Falling Debris

It's been a turbulent 6 years for the Marvel U, and now it's time to cool down. What started with Brian Michael Bendis dissassembling the Avengers eventually turned into House of M, Civil War, Secret Invasion, Dark Reign and Seige. As fantastic as some of these stories have been, readers are feeling exhausted and alienated. Anyone who hasn't read Marvel books in the past 5-10 years (see my middle-aged coworker) isn't going to recognize any teams and just dismiss the whole thing as not being the kind of comics they used to read. As someone who has been keeping up with it, even I'm fed up. Time to step back and enjoy some stories.

That's where Heroic Age comes in. Starting May 2010, Marvel has changed some gears to balance out "classic" stories without sacrificing some of the progress they've made. Unfortunately, there will still be multiple Avengers teams: Avengers (traditional heroes), New Avengers (Luke Cage's vigilante team), Secret Avengers (Steve Rogers's black ops team) and Avengers Academy (successor to Avengers Initiative). There will be team crossover and the other Marvel stories will acknowledge it, but hopefully this will mean that things get back to normal, without conspiracies and wars. What I would really like to see is the X-Men line stop having so many events, but that's never going to happen. Basically, if you haven't read X-Men books since before 2005, you're out of luck.

Will Heroic Age save Marvel from a nonsensical self destruction and finally allow new readers back? Here's hoping so, but those inflated issue prices aren't very welcoming. If you can spare $3 a pop, feel free, but you may need to wait until it comes out in trades. If you've got an iPad, however, I strongly recommend you get your books there.

Note: Feeling left out and can't pay to catch up? Go to the Marvel Database and spend your sleepless nights finding out who was really a Skrull.

Source: ugo.com

Of course, it wouldn't be Comic Con without talk about actual comics! Well, I don't have the best current story information (mostly because I've been out of the loop since Secret Invasion), but I did get to see Stan "The Man" Lee.

I had to get in line pretty early and sit through a terrible panel for Marvel Super Hero Squad (there's no way kids care about voice actor panels), but I got in. Not the best seat, but while they were in between panels, I noticed the name plate for the moderator - Todd McFarlane. Holy eff. I was going to be in the same room as two of my favorite comic creators ever.

Todd came out to introduce Gil Champion, Stan's co-creator of POW! Entertainment (Purveyors of Wonder), which brought us the likes of Stripperella (who actually appeared in the flesh - lots of flesh!) and Who Wants to Be a Superhero?. It was basically just a plug for their new projects, but no one could really care less, we were just there to see Stan! So without much ado, Smilin' Stan came out to chat with Todd about his creative process and how he came up with characters like Spider-Man and Thor. Unlike the impression he may give on screen, Stan has a few marbles loose. That's fine, but Todd was really trying to run a serious discussion to benefit the audience. He talked about Dr. Fredric Wertham, who paved the way for the Comics Code Authority. We all know Todd and Stan have a great relationship, but I'll be damned if Todd's patience wasn't being tested. Stan loves telling stories, but there's a reason he writes them down and doesn't orate them. "Oooh! Remind me to tell you about the romance stories I used to write!"

Overall, I'm honored to have been in the same room as Stan Lee. I couldn't get an autograph or picture taken with him, but with any luck, I'll meet up with him next year.

This is it. The moment we've all been waiting for. We're in San Diego for Comic Con 2010! Robert and James are infiltrating the murky secrets of this unknown nerdvana to expose what unholy geektrocities occur. Stay tuned for lots of updates from the panels, booths, and ladies.

To see what we hope to cover, head to the Calendar section. If we're lucky, Robert will post pics of sexy slave Leias.

We want to give a major shout out to former contributor Josiah Thomas for helping make this possible!

Holy crap on a stick Tuesday! It's been forever since I wrote about anything comic book related, mostly because I couldn't afford to buy them. Now that's it's almost been 2 years since my last new book, I'm in a position to get back into the game. However, books are still getting increasingly expensive. With individual issues hitting $3-$4 standard during an economic recession, it's the worst possible time for a price hike. People can't afford the luxury of comics, not to mention most current books are lousy anyway. So, what are people to do if they want books cheap? I'd hate to say it, but the answer to keeping the comic book industry alive may be the Apple iPad.

