Centralia. A Nice Place to Visit

Greetings! Here at On The Square Comics, we bring you the best in comic book entertainment. At least, that’s our very biased opinion. Thus far you have no doubt thrilled to the adventures of Lynch, as he struggles to simply be left alone to… to do … whatever it is he wishes to do.

But folks on Centralia VI just seem to be crawling out of the weeds to bother him and give him new problems with which to contend. And now the creators of Centralia are getting in on the act!

Normally, any production delays are the fault of our very talented and esteemed triple-threat artist, Jay “Fortissimo” Taylor. After all, the art takes longer to produce, and he does have three projects ongoing, two of which are already producing pages at a pretty good clip.

That was the case with issue 1 of Centralia, as we were just starting down the road of producing a comic book, and working through all the issues that come along with such a grand endeavor. We learned a lot, and thought that we might put these lessons to good use for issue 2.

So much for that.

The first two pages are ready to go, except for one problem. The “word monkey” (writer, to you non-artist folk) has been gumming up the works. That’s right, writer – Mike “Wordnik” Frangione – has, on both of the first two pages, failed to deliver the dialouge in a timely manner.

Calm down, calm down. Even though the words mess up a perfectly nice page, they are needed in order to get the story told. And Mike has been roundly thrashed for his tardiness. Except for his fingers, of course, as he needs them to type the words.

Anyway, soon, you will be able to peruse page 2 of Centralia 2, a marvelous page with plenty of action, and what is probably one of Jay’s most ambitious and eye-pleasing pages to date.

The folks at Centralia thank you for your support, and want to assure you that they are working feverishly to end the delays and get new pages to you in the weekly manner to which you are accustomed.

Once again, we thank you for your interest, and we hope that you’ve enjoyed the ride so far. We have lots of cool things in store!

The Old Order Changeth! Cap and Thor - no more!

The comic book world is in upheaval! Everywhere you look, people are screaming in pain! Two of Marvel Comics Group's most steady characters are undergoing massive changes. And not for the first time, in both cases.

Captain America is going to be replaced by Sam Wilson, AKA the Falcon. And Thor is going to be a woman, going forward. Details are sketchy at this point (and I haven't done a lot of digging), but the comic book fandom is abuzz about these changes.

It's clear that Marvel is trying to make a statement, but it's unclear what that statement is. My thought is that they are simply trying to goose sales, and controversy sells. There may be other social implication reasons for this, but I'm not overly worried about that.

As I've said many times before, just tell good stories. Don't renumber the titles. Don't cancel the book and restart it a few months later with a brand new team/brand new direction. And don't change the essence of the characters.

Marvel has pretty much done all of these things in the past, and the changes to Thor and Cap indicate that they will continue to make changes like that. And, as long as they tell good stories, I'll keep reading.

The one thing that I will say in dissension to these changes is that I'd rather that they made these changes and left Sigurd and Steve Rogers intact. Not to return to the roles, but to play a part in the new world. I had recently re-read Christopher Priest's "The Crew" and thought that it would have been cool to have had a Josiah X comic book published concurrently with the main title. If one Captain America is good, two must be better, right?

I'd like to see that now. I'd love to see Marvel give male Thor and Steve Rogers Cap their own books, to be telling stories alongside the newbies. There could be crossovers, team-ups, judgments, lessons learned and taught.... The possibilities, are, quite frankly, really interesting to consider.

Of course, I have very little faith in Axel Alonso, Joe Quesada and Brian Michael Bendis to do anything like this. I suppose we'll just have to watch this play out and wait a year or so before Marvel puts everything back the way it was.

I just hope they tell good stories along the way.

How I Spent My Zombie Vacation - Season 2 of The Walking Dead

All right - so the much hyped "The Walking Dead" season two finally aired. I also watched "The Talking Dead" and heard what some dudes (and creator Robert Kirkman) thought. I had some thoughts on the show as well. What are they? Glad you asked - although you may not be...

Overall, it was a typically good show. I loved the zombie herd, and how the living managed to escape unscathed (mostly) - especially Daryl's actions to save a guy he probably thought about killing himself. When the blood started to flow, I thought that was it for T-Dog, but he lives to run another day after spending some quality time up close and personal with a dead zombie.

