I first heard about and became interested in Sun Wukong the Monkey King about twenty years ago. I was initially attracted to the basic design of the character -- at least the version I first happened to see as a bronze statue -- but once I started looking into who this character was, I immediately saw why the character has been a staple of Chinese storytelling for centuries. I've gotten several versions of the basic story over the years and it was kind of a no-brainer to order a copy of Maple Lam's Monkey King and the World of Myths as soon as I heard it was coming out.

The book opens with a modified-for-the-sake-of-brevity 13-page origin of the character. If you're familiar with the original story, you might find yourself saying, "That's not how he got his staff!" or something but it's an early indicator that the book's more about getting to some new adventures than just another retelling. And sure enough, it's not long before Wukong is off on a quest to slay the beast that's terrorizing the people of Crete. In a somewhat traditional fashion, though, he's sidetracked briefly, runs into Hades and is coerced into potty training Hades' new dog, Cerberus, who he ends up taking on his quest. The beast he's tracking is evidently in a labrynith and is half-man and half-bull. Instead of beheading the Minotaur, though, they become friends and Wukong re-unites him with his father, who then teaches him how to swim.

At this point, even if you're not super-familiar with either legend of the Minotaur, you might be thinking "What the heck?! I'm pretty sure the original legends didn't end that way!" You'd be right, of course; they didn't. As Lam mentions in her end notes, she deliberately wanted to mix and match mythologies, likening the idea to her own upbringing with both Chinese and American influences. The basic idea of mixing cultural gods in hardly new, of course. Even within the realm of mainstream comics, Hercules from the Greek pantheon was introduced as a rival to Thor of Norse mythos back in Marvel's 1960s books. In this particular case, we have Chinese and Greek but the implication both in Lam's notes and by the open-ended nature of the story suggest she'd like to continue this as a series (presumably if sales do well). I'm not sure which other myths she'd like to tap into, but there is a page in the story itself when they're explaining about all the gods that one of the figures looks like it might be intended to be Cthulhu.

The story is definitely aimed at kids and I think would be a fun read for them, with many light-hearted moments and a couple morality lessons on clear display. As with any interpretation of a centuries-old character, some of his personality aspects are played up more than others. So while Wukong does have some narcissistic tendencies here, for example, Lam puts more emphasis on his impishness and playfulness. The same can be said of the other characters, too -- Cerberus is very much more of a naughty puppy than the typical hellhound they're often depicted as.

Overall, it's a fun look at the character and I enjoyed seeing him interact with characters I don't think I've ever seen him interact with before. Worth taking a look at, particuarly if you'd like to introduce younger ones to the Chinese legend. Monkey King and the World of Myths is available from all major bookstores now and retails for $13.99 US.

While the individual issues of Con ∓ On came out last year -- and I somehow managed to miss hearing about it at all -- the collected edition reprinting all five issues was published in late March from Ahoy Comics. The story follows several different people connected in various ways to the comics community as they attend the Vista Al Mar Comics Festival over the course of several decades, starting in 1992 and wrapping up in 2022. Every year, the positions and connections with comics have changed and readers get to see their lives play out as both they and the industry at large grow in unexpected ways.

Well, I say "unexpected" but it's clear writer Paul Cornell is drawing on his first-hand experiences in comics over that period. While the individual character paths may be unexpected, the comics industry seems to play out pretty much identically to what we've actually seen over the past few decades with comics as a whole being derided by most everyone to a powerful (i.e. money-making) industry that seemingly everyone is trying to tap into. If you've been a comics fan since the early 1990s or earlier, you'll see a lot that looks familiar.

The story touches on any number of aspects of the industry, many of which didn't get much attention until years after the fact. Creators who shafted former friends, editors harassing (or worse) women trying to get into the industry, outright dismissal of anyone not expressly focused on superheroes, the perennial "women in comics" panel, the "surprise" from publishers that webcomics are a thing... While I've seen the story referred to as a "love letter" to comics conventions and, while it is that, it's an honest one that doesn't sugar-coat the uglier parts of them.

