Author: admin

 

 

The following events took place at Comic-Con International in San Diego on Friday, July 21 between 5:30 PM and 11:30 PM.

FRIDAY 5:30 PM
“This is a snake-free zone,” proclaimed Michael Dooley, the moderator of the panel “Masters of American Comics,” about the landmark museum exhibition of the same name. Apart from people recording the panel with video cameras, including the ubiquitous Mike Catron, there were a mere eighteen people seated in the audience in Room 8 when it began. Mr. Dooley was implying that everybody else was attending a competing event going on at the same time over in the notorious Hall H dealing with that new threat to air travel security: “New Line Cinema Presents Snakes on a Plane,” complete with a personal appearance by Samuel L. Jackson. There was even going to be a “snake wrangler” onstage with live snakes from the movie. Snakes at a Comic-Con! (But I note David Letterman’s observation following the revelation of the Heathrow Airport terrorist plot that the threat of airborne serpents no longer seems as bad or as funny.)

I confess that I was tempted to see Mr. Jackson in person for myself. But I decided that the “Masters” panel was more important.

Dooley, the co-editor of The Education of a Comics Artist (and brother of former DC editor Kevin Dooley), commended us for being an “elite audience” and observed that at the “Masters” panel they would be “talking about comics at the Comic-Con, not action movies.”

“Masters of American Comics” is an exhibition that showcases the work of fifteen leading cartoonists, ranging from the early 20th century into the present day: Winsor McCay (Little Nemo in Slumberland), Lyonel Feininger (Wee Willie Winkie), George Herriman (Krazy Kat), E. C. Segar (Thimble Theatre Starring Popeye), Frank King (Gasoline Alley), Chester Gould (Dick Tracy), Milton Caniff (Terry and the Pirates), Charles Schulz (Peanuts), Will Eisner (The Spirit), Jack Kirby (Fantastic Four), Harvey Kurtzman (the original MAD), Robert Crumb (Mr. Natural), Art Spiegelman (Maus), Gary Panter (Jimbo) and Chris Ware (Jimmy Corrigan).

This show debuted last year in Los Angeles, and was so colossal that it was divided between two museums: the Armand Hammer Museum at UCLA and the Museum of Contemporary Art. “Masters” spent the summer in reduced size at a single venue, the Milwaukee Art Museum, but starting September 15 will be divided again between the Jewish Museum in Manhattan and the Newark Museum. There is also a comprehensive catalogue of the exhibition published by Yale University Press.

The panelists in San Diego included comics historian Brian Walker, who was co-curator of the exhibition (for reviews of his recent books on the history of American comic strips, see “Comics in Context” #66 and 71); Claudine Dixon of the Hammer Museum; and publisher/cartoonist Denis Kitchen and cartoonist/comics historian Craig Yoe, both of whom lent original artwork to the show.

As Dooley told the audience, the story of “Masters” actually began with another museum exhibition, the infamous “High and Low: Modern Art and Popular Culture” show, curated by Kirk Varnadoe and Adam Gopnik, that was held at New York City’s Museum of Modern Art a decade and a half ago. This exhibition “put great works of 20th century art” “side by side” with comics, advertising art, and even graffiti. Dooley said that “art people thought it was a desecration,” while “comics people were resentful at the secondary status given to [their] medium.” (That’s exactly why I didn’t go to “High and Low,” although now I wish I had.)

Dooley showed on screen Art Spiegelman’s “High Art Lowdown,” his critique of “High and Low,” done in comics form. In it Spiegelman quite bluntly asked why he and his friends (presumably the alternative cartoonists from his magazine Raw) weren’t in the show, as well as inquired about the absence of the early 20th century German artist George Grosz, whose illustrations, employing caricature, are now considered fine art, but are also arguably cartoons.

Spiegelman went further and invited museum curators to visit his studio, One of them was Ann Philbin, who was then the director of the Drawing Center in New York City, She agreed that the comics medium deserved museum exposure. She later became director of the Hammer Museum, where she instigated the “Masters” exhibition.

Claudine Dixon, the show’s catalogue coordinator, told us that she and the show’s coordinating curator Cynthia Burlingame were “drawn in against our will”: and “had no idea what comic art was about.” “I learned a lot in a year and a half,” Dixon said, and liked a lot of what she saw.

Walker said that he met the show’s other curator, John Carlin, in the early 1980s when Walker was working at the Museum of Cartoon Art in Rye, New York (which is someday to reopen as the National Cartoon Museum at the Empire State Building) and Carlin and Sheena Wagstaff were guest curating an exhibition “The Comic Art Show” at the downtown branch of the Whitney Museum of American Art in Manhattan. (I did attend this show, and recall being exasperated by its seeming premise that comics were not art, but that artists could create fine art by appropriating imagery from the comics. The work of Roy Lichtenstein provides the best known examples.)

Carlin invited Walker to work with him on the “Masters” show. From curating about sixty-five past exhibitions on comics, primarily for the Museum of Cartoon Art, Walker knew where to find collections of original comics artwork. The “Masters” show borrows from fifty different lenders, ranging from private collectors like Yoe to institutions including the Library of Congress and Ohio State University. (Later during the panel Walker said that he “kept running into dead ends” looking for Kirby originals. Someone asked if some collectors of Kirby artwork were wary of lending it out because so much of Kirby’s art had been stolen. “I couldn’t say,” Walker replied, perhaps diplomatically.)

Then Walker turned to what he called “the most controversial” aspect of the show: the selection of the “Masters.” (Most notably, there have been complaints that no women cartoonists were included. Herriman was African-American, so the show can’t be accused of confining itself to white guys. But to my mind the insistence on including female cartoonists smacks of political correctness. The criteria that the show’s organizers set for inclusion, as described at the panel, make sense to me.)

Rather than display works by hundreds of comics artists, it was decided to concentrate on fifteen cartoonists. A “lengthy” list of possible candidates was compiled. One of the goals was to “tell the story of the development of comics in the 20th century” through the specific artists who were selected. Another criterion was that each artist must have achieved “technical mastery.” Yet another was “formal innovation”: the organizers sought to determine “which artists most added to the form of the medium.” In other words, which artists proved most innovative in crafting the visual language of comics?