I also loved the interaction between Dale and Andrea - It was clear something was up between them, and the show did a good job of getting it out in the open and moving on.

Now for the things I didn't particularly like. I thought the episode spent way too much time on the search for Sophia. Now, I'm not saying don't search - quite the opposite. But this is a TV show - cut to the chase, man. Some of the sequences that occurred during the search were interesting (gutting a zombie, the exploration of faith by different characters at the church), but as a whole...it dragged on a bit. And then they still hadn't concluded the search by the end of the show? This seems to me to be an unnecessary cliffhanger. There are plenty of other things going on to keep us coming back.

I was also not too wild about the scenes with Shane and Lori. Sure, there's reason for these two to be at odds with each other, but her pushing Shane to leave the group and Shane's nastiness to Carl didn't ring true to me. Of course, I've never been chased around by a world of zombies, so what do I know?

I just thought that if Shane had an issue with what went down, he ought to keep the discussions and nastiness between the adults. And how could Lori encourage Shane to leave the group and head off by himself? That just sounds like banishing him to die, as he'd be on his own and most likely become a lunchable for a pack of zombies, as he'd have nobody to help him or watch his back.

Finally, the scene with Shane, Rick and Carl in the woods. The setup was obvious - something was going to happen. I was wondering if the deer was going to attack Carl or something like that. I didn't expect Carl to get shot. And why, if Lori dislikes Shane as much as she does, and if she's not thrilled with how meanly Shane was treating Carl, did she let him go along?

But I did enjoy the episode, and am looking forward to the upcoming installments. This is easily one of the best shows around. But since I am actively interested in about 3 or 4 shows, I'm not really sure how much weight my endorsement would carry.

As for "The Talking Dead," I thought the best part was the behind the scenes stuff and the interview with creator Robert Kirkman (a comic book writer, not a graphic novelist, despite what they kept saying). The one takeaway that I got from the show was that Robert Kirkman reminded me a lot of Philadelphia Eagles head coach Andy Reid - in his appearance and mannerisms. Maybe that's just me.

They showed a clip of the next episode, but it was hard to put it into meaningful context. I'd wager to say that that clip didn't change anyone's mind as to whether or not they'd watch next week. The show is good enough to keep us coming back. It was also interesting to hear Andrew Lincoln speak in his real, british, voice. Quite a contrast to Rick's accent.

It's nice to watch a show that is able to give the viewers solid writing, solid acting, over the top gore, classic suspense and enough compelling characters and plot threads (without overdoing it) all in one show. It's really too bad there aren't more shows like this!

Given the success of the show, can a spin-off called "The Real Housezombies of Atlanta" be far off? I bet it would be at the top of many must see TV lists. Hell, I know I'd watch.

Disney Goes All Galactus On Marvel

That's right - for $4 billion dollars, Disney acquired Marvel Comics. Ate the entire Marvel World and is sitting pretty, just waiting for those movie bucks to start rolling in. The only real problem is that $4 billion capital outlay. Maybe Disney can get a bridge loan from Tony Stark or Bruce Wayne.

Some people have asked me what I thought of the deal, and I have to admit, I am somewhat indifferent. It's been a while since I have actively followed Marvel (or comics in general), so I don't have a real feel for this in the sense of the here and now.

Is it the worst thing that has happened to Marvel? Not likely. And I'll skip the silly, obvious jokes about Mickey Mouse teaming up with Wolverine. That's pretty sophomoric and trite, and, frankly, beneath me. Hahahahaha! Better to avoid it simply because that ground has already been covered. And besides, there's already been an Archie/Punisher comic book, so how bad could a Mickey/Logan team-up be?

Actually, this could be a good thing for Marvel. I think it's been a while since they were the company that was publishing the kind of comic books that got me interested and - more importantly kept me interested - in comic books in the first place. A lot of the characters that I grew up reading are so radically different now, it's like they are different characters.

The Hulk is red. Captain America is dead. Spider-Man is unmarried and single. Who are these guys???

