but now it seems either he isn't or they just aren't competent.
posted by Artw at 12:17 PM on August 8, 2012


I liked Irredeemable and Incorruptible a lot, but yeah, I too thought at first that the joke was that these were all panels that Mark Waid has done. I'm pretty sure you can find examples of him doing most of these things without looking that hard. Maybe there's some meta-joke here I don't really get. I don't think anyone would care about this if not for the stab at Johns, which I also am not sure is meant as something serious or just ribbing the dude. I am shrugging. But OTOH, Irredeemable and Incorruptible? Those are worth reading.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 8:25 PM on August 8, 2012




From that link: I’d like to point out that if it weren’t for vile, women-hating misogynist shitbags, we wouldn’t HAVE a mainstream comics industry.

Oh, Waid is awesome.
posted by Mezentian at 5:05 PM on August 10, 2012


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