Matt-Fraction

I’m a weird target for the Marvel TV shows. I don’t watch the movies. In fact, I don’t think I’ve seen any of the movies since Disney/Marvel started making movies with the characters they hadn’t sold to Fox (X-Men, Fantastic Four) or Sony (Spider-Man). Well, I’ve seen Deadpool, but that one is off by itself. Back in the early 2000s I saw the X-Men and Spider-Man movies and I came to the conclusion that movies were the absolute worst way to tell these stories. In modern comic book storytelling a story arc is usually 5-6 issues and a story may be made of many arcs. I was just ahead of my time because Netflix and Amazon didn’t exist yet. HBO wasn’t making epic stories like Game of Thrones. ...

I am a huge fan of Matt Fraction. His run on Hawkeye is one of the best Marvel comic runs of the decade; Sex Criminals is so innovative, emotional, and honest; The Defenders was a trippy run; Satellite Sam great for early television nerds. So I excitedly went into ODY-C which was not only sold as a gender-flipped Odyssey, but also takes place in outer space. ODY-C - Beautiful page art ...

Reading Sex Criminals Vol 1, one almost feels like Fraction and Zdarsky never expected to be able to get away with this comic. It’s almost even neatly wrapped up by the end in the sense of one of those stories that leaves more questions unanswered than answered. In fact, Suzie makes fun of this in the first page of Volume 2. Viewed from another perspective, the story that is the basis of Sex Criminals is so insane (even though, as I noted last time, contains a great many wonderful metaphors), that Fraction and Zdarsky were forced to cram lots of story in those first five issues in order to keep readers from giving up on the bizarre concept. In contrast, this volume seems to be the creative team stopping to catch its breath; It’s not a bad thing. The story begins with Jon and Suzzie deciding they are done with robbing banks and will try and save the library in a normal way. Then it’s time for personal growth for Jon and Suzie as well as the return of Rachel and the introduction of Robert Rainbow.

We are used to comics containing metaphorical representations of puberty. With the X-Men it is no coincidence that the mutant powers kick in when the characters reach puberty. There’s no better metaphor for the inexplicable changes the body partakes during puberty than to suddenly start shooting lasers out of your eyes. Let’s not forget Rogue’s power. Her near killing of a boy when acting on the urges that come from puberty is the perfect metaphor for promiscuity. Elsewhere in the Marvel Universe, we have Spider-Man. He is doing stuff in his room that he doesn’t want his Aunt May to discover. And, I think it’s pretty obvious what Spidey’s webbing is a metaphor for. With Matt Fraction’s Sex Criminals the puberty metaphor is completely stripped away although new metaphors about sex come to the fore.

Everyone who is talking about comics has already written about what a great run Fraction’s Hawkeye is. Here at Comic POW! it was Dan’s best Marvel comic of 2012 and Kari explored the amazing art. But what is it about Hawkeye that’s so resonant right now? Yeah, Matt Fraction’s unique sense of humor helps (there’s a Sex Criminals commentary coming as soon as I find the time to write it). Yeah, Aja’s art is exemplary. But I think it’s much more than that.

While I was on vacation last week Image Comics announced a boatload of new series coming out soon. Here they are: The Fade Out I’m not a huge fan of Ed Brubaker, but I do respect his work on Fatale. It’s going to be ending after its 24th issue and Brubaker will be working with Sean Phillips (who he also worked on Fatale with) on The Fade Out. Here’s how Brubaker describes it: The Fade Out is my ultimate noir story. It’s a brutal crime story set in late ’40s Hollywood, and all spinning around the mysterious death of an up-and-coming starlet. For people who’ve been waiting for us to return to Criminal, this will be exactly what they’re looking for, but on a much more epic scale—going from studio backlots to the debauchery of the rich and famous, and even stretching back to the horrors of World War Two. I am a fan of noir, but what’s really exciting about this announcement is how it’s shaking up the industry. Phillips and Brubaker will have full creative control and ownership of their projects at Image for the next five years. Image Comics was founded because of the Big Two having ownership of characters created while working for them. But this is an even further move. I think this new move is motivated by Thrillbent and Panel Syndicate proving that the Internet is finally coming through on its promise of no longer needing a publisher. So if publishers want to stay in business, they need to provide something above and beyond what creators can get doing it on their own. It’s an exciting shakeup that could lead to even more creative works in a space that really needs it.

Iron Man 3 has just been released on DVD, which makes now the perfect time to discuss some of the controversy surrounding its primary antagonist. The way the movie handled the character of the Mandarin upset some long-time comic fans and relieved others. When I first saw the trailers for Iron Man 3, I was concerned about the inclusion of the Mandarin. He’s been one of Iron Man’s greatest foes for decades, but as his name suggests, the character was created without much sensitivity during an era when the US was deep in the Cold War. The fact that the trailer showed a British actor of Indian descent dressed in very stereotypical fashion did not assuage my fears.

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. ...

I’ve bee waiting for this series ever since I first heard about it. It has Matt Fraction (who I LOVE from Hawkeye, Fantastic Four, and The Defenders) and it has a ridiculously fun sounding premise. Suzie has a secret. When she has sex, she stops time. She’s alone with this secret until she meets John, a young man with the same “gift.” In the new Image Comics series SEX CRIMINALS by Matt Fraction (SATELLITE SAM) and Chip Zdarsky, Suzie and John embark on a journey of self-discovery, intimacy, and… well, actually, they do what every time-stops-when-you-have-sex couple would do: They rob banks. ...

Satellite Sam #1 The AMAZING Matt Fraction ( see today’s post in which Kari explores his teamwork with Aja on Hawkeye) will be teaming up with Howard Chaykin for a new black and white series called Satellite Sam. I’m extremely excited for this series both because of Fraction’s involvement and because of the time period in which it takes place: 1951 in the early stages of television becoming one of the most powerful forces on the planet until the advent of the Internet. I’m a history junkie and especially so when it comes to media. Additionally, I’ve been wishing more people would realize that the 1950s weren’t as perfect as we assume when we watch TV and movies from that time period. So this description just got me so excited: ...