Back in January I wrote about Kevin Smith’s take on The Green Hornet. In February I wrote about Mark Waid’s first two Green Hornet volumes. Although it’s not unheard of with the Big Two, it’s certainly much more rare to have the freedom to interpret characters as you wish. Take a character as iconic as Spider-Man. Until Miles Morales (nearly 50 years into the character’s history), Spider-Man was always Peter Parker. Nearly every aspect of his character is immutable. In fact, that’s one of the reasons his marriage was dissolved - he didn’t have the old Parker luck with women. Yet, because Dynamite is working with licensed properties a few volumes at a time, each writer gets a lot more leeway in how they can interpret the character (with only the licensor typically making any objections).

When I was doing my undergraduate degree, we were just getting cell phones that could take sub-megapixel images. There was no video in most phones, and those that did shot videos that would show the size of a postage stamp on today’s monitors. Some of my friends and colleagues who were of African descent would talk about how black people got higher prison sentences for weed possession in the USA than whites. When I heard this, from my position of privilege in which I’d only once ever had to deal with racism (I’m ethnically Hispanic, but racially white), it was hard to have sympathy. Yeah, it was profoundly unfair that the same crime did not get the same punishment, but it’s not like weed was legal back then. You knew what you were getting into if you chose to do something illegal. It’d be like getting mad for going to jail for stealing something.

A few weeks ago as I was doing laps in the pool, my brain started wandering to comics and how I’d been so frustrated with DC Comics’ New 52 as the months passed and the Bat-Family timeline, in particular, became more and more of a mess. I became consumed with an idea and I was convinced I’d written about it here on Comic POW! I searched through the archives and couldn’t find it. I asked my wife and she remembered me telling her about it. But it was not on my personal blog either. So rather than wonder if Dan Didio had somehow read my blog, I have to wonder if he plucked my idea from the ether.

Here at Comic POW! because we’re not obsessed with reviews and are, instead, looking at greater themes within the works, we’re able to revisit older stories along with the newer stories. So this blog post kicks off a series focusing on Bill Willingham’s Fables. There has been a huge resurgence in interest in the stories of the Brothers Grimm. On one side we have Disney revisiting their animated films as live action films (as well as others leading to two Snow White films in one year). On the other side we have TV shows like Once Upon a Time and Grimm. But before the ABC show thought of what it would be like to have characters from our fables among us in the real world, Bill Willingham was telling a similar story nearly fifteen years ago.

As always, I’m covering Baltimore Comic-Con! So here’s a roundup of the news so far! Some of the announced guests include: Don Rosa at Baltimore Comic-Con 2012 Steve Conley, who you may know from JLA-Z from DC Comics, Star Trek: Year Four from IDW, and Michael Chabon’s Amazing Adventures of the Escapist from Dark Horse Comics or his self-published Bloop Don Rosa: after Carl Barks, probably the most famous people to work on Duck Tales . ...

It’s no secret that I’m a huge fan of Image Comics. So I was elated to hear they’d received lots of Eisner nominations. In fact, in many categories, there are multiple Image Comics nominees against each other. What follows is a list of their nominations and what I think. Best Single Issue (One-Shot): MADMAN IN YOUR FACE 3D SPECIAL by Mike Allred - I don’t know anything about this comic, but Allred does good work. Best Continuing Series: ...

I read Scott Pilgrim in its original manga-sized, black and white form when it first came out. With the final volume of the color version coming out this year, I thought it would be a great time to revisit the story as well as looking at how the addition of color changes things. I’ll be exploring the story and themes volume by volume. This time, volume 3. This volume is the culmination of all that’s come before - a lot of Scott insecurities hinge on his relationship to Envy and this volume is mostly about their relationship. There aren’t any real new examples of the main characters’ extended adolescence. Knives, on the other hand, continues her personal growth. This volume begins with her unable to contain herself in front of her fashion and music idol and then being unable to contain the fact that she must be so cool by association as both she and Envy have kissed Scott Pilgrim.

note on all the image scans: they are correct manga-style so they are read right to left Spend enough time doing critical readings of media and you come across the assertion that all media tells you about the culture it was written in. Sometimes, as in contemporary media, this is easy to tease out. Other times, as with science fiction, it’s by extrapolation. So I thought it might be interesting to re-read Love Hina, by Ken Akamatsu, as a way to to understand Japanese culture. Part One can be found here. Story Keitaro finally comes back from America. In the last book we learned that Kanako lusts after her brother and in this book Keitaro is confronted with that in a powerful way; we’ll return to this in a later section. Keitaro now looks like Seta and even drives as badly as he does. All the girls at the Inn now see Keitaro as manlier. Pretty much all the girls lust after him now except Sarah and Kaolla. So the dynamic has changed from Keitaro and Naru with Kitsune always open for some sexual play and Mutsumi being ready to grab Keitaro if Naru said no. And, of course, the somewhat disturbing Shinobu - not that she has a crush on an older guy, but that Keitaro occasionally thinks about it. So the book shifts to be a bit more of a harem manga where Naru has some real competition now.

Although Hinges began as a web comic, I was not familiar with the story prior to reading this book. What attracted me to this book was the interesting cover and interesting art style. The decompressed storytelling style has been in vogue for about ten years now. While many different writers (such as Brian Michael Bendis) in the commercial world are responsible for spearheading the idea at the idea at the big publishers, two different trends have lead to readers becoming familiar with the idea: manga and webcomics. Manga, beginning its tradition much in the same was as cheap pulps in the USA had a need for a great number of pages. Web comics, of course, can have infinite page counts because it’s taking place in an electronic medium. Of course, much of what makes web comics so innovative makes them hard to transition to paper. Often various compromises have to be made. And, of of course, the decompressed story telling means that those discovering the story for the first time on paper may find that at the end of the book, nothing much has happened.

Last time we considered Hickman’s use of the themes of love, family, and fatherhood as well as introducing the world, plot, and art. The title of this third trade is “There is No Us” and on the surface, it is about the dissolution of the tenuous peace between the Seven Nations North America. But the deeper themes of this volume are that of free will vs predestination and deception. The first two issues of this volume overlap with the twelve issues I examined last time, but I will include their plot elements as I provide a quick overview of the plot. Xiaolian calls a conference of the Seven Nations at the neutral territory of Armistice. Finally in a position of power, she seeks revenge on The Chosen for kidnapping the son she had with Death. As I mentioned before, many of the Seven Nations are not run by The Chosen (although they hold positions of power) and so they attempt to avert war. A situation I will detail momentarily leads to Xiaolian getting the war she wants. The Ranger finally finds his target and kills Cheveyo. After a confrontation with Death, he agrees to take Death to the facility housing The Beast (his son). The Three Horesemen decide they’re sick of following along with The Word and will go kill The Beast. They leave Ezra in a crumbling Armistice building and head to the facility housing The Beast. As I mentioned last time, The Beast has been plotting his escape with his computing device. He defeats the Conquest and affirms his dominance. He renames himself Babylon, names his computer Balloon and the book ends on a huge “OH SHIT” moment.