I liked that we storytelling setup here. Each chapter is a different convention and we're just presented with vignettes of whatever's going on with the various characters. Some are, at first, young enough that they have to be brought to the convention by their parents and eventually grow old enough to bring their own kids. Others are grizzled industry veterans who pass away during the course of the overall story. And there's plenty in between as we see a number of folks grow (and trash!) their careers in the process. Jumping back and forth between all of them gives both a sense of energy larger conventions have, and it also showcases just how many different perspectives there are at a single show. Everybody attends with their own agenda, and we see many of them on display. Again, no doubt based on first-hand experiences Cornell witnessed.

That was one thing I found a little odd about the book, though. Not bad, really, but something that caught my attention early on and I found it a little distracting every time I encountered it. Namely, that the story makes the disinction between fact and fiction very blurry. Like, there are any number of references to real people and events. One of the main characters has some direct interactions with Roz Kirby, one of the actors that attends the con is expressly cited as having played a Romulan in a fifth season episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation (with a later cameo on Star Trek Discovery), Cornell himself makes a brief but notable appearance... But then there's a lot of other elements that are obviously drawn from real people and events -- ones that are immediately recognizeable as soon as they appear -- but the names are changed. In some cases, I can understand not wanting to drag real people's names in the mud posthumosusly, and I can understand wanting to dodge some sensitive topics for professional survival, but the parallels with the real world counterparts are plain. They're only disguised as much as Superman is when he puts on a pair of glasses, so why even bother? It just made for some weird mental shifts when, on one page I'm making a mental note that all references to Julius Kerunkle are actually referring to Julie Schwartz, and the next page, I'm just presented with Jack Kirby as himself. If you don't know any of the people involved, it'd be fine but I found it just distracting enough to take me out of the story in many cases.

Which makes me wonder who the book is aimed at? As I said, I found the super-insider stuff distracting when it was shifted into fiction... but I don't know if people who weren't already familiar at that level would appreciate the book in the first place. Would anyone who came to comics in, say, 2015 appreciate the vibe of a convention circa 1992? Maybe they would, I don't know, but it seems like it's all deep enough that you have to come to the book not only loving comics and the comic convention culture, but having loved that for several decades. Heck, would anyoe under 30 appreciate the first half of this at all? Maybe the shift-to-fiction stuff doesn't bother most people, or they know enough to be familiar with the '90s convention scene but not enough to know the specific personalities and stories being referenced.

I'd be remiss if I didn't mention Marika Cresta's artwork. I know she's got a good body of professional work out there, but I think this is the first book of hers I've actually picked up. She had one of, I think, the hardest jobs a sequential artist can be given: drawing not only the same characters over and over and making them look consistent, but drawing them at several different ages and making them look like the-same-person-but-older every time. An insanely challenging job that she seeme to handle with ease. Not to mention that she's regularly having to show the huge convention crowds and packed after-parties, and just a lot of busy details all over the place. Plus making the story move along smoothly? Excellent job on the artwork all around!

That fiction-shifting aside, I actually rather enjoyed it. I think it does indeed capture the spirit of comic cons over the years; I've been watching the changes myself since the mid-1980s and everything shown in the book felt familiar and true. I suspect that if you're popping over to read through my blog in the first place, you'll probably appreciate Con ∓ On but I can't vouch for a wide audience appeal. The trade paperback collection, as I said, came out in March and retails for $17.99 US.

I can't find the exact text of the story at the moment, but I've had this running through my head lately.

Early in the days of Jack Kirby starting to work on the Fourth World stuff for DC, he stopped into DC's offices. He met with, among others I'm sure, Carmine Infantino who was art director at the time. Evidently Infantino had just gotten a copy of Neal Adams' cover to DC's 100 Page Super Spectacular #6 and was gushing over it.

"Jack! Look at this! All of our biggest heroes sharing the stage together! Isn't this just glorious!" (I'm paraphrasing here, but I'm fairly certain he did use the word "glorious" -- hence the title of the post.)

"I don't like it."

"Why? What's wrong with it?"

"Well, look at them. Superheroes are all about action, but these guys are just standing around. They should be running and flying and moving. This is way too static."

Infantino disagreed, obviously, as he ran the cover as is. I can't say for sure, but I think Adams did agree with Jack on this and took it as a learning opportunity. Me? I happen to agree with Jack too.