In the end, Walker asserted at the panel, the list of fifteen “Masters” was achieved through “compromise consensus.” In an online interview (http://journal.aiga.org/content.cfm?ContentAlias=%5Fgetfullarticle&aid=1398198) Walker had stated that “John [Carlin] helped me understand in the beginning that, in this type of [museum] environment, you really have to search for examples of work that are the most visual – graphically powerful – and not just the first time that Little Orphan Annie’s dress appeared or something. I’m probably a little more content-oriented, and he’s probably a little more form-oriented.” Walker told us at the panel that “Storytellers like Harold Gray [Little Orphan Annie] didn’t reinvent the form” and so they were not included. He said that Carl Barks (Uncle Scrooge) had also been on the list of possible artists, but “was not that innovative in layouts or design.” On the other hand, Lyonel Feininger, “whose comics career was only nine months long” did such “incredible” artwork that he was chosen. Walker said he had successfully advocated putting Milton Caniff in the show over the objections of Spiegelman, who had “a lot of input” into the selections. On the other hand, Walker told us he had “argued” for including Walt Kelly (Pogo) but failed. This show, it seems, is only about the visual dimension of comics, not abut comics as literature. Examining the idea of comics as the combination of words and pictures, or as Walker put it, “storytelling,” will have to wait for another show.

We were also told that at the opening of “Masters,” Spiegelman had said that they “should start working on “˜Masters II.’” In other words, one could tell the
story of American comics in the 20th century through an entirely different group of fifteen cartoonists. Later, an audience member asked “does this codification of Masters”–this designation of fifteen great cartoonists– “make it impenetrable” for other comics artists? Walker replied that “I hope this group of fifteen isn’t set in stone,” and that people don’t assume that these are the only cartoonists worth serious attention.

During much of the panel we were shown examples of each Master’s work from the exhibition, projected onto a screen, and even photos of the museum galleries in which the original artworks were displayed in Los Angeles.

Dooley informed the audience that the “critical reaction” to “Masters” was “a lot more favorable than” it had been to “High and Low” a decade and a half ago. Walker enthused that “the response to the exhibit was overwhelming,” leading to numerous articles in the media.

(Oddly, Walker remarked that “Art Spiegelman is not crazy about having his art exhibited at the Jewish Museum,” which is hosting part of “Masters” in New York, but Walker did not explain why. Then this week I read in New York Magazine‘s ” “Fall Preview” issue that Spiegelman had withdrawn from the show. If this is true, I wonder why.)

After the “Masters” exhibition opens in the New York area, I will be writing further about it in this column. This is a landmark event. Back in the 1980s the Whitney Museum held a brilliant exhibition on Disney animation art, but the world of art museums did not follow its lead; perhaps it was too early. Over the last several years, however, there has been increasing interest in the media and academia in the comics medium. Perhaps “Masters” is arriving in the New York area at a propitious time. I am interested in seeing how New York City’s art critics react to “Masters.” contemporary alternative cartoonists like Crumb and Spiegelman have already won favor in the fine art world. Will “Masters” open the eyes of the art world to the great works of American comics throughout their history?

Towards the end of the panel we were told that at the opening of “Masters” in Milwaukee, Kitchen had spoken with representatives of two museums who said they were interested in acquiring comics art for their permanent collections. Dooley asked, “Is this a watershed moment?” Will institutions such as art museums now compete with collectors to buy artwork by leading comics artists, thereby driving up the prices? Kitchen replied that he thought it would be a good thing if museums began collecting comics art and “I hope it’s a trend.”

And that is why this panel, with its miniscule audience, may prove to be the most historically significant at the 2006 Comic-Con. Graduate students of the future, take note. It’s not just that it predicted skyrocketing prices for original comics art by the greats. It’s the reason that those prices will increase. We may be on the brink of a new era of serious appreciation of comics by the world of fine art curators, scholars and collectors. “Masters of American Comics” might well prove to be the tipping point.

We were told at the panel how popular the “Masters” show was at its Los Angeles venues, and I believe it. So it’s strange, and perhaps telling, that there was such a dearth of people at Comic-Con who were interested in attending a panel about a museum exhibition that takes the comics artform seriously.

On the way back to the Convention Center, I saw Captain Jack Sparrow, lead character of the Pirates of the Caribbean movies, for the first time during my San Diego trip. It turned out that there were many Captain Jacks at Comic-Con, and, I am informed, many of them were disguised women.

FRIDAY 8:30 PM
“They don’t really need this big a room,” a woman behind me told the guy she was sitting with. I was seated in Room 20, the second biggest panel room at Comic-Con: the room can hold thousands of people. The 18th Annual Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards (named after one of the Masters of American Comics) were about to commence. Not counting the comic industry professional elite at the tables in front of the stage, I’d say there were roughly only two hundred people sitting in the audience when the ceremony began. Keep in mind that there were over a hundred thousand people at this year’s Comic-Con.

Why did so few people show up? Weren’t most Con attendees interested in seeing so many big names in the comics business? Weren’t they interested in learning who won? After all, the Comic-Con program refers to the Eisners as the Oscars of comics!

Indeed, the Beat told me that this year there was actually a video interviewer who was asking pros heading into the Eisners that familiar red carpet question, “Who are you wearing?” Now, I don’t expect that any of us proles who were sitting in the audience should dress up for the Eisners, but I have higher expectations for the pros who appear onstage or who sit at the tables up front. Will Eisner set an example by wearing a suit to the ceremony. But in many cases what happens is that the women dress up and the men dress down.

A prominent exception was the evening’s host, Bill Morrison, who was dressed formally and impressively. He was matched by his wife Carol, an attractive redhead in a yellow gown, who, as he put it, served the familiar award ceremony role of the “one beautiful woman who takes the winner offstage the opposite way in which he was going.” Morrison is creative director of Bongo Comics, which publishes Simpsons-related material. Introducing him, Comic-Con’s Jackie Estrada observed that “about anything you’ve seen with Matt Groening’s signature on it, Bill actually drew.” Ah, so ghosts still walk among us in the comics business.

The “Masters of American Comics” exhibit may ignore the writing component of comics, but the Eisners do not. The first award to be announced was the Bill Finger Award, which was inaugurated last year as a lifetime achievement award for comic book writers. Presenting the award were the late Bill Finger’s colleague, Jerry Robinson, who instigated the creation of the award, and Mark Evanier, who was a full pound lighter than he had been the day before. (Like Earth’s polar ice cap, Mark is disappearing at a disconcertingly rapid rate.)

