Back in the day, we used to just like stuff every week. We still like stuff, but now we mix in links, videos and other random claptrap. It’s like the Cold Stone Creamery of nerd-dom; we call it The Bin, and we’ve gotta have it.

Stuff We Like This Week

Jeff: Can I like hating Jack Shephard? It gives me joy. Conversely, I’m all about a different Shepard this week – Commander Shepard from Mass Effect. I’m restarting the first game in preparation for the sequel, and I’m remembering how much I love the universe that BioWare has built. For me, it is the best example of the type of world-building that the company is capable of, even more than its admittedly excellent treatments of the Star Wars universe or the Forgotten Realms.

Something else I like? My native Scranton, usually a bit of a wasteland in terms of live music (that I like), is scoring some great concerts in the near future. In the next few months, I’m looking forward to seeing Wilco, Coheed and Cambria and The Hold Steady without traveling more than a half hour from my front door to do so.

Sarah: Going to Disneyland on a chilly Thursday in February is pretty much always a good idea, because the place is gloriously EMPTY. Go on Space Mountain six times, stuff yourself with churros, wander to your heart’s content — all with no threat of lines! Anyway, I finally got a chance to see the refurbished-as-of-2009 Small World, now with more Disney characters incorporated. I felt a little weird about this when it was first announced, I guess cause it seemed like adding a bunch of recognizable cartoon folk might be sort of…obtrusive? Crass? Yes, I realize I’m talking about It’s a Small Freakin’ World. Anyway, the additions are actually quite cute and fun and done in a way that makes sense (Lilo and Stitch in Hawaii, Alice in Wonderland in England, Ariel in…Mermaidland or whatever). Kind of loved trying to guess who I might see next.

Matt: I’m still about 15 minutes from finishing the first two eps of this final season of Lost but what I’ve seen so far is pretty damn good. I like the simultaneous feeling that there’s so much more to see in this universe, and yet the plots are closing in and falling atop one another as questions are answered. As someone who long ago tired of yet more Kate and Jack-centric episodes, I have to say the prospect of a new Kate and Jack over which to obsess hasn’t turned me off yet. To me, this show has treaded its share of water, but the storytelling drive that’s on display so far is riveting.

Chris: I stopped watching Smallville after the first season and I wasn’t all that invested in that season as it was. I didn’t hate it, though I was disappointed by the adamant and dismissive “no-costume” rule, and the unspoken “weekly villains are linked to Kryptonite” rule. So, when the word came down that the JSA was going to show up, my ears pricked up – and when the Internet fanboys started to whine, my teeth were beared. Goddammit, it’s like nobody remembers life before the X-files, when genre TV was few and far between and comic TV did not exist outside of Saturday mornings. So you know what I like this week? The classic Sandman, Dr. Fate, et al, are going to be on TV and not as cartoons. And the whiners can suck my remote.

Link Stew

Our friends at Film Buff Online play detective with Fox’s mysterious Zorro musical developed in the 30s but never completed.

The new Avengers lineup looks a lot like the old New Avengers lineup, no?

Crime novelist and Cable scribe Duane Swierczynski is livetweeting the “hostage situation” in the Macmillan/Amazon conflict.

Heidi MacDonald has moved The Beat over to its spiffy-looking new home.

The Fantastic Fangirls are hosting their first-ever comic book awards. And anyone can vote! Goooooo, Moonstone!

Calvin and Hobbes homages by various artists – the last one made me all blubbery.

Etc.

David Byrne and Fatboy Slim are releasing a concept album about the life of Imelda Marcos. Go ahead, read that sentence a few times. Let it sink in. (Thanks to Dave for the heads-up on this one.)

I sometimes deliver these pronouncements that make me sound like I’m permanently stuck in 1999. “Wow, the internet!” I’ll say. “So goddamn amazing, no?!” (I imagine myself sporting a too-big dot-com swag tee, Discman headphones jammed over my ears and piping in “69 Love Songs” as I’m saying this, by the way.)