Completely unrelated, here's the cover to DC's Absolute Power Special Edition #1, "prelude to the biggest DC Comics event of 2024."

There have a been a handful of stories/franchises that I became a fan of almost from the moment I became aware of them, and I've remained a fan of since. In the order that I discovered them: Star Wars, the Fantastic Four (and, to a lesser extent, the Marvel Universe in general), Doctor Who, and Firefly. I enjoy other franchise as well, of course, but those four are the ones that have remained perennials. While I don't partake of each and every iteration of them, I do give them enough attention to be able to scrutinize whether I want to pick up the latest book or watch the latest movie or whatever. I bring this up because, of late, they largely haven't spoken to me at all. And today's post is me trying to sort out why.

I've already talked here about the past two years of Fantastic Four comics have left me cold. This weekend, I happened to read through the Clobberin' Time trade paperback that came out in January and felt much the same. Like Ryan North's stories, it was executed well enough but it ultimately fell flat for me. I didn't connect with at any level. I've had the same general disinterest in Moon Knight which was another favorite of mine back in the day. (Though, to be fair, the character has been handled very inconsistently over the decades so I've never been as big a fan.) There's been exactly one Fantastic Four story published in the past three years I've really enjoyed at all, and nothing's been done to follow up on it. (And, actually, as I think on it, the FF story I last enjoyed before that was never really followed up on either.)

Doctor Who. I watched the two new episodes Disney+ dropped last week and... meh. I think Ncuti Gatwa and Milli Gibson do a fine job and I like their characters, but the stories just lie flat for me. I wasn't a big fan of any of the specials from last December either. The show has never been even close to 'hard' sci-fi, but it's shifted into straight-up fantasy with barely a veneer of science fiction. I also hate musicals; however good the music itself is, the story always grinds to a screeching halt and we get an extended charaterization monologue that I would rather see handled in a "show, don't tell" manner. The story, for me, is what's most interesting and most important and I don't care for these literall-anything-can-happen fantasy stories.

Firefly is certainly not as robust a franchise as the others I've mentioned, but it's had a variety of comics since the show ended two decades ago. While I liked the early stories Dark Horse put out, the Boom! Studios ones since 2018 have all felt like pretty generic sci-fi with the characters' names dropped in place. I'm not opposed to adding new characters like they have, and even having the existing ones grow beyond who they were in the original, but there's a lot that misses the feel of the show. They've introduced aliens and space portals and sentient robots, and it feels less like the gritty, backwater 'verse we saw on the screen and more like any other sci-fi story with a few Western aesthetics thrown on top when the artist can remember to include them.

The one bright spot of any sort for me lately has been Star Wars. I didn't care for Young Jedi Adventures and Tales of the Empire was just okay. But I quite enjoyed Bad Batch and, while The Acolyte doesn't really interest me yet, Skeleton Crew does sound intriguing. Andor season 1 was excellent, and I'm looking forward to season two whenever that drops. So not everything, but what I have enjoyed was really enjoyable.

So the question is: have I outgrown those story franchises that I used to enjoy or have audience tastes changed sufficiently that, in order to obtain an audience for what I used to enjoy, it has to be changed sufficiently enough that I no longer engage with it?

The notion of my growing older is certainly viable. I am, indeed, older than whenever I first encountered any of these and, particularly over the past several years, have had some experiences that have impacted my overall outlook. Notably Trump's presidency, COVID and the lack of an adequate response and most personally, getting hit by an SUV and being unable to walk for months afterward. Any/all of those events could have steered the direction of my life view to the point where I'm responding to very different story elements than I used to.

But let's stop a moment and look at what those story elements even were. Take a moment to review those franchise I listed; what do they have in common? (For Star Wars, think of that primarily in terms of the original trilogy and for Doctor Who, focus on the classic episodes.) I'll save you some time since I've actually given that a lot of thought over the years. The two biggest things I respond to in those are: a spirit of finding the new and exploration, and the centeral notion of a found family. They each have that in varying degrees and they have their emphasis in different places but they're all there. The found family elements should be pretty self-evident if you're at all familiar with the stories. The exploration elements of Fantastic Four and Doctor Who are pretty straight-forward, too. It's there to a lesser degree in Firefly; the explorations there have already happened, but only recently, so all those backwater moons are still trying to get things organized and settled. The characters aren't explorers per se but early settlers, which covers some of the same territory. In the case of Star Wars, the exploration is a little more meta -- while the characters aren't doing much in the way of exploring, the audience very much is with new aliens and systems popping up in every new scene of the original movie.

