Discerning Comics Reader David (DCRD) took to his bed, knowing he’d never hear the end of it from Hopeless Fanboy David (HFD) when we came across this interview with Brian Bendis in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (via the New Avengers Message Board).

After a brief introduction, explaining which movies members of the New Avengers come from, Bendis denies that’s the only reason this group of characters was chosen.

“‘I said, ‘Why can’t this book have the coolest members in it? And these are the guys I think are the coolest,’ Bendis says. ‘Why can’t this team inspire comic-book fans as well as the rest of the world?'”

You can all answer that for yourselves, drawing that tender thread between coolness and inspiration, I’m sure. I’ve got my hands full at the moment, as DCRD needs a compress and a copy of Street Angel.

The coolness doctrine is undermined somewhat by the subsequent quote from Joe Quesada.

“‘The New Avengers’ is set up to attract new comic-book readers by featuring several of our characters who have been successfully adapted to the big screen,’ says Marvel editor in chief Joe Quesada.”

Why, and look!

“Captain America, Luke Cage and Iron Man will also be members, and are on the drawing boards for their own feature films. Tom Cruise has expressed interest in playing Iron Man.”

Poor Spider-Woman and Sentry get no mention at all. They’re like the Professor and Mary Ann when they were still “the rest.”

It’s not just a list of this week’s new releases. It’s a battlefield where Hopeless Fanboy David (HFD) thrashes it out with Discerning Comics Reader David (DCRD).

For instance, we have New Avengers 1. HFD still stings from the dreadful Disassembled arc and wonders if he can support a title built on the rubble of one of his sentimental favorites. DCRD reminds HFD that Brian Bendis has written many entertaining comics and has cast the book with characters he likes and writes well (Luke Cage, Jessica Drew). HFD quotes Bendis-written Captain America dialogue. DCRD winces. The combatants stand at an impasse that will only be broken at the comic shop, though each prepares a cutting “I told you so” for future use.

Then, there’s the second volume of Ultimates. HFD finds it a grating and snide treatment of the super-hero genre. DCRD rolls his eyes at Mark Millar’s attempts at sophisticated cynicism, which end up being neither. Both snicker at the likelihood of a regular publication schedule but concede that the book is so lightweight that long stretches between issues scarcely matter. Then, they think of the pretty, pretty art by Bryan Hitch and feel twinges of shame that they’ll abandon their critical and sentimental standards when they see something shiny. To make themselves feel better, they scoff together at the prospect of buying the second issue of Intimates.

Ultimately, they’re distracted by Tales From Fish Camp from AiT/Planet Lar, which sounds really interesting. DCRD has been meaning to try something else from this publisher forever (having just realized that the splendid Electric Girl is part of its catalogue), and hopes that the comic shop will have a copy. (The shop has had copies of Demo in the past, but both Davids gave it a pass.) They know the shopkeep will happily order Tales From Fish Camp for him, and DCRD promises to handle that end of things while HFD wanders off to make fun of the second and third printings from DC and variant covers from Marvel.

This arrangement leads to a suspension of hostilities, pending the arrival of Fiscally Responsible David. But he’s tiny and weak, thank heavens.

I picked up the last two volumes of the splendid Alice 19th over the weekend, and it’s just a pleasure from start to finish. What started as an engaging teen melodrama with supernatural elements ends as a battle to save the world from darkness, with the future in the hands of shy, painfully normal Alice.

This story evolved so nicely, with the stakes raising progressively with each volume. Mangaka Yu Watase paces things superbly, gradually introducing the supernatural elements without losing the humanity at the root of Alice’s struggles. And I still love the idea of the power of words that Watase explores.

So, this was my first “everygirl discovers amazing powers, saves the universe” manga, and I have to say I loved it. If anyone has any recommendations of other stories in this vein, let me know. I’m already enjoying Watase’s Imadoki!, which is more a case of “everygirl struggles doggedly to convince people around her not to be such jerks.” (I guess that can count as a mythic struggle, now that I think about it.)

I was wondering in earlier volumes why Watase included those text pieces in some chapters, where she talks about her work, her travels, how cold it is, whatever. I found out the thinking behind these pieces in the invaluable Manga: Sixty Years of Japanese Comics. Apparently, they’re fairly common, particularly in shojo, and they’re seen as a way to let the readers connect with the creator more informally. It almost seems like a means of building brand loyalty, if the brand is the mangaka in question. So Watase chats amiably about how she’d love to have a pet if her apartment wasn’t so small, and readers nod and smile in recognition, like they’re having coffee with a friend. Simple enough.