Jerry Robinson reminded the audience of Finger’s “enormous creativity,” “love of the business,” and “perseverance in the face of the trials and tribulations of being unrecognized for his work.” Robinson observed that there are now “few survivors who remember him [Finger]” and that a reason for instituting the award was “to have new writers and young writers know of his accomplishments.”

Evanier continued along this theme, pointedly remarking in the presence of the comics business’s elite that “Bill Finger’s name is not on his greatest creation,” adding, “I wonder who that is.” (That co-creation is Batman; see “Comics in Context” #94.)

The plan is that each year two FInger Awards will be given out, one to a living recipient and the other to a deceased writer. This year’s posthumous prize went to Harvey Kurtzman. Evanier praised his work in the 1950s on EC’s Two-Fisted Tales and Frontline Combat as the “best war comics” in the medium’s history. “Then,” Evanier continued, Kurtzman “came up with MAD,” working on its first twenty-four issues, which Evanier declared to be the “single greatest body of humor writing ever,” which he said influenced movies, television and stand-up comedy. The award was accepted by Kurtzman’s daughter Nellie, who proved that the proverbial apple did not fall far from the tree in her acceptance speech: “My father got the finger from the comics industry many times in his career, but this is the first time I’ve been pleased about it.”

The other Finger award went to Alvin Schwartz, a Superman and Batman writer from the Silver Age of the late 1950s and early 1960s, whose health precluded his attending the Con. Schwartz is an obscure figure in comics history, but his most celebrated co-creation is not: Bizarro. Unlike other comic book writers of his period, Schwartz apparently recognized that superhero stories could have mythological and psychological subtexts. In the recently published book Superman Cover to Cover, Schwartz reveals that he conceived of Bizarro as what the psychologist Carl Jung would call a “shadow” figure for Superman. At the Eisners an excerpt of a videotape from Mike Catron’s invaluable collection, showing Schwartz on a 2001 convention panel speaking about Bill Finger. In it Schwartz contends that “mostly his [Finger’s] anger was repressed,” but the story of “the creation of Batman through the death of Bruce Wayne’s parents. . .was Bill’s psychological way of getting rid of his [own] parents.” I suspect that comics historians might find it rewarding to reinvestigate Alvin Schwartz’s superhero stories.

At one point Bill Morrison declared that this was “Couples Night” at the Eisners. The next presenters were examples of that: Amanda Conner, looking fetching in a silver dress, and Jimmy Palmiotti, wearing a black shirt with a palm tree motif. Among the awards they presented was the one for Best Digital Comic. (“Some guys don’t know what that is,” observed Palmiotti, who explained it as simply as he could: “That’s on a computer.”) The winner was PVP by Scott Kurtz, who was genuinely funny in his acceptance speech: after profusely thanking his wife, he added, “I also want to thank my girlfriend Nancy, because she made my marriage possible.” But Kurtz also gave the most moving acceptance speech, and broke into tears as he said the Eisner voters “make me feel included, like one of the cool kids.”

I’m not going to list all the Eisner recipients, since you can easily find that information elsewhere on the Net. I’ll just mention a few that I found interesting.

Accepting his award for best lettering, Todd Klein said, “This is one place I can come where I don’t have to explain what I do [and] that they actually still make comics.” Perhaps Mr. Klein still hadn’t gotten the memo that the comics, or should I say graphic novels, are recognized by the mainstream media as hip and cool. Or perhaps he was reminding us that the public at large still has little awareness of the continuing existence of comic books, much less their cultural value.

Nisha Gopolan, comics editor for Entertainment Weekly (in an attractive miniskirt) and Calvin Reid, my uberboss at Publishers Weekly‘s Comics Week (no jacket), presented the Eisner Award for Best Reality-Based Comic to Nat Turner by Kyle Baker, who showed up onstage wearing white shorts. (What did I tell you about the casual fashion styles of male Eisner attendees?) “I’m doubly thankful tonight,” Baker said in an effectively understated delivery, “in part because I just walked in ten minutes ago.”

Next Reid and Gopolan announced that the winner for “Best Archival Collection” of comic books was Absolute Watchmen, collecting the series by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons. Apparently Gibbons wasn’t at Comic-Con, and Moore nearly never seems to leave Northampton, England nowadays. I did see Moore’s fiancee, Melinda Gebbie, at the About Comics booth, where the completed edition of their collaboration, Lost Girls, was making its debut. But I recall noticing how uncomfortable Moore looked when I saw him accepting awards at a comics convention in London back in the 1980s, so it was no surprise to me that Gebbie didn’t accept this Eisner on his behalf.

Instead Len Wein, as the original editor of Watchmen, went up to accept the award He told the audience that he had worked on “probably no project that was more challenging and gratifying than Watchmen.” Len Wein isn’t very visible in comics nowadays, but it was he, as an editor at DC, who hired Moore to write his first major American project, Swamp Thing, which Wein himself had co-created. Moore’s Swamp Thing, and his writing in general, is vastly different from Wein’s own work, but Wein nonetheless recognized Moore’s talent early on and encouraged him in breaking new ground in American mainstream comics. Len Wein is therefore an unsung hero in the history of the comics revolution of the 1980s, and it was absolutely appropriate that he got to take a bow by accepting this award.

The next pair of presenters were newlyweds Paul Dini and Misty Lee, who were introduced as the creators of “Monkey Talk” here at Quick Stop Entertainment, among their other credits. (Quick Stop got a plug in front of the Comics Elite! Huzzah!) This was the first time I’d ever seen Ms. Misty in person. But though she is a stage magician with a renowned resemblance to Zatanna, she came onstage in a long, white gown, not in a tuxedo and top hat, and did not pronounce a single word backwards. Nor, alas, was “Monkey Talk” co-host Rashy anywhere in evidence.

Winning as Best Cover Artist for Fables and Runaways, James Jean reminisced onstage that Amanda Conner, when she worked at a comics store, “sold me some of the first comics I ever read.” Considering that in the 1980s I encouraged Amanda in pursuing her comics career, and that now James Jean looks up to her as a helpful elder, I suddenly felt old.

Another general observation I have about the Eisners is that most of the speakers who think they’re being funny aren’t. There were exceptions to this rule, but, to my surprise, the next presenter wasn’t one of them. This was Dean Haglund, the comedian who is best known for playing Langly, the longhaired member of the Lone Gunmen on The X-Files. (His hair, by the way, is now short.) I saw Haglund perform at an “X-Files Expo” back in 1998, and he was quite funny, but not tonight: he didn’t seem to have a feel for the sensibility of this Comic-Con audience, and his jokes unfortunately fell flat. But he was right about one thing: “It’s a long night, isn’t it?” he asked the audience. Is this one reason so many Con attendees stay away?