So can we apply that to more recent stories? Fantastic Four -- the found family element is very much there, but there's been precious little in the way of exploration since the "Empyre" crossover in 2020. (Although that had all the baggage of a crossover event that hampered that from being very good.) Doctor Who -- the found family element here again is very much in play with the Doctor and Ruby, and there is some exploration with the space babies and "Wild Blue Yonder" and whatnot, but the fantasy angle feels like they've thrown out all the internal rules of the show that they've spent decades (even just with the new series) establishing. Firefly -- the found family is technically there, but the character dynamics of the recent books feel just like a crew and not a family. There's some measure of exploration, but they've also thrown out many of the internal rules of the original show. Star Wars Bad Batch -- heavy found family story and lots of jumping around to new planets; virtually all of season 3 and much of season 2 was expressly about trying to find Tantiss. The found family idea is still prevalent in all these, in part because it's baked into their respective premises, but the exploration idea seems to have been largely downplayed across the board.

I obviously like stories that do not have the explortation and found family elements to them; they're not necessary for me to enjoy something. But when having those elements there are a large part of what attracted me to the story in the first place, and then you have them largely removed for an extended period, I very much feel their absence. Is exploration not trendy any more? People have been rattled by too much change and having too many unknowns in their future, and prefer their fiction to show something more stable? I don't know. I'm pretty selective with my media, so I don't try a lot of new shows and movies to see what's going on with broader trends. But in the small subset of "franchises I like that use exploration as central pillar," I certainly don't see much of it. Which suggests to me that, however my personal tastes have changed in the past several years, it's actually the media that has changed more.

Marvel, BBC, Boom! -- it's not me. It's you.

Here are this week's links to what I've had published recently...

Kleefeld on Comics: Will the REAL Doctor Richards Stand Up?
https://ift.tt/rXfiLDl

Kleefeld on Comics: Studying Kirby
https://ift.tt/8PC2u7l

Kleefeld on Comics: Marvel's 25th Anniversary
https://ift.tt/yenk4TQ

Kleefeld on Comics: Variant Covers Indicative of Late Stage Capitalism
https://ift.tt/0Kb6Wa4

Kleefeld on Comics: The Buttons of Doom
https://ift.tt/xCjcZAD

How about a Flashback Friday? The following is the very first piece I wrote for The Jack Kirby Collector way back in 2003. Actually, I think I may have written in 2002, but it didn't get published until issue #38 in 2003. Frankly, I'm kind of surprised how quickly/easily I found an electronic copy of what I wrote in a format (RTF!) that was still useable! Anyway, here my original "The Buttons of Doom!"
 

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Think big, but start small, they say. Appropriate here for two reasons. First, this is my foray in the researching Jack Kirby’s artwork and, while I have aspirations for great discoveries, this is not one of them. Second, how many of you noticed the size of Dr. Doom’s buttons over the course of Jack’s run on the Fantastic Four?

Upon reading through The Jack Kirby Collector #33, I found an interesting aside. As the caption points out, Stan Lee added some gutter notes to the original art of Fantastic Four #85, page 9. Playing art director, Stan apparently was dissatisfied with the large buttons used to clasp Dr. Doom’s cloak in place. He writes, “I think the big ‘buttons’ should have more detail, pattern, or modeling. They look too unfinished, too cartoony, this way.”

At first, it struck me as an odd request. Why would Stan now begin to concern himself with a minor detail like that? Especially on a character that had been around for the better part of a decade.

A quick scan through Dr. Doom’s previous appearances, though, reveals that the large clasps were in fact part of an evolution of the character’s visual. His early appearances in Fantastic Four and Amazing Spider-Man show a single small button holding his cloak in place. Not being one to dwell on inconsequential details, though, Jack’s renderings of Doom alternate between double and single button clasps over the character’s next several appearances. (Sometimes within the same issue!) Jack eventually settled for the two button approach, but down-played their visual importance. Even Doom’s appearances as late as Fantastic Four #60 show him with small claps, often covered by his hood.

