Specifically, the question is what expensive fancy item that you wouldn’t normally buy for yourself would you most like to find under the tree. This was an easy question. I love books, and I really love beautiful books. Stuff that’s lush, beautifully bound and designed. I often will settle for second hand paperbacks, but I’d always love the leather bound, end-papered, gold leaf etc version if possible. But face facts, it’s not often possible. And as we head more and more into digital, it will be interesting to see whether this kind of product becomes rarer, or, because print will become the realm of those who really love physical books, they will lean more towards the collector and connoisseur. Mike Mignola’s Hellboy is a series I’ve really enjoyed. I remember reading the very first story way back when. But I’ve been kinda reading it sporadically, usually from library copies of the various trade paperback collections. Part of the reason for this is it’s a spread out series, lots of short stories and stuff published in anthologies and such. Much easier to read once collected. But take a look at these, now this is the way to read Hellboy. It’s the right look for these books. Large weighty tomes, even better if dusty and covered in cobwebs. Fables is another great series, and I’ve read it much the same as Hellboy. I’ve also managed to gather a bunch of the collections, with some notable gaps. And now they are publishing Deluxe Editions. Again, gorgeous. Now this is an expensive prospect, obviously I haven’t been able to jump in on these. But there are ways to soften the blow. Amazon often discounts these books, as the links above show. There is also a new website called Thwipster, that offers comic collections and other related merchandise each day at a discount. you can follow them on Facebook or twitter and see what is offered each day. As I write this, the first three Hellboy collections are available for 44% off. I’ll be over here arguing with my bank balance. Comics are also breaking into lots of mainstream retail outlets, like Walmart and Costco. I’ve bought stuff from both places at 20-40% off. There’s not a great selection, but I’ve managed to get the first two 3in1 Harcover Bone colour volumes that way for about the price of one of the single soft covers. So that’s sorta my wish list, you can see the panels notes to Comic Santa over at CBD. Now what’s on your list?

Bit of confusion on my part as this question made the rounds, so while I was pretty confident in my original vote, I’m amending it now. Not that I don’t believe Batman has a great Rogues Gallery, I still think that for the guys in tights hitting each other crows, he wins. But if you want my idea of who has the best baddies across all of comics, (defined by the committee as anything that’s had a comic, even movies, TV or books) then my vote goes to the Gallifrean galavanter himself, The Doctor. A show that’s been around for almost 50 years now, and regularly featured a so-called monster of the week has a huge swath of nasty’s he’s tangled with, some only once, but many over and over. Right off the top you’ve got his arch nemesis the Daleks. A single one is terrifying, a handful could make short work of most military forces. And for anyone who encountered them as a kid, they are damn scary. All that shouting and killing with no feeling, plus a mindset that only once you grow up do you learn is modeled on humanities most evil of empires. Oh sure, they’ve had the mickey taken out of them with the no stairs and being pushed out a window, but you watch their re-introduction in the 2005 series and tell me it’s not chilling. And if The Doctor is scared, then they must be bad. Add in their creator Davros, a nasty piece of work that makes old Adolf look cuddly and handsome and we could stop right there.

 

Then there’s his opposite. A fellow member of the Time Lords, the Master is everything the Doctor isn’t. His evil mirror self, bent on conquering but also often just in messing with the Doctor himself. He’s pure vaudeville mustache twirling evil. And speaking of the Time Lords, they themselves, while not actual monsters are often presented as beurocratic, callous, stuffy and generally get in the Doctors way, even going so far as to trap him on earth as punishment. And there’s also Omega, another rogue Time Lord baddy. His own people are some of greatest adversaries. Then there are the armies, the Cybermen and the Sontarans. The Cybermen are alternate Earth humanoids who undergo cybernetic modification as a survival mechanism, a predecessor to the Borg from Star Trek, only with extra creepy body horror aspects. The Sontarans, who we’ve had fun with in our current story as the Yup-Yups, are a clone race bred for war and nothing but. Sorry Lucas, beat you to it. Both have had repeated run ins with the Doctor over the years. And before you start saying that Star Trek or Star Wars also have tons of different aliens/monsters, they can’t touch Doctor Who for the weird and wild varieties. Who monsters include living statues, giant plants, bugs, shape-shifters, werewolves, vampires, robots of all sorts and even standing stones and candy men. Okay, so they are not all winners. But much like Batman’s fringe baddies, they might be a bit silly, but it doesn’t mean they can’t be a good foe, or even a great one. But there’s so many more. The show is almost 50 years old. And it’s still going, still adding new members to the Doctors rogues gallery. So yeah, while Batman might win in the capes and tights world, the Doctor’s got the best villains overall. Others might disagree though.