But, look, I’ve been thinking a whole lot about the internet — and its amazingness — recently, thanks to a bunch of virtual kerfuffles and debates, mostly having to do with ladies and comics. I was depressed by the raftload of negativity that greeted the Girl Comics announcement*, then perplexed that there wasn’t more negativity towards that sausage fest Heroic Age image**. I track all of this on Twitter, of course, then follow up with longer outraged/not-outraged/outraged-by-the-outrage emails between internet friends. But whatever your feelings on any of these topics, here’s something I never quite thought about whilst debating them: it seems like we’ve finally moved beyond the “yeah, girls do read comics!” portion of the discussion.

Do you know what I mean? I was just thinking back to some of the scandals of yesteryear (ie, like, 2006): remember LarsenGate? Erik Larsen writes this column, tons of angry responses (including mine) occur, track the results on When Fangirls Attack? At that point, I did feel like it was necessary to say — again and again and again — that, yes, women do read comics. Superhero comics, even. I am one of these women! Hear me roar from behind my massive stack of Authority back issues!

The idea that maybe we’re a little farther along in the conversation in 2010 coalesced for me the other day, thanks to the whole T-Shirt Product Description Incident (…T-ShirtProductDescriptionGate? Hmm, nah).

Basically, this one merch site, Superhero Stuff, had some totally horrific copy describing this shirt. It was all about how the guy writing said copy was trying to decide which Marvel lady he’d like to have in his “harem” and I don’t feel like replicating the whole thing, but basically? It was really over-the-top, on-the-nose gross and sexist and quite grandly reinforced the hoary old “girls don’t read comics” thing. (As you can see, it’s since been changed. But more on that in a sec.)

I Tweeted about it and then other people picked that up and pretty soon, there was all kinds of cool, 140-character commentary flying back and forth. Friends Jeff and Carla had a great exchange about why “wooting up” copy should generally be avoided. Colleen Coover made this amazing comment, which is just so precise and right on, the most intelligent response I could come up with was, “Yes, totally!” (Why don’t I just say “totes” while I’m at it, eh?) People were pissed off enough to email the site and @ them on Twitter and hey, 24 hours later, the product description suddenly has no mention of harems. Friend Sigrid over at Fantastic Fangirls did a great write-up that documents the whole shebang in detail.

I suppose a bit of changed copy seems like a pretty tiny thing in the grand scheme of the world, but still: I thought it was neat.

Here’s what’s even neater, though, and yes, I’m about to get SO CHEESY. The minute that link started making the rounds on Twitter, there was no debate about “oh, hey, but do girls read comics? Why should they care?” I didn’t feel the need to preface all my statements with “yes, I’m a comics-reading lady and…” It made me think that maybe the ol’ comics internet has progressed a decent amount since the debates of yesteryear (again: 2006!). It made me think about the amazing variety of kick-ass fangirls whose words I can read and listen to online, people like Evie Nagy and Laura Hudson and Jill Pantozzi and Esther Inglis-Arkell and Karen Healey and Ragnell and Kalinara and Caroline/Sigrid/Jennifer/Anika. It made me feel like, these days, it’s way harder for some clueless person to equate the “girls reading comics” thing with “hey, unicorns!”

I could be wrong. Maybe something will happen today that will make this post look like the ridiculous rainbows-and-sunshine ravings of an idiot optimist. It is the goddamn internet, after all. And if that happens, well…at least I’ve still got this massive pile of Authority back issues.

*I’m sorry, but can we talk about how totally fucking amazing the creator line-up for GC is? Colleen Coover and G. Willow Wilson and Kathryn Immonen and Amanda Conner and, and, and?! I drooled a little. I suppose my general view is that spotlighting women does not have to equal marginalization and if done right, can be quite awesome. If this book had existed when I was a kid, I would’ve clawed and shoved all of the other unfortunate comic shop urchins out of the way just to get my grimy mitts on Jill Thompson’s Phoenix/Kitty Pryde/Scarlet Witch-highlighting cover. Hell, I might still do that. As an adult. You’ve been warned.

**Seriously, there is one woman in that image. ONE. Not okay by any stretch of the imagination.

Nerdly Advice is still here every Tuesday, shining its light off the dock and waiting, waiting, waiting for Daisy. Except, much like Gatsby’s one true love, the questions have dried up.  Without them, I’m forced to do more Batman answers Ann Landers posts, and nobody wants that, especially that one guy who got really offended because I bit his decades-old username (and it was completely on purpose).