So Fantastic Four #84 marks the first significantly-sized buttons on Dr. Doom’s cloak. They grow even larger in #85; a comparison between the splash on page 5 of #84 and the last panel on page 9 of #85 shows the circles to be the same size, despite a vast difference in the figure proportions. Stan’s suggestion for more detail begins to make sense.

Then we find Stan’s gutter notes again on the artwork for Fantastic Four #86, page 17. “Sol [Brodsky] — I’m not sure I like these designs on the button. They look like sunflowers!” Curious, considering the design we see published is simply a few diagonal lines to represent a reflective surface. Clearly the artwork was changed at some point after Stan’s comment.

So what design would Jack have included to make Doom’s clasps look like sunflowers? Well, without having the original to examine carefully, my guess would be a simple cross-hatching pattern. A rather logical texture for buttons.

It seems to me that this was production manager Sol’s invention, however. In the small reproduction I have, there are two circles also in the gutter next to Doom’s clasp. One hollow, one slightly smaller, but nearly filled in. The simple word “Thruout” hangs next to them. A note from Sol, perhaps, suggesting an idea to Jack. Or directions to inker Joe Sinnott. Was that filled-in circle the actual pattern Sol wanted before Stan’s sunflower reference? And who finally decided on the reflection lines? Why was Sol acting as a go-between for the writer and artist?

Minor questions in the end. Virtually insignificant in fact. But I think it shows a part of the failure to communicate that built up to Jack’s leaving a little over a year later. It also shows that we should be grateful Stan had some say in the art direction; otherwise we may have had to witness the Thing rolling on the floor laughing at the Sunflowers of Doom!

As I noted last week, things have been a bit busy around here, so I'm only now just getting a chance to read the ICv2 interview with BOOM! Studios President of Publishing and Marketing Filip Sablik from back in April. I'd like to call out the variant covers question and, more to the point, show how that's indicative of the problem we're currently facing with capitalism writ large. Here's the question and answer I'm specifically referring to...

One remaining question on the periodical business: we took a look at your April solicits for June. Pretty much every issue has two to three to five variants. Is that just the way the periodical business has to be done now in order to be successful?

The short answer is yes. Not to say that you can't find success with one cover, but I think it is very difficult. If you look at the current market and the titles that are really finding engagement with customers, they tend to be licensed, they tend to have a lot of covers.

On some level, it's a little bit of an arms race. At a certain point, you need to make sure that there are enough things for retailers and fans to pick from that you're not disappearing on the shelf. What we try to do to the extent that we can is be very curated about how we're approaching those covers. So what you'll typically see on our series is there is an artistic direction. Something like Pine and Merrimac by Kyle Starks and Fran Galan is heavily inspired by detective agency stories. We have a variant cover program where there are homages to that era of pulp fiction.

Typically, you'll see less just variant covers for the sake of variant covers. If you look at our solicitations now, ultimately, that's the judgment. Somebody may look at that and disagree with that statement, but that's how we approach it. We never have a situation where we're looking at the program and saying, “We have to have four covers on this. What's the fourth cover? We don't know.”

We do look at every project and every program and say, "OK, what do we think works for this? What makes sense for this particular series? What can it support, and what do we have creative vision for?”

Sablik says, point blank, that success is unlikely without variant covers. Now, there are certainly any number of measures you can use to gauge success, but I think it's safe to say he's talking about market success here and not critical or creative success. Market success is generally one of two things: the number of issues sold or the money generated by the number of issues sold. The number of issues sold is straightforward enough for most people understand: if you sell 1000 comics, that's better than if you only sell 500 comics. It's pretty much always a "bigger numbers are better" kind of metric.

The money generated angle can get a little more complicated. You might think, "Well, selling 500 issues at $3.99 is better than selling 500 issues at $4.99, isn't it?" All other things being equal, yes, that is true. But it's rare that all other things are indeed equal. Maybe they had to pay the creators more for one book versus another. Maybe the paper costs went up between the first and second books. Maybe one issue had a misprint and had to be pulped and reprinted. There are any number of possible factors that could mean 500 issues selling for $3.99 actually makes the publisher more money than 500 issues selling for $4.99.