Haglund announced the award for Best Comics-Related Book to the Eisner/Miller book of their transcribed conversations. Accepting were Charles Brownstein of the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund; Dark Horse editor Diana Schutz, looking glamorous in her long blonde hair and black dress, and Frank Miller, whom I didn’t recognize until he spoke. He has suddenly (as far as I know) adopted a new look, that strikes me as being a contemporary updating of a 1930s or 1940s period style: he had on a light gray suit and a white fedora.

Haglund also announced that there was a tie for the winner of “Best Publication Design”: Chris Ware’s Acme Novelty Library Report to Shareholders, and Sunday Press’s Little Nemo in Slumberland, which reprints the Winsor McCay classic at the enormous size in which it originally appeared in newspapers. Accepting on Ware’s behalf, Chip Kidd of Pantheon Books (in a suit!) said that “Chris would’ve voted for the Nemo book” and that “He’s very sorry he won this award and he apologizes profusely.” That prepared line didn’t fit the possibility of a tie, but it was pleasingly witty nevertheless. And while the organizers of “Masters” have presented McCay and Ware as equals, it’s rewarding to learn that Ware knows better.

Maggie Thompson of Comic Buyer’s Guide performed her annual duty of presenting another familiar component of industry awards shows: the “In Memorium” segment, listing significant figures who had died over the previous twelve months, such as comics artists Jim Aparo, Jack Jackson, and Alex Toth. I was shocked to learn from her presentation that Selby Kelly, widow of Walt, had passed away; somehow I’d never found out about this. Thompson included the late Joe Ranft, head of story at Pixar, and that seemed right, since animation is another form of cartoon art. But she also included Robert Wise, the director of the film version of The Sound of Music (1965) and co-director of the West Side Story movie (1961). What was he doing on the list? Wise did appear at Comic-Con years ago, and he directed the first Star Trek movie (1979) as well as the science fiction classic The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951). Perhaps his inclusion was yet another indication of how Comic-Con is metamorphosing into a Movie Con as well.

Watching the “In Memorium” tribute a macabre thought suddenly hit me: will I be included in this tribute someday?

The Bob Clampett Humanitarian Award was presented by the late animation director’s daughter Ruth to Publishers Weekly‘s Calvin Reid for being an “advocate of our medium” to librarians and others in mainstream culture. Calvin is a genuinely nice guy (and I’d say so even if he wasn’t my editor, trust me), though I’m not sure that his support of the comics medium really counts as humanitarianism. Maybe there should be an award specifically for spreading the word about the artistic value of the comics medium to the world at large. But until there is, the Clampett Humanitarian Award will do. Overjoyed, Calvin laughed that he “didn’t expect this”: indeed, his wife had already left the ceremony. (In retrospect, this must be one reason why he was asked to be a presenter: to ensure he would attend this underattended event.) But he seemed thrilled that “I’m a part of this now,” meaning the world of comics.

British writer Grant Morrison, also won awards at this year’s Eisners. He was definitely at the Con, so why didn’t he show up at the Eisners? It’s bad news when not even nominees attending Comic-Con show up.

In contrast, another Brit, artist Mark Buckingham, one of the recipients of the “Best Serialized Story” award for “Return to the Homelands” in DC/Vertigo’s Fables, exulted onstage that after “twenty years in the business” he “finally made it to Comic-Con.” He enthused about “how amazing and unlike anything in the world this is.” I wonder if he’s been to major European comics festivals such as France’s Angouleme and Italy’s Lucca. It’d be nice to think that the San Diego Con has outdone them.

Finally, Sergio Aragones, as always, announced the six new additions to the Eisners’ Hall of Fame.

First was the late Floyd Gottfredson, who wrote and drew the Mickey Mouse comics from 1930 to 1975, and was to Mickey what Carl Barks was to Donald Duck. A representative of Walt Disney Studios accepted, and I found that rather sad, since it suggested that Gottfredson has no living heirs.

The next new Hall of Fame was the late William Marston Moulton, the creator of Wonder Woman. (Shouldn’t Moulton be designated as “co-creator,” since he didn’t draw her?) Accepting on behalf of the Moulton family was their lawyer, Edgar May, who had appeared at the stamp ceremony the day before.

Reading remarks composed by Moulton’s son, May told us that William Marston Moulton had believed that “women were the more powerful sex.” There were cheers from the audience. May unwisely interjected, “I’m not convinced,” whereupon he was loudly booed.

Cartoonist Mark Bode accepted on behalf of his deceased father, the late underground cartoonist Vaughn Bode, creator of Cheech Wizard. The younger Bode reminisced about his father, who died when he was a boy, in a somewhat rambling but nonetheless affecting speech.

Dody Manning, the widow of Russ Manning, artist on Tarzan and Magnus, Robot Fighter, went to the opposite extreme, saying simply, “Thank you all., Thank you very much.”

One of the few female comic book artists of the Silver Age, Ramona Fradon, co-creator of Metamorpho, wasn’t in San Diego, so DC president Paul Levitz accepted for her, confessing that as an assistant editor he “had a crush” on her.

Then came the final addition to the Hall of Fame, Silver Age writer/artist Jim Steranko, in person, with silver hair, dark glasses, and a dapper white suit, in sharp contrast with other, all-too-casually dressed men participating in the ceremony. “I thought I was up for the Rob Liefeld Humility Award,” Steranko said; this joke didn’t go over. “I know this is the Moby Dick of award ceremonies,” he continued (More Tolstoy than Melville, I think), “so I’ll only keep you a moment.” Then he said something the audience very much liked: “I accept this award in the names of all the nominees tonight till they get their own gold.”

I still wonder why so few people showed up at the Eisners. As I observed last year (see “Comics in Context” #97), many of the nominated stories and series tend to be relatively obscure. I certainly don’t believe that artistic merit is necessarily commensurate with the level of sales. But is it possible that that the Eisners voting reflect a minority taste that is too idiosyncratic and unusual for the awards’ own good? Or is it that, as the attendance for the “Masters” panel showed, there still just aren’t enough people who take the artform truly seriously?

Towards the end of the ceremony, I turned around to check on the couple who were sitting behind me at the outset. They were gone.