For me, the trouble all started when Marvel forced Peter David off of the Hulk. It was a well-written, very enjoyable comic book - one of the few Marvel had at the time - and they forced Peter David off, to make room for a reimagining of the character by John Byrne. Which lasted all of 10 issues and had very little impact. The Paul Jenkins and Bruce Jones stuff that followed was moderately interesting. But then David was back for a few issues. What gives??? Forget that his run was long, never lacking for interesting ideas and never should have been halted...why did they feel it was the right thing to do to bring him back???

Then along came what I think was the the turning point for me and my love of comic books - Ultimate Spider-Man. At first, it seemed innocuous enough. It was a refreshed retelling of the Spider-Man legend with a new, contemporary take, complete with snappy dialogue and a revamped/bolder Peter Parker character. Kinda like what Man of Steel did except that it was written better.

So Brian Michael Bendis changed a few things, but essentially retooled a character's history that didn't need to be retooled. Among the changes was the removal of Gwen Stacy from the developmental years and the idea that Mary Jane Watson knew from an early point that Peter was Spider-Man.

The influence of the Ultimate series can be seen in the Spider-Man movies, as the canon created in Ultimate Spider-Man was the underlying schema used - as opposed to the original Stan Lee version which was the lifeblood of Marvel's flagship character for the 35-odd years prior to the movies coming out. Forget about all that crappy history - and the fact that Amazing Spider-Man was still ongoing and building on that history - we want the clearly superior (sarcasm heavily implied) Bendis version!

But I digress. I started out talking about Disney buying Marvel and have ended up covering old ground about some things I dislike about the current state of comics. Although perhaps this rant is somewhat pertinent here. I wonder if things would have been different if Disney had bought Marvel about 10 years ago instead?

Perhaps Disney would have recognized the value of that rich history that goes along with all of the great Marvel characters. They'd probably have steered away from such storylines as the Peter/Mary Jane marriage problems (which was painfully boring to have to read), which would have, in turn, steered us away from some of the half-baked plots that marked the post-renumbering Spider-Man issues.

Yeah, that's the ticket. At least, that's what I can tell myself. I can only hope that Disney's influence will help stabalize what was once a great world of characters. That the comics that will be produced now will maintain the connection to the past, rather than trampling on it and changing it at every turn. Perhaps this is closed-minded of me to prefer no changes, but I just want to enjoy - I mean really enjoy - reading comics again.

And it seems that the only way I'm going to be able to do this is to re-read older comic books.

And don't even get me started on my issues with DC Comics. That's fodder for another curmudgeonly post.

How I Learned To Love (Well, Appreciate) Thor

When I was younger, my buddy "Sluggo" and I would argue the most mindless, mundane minutae of comic book lore. We'd argue over who was the best comic book artist. Who was a better character. Which titles were good and which ones weren't. Whether or not some random plot point was totally stupid or only marginally so. I miss those stupid arguments sometimes...

Anyway, there were two arguments that never failed to spark up considerable dialogue. The first was which of us was the better artist, because - of course, in true fanboy fashion, both of us felt we should be comic book artists someday. There were many random "I can draw better than (insert name)!" This argument went on for a while until I decided that perhaps I'd rather be a writer. I still think I could have been a damn fine artist.

The second was "Which character is better?" And it frequently came down to Spider-Man (me) or Thor (Sluggo). Forget for a moment that Sluggo would pronounce O-din as Odd-in and refused to accept it when I would correct him. This argument was based purely on who was stronger. If it was based on which character had a better run of comics, Spidey wins hands down. It was pretty lean between the Stan Lee and Walt Simonson runs.

That's right - the Simonson issues. Other than the Lee issues - in my mind - the only significant run of Thor issues even worth looking at. After years of trying to convince me that Thor was great, Sluggo hits me with Thor 337. Look at the cover. It's ridiculous. Some weird lookin' dude in a Thor suit smashing the Thor logo. Big deal.

"It's great," Sluggo tells me. And he was right.