So for the sake of simplicity, let's assume Sablik meant that succes = number of comics sold.

Now plugging that back into his statement, he's saying that if you want to sell more comics, if you want to increase your comics sales, you have to produce variant covers. But since the only thing differentitating one variant cover issue from the next is literally only the cover itself, why would more people buy an issue just because it has a different cover options? There are, no doubt, fans of particular artists who try to buy everything that person produces. So you will probably get some people who do indeed buy that one specific issue because it features a cover by one specific artist, even if that customer normally never buys that title. But there are two problems with that idea: first, that's really only a viable strategy if you're always able to use the most popular artists -- you can't just have any artist draw a cover -- and second, that only works for a single issue because the customer who buys an issue because Alex Ross did the cover isn't coming back next issue for the Greg Land cover.

No, the way variant covers work more effectively is because it's not more people buying those additional issues, but the existing customers buying multiple copies of the same issue. You're not increasing the number of customers buying the same issue, you're increasing the number of issues bought by the same customers. I think people sort of intuitively know this already, but I want to explicitly call attention to it. Because this is just a single example of where capitalism is right now.

Businessess have spent much of the past century trying to convince people to buy more stuff. They've created a very consumerist culture where people's very identities are wrapped up in the products they spend money on. Does Apple objectively make a better phone? It doesn't matter; people buy iPhones because they're iPhones and not some othr brand. It's as much, if not more, a statement about what brands they want to use as a reflection of their own personality than anything else. It applies across all sorts of industries -- I'm sure you know people who are Jeep people, Trekkies, Ralph Lauren fashionistas, and Disneyphiles. Some part of their identity is tied to a product or brand. They not only buy the product in question, but they buy material essentially advertising that they buy/bought the product.

What they're doing, effectively, is not trying to grow their base but trying to obtain more money from the base they already have. Apple has a trade-in program for their phones specifically in order to ensure they can destroy the old ones and effectively kill any sort of after-market; if you want an iPhone, you almost have to buy one from Apple and it almost has to be a new one. That's why car manufacturers always push OEM parts instead of third party ones; it's not that they're necessarily better/safer/higher quality, it's just that they don't get your money if you buy them from someplace else. Variant covers are a way specifically to target completist collectors to buy the same issue mulitple times; they're selling you the same product repeatedly because it's a way to get more of your money.

That's what we're dealing with broadly speaking. Capitalism today isn't about providing goods and services; it's about transferring as much of your hard-earned money as possible into the hands of a corporation that already has infinitely more money than you'll ever see in your lifetime. I think most comic fans understand the cynical way in which variant covers are made. But what Sablik is saying that maybe isn't as commonly known/understood is that their entire business model is predicated on telling the best stories possible, or providing the best entertainment value, or anything like that, but by using business tricks to get the most money out of people with the least amount of effort. And I don't say that to single out Sablik or BOOM! or even comic publishers generally who do the exact same thing. It's the entire structure of 21st century capitalism. You are not a person to them; you are a consumer. Your only purpose, as far as they're concerned, is to send as much money to them as possible.

I don't have a good -- or any, frankly -- solution for realistically opting out of this situation. The only thing I can suggest to folks is to understand the actual rules at play here -- not the ones you were taught; the ones Boomers use to complain about how these kids today don't work hard enough and buy too much avacado toast -- and work around/through all the loopholes they haven't gotten around to closing up yet. I heard someone recently complain about the phrase "if you're not paying for the product, you are the product" not because it's a lie but because it's only half of the truth. The truth is that you are the product whether you're paying or not. Again you are not a person to them; you are a consumer. Your only purpose, as far as they're concerned, is to send as much money to them as possible.

I'm not saying don't buy anything from any coporation ever; that's not realistic. You can enjoy and get a lot of use out of the products they produce. Enjoy their smart phones and comics and movies and whatever else. But understand what they're doing -- what they're really doing -- and act in your best interests, not theirs.