What I’m saying is, lay those questions on us. We know you’ve got them.  Hit us up in the comments, or email us at nerdlyadvice@gmail.com.

We used to just like stuff every week. Now we throw that in a blender with links, videos, and random claptrap and we call it…THE BIN. It stinks like garbage but it doesn’t taste half bad.

Stuff We Like This Week

Matt: I have a playlist on my iPod entitled “Geek Music Hits,” where I put basically an assortment of my favorite John Williams themes & tracks. There’s a little Danny Elfman too, and lately Michael Giacchino has been making an appearance. I take this music for granted, because it’s stitched into the fabric of my brain so vividly; this is my go-to “Oh shit I gotta get some work done” playlist, for example, cause there’s no distracting lyrics and it’s interesting while being consistently recognizable. In other words, I can hear it without really listening, unless I want to take a mental break and do so.

I used Williams’ Superman theme for a work video this week; in creating it, I heard it about fifty billion times over and over. (Actually, at the risk of sacrilege, I used John Ottman’s mild reorchestration of the theme from the Superman Returns soundtrack, which was shorter and worked better for my purposes.) Even hearing it over and over, as it played yesterday morning at the event’s opening, I still got a tingle down my spine. The man is a master, and his work is indelible.

Sarah: I picked up the Marvel Fairy Tales collection on a whim. Not much thought went into it beyond “this art looks really pretty and I get 25 percent off at this particular comics shop. Wheee!” But this adorable little book — which collects all of the Avengers Fairy Tales, plus one issue each of the X-Men and Spidey editions — is the most beautifully rendered, flat-out joyful thing I’ve read all week.

Basically, C.B. Cebulski takes familiar Marvel heroes and puts them in various fairy tale situations and gets a bunch of talented artists (like Kyle Baker and Takeshi Miyazawa) to illustrate the results. One especially lovely thing: the Avengers stories, in particular, really position some of my favorite female characters front and center, whether it’s Wanda as a magic-wielding Wendy Darling or She-Hulk as Wizard of Oz’s Dorothy or Cassie Lang playing a social outcast version of Alice in Wonderland. And each story has its own distinct style and tone that fits perfectly with these ladies. Given the frustration I’ve felt over, say, Wanda’s absence in regular continuity, this seems like a truly magical thing. More, please.

Jeff: I caught up on the first two issues of Fabio Moon and Gabriel Ba’s Vertigo series Daytripper this week, and I am just kind of blown away by it in an understated way. The art is breathtaking, the storytelling is poignant, and the dialogue seems incredibly real. The book is a huge breath of fresh air.

Oh, and hey! Lost! Lost is only days away and it is omnipresent in my life. I’ve been trying to keep a mild level of enthusiasm for the show, but everywhere I go, someone is super-psyched and I can’t help but get swept along with it.

Does anybody else feel like the 1960s live action Disney films are totally acid-fueled? I’ve watched Chitty-Chitty Bang-Bang twice this week with my niece, and I am shocked at how insane the movie is.

Link Stew

Yeah, so Whitney Matheson of USA Today’s Pop Candy blog says Sarah’s book, One Con Glory, is the best thing she’s read this week. No big deal. (TOTALLY BIG DEAL.)

Our friend Karen Healey directed us to this excellent essay by Bao Phi about being a nerd of color.

Our friend Dan Wiencek’s write-up of the iPad as digital textbook is probably the best piece of writing we’ve seen so far covering the device.

This is Psyduck’s Wikipedia page.

Not surprising: several of the Alert Nerds are theme park dweebs. These image dissections of a 3D model for the Fantasyland redo at Magic Kingdom are way cool, from a nuts-and-bolts perspective if not from a content perspective (although we have high hopes for the Be Our Guest restaurant).

On a similar note, supposedly the Harry Potter land at Universal Orlando is now visible from the highway. Matt hasn’t spotted it yet, but here’s a pretty cool virtual walkthrough.

This tongue-in-cheek zombie revisionism kick in fiction has gone too far.

Etc.

Hitler doesn’t like the iPad, much like the rest of the Internet.

“Game-changer” is a pretty fucking strong term.

Like, just think of a game. Let’s use Monopoly. Let’s say they revised the rules so that instead of having the most money at the end of the game, you had to own the most properties to win.

THAT is a game changer.

