Code Monkey Save World #1 Cover We tend not to focus on comic reviews here at Comic POW! We like to take a look at how books or story arcs fit into the greater medium and society. But every once in a while we do take a look at an individual issue and I think Code Monkey Save World presents a great reason to do so. Code Monkey Save World is a mini-series based on a universe derived from the songs of Jonathan Coulton. If you’re not into hyper indie nerd rock, you may still have come across Coulton’s work if you played Valve’s Portal and Portal 2 as Coulton wrote the songs that play over the credits of those games. Jonathan Coulton is quite the world builder; while most pop and rock songs revolve around love between a couple of everyday Joes and Janes, Coulton imagines a romance between an evil mastermind and a woman he’s captured or a literal code monkey and office secretary. Greg Pak has combined all these elements into one universe and the result is something that would probably make a pretty awesome Point and Click Adventure game. (I kept thinking of Sam and Max as I read this first issue) If you’re willing to suspend your disbelief (which, to varying degrees is required of every comic reader), I believe this series can be enjoyable by anyone, whether or not they are a fan of Coulton’s songs. The first page is a great example of this: ...

The Avengers name is a hot property right now. If you go to your local comic shop and look at the shelves, you’ll see seven comics with “Avengers” in the title. That kind of saturation can be confusing for the consumer, making it difficult to figure out what makes each book stand out, and last week, Marvel made it even more confusing by adding yet another Avengers title. Mighty Avengers is the first ongoing series to spin out of the events of Infinity, and this week I thought I would take a look at what makes it stand out from the other, similarly named, titles. ...

I’m just going to jump out in front of this and call it a rant. It’s inspired by Kari’s entry last week: So What’s With Batwoman?: Why This Is Important . I’d passively read about the Batwoman controversy and shook my head. Batwoman was the subject of a few early articles here at Comic POW! ( Dan’s 2012 DC Runner Up, vs Wolverine and the X-Men, and vs SHIELD) and we’ve always praised the art and the storytelling that set it apart from the rest of the Bat Family. However, being apart from the Bat Family was a double-edged sword. When financial constraints hit, Batwoman hit the chomping block for me. I always intended to collect it as an omnibus trade but I didn’t bother supporting it monthly since it didn’t fit in with the other comics I was reading. Since I didn’t read it monthly, I only followed the departure of JH Williams III from the periphery. At first I thought it was an anti-gay stance which I thought was weird after the whole Alan Scott thing. But when Kari brought word that it was an anti-marriage stance coming from Dan Didio himself, it was the straw that broke the camel’s back for me. ...

By now, you’ve probably heard about DC’s rather public PR nightmares from last week. One involved Harley Quinn and a dubious-at-best decision by DC editorial regarding soliciting artwork for an upcoming book. The other revolved around marriage in the DC Universe; specifically it centered on Batwoman and her longtime girlfriend (and recent fiancée), Maggie Sawyer. Though it’s been talked about on several other sites already, I’d like to offer my thoughts on why the second issue is such a big deal – and why DC’s handling of it is being viewed in such negative light. ...

I’m a history buff that has a huge breadth of knowledge. I know a bit about nearly every period in history and I know more than a bit in subjects that fascinate me. I’ve considered media history to be one of those areas where I’ve gone in pretty deep. I know about the radio wars and that ABC was spun off from NBC because of antitrust concerns. I know that cable TV was originally just a way for people in the boonies to get the over the air channels blocked by mountains and other geographic features. I know that TV was originally filmed live and that I Love Lucy was one of the first TV shows to record the episodes and ended up birthing syndication. The commercials were also done live and that’s the whole point of the Vitameatavegimin episode. What I didn’t know until I recently heard an episode of WNYC’s On The Media is that there was a fourth TV station way before Fox. This TV station was called The Dumont Network and it was directly responsible for The Honeymooners. In the same way that The Simpsons was born from The Tracy Ulman Show, The Honeymooners was born on Cavalcade of Stars which aired on The Dumont Network. This OTM segment also revealed that The Dumont Network invented daytime television. NBC, ABC, and CBS also owned radio stations and wanted people to listen to the radio during the day so they didn’t have daytime programming. The Dumont Network didn’t have radio stations, so they came up with the talk show and many other staples of daytime TV. They even invented a proto-PBS with a program that was supposed to entertain your kids and then make a loud sound when that was done so you would go and get your kids again. ...

Very few superheroes are lucky enough to be invulnerable like Superman or have a healing factor like Wolverine, so what happens when they get hurt on the job? Even heroes with good healthcare in their civilian lives may have trouble explaining away gunshot wounds and regular concussions when their insurance company gets curious. Then there are all the heroes whose vigilante career keeps them from having a stable nine to five with healthcare in the first place. So what’s the answer? In the Marvel Universe, the answer is to go to the Night Nurse. ...

It may be cliche to say that art reflects its times, but that does not make it any less true. Mark Millar’s relatively new book, Jupiter’s Legacy, is a book that very specifically speaks to 2013. However, as I’ll get to momentarily, the way we feel now isn’t unique in American (or even world) history and so, depending on which direction the book goes, could end up becoming one of the classics like Watchmen or V for Vendetta which are both very much products of their time, but still stand up today. The book opens up during the Great Depression, after the stock market crash of 1929. Within the first two issues there are a lot of parallels drawn between 1929 and 2008. It’s not perfectly parallel, as I intend to return to later on, but it certainly is the closest the world has come to that moment. Many European countries are still reeling from the Euro collapse and even here in the USA we haven’t yet fully recovered. Folks can debate on the reasons why things didn’t get as bad as they were in the 1930s, but it certainly is the closest that about 3 of the 4 living generations have actually experienced and so we can understand what drives the main characters. ...

There’s no one set format in which all comics are written. Things vary – sometimes wildly – from writer to writer, and from book to book. For instance, an author who spends a lot of time writing Superman comics will probably struggle for a little while if they suddenly switch to Batman comics, and probably even more so if they move to a different company and have to learn how things are done there. There’s even more of a striking difference between comics written today and those from the sixties; everything from artistic styles to speech patterns to narration boxes have changed in some way. ...

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. ...

Unfortunately, I won’t be able to go to Baltimore Comic-Con this year because of family commitments, but I had a blast last year and I recommend going if you’re in the area. It’s 7-8 Sept this year. But if my endorsement isn’t enough, check out the info they have sent me about this year’s Comic-Con: Neal and Josh Adams will be there. Neal Adams is best known for his Silver Age work on X-Men, The Avengers, Detective Comics, and Green Arrow. Josh Adams is the artist for IDW’s Doctor Who although he has also done work for both DC and Marvel. ...