By the end of it, I wanted to see what happened next. Usually anytime someone tried to pick up Thor's hammer, they were unable to due to their unworthiness. Now here was Beta Ray Bill, not only picking up the hammer, but being summoned to Asgard by the All-Father (Oh-din) instead of Thor! What's a Don Blake to do?

And it got better from there. On to Beta Ray Bill getting his own hammer, fighting alongside Thor and just being a part of some really cool stories. Add in a french fry that 'kills' someone, a Casket of Ancient Winters (and a mortal who is entrusted with a centuries-old god legacy) and a Thor Frog, and - by Sigurd Jarlson's Beard, you've got something.

It was just the right mix of quality art, great storytelling, Norse mythology and just plain fun. A comic, that, just like Keith Giffen's Justice League, had a ball telling great stories without getting mired in the grim & gritty thing. Comics were meant to be escapist fun, and Simonson's Thor was just what the doctor ordered. The run even includes a hilarious Bob Layton fill-in issue that pits Thor against Hercules and is just as enjoyable as the Simonson issues.

In my opionion, it holds up very well when compared to today's comic books. Especially recent Thor comic books. And, while I haven't even flipped through a Thor comic in a few years...I doubt I'd like what I'd find.

So I thank Sluggo for introducing me to this great comic book run, and I thank Walt Simonson for creating it in the first place. If you haven't read this before (Thor 337-382), and you plan to do so - I envy you. You are in for a real treat.

Tales From The Basement: What Marvel Zombies Missed

I'm sure the phrase "Marvel Zombie" isn't going to make readers (if there are any) of this blog scratch their heads and wonder what the heck it is to what I a refer. In a nutshell, if you were reading Claremont/Byrne X-Men, Miller Daredevil, Stern/Romita Jr. Spider-Man or any of the other fine Marvel comics being produced in the early 80s, chances are you were a Marvel Zombie.

If you were also unaware that DC Comics, First Comics, Comico, Aardvark-Vanaheim and Eclipse Comics were producing comics at that time, chances are you were a Marvel Zombie. This post will concentrate on a few of my favorite titles from this time that were produced by DC.

All-Star Squadron

I think this debuted in 1981. What I remember most about All-SS (can't really abbreviate this one by it's first letters, now can I?) is that it featured, introduced and/or re-introduced a lot of cool characters that you didn't see all that often. Characters that have since become part of the DC canon. In my opinion, JSA writers/resurrectors James Robinson and Geoff Johns should have been thanking Roy Thomas in each and every issue of JSA.

You shouldn't be surprised to learn that Roy Thomas was the writer of this great series, and Rich Buckler and Jerry Ordway were among it's artists. The stories were classics - set during World War II, every issue oozed with authenticity. If I hadn't known better, I'd have sworn these comics were written in the 1940s. The Joe Kubert covers probably helped to promote this perception.

Roy Thomas was no dummy - he used a tried-and-true comic book trick by having the book cross over with the Justice League of America title, thereby guaranteeing exposure to a much larger audience. The good news is that the story was so good, even if you were not reading All-SS prior to that crossover, chances are you were afterwards.

What was most interesting to me is that Plastic Man was a pivotal character in this series. He was a federal agent of sorts who was sorta responsible for forming the team. I have always been bored by Plastic Man. I don't think that the writers ever took him that seriously. And I keep hearing about how he is the most powerful character in the DC Universe, but I never see this. And I thought that Frank Miller (whose work I usually really like) made him look like a total doofus in the Dark Knight sequel.

Anyway, some of the cool characters we were treated to were Johnny Quick, Liberty Belle, Firebrand, Steel, Robotman, Tarantula, the Alan Scott Green Lantern, the Spectre, Baron Blitzkreig, Per Degaton, the Ultra-Humanite, Cyclotron and Hawkman just to name a few.

The best part of this series is that it doesn't seem to have resonated with many people as it did with me. The stories are great and the art is great. If you are looking for a decent title to read that offers excellent team-oriented tales and a timeless storytelling style, go ahead and get some issues of All-SS. It compares very favorably to the Marvel output of it's time.

In fact, I liked this title so much, I forgot that I had already written about how good it was.