For those of you who are interested in manga, I can’t recommend Paul Gravett’s book strongly enough. It’s a fascinating overview filled with illustrations from a staggering variety of manga. It’s also wonderfully written, with a scholarly foundation but in a really engaging, almost casual voice. And the sample pages from manga of every stripe alone are worth the price.

It’s amazing to look at how the manga industry grew up with its readers, adapting to reflect their interests and tastes. It seems to be more integrated into the culture, too, not just a niche hobby like comics are here in the U.S. I don’t know if Marvel and DC can learn any lessons from manga at this point, but it will be interesting to see howOni does with its manga-esque “real mainstream” approach and varied genres.

This week’s comics have made me grumpy.

Powers 6 is solid enough, but I’d love it if they could get a handle on the typos.

Supreme Power 13 arrives, and it still isn’t going anywhere fast. There’s also something about the way the hookers get played for laughs and cheesecake even as they’re being systematically murdered that creeps me out.

The current arc in Daredevil is supposed to be some big, thematic culmination, but it seems like more of the same to me. And the “chaos magic” gag in #67 is irritating and gratuitous.

I’m not quite sure where Natasha’s rant against gender-based double-standards of appearance came from in Black Widow 3. Her argument has merit in a general way, but she seems like an odd messenger. She’s routinely used her appearance to disarm and seduce opponents and informants (and in fact does so in this very comic), and she does nothing to articulate the contradiction. She takes advantage of the double-standard and uses it as a professional tool, and it might have been more interesting if she’d pointed that out. Honestly, I’m as unnerved by the “beauty industry” as anyone; I liked the recent Mystique arc that took a swipe at it. The discussion of it here just seemed like odd, underdeveloped boilerplate.

Remember John Byrne’s brief stint on one of the Spider-Man books where he revealed that Sandman, who had undergone a meticulous reformation process that played out over years in a variety of comics, was just faking the turn-around? Remember how much of on-line fandom hated that twist? I’ll be curious to see if there’s a similar reaction to the big reveal in Flash 216. I haven’t read a lot of the Wally West run, so I’ve missed many of the “Rogues gone good” stories this issue references, but I do remember Heat Wave’s turn from the pre-Crisis Barry Allen stories. It seemed like the only break Barry got at the time, and it was rather a nice change of pace.

Now, I’m going to go read the latest volume of Hot Gimmick to restore my mood. Man, Akane and Subaru are adorable.

I’m back from Thanksgiving travels, picked up the week’s comics, and they weren’t exactly a cornucopia of goodness. There was one exception.

Adam Strange is brilliant. It’s the most solidly entertaining thing DC has put out since Formerly Known as the Justice League. (Disclaimer: I haven’t read Superman: Secret Identity yet.)

Give yourself a holiday present. Go out and buy this week’s issue and track down the first two.

A lot happens in the first four issues of DC’s Manhunter. Prosecutor Kate Spencer fails to convict the murderous Copperhead, then launches her vigilante career by tracking and killing him using super-villain gadgetry stolen from an evidence locker. She leaves that same gadgetry lying around to be found by her young son, who winds up in the hospital. Clearly at fault for her son’s condition, she still finds time to spar bitterly with her ex-husband. After an unsuccessful battle with the Shadow Thief, Kate blackmails a protected witness into providing tech support for her costumed activities.

And she’s the protagonist.

This title really shouldn’t work for me, given my usual tastes in super-hero comics. It’s got an unsympathetic central figure with a deeply suspect moral framework. The material is dark and violent. But writer Marc Andreyko has posed a number of intriguing questions about his central character, and he’s created a fictional corner of the DC Universe that’s well worth exploring.

It helps that Andreyko is starting from scratch with the character. He’s developing his own sandbox while making it work in the larger DC context. Even Kate is aware that she’s breaking conventional cape rules, demonstrated in a memorable dream sequence. She knows she’s crossing the line, so why does she?

Readers don’t know the answer to that yet. The title so far has been more concerned with establishing Kate’s circumstances than exploring what drives her. But the ambiguity is tantalizing rather than frustrating. Her actions are so brutal and her choices are so contradictory – she’s an officer of the courts and a successful one at that – that the reader can’t help but wonder how all this started. Part of the fun of the title is waiting for those answers.

