Thursday Thing!

Francesco Francavilla! Courtesy of Comic Twart.

Atomic Robo Monday!

Thursday Thing!

Courtesy of Craig Rousseau, whose site you should really check out, because that dude can seriously draw y'all.

A Day in the Life...

Awesomeness scrounged up courtesy of Joe Bloke. Go read the whole thing on his blog.

Atomic Robo Monday!

Friday is for Fighting!

I haven't posted a link to Diversions of the Groovy Kind in a while, but this was too good to let slip by unmentioned...a team-up between Iron Fist and the Sons of the Tiger? Written by Bill Mantlo? Count me in.

Here's the Thing...

I'm a hack. I'm a bit proud of that fact, in a perverse and self-deprecating sort of way. I write other people's characters for money in order to subsidize writing my own, schedule permitting. That's the path I've chosen, because I've got a mortgage and student loans and, frankly, people pay more if it's something they're familiar with already, right?

Right.

I don't get a lot of 'come to Jesus' moments in my line, is what I'm saying. A project gets plopped down in front of me, and if the money's right, I take it. I don't stop to consider the views of the original creator, or how my decision might offend him, rightly or wrongly. Because that's what hacks do. They're mercenaries of the written word, which is a glamorous way of saying 'I write for money, not myself'.

I say that to say this: I understand Alan Moore's recent comments, and I understand, on a gut level, just why Before Watchmen is such a terrible, terrible idea, but if I had been offered the job? I'd have done a little Irish jig as I cordially accepted the offer.

Because I'm a hack. And that's what hacks do. They keep the circuses going and the bread flowing to the masses. Hacks pick up the slack when entertainment becomes a commodity and the original creators bugger off to go do something new and exciting (or die), because someBODY has to keep the joy machinery chugging along. And of course they do it for money, and of course the potential gains of being attached to a project like Before Watchmen outweigh the potential pitfalls for the folks in question.

It's not about Team Comics or professional ethics. It's about bread-line necessity. It's about the project being commissioned and it's going ahead with or without you, and you may as well take that check because you've got bills to pay and groceries might be nice this week. It's about doing the best job you can with unfamiliar materials, and maybe adding some value to a prized concept. It's about telling old stories in new ways and new stories in old ways. It's about customer satisfaction. It's about taking that next step, using each project to boost you forward to some future, 'better' gig.

They say there's no magic ladder in publishing, and there isn't.

Because it's not a ladder. It's a treadmill. It's a treadmill that's constantly increasing its speed. And if you skip a step, or stumble, you might just get whisked right off.

Moore has a right to be angry, but little right to be dismissive. He chose to get off that treadmill a long time ago, and good for him. But some folks are still on it, because they haven't reached the spot where they can make the jump off.

All that said? I'd have written the hell out of a Comedian mini-series. 

It's March, And That Means...

That's right! IT'S MODOK TIME! March MODOK Madness is back in session, folks. Go check the daily awesome out!

Villains With Potential-The Armadillo

This guy. This guy here is the longest running inadvertent possibly mildly racist joke in the Marvel Universe.

Every time we see him, he wants to go straight. Every time we see him, he is in jail. Okay, fine, once or twice he was on a government sponsored super-hero team. Or begging in an alleyway. But his default starting position is jail.

And the reason he's always in jail?

Because he gives up. Again and again, the Armadillo, a man re-built into a bargain basement bullet-proof Hulk, surrenders himself to the authorities. He's either very trusting of the American judicial system or he's a man who's been in jail so long that he's scared of being anywhere else.

Think about that last bit for a minute. Let it percolate. The Armadillo is a man looking for rules. He needs them. He needs order to live happily. A boss, co-workers. Structure. That's why he's the perfect super-villain flunky. And ordinarily, I'd be all for that, because I LIKE plug-n-play villains. I think they're a necessary component of good cape comics.

But the Armadillo has been a flunky his entire career. So let's try something radical, shall we? Lets make him a hero.

I'll wait for you to stop yelling.

Done? Groovy. I'll continue. See, the 'reverse-heel-turn' has been a staple of comics for a long time, but lately it's been almost exclusively applied to popular villains...Venom, Sabretooth, i.e. villains who have little to no reason to be 'good guys' so much as 'protagonists'. But Armadillo? Yeah, crime is not paying for this gentleman.

But he's not cut out to be an Avenger. Too many old sparring partners there. And, frankly, the Defenders will disband again before he has a chance to join. Heroes for Hire is always an interesting possibility (more on that later), but I'm going to be daring...Armadillo should join the X-Men.

Stop laughing. I'm being serious.

He's not a mutant, true, but neither is Namor, really (he's a hybrid, not a mutation of an existing species-in effect, Namor is a NEW species) I mean, if Namor's a mutant, so's Jim Hammond (a robot who spontaneously evolved self-awareness isn't a mutant?) And if we're opening up the field to that extent, Armadillo fits right in. 

He's looking for a place to belong. A place with laws and a social fabric that will allow him to be normal. In normal society, Armadillo is the odd man out. He's not particularly criminally inclined (or adept), and he's not  human enough to blend in. Utopia sounds just like his kind of place, doesn't it? Among mutants, he'd be accepted. Even honoured, considering that when he's motivated, the Armadillo is dangerous enough that even Captain America thinks twice about tangling with him.

There's nothing so frightening as a true-believer, remember. And no one believes truer than a new convert. Imagine that guy, eager to prove his patriotism to the mutant cause, joining the X-Men. This isn't Quicksilver joining the Avengers, this is Magneto joining the X-Men. How far could they trust a fifteen-time loser like the Armadillo? And would a mutate find a home among mutants? Or would he be only opening himself up to a different type of discrimination?

Wouldn't it be neat to find out?

Atomic Robo Monday!