Now let’s say they put Monopoly on your phone. Does that change the game? Now you can play it alone on the shitter. But it’s still Monopoly. (Technically speaking you could always play it alone on the shitter, but it is nigh-impossible to balance the board on your lap. Trust me, I’ve tried.)

The iPad looks like a potentially neat device. I kinda want one. But it doesn’t change any games, at least not yet.

ESPECIALLY the game of comics, which is one specific area where the interwebs have been enflamed with the kind of loose rhetoric that only geeks with an internet connection can conjure. The way it reads out there, it’s like Steve Jobs himself is gonna come by your local comic shop and board up the windows. Tomorrow.

First of all, and this is kinda obvious so forgive me for saying it, the Direct Market is a massive beast. Even in its anemic current state, it’s a big show. Comics in printed form period is even more gigantic. While there are some leading-edge publishers who are supporting truly awesome digital initiatives via the iPhone (IDW, Image, Boom), neither DC nor Marvel has thrown their weight in behind the iPad, or hell, digital comics period. Except for that slightly crappy website Marvel made.

(Which leaves aside the fact that to my mind, the Direct Market as it’s known has been dead for a long time to the savvy and business-minded comic shop owner, but that’s a whole separate post. In fact, I already wrote it.)

But let’s say there’s some miracle year for the iPad and all the publishers trip over themselves to get their books onto the device, and in 365 days, we’re able to log onto our Jesusputers and download current issues of major comics to read electronically.

There’s still a pretty significant price barrier at a $499 entry level, even though that’s lower than I think anyone expected. On top of that, you’re not getting free comics for $499, you still have to pay to read them. And that ephemeral barrier cited by so many fans, that you will buy the comic but not HAVE A COMIC TO FILE IN A LONGBOX AND CRADLE AS YOU DIE, will still exist.

So will a significant pile of fans be more willing to pay $499 one time plus, let’s say, another couple hundred a year on digital comics files, when they could just keep doing what they’re doing and buy comics at a store like their nerd ancestors? Maybe, but not right away, and not at $499. I think the magic price for an iPad or any tablet is more like $199 or $299, and until it drops to that level, it’s not going to be a cultural phenomenon.

I would say we are at LEAST five to seven years away from the iPad having a significant impact on the publishing industry. The window for comics may be smaller but that’s only because it’s a smaller part of that industry. That’s not “game changing.” That’s “don’t torch your LCS and buy an iPad anytime soon, cause you’re still gonna buy comics if you still wanna read comics.”

I think the game of comics WILL change. It is changing as I type this. I am excited about digital comics, the iPad, and basically anything Steve Jobs decides to push out his miracle anus. But let’s all take a deep breath and smell the musky romance of ink on pulp, because that scent ain’t going anywhere soon.

***

Let’s get bigger in the picture cause I’m rambling now, so why stop?

Will the iPad change ANY games? I agree with my pal Dan Wiencek who sees the big picture for the iPad as primarily in the realm of education. Apple already has relationships and a track record in the education world, and the appeal for both students and publishers of moving to an all-digital DRM-protected format is too great. Freshmen can carry their entire syllabus in their backpack, and publishers can rest easy that the used bookstores that cannibalize their products will soon be closing their doors for the last time. So it’s a consumer device with a really strong eye toward dominating a potentially lucrative and consistent revenue stream; if the iPad becomes a standard issue device at major universities who will rely on Apple’s cachet and easy-to-use UI and sales system to basically replace their bookstores, that’s a lotta green.

I’m honestly most excited for what the iPad means for everyone but Apple. If this device is any kind of success, and come on we all know it will be because it’s Apple and there’s still enough disposable geek income in this tragic economy to guarantee pretty big initial sales, then the netbook space will be joined by a tablet space, and maybe even suffocated by it. There’s already an HP tablet device coming, but what about a hardware shop like Asus, which has made a big dent in the netbook space with some amazingly competitive pricing? How long will it take for enough other companies to jump on the bandwagon that a tablet gets to be as economical and mundane as an mp3 player is today? And how much will THAT change the game, especially if Apple sees where the real money is at and builds out their iBooks application just like they’ve built out iTunes, optimized for their own ecosystem but not dependant on it?