Interesting question this time, about serialized material that’s either out of print or has never been collected. It’s interesting mostly in what it says about the current atmosphere concerning single comics vs. book collections. The era of pawing through long boxes seeking that missing issue is fading away. With the large omnibuses and the regular collected trades, more and more people are going that route, myself included. And I can completely understand it, not just from a reader/collector point of view, but as a publisher. We’ve been hauling single issues of the old DFS mini comics to shows for years and they are a hassle. Trying to keep over a dozen issues in print and displaying them and storing them is no fun. So we are finally getting close to retiring them in favour of the second trade collection. So the real answer of what storyline I most want collected is our second mini-comics run. This was not my answer on CBD however, as it would have seemed rather self serving. Instead it was a superhero book that I remember fondly that has not been collected and really should be. I think it was our old comic pusher Heath that introduced me to Ted Kord. a lighter spirited Batman, Ted was smart, athletic but a real hero. He was a brains over brawn kinda guy. And I hope I don’t have to explain how fun and cool Blue Beetle is, especially his Justice League days. And then they went and shot him in the head. But that original solo run by Len Wein, Parris Cullins and Bruce Patterson are really fun and I’d like a nice big fat book with all of them. And then there’s his original appearances in the Charlton comics before they were bought by DC. Does the name Ditko mean anything? Yeah. Plus there’s ties to another cool character, the Question, also from Charlton. Those I gather have been collected and I’d like to find those. And then there’s Dynamo Joe, but I’ll leave him for another time.

I can’t really say a lot more than I did when originally answered this question. 2010 for me was all about Scott Chantler, Faith Erin Hicks and Caanan Grall. And I have been not only following them, but thanks to modern social media, I’ve even been able to interact with them. I actually knew Faith through her Dad who was a teacher at my high school, so that’s been very cool, and Faith’s been helping me find Manga I might enjoy. Caanan did that awesome Max/Jay piece for us for TCAF after a back and forth he and I had, and Scott tweeted late one night that he was buried in colouring and was there anyone else out there in the same boat. I responded, and later that night he had tweeted back that he’d had a look and said nice things about DFS that still make me giddy. I feel vindicated in Caanan getting the Eisner nod. And both Faith and Scott have had very good years. But that question was sorta about 2010 in my mind. Now it’s 2011 and I need new people to obsess over. So far? My new one to watch is David LaFuente. I don’t exactly think he’s new, or truly up and coming, but I got one of the Ultimate comics Spider-Man collections he did from the library and really liked his work and have been trying to find lots more. So he’s my first new personal find for 2011.

I came to reading comics in a bit of a roundabout way, and like most, I started with stuff that wasn’t that meritorious. I detailed it earlier, but this weeks question was about the comic that made you sit up and take notice. The one that really made you change your outlook on comics. And I reiterate that Cerebus and Elfquest were really important in showing me what else was out there and possible. But the question specified, “as an adult”, so I had to re-think my answer and think back to when I read what. My response was slightly tongue in cheek, but still very honest. When we published The Dirty Baker’s Dozen, we dedicated it to, Captain Thatcher, The Little Grey Guy and The Lad. The first two I’ve mentioned before, the first is our friend Heath, who was not only our comics pusher, but had created his own comics way back in grade school. The second is Dave Sim, whose work on Cerebus, as well as his support and advocacy of self-publishing and doing your own thing in comics, let alone the high water mark of his own work, were a huge impact on us. The other is a reference to Lethargic Comics. Lethargic Comics came out of Sheridan College’s Animation program. A group of students and one instructor were the creators of such characters as Walrus Boy, The Grad, Him, The Zit and the titular Lethargic Lad. These were superhero parody comics, some lampooning specific stories, others a specific character or just the general tropes of superhero comics. From simple beginnings, rough photocopied mini comics, only four pages to begin with, but expanding over time, over 50 issues, leading up to a move to full-sized comics, distributed to comic shops and drawing attention of the comic world at large. Over time, Lethargic Comics weekly was replaced by Lethargic Lad and eventually Lethargic comics moved online to it’s current home at LethargicLad.com. The driving force all along has been Greg Hyland, and it’s Greg that keeps the Lethargic fun going on. Lethargic Comics were important to us not only for showing a path and what was possible, but the people themselves were supportive and encouraging. Brian Lemay was very helpful in starting us towards getting our first trade paperback together, even going so far as to air-brush the cover gradient for us. John and Steve, um, life lessons, yeah, let’s go with that. And Greg, Greg has always been a role model in sticking with your dream, and following your own path. How important were the Lethargic guys? We made them into supporting characters.