FRIDAY 11:00 PM
After the Eisners, I engaged in some of the traditional milling about just outside Hall H, where live musicians were performing even before the annual post-Eisnerian party was about to start. I considered staying, since it might be my only opportunity to see some people, but it had been a long day, I was tired, and I still had to make my way back to Coronado Island. Maybe next year.

Copyright 2006 Peter Sanderson

 

 

  

The following events took place on Friday, July 21, between 2:30 PM and 5:30 PM.

Attending Comic-Con International in San Diego means having to decide among a wealth of choices of things to do and see. The next panel on my must-see list was the Paramount Pictures presentation in Hall H at 2:30 PM, and I didn’t want to take the chance of being stuck in one of the infamous long lines outside. As it turned out, once again I was able to walk right into Hall H. So what’s the big deal?

FRIDAY 2:30 PM
The “Paramount Pictures” panel was entirely devoted to Stardust, the film adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s fantasy novel, which is currently being shot by director Matthew Vaughn.

Jeff Walker, who was once again acting as emcee, told the audience, “Guess you can see who we’re bringing out.” Indeed, there was Neil Gaiman, dressed, as always, as a Man in Black: he is the Johnny Cash of the graphic novel. He had been flown in just to appear on this panel and would be spirited away from Comic-Con immediately afterwards, sort of like President George W. Bush making one of his whirlwind visits to Iraq.

Also present onstage were Charles Vess, who had created the illustrations for the Stardust novel; writer Jane Goldman, a very pretty Englishwoman with long, bright red hair, who collaborated with Vaughn on the film’s screenplay; and the movie’s producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura.

Gaiman informed the audience that “People have been trying to make a Stardust movie since 1998.” He said that he finally let Matthew Vaughn have the movie rights “because I trust him.” Gaiman added that Vaughn and Jane Goldman “let me look over their shoulder and occasionally kibitz.”

The movie industry’s low regard for screenwriters is legendary: they may be highly paid, but their work is nearly always rewritten by other screenwriters, directors and even actors. Writers of the books from which screenplays are adapted are even lower on the proverbial totem pole, with no power to control how their stories are translated to the screen. So it was heartening to see Gaiman take such a prominent role on the Stardust movie panel, as it was to see Frank Miller in a similar role on the 300 movie panel the following day. It certainly makes sense for the studios to parade Gaiman and Miller before a Comic-Con audience, but the respect that the movie people showed to Gaiman and Miller on these panels seemed persuasively genuine. For that matter, it’s a happy surprise to see writers–Miller and Gaiman–so pleased with the translation of their work to the screen.

Nonetheless, the filmmakers rightfully put their own mark on the material. Introducing the first of the clips from the film, Gaiman observed that “some bits we’ll show are very faithful” to the book, but “some bits are new.”

In the initial clip, the young protagonist, Tristan Thorn, played by Charlie Cox, stands beneath the window of Victoria, who is the wrong woman for him but he doesn’t realize that yet. Tristan’s attempts to court her are interrupted by his rival Humphrey, who easily defeats him in a duel. There was a long pause after the clip before the audience gave it muted applause. (Were they taken aback by seeing the hero defeated? But it is, after all, only the beginning of this hero’s journey.)

“So. . .” continued Gaiman, who explained that Tristan plans to win Victoria’s heart by promising to bring her back a fallen star. In order to find it, he must cross the Wall which separates his village in the everyday world from the magical world beyond. In the second clip Tristan attempts to cross the Wall only to be thwarted by what Joseph Campbell would call a threshold guardian: an unusually agile old man who fights Tristan with his long staff and easily overpowers him. It struck me as the reverse of Siegfried’s confrontation with the Wanderer–the disguised god Wotan, his grandfather–in Richard Wagner’s Ring of the Nibelung: the young Siegfried slashes Wotan’s staff of power in two with his sword. (Hmm, Tristan is also a name associated with Wagner.)

You see a pattern of defeat emerging for Stardust‘s nascent hero, but he will eventually break it. As Goldman observed, “people don’t break out of the prescribed route they’re supposed to follow. Tristan is the exception.” He does get across the Wall to begin his adventure.

Gaiman cautioned us that “Matthew really wanted us to stress that nothing has been done to the footage you’re seeing,” meaning the addition of special effects. “He’s currently back in England shooting green screen stuff and worrying.”

This warning applied to the third clip, in which the lead witch, played by Michelle Pfeiffer, casts a spell on another character. The camera shook as Pfeiffer uttered her curse, and presumably CGI will be added later. Even so, the shaking of the image, as if an earthquake had been conjured up, together with Pfeiffer’s sinister performance, already created an unusual effect. We don’t see Pfeiffer much in new movies since she turned forty (at which point Hollywood believes they cease to exist), yet she has grown not one iota less beautiful.

Introducing the next clip, Gaiman said, “This is a character who’s not in the book. In fact, it’s one and a half characters who are not in the book.” The “half” is a character from Gaiman’s book who has been renamed Captain Shakespeare in the movie, has been given an expanded role, and is played by Robert DeNiro. The Captain is a “fearsome pirate” who commands a flying ship with which he captures bolts of lightning. (Whether the Captain’s new name of Shakespeare has any significance beyond sounding cool, I as yet have no idea.)

In this fourth clip Captain Shakespeare negotiates the sale of some lightning bolts to the whole “character who’s not in the book,” Ferdy the Fence, played by Ricky Gervais, the co-creator and star of the original BBC version of The Office.

In that series Gervais created a specific variation on a comedy archetype, the incompetent impostor who nonetheless brazens it out. The difference between Gervais and, say, Bob Hope or Woody Allen in their comedies is that Gervais’s characters have partly or wholly deluded themselves as well. It’s as if the world had unknowingly been waiting for Gervais to discover this character type, since now he turns up in so many different places, including the fantasy world of Stardust. Though it took a while for the audience to warm up to this clip, it finally, deservedly, got a big laugh.

(Gervais also turned up as a voice actor in last year’s British computer-animated feature Valiant, about homing pigeons during World War II. Though I agree that the title hero had a vacuum where his personality should have been, I found Valiant entertaining, and certainly not the disaster that reviews claimed. Perhaps as a Turner Classic Movies aficionado, I’m more kindly disposed to period war movie parodies. But I certainly agree with critics that Gervais’s performance as a proudly cowardly pigeon was the best thing in the movie.)