Kate is a novice in a very violent game, and her inexperience shows. It’s a smart choice and more believable than if she was a ruthlessly efficient killing machine right out of the gate. And while it doesn’t exactly soften her, her fledgling status does humanize her a bit. It also drives her to consider her tactics, which can be fascinating to watch. The addition of the blackmailed ex-con to the cast is particularly promising. Dylan Battles is a tech-savvy scumbag who avoided jail by ratting out his super-villain bosses. Now he has a new employer who’s a different flavor of ruthless, making for an interesting dynamic.

Art by Jesús Saiz complements Andreyko’s efforts nicely. His pencils have a shadowy realism that suits the story of an apparently normal woman stepping into some very dark places. He also handles the super-heroic material well, with memorable fight sequences and nice renderings of figures like Copperhead and Shadow Thief. Comedy is in his repertoire as well; the pages showing Dylan’s ignominious career as a henchman are hilarious.

For all these strengths, the book still doesn’t seem to be finding an audience, which is too bad. The stories seem to be brushing up against the mainstream DC Universe, which is a smart move. (The Justice League is set to guest-star in the fifth issue, and there are references to events in Identity Crisis. Those references are a lot easier to swallow in a title like this than in more conventional super-hero fare.) I do wish DC had thought to slate a crossover with Birds of Prey, which is exploring similar subject matter in its current story arc. It might have given Manhunter the boost it needs.

Still, if you’re looking for an intriguing exploration of vigilantism in context of and contrast to a larger super-hero community, you should really give Manhunter a try. It’s an engrossing read with loads of potential.

Steven Grant posted a list of questions in the latest edition of Permanent Damage at Comic Book Resources:

1) What’s your favorite comic of 2004?
She-Hulk. I love its light-hearted approach, character-based comedy, and solid super-heroics. It’s a nice tonic, given some of the depressing material that’s been flooding the market.

2) What’s your favorite comics-related moment?
Awesome Andy’s moment of clarity in the sixth issue of the aforementioned. Actually, just about any Awesome Andy moment would make the short list.

3) What’s the worst thing to happen in comics in 2004?
Grim, depressing content translating into high sales in super-hero comics. It doesn’t help that I find the stories themselves pretty poor.

4) What’s your most fervid hope for comics in 2005?
That Marvel and DC (particularly Marvel) focus on quality over quantity in their publishing decisions. Flooding the market with more of the same doesn’t seem like the smart way to expand a dwindling market. It just makes it harder for interesting, unusual titles to make a dent or find an audience when they’re buried under thirty-seven comics featuring another Spider-Man/Wolverine team-up.

5) What aspect of comics in 2005 are you most looking forward to?
More Scott Pilgrim! What do you mean, “The second volume doesn’t come out until February”?

6) What’s your worst fear for comics in 2005?
Inertia. It seems like the Big Two aren’t trying anything new, either creatively or in terms of business practices; they’re just doing the same old things louder.

(Here are Matt’s answers at Highway 62.)

Congratulations to Paul O’Brien for surviving Chuck Austen’s runs on an assortment of X-books. O’Brien bids bon voyage (or débarras) on the occasion of Austen’s last issue of X-Men, and pauses to wonder if Austen isn’t “the worst X-Men writer ever?” The answer may surprise you, provided you’ve never read any of O’Brien’s delightfully scathing reviews of Austen’s work.

“The disintegrator communion wafers? The Draco? A five-issue adaptation of Romeo and Juliet with armour plating? Everything he’s written involving Polaris? There’s just so much in this run which defies belief. Usually with bad comics, you can at least understand why they seemed like a good idea at the time. But it’s incomprehensible that the Chuck Austen run seemed like a good idea to anyone.”

O’Brien has praise for Madrox, and he shares my disappointment that it isn’t doing better in terms of sales:

“For god’s sake, go and buy the thing. Show some support when they produce something genuinely worthwhile.”

This ties in nicely to O’Brien’s column over at Ninth Art, where he considers the plight of critically acclaimed books with miniscule audiences. He focuses in part on the “second season” concept that started with Sleeper and has been picked up by under-performing Marvel charmers like Runaways and She-Hulk. It doesn’t really bother me when a publisher starts with a new first issue, particularly if it draws attention to worthy titles. I do wonder why the publishers didn’t give the titles a decent push in the first place.

Also in this column, O’Brien talks about the Big Two Glut and the disadvantages publishers create for their interesting fringe titles when they saturate the market with high-profile characters in a slew of titles:

“In February 2005, for example, we can look forward to seven Spider-Man books, twelve Batman titles and nineteen X-books. (Depending on how you define each category – but you get the general idea.) By flooding the market with these books, many of which aren’t exactly great sellers either, the publishers ensure that readers have plenty of boringly obvious choices to take up their attention and time before they’re ever likely to consider the lower ranking titles.”