This is why I read comics, because I make comics, and I love seeing what’s out there, what other people are doing. And because it can be a great community. As to what changed the other lives, well go see.

At first glance, the question for the week seemed like an opportunity to get rid of people I might have a grudge against, and after I stopped making out a list and re-read the question, I realised it was about characters and not staff. So I had to re-think my response. And really what I was thinking about was the whole notion of comic book deaths. That’s become a phrase in and of itself, ‘comic book death’. It’s come to mean overly dramatic, done to shock and get attention, but with the understanding that it won’t be true death. All this came about because there was another ‘major’ character who was being marketed as dying in a huge media attention grab. I won’t say who, because you could read this in 5 years and it will still apply. We’re not talking about an element of a story, we’re talking about a sales gimmick. While I’m sure the moment will be played out for all the pathos possible, in the larger scheme, and I do mean scheme, it’s nothing more than a new costume, new art team, or shiny cocaine laced ink on a cover. The death of a significant character in a story should be there because it serves the story, because it’s an element of the story as a whole. Bambi’s mother died as a main plot point of the overall story.

Hamlet is full of people dying, but each one dies for a reason and it drives the story forward. And yeah, we could accuse old Bill of a ‘comic book death’ or two, it really screwed over poor Romeo, but again, it was a key part of the whole story. With all these comic character deaths, it’s like the villain of the week. Who dies this month, only to come back in a later story, having been resurrected or as a certain comic writer liked to crib from Mark Twain, “reports of my death were greatly exaggerated.” So my response to the question was pretty flippant, and it looks like it was actually mangled, losing part of it in the middle. What I was trying to point out was the ridiculousness and emptiness of killing on a quota, (there were reports a senior editor type was calling for a major death every quarter) and then referenced the difference that struck me as a kid between the massive battles in the GI Joe cartoon and Robotech. In one, no one died despite a crazy amount of weapons fir everywhere, and in the other there was death on both sides and we lost a couple of key characters permanently and each was significant to the other characters and the course of the story.

And then, thinking back on it all, I realised I was a huge hypocrite. Here I am complaining about killing off characters, and we’ve done exactly that. We killed Alex and Walter. Did it way back in issue 12 of the small press DFS. And it was a ‘comic book death’, because it was the Alex and Walter from an alternate past time-line. But I submit that while it was a very ‘comic book’ death, we planned it out as a part of the longer story we’d built towards, it had a profound effect on the living Alex and Walter and their future, (and in the short term, they spent the next couple of issues dazed from the experience) and frankly, it was done as a satire of that exact type of comic-book death. We also had a bit of fun with the whole thing in one of our pre-launch teaser posters. So you can agree with me or call me a hypocrite. I’d still kill off Deadpool. Who would the panellists kill? Who would you send below?

I’m not a big awards follower. I don’t watch the Oscars or the Gammy’s or such. Frankly, the idea of choosing one single film or song or other achievement and saying this was the single best thing of an entire year is pretty crazy. I do however, like the way it sheds a light on works that are worthy of attention. I’d be happier with nominees and no winner.

So when we were asked about our reactions to the Shuster awards, (Canadian Comic awards) I was kinda at a loss. I was only familiar with some of the work. And I was pleased to see that two of my favourite things from 2010 were in the lists, namely Kill Shakespeare and the works of Scott Chantler. (I checked and Caanan was in the running, but didn’t make the short list. ) But I can now go to the list and see what work was singled out and discover some more great Canadian work. And to me, that’s the good part of the Shusters. As others point out, it’s a very American heavy industry, and it’s often hard to know what’s Canadian and who’s doing what. So go check out the others responses, and more important, go see the nominees and check out their work!