Goldman hailed the film’s “incredible cast,” which also includes Claire Danes as the fallen star herself, Peter O’Toole, Rupert Everett, and Sienna Miller. The one lesser-known actor in a major role is Charlie Cox as Tristan. “Lots of actors could do the nerdy side of Tristan,” Gaiman said. “Lots could do the later cool side of Tristan once he grows up. Charlie can do both.”

In the fifth clip Danes and Cox converse as they walk beneath cliffs; unmoved by the remarkable scenery, the audience again responded with only muted applause. (What’s wrong with them?)

Gervais returned in the final two excerpts. In the sixth clip Pfeiffer’s witch puts a spell on Fergy, so he cannot talk; instead all he can do is make strangulated sounds, to nonetheless humorous effect. In the seventh clip the villain Septimus interrogates Ferdy, who cannot answer due to the spell, so Septimus stabs him. I can understand why this received very low applause: no one wants to see a character who makes us laugh get (seemingly) killed.

But then we were shown a montage of excerpts from the film, and finally the audience got it and erupted into big applause.

Charles Vess praised the “beautiful visualization that they had done.” Then an audience member asked, “Neil, is it how you pictured it in your mind?” Gaiman responded, “No, it’s how Matthew and his set designers saw it in their minds.” He said that “The inn the witch magics up in the mountains was just like having walked into the thing that I had imagined,” but that’s an exception. But Gaiman obviously was content to let the filmmakers interpret the material their own way. He said he likes the way the movie looks, and that “It’s cooler” than what he imagined. “It doesn’t look like a fantasy movie. It looks like itself, whatever that means.”

Well, I agree that it doesn’t look like a fantasy movie, although perhaps that’s in part because the CGI are still missing. I think its visual charm, from what I saw, comes from looking like an enchantingly well-designed period piece. Goldman said it was set in Victorian England, and the clips convey a handsome, persuasive reality in which the fantasy elements are grounded.

Next Gaiman was asked about The Eternals series he is currently writing for Marvel, based on Jack Kirby’s 1970s creations. Gaiman said he was “currently writing issue 4,” but that he had “more plot and things I have in my head than I can fit in by the last page of issue 6,” when this miniseries is scheduled to end. Gaiman reported that artist John Romita, Jr. says he’s willing to keep going after issue 6, so “It’s going to be a matter of finding time” amidst Gaiman’s packed work schedule. (In case you’re wondering, yes, indeed, I have been reading Gaiman’s Eternals–and rereading Kirby’s Eternals–with interest, and I will have much to say about them in this column later this year.)

Gaiman then returned to the story of how Matthew Vaughn got to do Stardust. He said he first met Vaughn when Vaughn sought the film rights to Gaiman’s short story “Snow Glass Apples.” Later Vaughn produced the first film that Gaiman has directed, A Short Film about John Bolton. (That’s the artist, not the U. S. Ambassador to the United Nations, who is even scarier. See “Comics in Context” #5.)

Vaughn and Gaiman had lunch with Terry Gilliam to try to convince him to direct a movie of Stardust. But, Gaiman recounted, this was right after Gilliam had directed The Brothers Grimm (2005), and he didn’t want to do another fantasy film right away. Here Gaiman noted, “As I’m sure everyone here knows, Terry Gilliam is back on Good Omens,” the projected film version of Gaiman and Terry Pratchett’s comedy fantasy novel. Well, I didn’t know that, but I was glad to hear it. Gaiman added that Gilliam had not yet paid him or Pratchett the “option fee, which is one groat each, or about five pence.” The cheapskate!

After directing Layer Cake, Gaiman continued, Vaughn wanted to direct Stardust, and Gaiman put him in touch with Goldman, whom Gaiman had known for a long time.

As for other film projects based on his work, Gaiman first mentioned Coraline (see “Comics in Context” #67), which Henry Selick (The Nightmare before Christmas) is making as a stop-motion animated film, with Dakota Fanning as the voice of the title character, and the British comedy duo of Dawn French and Jennifer Saunders voicing the two old ladies. This, Gaiman said, will probably come out in 2008.

As for a movie of his novel American Gods, Gaiman said that “lots of producers and directors have approached me, and I tend to say, “˜Sure, sounds good,’ and then they look at me and say, “˜How would you make that into a movie?’ And I say, “˜I have no idea,’ and that’s usually how it ends.”

So what about a Sandman movie? Keep in mind that Sandman is a property owned by DC, that Gaiman doesn’t control. “Sandman is just floating in a void,” Gaiman said, asserting that “I’d rather no Sandman movie got made than a bad Sandman movie got made.” Gaiman voiced the hope that “sometime during our lifetimes” a director will come along who loves Sandman the way that Sam Raimi loves Spider-Man and Peter Jackson loves The Lord of the Rings, and who will make the Sandman movie.

On the other hand Gaiman himself has long been committed to writing and directing a film adaptation of his own Vertigo miniseries Death: The High Cost of Living. Gaiman told us there is a “script everyone likes” and “people would like to be in it” and that the project was “slowly moving through the system.” He summed up, “It doesn’t seem to be dead yet, which is the best thing you can say about Death, I suppose.”

Then there is the Beowulf movie that Gaiman and Roger Avary co-wrote for director Robert Zemeckis, which will be released on November 22, 2007. Gaiman announced that “Next year I will probably be a guest of Comic-Con for the whole four days” and will do a Beowulf panel with Roger Avary, actors Angelina Jolie, Crispin Glover, “maybe Anthony Hopkins,” but probably not Zemeckis, who “hates” doing panels. Zemeckis is doing the film using an advanced version of the techniques he employed for The Polar Express (see “Comics in Context” #66). Gaiman characterized the forthcoming movie as “a cheerfully violent, very, very strange take on the Beowulf legend which manages to be remarkably faithful while being deeply weird.”

Then, before the panel ended, Lorenzo di Bonaventura brought up another future film on which he is a producer: the Transformers movie. At the very mention of its name the audience broke into loud applause. We were informed that a new addition to the cast would speak to us via cellphone (the second guest I heard do this so far at this Comic-Con). Then the voice of actor Peter Cullen addressed the audience in his role as Optimus Prime, which he had played on the Transformers animated TV show, and Hall H resounded to the loudest, biggest applause I’d heard during the entire panel. I was puzzled: do Gaiman readers really get even more excited over the Transformers?

Not until I started writing these reports on the 2006 Comic-Con did I realize the answer. These Transformers fans were the “campers,” the people who sit in Hall H all day to watch all the panels about action-adventure movies. This wasn’t your typical Gaimancentric audience at all. Well, I hope the Stardust preview inspired some of them to try a movie that’s robot-free.