Batman & The Outsiders

Nowadays, most people probably think the Outsiders is an original concept. And it kind of is - but it's a derivative of the Batman & The Outsiders title that came about when Brave & Bold's 200th and final issue came out. Batman quit the Justice League and formed the Outsiders - a team of mostly all new characters that would be led by Batman.

As if this concept wasn't cool enough, it was written by longtime Batman Scribe Mike W. Barr (writer of the awesome Son of the Demon graphic novel) and drawn by long-longtime Batman artist Jim Aparo. From the getgo, I knew this was going to be one of my favorite all-time titles. Alan Davis became the artist in later issues.

The new characters were the sword-wielding Katana, the amnesiac Halo and the former prince Geo-Force. The established, but less used characters were Metamorpho and Black Lightning. The disparate characters were woven together expertly and Batman was convincing as the loner who suddenly wanted to lead a team.

Again, this title proved that good stories, good art and an understanding of your characters could work well to make a title that would hold up well more than 20 years later. Amazingly, these back issues also seem to have fallen through the cracks and can be had for a relatively small amount. But they're worth the effort.

Firestorm

This character, who was first featured in the Justice League of America and as a backup in Flash, had two attempts at a solo title. The first was in the late 70s and that only went 5 issues, a casualty of the "DC Implosion" which saw a good number of DC's titles killed in the late 70s.

The original 70s issues were written by the 3rd ever Spider-Man writer Gerry Conway and drawn by Al Milgrom. The second series, The Fury of Firestorm, was again written by Conway, but drawn by Pat Broderick.

It seemed to me that Conway was putting his take on Spider-Man, but calling it Firestorm. It read kinda like an updated version of the teen hero tales we were treated to when the original Amazing Spider-Man came out - interesting characters and pretty good adventures - and some cool villains to boot.

Ron Raymond went to school, dealt with a bully and graduated and went to college. The main differences were that Ron was popular, and the bully was the outcast, Ron was athletic (a basketball player) and he wasn't a top academic student. These are the sorts of changes that were implemented in John Byrne's Man of Steel miniseries and his subsequent Superman revamp, but I thought the concepts worked much better here.

A Few Words About the Mini-Series, Part 1

I had read somewhere (can't find it now, so perhaps I imagined this) that Watchmen was one of the first mini-series ever produced. This got me to hop up on my semantical, nit picky high horse.

First: It technically wasn't a mini-series. At 12 issues, it is a maxi-series.

Second: It wasn't one of the first, either. I believe that distinction belongs to Contest of Champions. And then, there were a few mini-series - Falcon, Hawkeye, Wolverine, Punisher, Magik, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Power Lords, Sword of the Atom, Elektra Assassin, Thriller and Dark Knight - just to name a few, that were out there before Watchmen.

In fact, I think that two other immensely popular 12-issue maxi-series may have preceded Watchmen. Namely, Crisis on Infinite Earths and Marvel Super-Heroes Secret Wars.

And even though I dispute the use of the term mini-series and the implied timeframe of Watchmen, it made me bristle even more every time that Watchmen was referred to as a graphic novel. It was not a graphic novel. It is, at most, a trade paperback. It can't be a graphic novel because it was published as 12 individial comic books.

I can't decide if the people who use the term 'graphic novel' use it (a) to make themselves seem knowledgeable on a topic that they may only have to write about once in a while - whenever a movie based on comic books comes out, or (b) to make themselves feel better about the fact that they read and enjoy comic books.

It's no secret what the perception is of folks who read comic books. There is no shortage of movies and TV shows that promote the timeless - and quite frankly, lazy, uninformed and unchanging - perception of comic book readers. Even mega sucessful movies like Dark Knight, Sin City and Spider-Man haven't changed this percetion.

But, please, do some research. Find out what a graphic novel is before you lump anything to do with comic books into the category. Just because it's a comic book, doesn't mean it's a graphic novel.

I can forgive the mini-series / maxi-series thing. After all, this is purely a semantical concern anyway, and only true fanboys (and I use this term with affection) would even bother to note the difference. Just as long as you know that Watchmen was not "one of the first" mini-series...that's good enough for me.