Spider-Girl No More!

Published on 13 Oct 2008 at 10:39 pm. .
Filed under Comics.

After 130 issues of published comics (100 issues of Spider-Girl, and a scheduled 30 issues of Amazing Spider-Girl), Marvel is finally going to pull the plug on the book starring May “Mayday” Parker, the daughter of the married Peter Parker and Mary Jane Watson.

In an industry that is very harsh towards new comic books, female character, and teenage characters, Spider-Girl managed to prove a success beyond anyones wildest dreams. Spider-Girl was the only survivor from the MC2 universe, an alternate reality future version of the Marvel universe. This universe was pretty much the only place Marvel acknowledged the whole clone saga that nearly ruined Spider-Man in the early 90’s.

This is not the first time that Spider-Girl has faced cancellation. During the first 100 issues of the original series, Spider-Girl was nearly canceled about four times from my recollection before Marvel announced that following the 100th issue of Spider-Girl they were going to put the book a a short hiatus, only to bring the book back with a new #1 in a move to hopefully draw in new customers. With the new series came variant covers, such as an Ed McGuinness variant for issue #1, and an Arthur Suydam zombie variant for issue #13, and two other variants for the 25th issue. While this series did not do particularly well in the single issue format, it was a hit in the digest format and marketed to the younger crowd.

The near continuous publication of Spider-Girl comics has places her as the the heroine with the third longest issue count to her name once you combine each respective heroine’s various series. She-Hulk is currently on issue 33 of the fourth volume of comics (Sensation She-Hulk ran for 25 issues, Sensational She-Hulk ran for 60 issues, and the initial adjectiveless She-Hulk ran for 12 issues). She-Hulk is only surpassed by Wonder Woman. Wonder Woman is currently on issue 10 of her third volume, with volumes one and two running 329 and 226 issues respectively. An honorable mention goes to the fourth place heroine in Witchblade, who is currently on issue 119.

While I have enjoyed DeFalco’s “Mr. and Mrs. Spider-Man” in the pages of Spider-Man Family, and will accept reading Spider-Girl in said pages, there is a large part of me that is hoping to see a May “Mayday” Parker: The Spectacular Spider-Girl #1 in the near future. 🙂

And yes, I recognize that I used a similar headline not too long ago. The first was for a sensationalistic headline, while this is a very appropriate title for the post (ripping off the headline from Amazing Spider-Man #50).

4th Amendment not dead yet

Published on 15 Sep 2008 at 7:53 pm. .
Filed under Politics.

In a refreshingly shocking display of freedom, a San Francisco court ruled that the government must receive warrants before they may receive GPS information from cell phone companies.

This is a ruling I’m particularly curious about, because my family has called me a “conspiracy theorist” because I actually believed this very thing. I don’t know why my family thinks one must believe in conspiracies to think the gov’t should need a warrant before they can find out where you are, but that’s what some people in my family believe.

On Bristol Palin’s pregnany

Published on 1 Sep 2008 at 9:23 pm. .
Filed under Politics.

It has recently come to light that Republican Presidential candidate John McCain’s Vice-Presidential pick Sarah Palin’s teenage daughter, Bristol, is pregnant. These information was released with the intent to quell Internet rumors claiming that Sarah’s four month old child with Down Syndrome is actual Bristol’s.

The Democratic Party’s Presidential candidate Barack Obama has come out to publicly criticize those attacking Palin’s family matters. Barack Obama’s response is to quickly point out to everyone that will listen that his mother was only 18 years old when she had him, and that it is absolutely classless to attack his opponent’s family. Children should be off limits.

I frankly do not believe that the media even knows how they should react to this. I think most people would agree that dragging one’s family into it is very tacky and likely to hurt one’s cause more then it will help it, but it is the media’s job to report on things like this and let people decide for themselves. Unfortunately, in the first link in this article you will see that CNN is quick to point out that Sarah Palin is in favor of abstinence-only education, while Fox News goes to Focus on Family to get a put an anti-abortion spin on the news.

Google Announces the Launch of Google Chrome… Tomorrow

Published on 1 Sep 2008 at 7:45 pm. .
Filed under Web stuff.

Today Google the launch of the open-source Google Web browser entitled Google Chrome. Oddly enough, this announcement was set a bit early as the browser will not be made available to the public until tomorrow.

One might wonder why Google would enter into the browser market. To paraphrase a famous Homer Simpson quote: Google, how could you? We’ve all thought about creating our own Web browser at one time or another, but what about the victims? Hard-working developers at Mozilla, Apple, or Opera. These are the people who saw an overcrowded marketplace and said, “Me too!”