FRIDAY 3:30 PM
I decided to get over to Room 20 early for its 4 PM panel, arriving while the panel about the Fox television series Bones was still going on. Onstage was one of its stars, David Boreanaz, who previously played the heroic vampire Angel on Joss Whedon’s Buffy the Vampire Slayer and the Angel TV series. (And hey, this was the first Comic-Con I’d attended in years in which Whedon didn’t appear!)

The conventional wisdom is that Comic-Con and similar events are attended almost entirely by men. I offer the Bones panel as proof that this is not true; there was a large, vocal contingent of Boreanaz’s female fans there. One woman from the audience began her question to Boreanaz thus: “I admire your body of work.” She clearly intended the double entendre, and everyone, including Boreanaz, reacted to it.

Boreanaz chuckled appreciatively at that remark, but another fan presented him with a conundrum, asking him who he had “better chemistry” with: his Buffy co-star Sarah Michelle Gellar or his Bones co-star Emily Deschanel. Diplomatically, he said he couldn’t answer.

When Boreanaz’s panel ended, the audience was cautioned, “Do not rush the stage.” As much of the audience filed out, I noticed that among them was a young woman in that Princess Leia slave girl costume. No one seemed to pay attention. At Comic-Con one gets accustomed to such things.

FRIDAY 4:15 PM
Finally, starting fifteen minutes late in Room 20, was the next panel: Warner Brothers Animation’s presentation “Bruce Timm Retrospective/Legion of Super-Heroes.” It’s the first part that interested me: a salute to the man who did the principal character designs and was one of the producers for Warners Animation’s 1990s Batman, Superman, Batman Beyond and recent Justice League Unlimited series.

First Sander Schwartz, the president of Warner Brothers Animation, came onstage to introduce “This very special presentation we have for you.”

One guy in the audience shouted, “Cancel The Batman!” That, of course, is the current subpar successor to Timm’s great 1990s animated Batman. But I doubt that anyone onstage could have heard him.

Schwartz stated that Timm had been working at Warner Brothers Animation since 1979 with Tiny Toon Adventures. “He’s just a great soft-spoken, talented guy who is just as nice as he is talented.” Schwartz pronounced Timm “a great producer, a great filmmaker, and a great human being.”

Then Timm himself appeared, looking very much like the toy collector he voiced in the Batman episode “Beware the Grey Ghost.” Some members of the audience gave him a standing ovation.

Timm said, “This is really kind of weirding me out a bit because normally career retrospectives come at the end of a career. I still have twenty years to go on my mortgage.”

Timm said “I have to share credit” with Alan Burnett, Eric Radomski, Paul Dini, Dwayne McDuffie and others with whom he collaborated on these series. Then he concluded, “We’re talking about the end of my career today.”

Is it? Not really, although so far it did seem as if Timm was present to hear his own eulogy. I should observe that Justice League Unlimited concluded its final season earlier this year whereupon Cartoon Network dropped it without rerunning the new episodes. Moreover, Warners’ forthcoming Legion show, like Teen Titans, is done in an anime-influenced style (not to my taste), and Timm isn’t working on any new television series. I know that all good things must come to an end, but I don’t have to like it.

Timm introduced his friend Jason Hillhouse, who served as interviewer, and they started by discussing how Timm’s career with superheroes began. Tim Burton’s Batman movie came out in 1989. “My boss at the time, Jean MacCurdy, took a huge gamble,” Timm said. She chose him and Eric Radomski to produce a new Batman animated series. “Eric Radomski and I had never produced a show,” Timm said, although they both “had long animation careers.” “I don’t know if she was brave or under medication or something.”

“I’m a born and bred comic book geek,” Timm confessed, whereas Radomski “came from a non-geek background.” (I hate this sort of self-deprecation; when will comics aficionados unhesitatingly admit to taking pride in this artform?) However, Radomski “loved Batman” as a result of Burton’s movie, and wanted to recapture its “mood.”

“There are any number of ways the Batman show could’ve been really bad,” Timm asserted. Nevertheless, he continued, “Batman’s got all this great stuff. He’s got the best costume, the best rogues gallery, the best setting. You’d have to really try hard to mess that show up.” Timm recalled that MacCurdy instructed him and Radomski, “I’ll just tell you one thing: don’t screw it up.”

Casting Kevin Conroy as the voice of Batman “right out of the gate,” Timm asserted, set the mold for “how many amazing people we’ve had on all the different shows” over “fifteen years.” Timm told us, “We can’t watch TV for more than an hour without someone I’ve worked with” turning up onscreen. (What about on CNN? Oh, never mind.)

After production on this first run of Batman: The Animated Series ended, “we got off on a tangent with Freakazoid,” an animated superhero comedy show. Then, “years before Superman Returns,” there was talk at Warners about doing a new Superman movie, and MacCurdy asked Timm if he wanted to do a Superman animated series.

Whereas Timm described his Batman series as “grounded in a kind of reality,” he said that “Superman opened the floodgates to a more science-fictiony environment.” Timm stated that they “hadn’t thought of creating a universe” when they were doing Batman, but using the Flash and Green Lantern as guest stars on Superman “ultimately paved the way for Justice League.”

Timm admitted that he did not have “as clear a vision on how to handle Superman” as he had with Batman. The “tricky thing about Superman,” Timm explained, is “like Miss Teschmacher says [in Richard Donner’s Superman movie]: he doesn’t drink, he doesn’t smoke, he’s too good to be true.” Timm continued, “Batman’s conflicted, broody,” whereas “Superman’s a good guy. How do you make that dramatically compelling? You want to keep him pure, keep him the Boy Scout.”

Superman had “more action-adventure fantasy than Batman,” and Timm declared that “It was a fun show to do.”

But then when “finally we felt we had a handle on Superman,” then Warners “said let’s do some more Batman.” Timm didn’t want to return to Batman at first, but then he devised new “graphic designs” for the characters. As a result, he declared, “I like that show [the new Batman episodes] visually more than Batman: The Animated Series,” quickly adding, “but I liked that, too.”

At this point we were shown a clip reel from Batman, Superman, Batman Beyond, and Justice League Unlimited. I was surprised by the tremendous response from the audience to the Batman Beyond clips, and Timm said he found that reaction “interesting” as well.