This probably explains why I’m so partial to marginal titles like She-Hulk, Runaways, Manhunter, and Fallen Angel. I’ve never had much interest in the first-stringers, at least not in solo titles. If I get interested in them at all, it’s generally based on the participation of a specific creator, as in the case of Greg Rucka’s excellent run on Detective.

It’s one of the more frustrating aspects of corporate comics, though. There’s at least some commitment to putting interesting, unconventional titles on the shelves or we’d never have seen these titles at all. But when it comes down to promoting them to the audiences who might actually enjoy them, neither Marvel or DC seems able to stretch out of their usual practices. Is there too much of a playbook? Is it fair for so much of the onus of promotion to be placed on the creators, like Peter David does with Fallen Angel?

I loved Archie Comics as a kid. Desperate to be older, Riverdale was perfect wish-fulfillment fodder. Archie went on dates and had his own car and had cool friends. Sure, it was all pretty wholesome, but at age six, it seemed like paradise. Now, at 37, I’ve found that same kind of escape.

I want to be Scott Pilgrim, or at least to borrow his Precious Little Life. Because Scott has it sweet, thanks to creator Bryan Lee O’Malley for Oni.

Scott is a twenty-something slacker. He’s happily unemployed, plays bass in a crappy band, has a cool gay roommate, and dates a cute high-school girl. He doesn’t have any real responsibilities, so life is nothing but possibilities. And he doesn’t even have to pursue any of them if he doesn’t feel like it.

As awesome as all that is, life throws him a twist. There’s this girl Scott (literally) can’t get out of his mind. Ramona Flowers is a roller-blading delivery girl who takes shortcuts in the subspace highways that run through Scott’s brain. It’s only natural that Scott would get a little obsessed, when you throw in the fact that Ramona’s smart, pretty, and undeniably cool.

That shortcuts through Scott’s brain make perfect sense is one of the great things about O’Malley’s story. The characters are all in such an amiable, slacker haze that nothing comes as too much of a surprise. Everything just flows effortlessly along, whether its late-night roommate gab or the arrival of one of Ramona’s seven evil ex-boyfriends. The everyday and the surreal mix perfectly.

The characters are wonderful, from ambition-free Scott to caustic roommate Wallace to adoring, adorable Knives, Scott’s sort-of girlfriend. The scenes with Scott’s band, Sex Bob-Omb, crackle with chemistry as they bust on each other in the ways that good friends do. And Scott and Ramona are a sweetly romantic pair, despite their circumstances. Those circumstances – Scott must defeat Ramona’s seven evil ex-boyfriends if he wants to date her – give the book (this is the first volume of six) a kind of quest structure, though “quest” sounds like an awful lot of commitment for this bunch.

I have to admit that slacker fiction usually makes me cringe. It seems to come in two flavors: existential whining or moronic hijinks. O’Malley neatly avoids these pitfalls. Scott and his friends are pretty happy with their circumstances, and they’ve got good reason. They’re at a place in their life when they can do precisely as much or as little as they want, and it’s refreshing that they don’t seem to view that as a crisis or a scam. It’s just how things are.

O’Malley’s illustrations perfectly suit the effortless charm of his story, and they have the same kind of everyday wonder. The characters are distinct expressive, and O’Malley does some of the best smirks in the business. Little comic flourishes fill the visuals, too, from the what-belongs-to-who layout of Scott and Wallace’s apartment to (sigh) the “Archies” logo on a drum set (sigh). It all works together seamlessly.

Enjoying comics can be a lot of work. From the shifting fates of franchise characters to stupid publisher tricks to the dozens of other frustrations large and small, the risk-reward equation can be perilous. With Scott Pilgrim, the rewards are enormous. It’s entirely engaging and deeply satisfying, and it really made me feel like that six-year-old flipping through his first comics. I can’t wait for more.

Up much too early again, so why not do some linkblogging before the coffee kicks in?

Case Closed has joined the ranks of Comics Worth Reading. I picked up the second volume of this fun mystery manga this week and liked it even better than the first. Viz has a really good track record with me.

Johnny Bacardi has pretty much the same reaction I did to Hi Hi Puffy AmiYumi. I would only add that I can no longer deny I spend too much time watching Cartoon Network, as I immediately recognize the voice actors from other ‘toons.

At the Low Road, Ed talks some more about hype. Read it now, and you’ll lose up to 25 pounds in just three months! (Or not.) Dr. Scott looks at hype through the lens of herbal supplements over at Polite Dissent.