Looking at the description that Google has put out using a Web comic by comic book/cartoonist legend Scott McCloud, Google Chrome seems to essentially take many features that are already present in browsers, and puts the Google spin behind them. These features include:

  • Safari/Konqueror’s Webkit HTML/CSS rendering engine.
  • Opera’s “speed dial” feature.
  • A JavaScript Virtual Machine (present in the nightly builds of Firefox 3.1 and set to be present in Safari 4.0)
  • Firefox’s Awesomebar/IE8’s Smart Address Bar (dubbed Omnibar by Google)
  • Mozilla Prism (only not using Mozilla’s mechanism)
  • IE8’s InPrivate mode
  • Opera/IE8’s tabs above the address bar
  • Sandboxing (doesn’t every modern browser do this?
  • a harmful sites check (I believe IE does this, not sure about others

From what I can tell, the only major features that Google Chrome has for it are that tabs will be a separate process (a fantastic idea, but likely something other browsers could not due without a total software re-write), and native integration with Google Gears (something other browsers required a plug-in/extension for). All in all, a pretty good offering by Google. I hope that it offers us excellent developer tools like Firebug. Let us see if it takes off.

Virgin No More!

Published on 31 Aug 2008 at 8:37 pm. .
Filed under Comics.

Earlier this week Publisher’s Weekly recently ran an article on the closing of Virgin Comics New York branch. The closing of the New York branch signifies the end of Virgin’s publishing unit, leaving the video game, movie adaptation, and various other branches of the company.

Virgin comics was founded back in 2006 with the premise that they would be writing stories based on Indian myth using mostly Indian creative teams. I say mostly because Virgin eventually began to use big name American creators to come up with the concepts/plot behind their stories, but still written/drawn by Indians.

While the concept behind Virgin was interesting, beyond the its initial release Virgin Comics never actively promoted their new products. Virgin seemed to be more interested in the creation of intellectual property that could eventually be turned into transitioned into other mediums that offered higher potential for large revenue.

I wish them the best in their endeavor… though, like during their entire publishing history, I just don’t know how they think any of it is going to work.

Robert Kirkman on the future of the comic industry

Published on 18 Aug 2008 at 11:08 pm. .
Filed under Comics.

New Image Comics partner Robert Kirkman recently issued a contriversal video manifesto on the future of the comic book industry.

Writer of Image’s number one best-selling graphic novel The Walking Dead and the co-creator of Marvel’s phenomenally selling mini-series Marvel Zombies, Robert Kirkman recently shocked the comic book world when he announced that he would no longer be doing any more new work at Marvel, because he was just promoted to the level of partner at Image. A move that was noteworthy because it marks not only the first time someone other then an Image founder held a partner-level position, and because Kirkman is the first non-artist partner at the company.

During his video posting Kirkman called to the big name creators over at Marvel and DC to leave the comfort of their deals with their respective companies and instead create their own, original content. He points out that while the risks are high with creator-owned characters, so too are the rewards. Kirman declares one’s life in the industry is longer when one does creator-owned work compared to working for the big name companies, stating that they only want you when you’re hot.

Kirkman goes on to elaborate on his pro-creator owned position by asserting that the work being done at Marvel and DC does have their place. He advocates that their role should be to draw new blood into the industry. Often times young children learning to love comic book characters cut their teeth on super heroes. They are people that are investing in the characters, not the creators. It is Kirkman’s belief that once you reach a certain level you will have people purchasing work for what you’ve done, not for the character you’re working on.

Undoubtedly, this last statement is partially correct. The comic book industry has been slowly turning towards an industry where a book often sells based off of three factors: 1) The characters 2) The creative team 3) What is happening in the book. Often times, a series needs at least one of the three of the above in order to be successful. Case in point, Moon Knight is not a high profile character, but when his recent series launched with David Finch artwork. Since Finch’s departure Moon Knight has used sales boosts from Civil War to keep things afloat.

One point that Kirkman makes that many creators disagree on is that creators should only be doing creator owned work. Frankly, I think this is correct. I think that creators need to do both creator owned work and work for the mainstream publishes because there needs to be a bridge available for the people moving from following the character-inspired stuff to the creator-driven stuff. Also, doing work for both gives creators some level of back-up in case their creator-owned stuff does not pan out. During the video Kirkman admits that he may be wrong about some of the things he has said, and I believe that this is the thing he was referring to most directly. Needing to draw in new blood to Image I can see why he is stating this, but making obviously incorrect statements is not going to help his cause very much.

With all of that having been said, I salute Kirkman’s honesty and I must say I am presently surprised by his level of motivation. And that’s not just because I have a vast majority of the work that he has done. :-p

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