Timm revealed that when Jamie Kellner, the head of the WB Network, proposed doing a series about a teenage Batman for the “6-to-11 year old” demographic, “we hated the idea, too!” (It does seem like a stereotypical wrongheaded corporate idea. I suppose we should be grateful he didn’t suggest Batman Babies.) But Timm said he and his collaborators found ways “to make it fun.”

“There were aspects of the show that were obvious demographic bait,” Timm conceded, “especially in the second season,” pointing to the “high school” and “sidekick.” But Timm said “That’s okay” because their goal was to “find ways” they would like “of doing what the network wanted to do.”

Timm pointed out that although the network intended Batman Beyond to be “a kid-oriented show,” “it’s the edgiest, nastiest show we did.” (Later during the panel Timm mentioned that Justice League Unlimited was “supposed to be a 6-to-11 year olds’ show, but everyone knows it’s a PG show.”)

Timm regards the direct-to-video feature Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker (2000) as “one of the highlights” of his career. “Lots say Mask of the Phantasm [1993] is the best Batman movie ever made,” he observed. “I like it, but I like Return of the Joker better.” Timm believes they “tried to hard to make Phantasm adult” and “it’s a downer,” whereas “Return of the Joker is effortlessly adult.”

Timm said he originally didn’t want to do the Justice League series, either, but “I was out of a job.” (Should Timm ever be out of work?) Timm recalled that Warners executive “Linda Steiner came to me and said we’re thinking of doing Justice League now” and he “bowed to the inevitable.”

Timm admitted “It took a while for it to get good” and claimed “It’s a tough concept to work with.” He said he was “reading Silver Age comics for inspiration” and stated they had “a lot of charm” but complained that “all the characters have the same voice, the same personality.”

Moreover, Timm maintained that “when we did Batman through Batman Beyond, we were used to being the class act in superhero TV.” But then, Timm noted, X-Men: Evolution came along, “and Samurai Jack kicked ass in art direction. So we realized the bar has been raised.”

After two seasons of featuring a team of seven members, Justice League morphed into Justice League Unlimited, and “now we give you fifty more characters.” Timm asserted that “Justice League Unlimited right now is ny favorite show of all I’ve worked on. . .probably because it’s more recent.” He described it as “almost an anthology show” which could move back and forth between “small stories” with “just a few characters” and “big stories.”

The first questioner from the audience asked if Timm, Dini and their other collaborators would ever do another animated series with DC Comics characters. Choosing his words carefully, Timm responded, “Never say never. I don’t really anticipate going back to that established version of the DC Universe” seen in his previous animated series. (And that, I realized, meant that he wasn’t ruling out working on some other version of the DC universe.)

Timm then said, “Nobody wants a repeat of the Brainiac Attacks experience,” referring to the recent direct-to-video Superman animated feature (see “Comics in Context” #139). Then he added, “I kid,” adding further, “Kind of.” Cautiously he told us, “There’s something I’m not allowed to talk about.” Finally, he said, “I tease [the guys] who did Brainiac Attacks a lot. They did the best they could.” There’s a mystery here, but I can’t figure it out.

Asked about influences on his art, Timm revealed he was a fan of Disney’s Sleeping Beauty (1959), which he said “has the most spectacular art direction of any Disney movie.” He said he “picked up things from Alex Toth.” (Here there was only a smattering of applause, suggesting that most of the audience didn’t know the work of this great comics artist, who died earlier this year.) Oddly, Timm said that he was influenced “after the fact” by the late Archie artist Dan De Carlo: he explained that he was “influenced by artists who were inspired by him,” specifically in “drawing cute, pretty girls,” before he discovered De Carlo’s own work.

Were there characters that he wanted to use on Justice League Unlimited but didn’t? Timm named the Blue Beetle and the Spectre, said he couldn’t use the Phantom Stranger, and said they had the rights to use Plastic Man (only once), Firestorm and Adam Strange, but never got around to them.

Timm mentioned the “rumor” that Warners is doing an animated adaptation of Darwyn Cooke’s comics series The New Frontier. “That’s miscommunication,” Timm insisted, and he claimed that they were actually doing a show called The New Fondue for the Food Channel. “It’s cheesy!” he said. No laughter ensued, and Timm buried his head in his hands.

So what is Timm really going to do next? “I am still at Warner Brothers,” he informed us, and “still working with DC characters.” He stated that there “should be an official announcement tomorrow at the DC panel.”

Just then a Superman insignia, dripping blood, appeared on the Room 20 video screen. It was an obvious reference to the 1990s “Death of Superman” story arc in the comics. Seemingly taken aback by this, Timm asked the audience if they had signed “confidentiality agreements.”

I did not attend the aforementioned DC panel, but later learned that during that presentation Paul Levitz announced a new series of direct-to-video animated films that would adapt stories from the comics. The first film will indeed be The New Frontier, with a story written by Cooke. Timm will direct Superman/Doomsday, an adaptation of the “Death of Superman” arc, and Marv Wolfman will co-write the film version of his The New Teen Titans: The Judas Contract. It was declared that the art style of the films will resemble the comics, rather than being in the style of the Timm animated series or the anime-like Titans and Legion shows.

I find myself in two minds about this. It seems like a dream come true for comics enthusiasts. Have you seen the Dark Knight Returns excerpt, executed in Frank Miller’s art style, in the animated Batman episode “Legends of the Dark Knight”? What if DC and Warners did an animated adaptation of the entire Dark Knight Returns in Miller’s style? Wouldn’t animation be the proper medium for adapting Watchmen?

On the other hand, doesn’t much of the appeal of the Timm animated series lie in the handsomeness of Timm’s character designs? And it seems that even when he directs one of these new films, he’ll be using character designs from the comics instead?

More importantly, doesn’t much of the rest of the appeal of the shows that Timm and his collaborators did lie in providing a positive alternative to the Grim and Gritty, Dark, Dismal and Depressing superhero comics of the 1990s and early 2000s? I always believed that the 1990s Batman and Superman animated series captured the spirit of the superhero genre better than the Batman and Superman comics of that time. At least The New Frontier is a leading entry in the Neo-Silver movement of restoring a positive outlook to the genre. I expect the film version won’t be cheesy at all.

Bruce Timm left the stage, and the other half of the presentation, previewing the new Legion of Super-Heroes animated series, commenced. But I took off for one of the most underattended panels at this year’s Comic-Con, but one which may prove to be the most historically significant, as you shall learn next week.

–Copyright 2006 Peter Sanderson