Announced in late February 2010, the iPad is the Apple slate device everyone knew was going to happen. It's a 10" touch screen device - arguably a "large iPod Touch". It runs the iPhone OS and will run iPhone OS apps, as well as apps tailored for the iPad hardware. On April 2, Marvel announced an app that will undoubtedly change their company forever. They released the Marvel Comics iPad app.

First question: "How will I save money on (luxury expense) comics by buying a (luxury expense) reading device?" Good question, imaginary voice. The truth is, it's going to be a long term investment, no doubt about that. The iPad starts at $500 and works its way up to $830, with six models total. Many people are saying that's way too expensive for a device that doesn't even run a full version of Mac OSX (let alone Adobe Flash). But there are still a variety of applications (not program applications, use case applications) that cannot be denied and if it dropped even $100 in price, a whole lot more people would be convinced to buy it. Still, let's get back to brass tacks. $500 is the equivalent of about 140 issues at an average of $3.50. That's the device with no content yet. Now, the Marvel app offers a few freebies to get you into the game, with hints of ongoing offers of free issues to spur sales. That's not bad, especially when it's modern books like New Avengers or Thor from the beginning.

Here's the real news: Issues are $2 a pop. Temporary price? Maybe, but that's still significantly cheaper than print. I don't even remember when prints were $2; I got into "collecting" when I was 16 and books were $2.25. That's still not a huge difference from $3.5, which means that it'll take about 350 issues to break even (yes, I did the math, 0+3.5x vs 500+2x). If you buy 5 issues a week (say you're following 20 montly titles), it'll take 70 weeks to break even and start saving money on the iPad. Again, long term investment. It's not the answer to reducing issue prices during the recession, but it's a start.

So the next question is, "How do I justify spending money on an iPad just to read slightly cheaper comics?" Another good question, imaginary friend. Like I said, the iPad has various use case applications. The mail client, the map use, reading traditional books (Kindle app), there are lots of ways to change the way you use traditional paper/electronic products. Of course, if you read my Kindle 2 review, you'll see one of my arguments for it is not only the money savings, but also the space savings. Books are heavy; Comic books are heavier! Three 12-issue hardcover books weigh 8lbs. I'm currently sitting on 14 books by my bed that need a new bookshelf, one that supports 40lbs just for them alone. Heavy. With digital comics on the iPad, a never changing 1.5lb device, physical space becomes a non-issue. Of course, depending on what storage capacity model you get, you may need to store the bulk of your library on Marvel's servers. Thankfully, Marvel allows you to delete local copies and re-download them from the app to the iPad. That could make licensing rules more relaxed than current rules for devices like Kindle, which has a secret limit on re-downloads that are dictated by the publisher, but not disclosed. We'll see how that works when people start pushing it.]

But still, this app has a lot of promise for getting people (back) into comics. Get onto a device that people may be buying for other reasons, but provide a cheaper price than print, with various freebies. If and when I get an iPad, the Marvel app will be on there. In fact, I actually have it on my iPhone with a couple freebies already on it. It's not the best reading experience, but the page turning experience and even pane transition is amazing. It's not "animated", but the intentional pan and zooming does something that print has not ever been able to do - keep the surprise of the next pane/page. Unfortunately, it doesn't yet address the problem of centerfold art that covers both pages. If the portrait mode supports both pages, it might work out, but it'll take some interesting designer work to make portrait mode working for large panes. Of course, a lot of people are wondering where the DC app is, but we'll have to wait for DC's parent company Warner Bros to deal with licensing (I guess I'm not sure about Disney's involvement in the Marvel print distribution as of right now).

If you've got an iPhone, download the free app and any freebies. You may not get an iPad (at least immediately), but you can still see how well this app works and get some free content out of it. With Marvel's catalog still pretty limited, it may be a while until you're even capable of buying enough comics to make it cost effective. Marvel still has a lot of work to do to make this app a viable supplement, let alone complement, to the traditional reading experience. I want the iPad to allow comics to survive and evolve into a new era.