The tech geek in me lusts for an iPad but the sensible daddy wearing slightly-worn loafers really aches for the day when Asus or a like-minded company cranks out a more open and affordable device, even if it has less memory on board, or doesn’t come with the miracle UI that Apple has developed. Especially if it can leverage iBooks alongside Kindle and whoever else enters the eBook space as the hardware market for this type of device grows.

(Did you know the iPad has no USB ports? Doesn’t that seem slightly insane?)

I love Apple but with a device like this it’s hard not to look at the closed nature of the computing and be a little disappointed. It’s one thing to make that sacrifice on a phone which is doubling as a small portable computer; when you’re buying an actual small portable computer, you expect to be able to do what you want with it, as long as no crimes are committed. Unfortunately, Apple’s got their iPhone OS and apps ecosystem firmly entrenched in the iPad to the point where you wonder how you’d even really use it for anything close to actual productive work. Can I make a word processing doc? Can I save it to a jump drive easily? And even if I can (I think iWork is Apple’s answer to those questions), I am absolutely required to do it using the software Apple thinks I should be using. Adam Pash at Lifehacker says all that far more eloquently than I can.

So…iPad. It sounds like a tampon, ha ha. It will probably make a splash and push some boundaries and maybe even incite a revolution. But the real revolution will begin in a few years when Apple’s innovation has the potential to spread and become a key part of a new reality that may or may not involve Apple’s closed software universe. 

Yes.

Like the Uni-Power or the 100 Bullets briefcase, a different superhero ends up with the Ronin costume in each issue or arc. El Aguila. Killraven. Red Hulk. Deadpool. All of them could be Ronin. And then they ninja fight for 20 pages. And of course, no matter the gender or dimensions of the person in the suit, they always look like a really buff guy.

Why? Is it because the Ronin costume is…magic?

2. Beast and Thing move into an apartment together. I don’t think I need to elaborate on this beyond playing the “Odd Couple” theme and smiling maniacally.

3. Really, aren’t all those Spider-Man villains just furries when you get right down to it? And also Frog-Man. This would, of course, be a MAX series.

4. What if Weapon X made a clone using DNA from Wolverine and Deadpool?

5. Did you know that Jean Grey has been alive this whole time? She’s just been chilling in Rhode Island, running her own indie bookstore and having a flirty, will-they-or-won’t-they thing with the rugged-yet-vulnerable guy who owns the hardware store next door.

6. When he deigns to notice that his accursed foes The Avengers have a team of Young Avengers, Doom creates DOOM YOUTH in Latveria. But what does this have to do with the return of…KRISTOFF?!

7. Ken Hale, High School Math Teacher.

8. Marvel Bromance – Steve Rogers and Tony Stark take a cross country road trip in Captain America’s old van. Back-up feature – Spider-Man and Wolverine try to pick up girls and fail miserably.

9. Planet Red Hulk. World War Red Hulk. Red Skaar, Son of Red Hulk. See also: Blue Hulk, Yellow Hulk, Orange Hulk, Indigo Hulk, Violet Hulk, Hulk Corps, Hulkest Night.

10. Secret Wars III – Someone Exposes The Beyonder To Internet Culture. “Spider-Man, I must have Taco Tuesday – TODAY! For I AM FROM BEYOND!”

We used to just like stuff every week. Now we throw that in a blender with links, videos, and random claptrap and we call it…THE BIN. It stinks like garbage but it doesn’t taste half bad.

Stuff We Like This Week

Matt: I like that this week I finally read the first actual real-life comics I’ve read in what feels like months. It was a modest stack–the last two issues of The Mighty, and the old Morrison/Quitely GN Earth 2–but it was comics. When you have a newborn, it’s the little things.

Jeff: The new Aziz Ansari CD, Intimate Moments For A Sensual Evening, has been making the rounds at my office, and it’s hilarious. Even more hilarious? Coworker Aaron trying to find Aziz’s cousin Harris on Facebook. “I wanna friend him!”

Something else I liked this week? Dark Wolverine. I’m surprised by how not a total joke this book is. It stars a totally unnecessary character and follows said star as he manipulates, stabs and sexually harasses the entire Marvel Universe and there is something glorious about it. Marjorie Liu is doing awesome work with Daken.

Chris: I first heard this track from La Roux while watching Misfits (which I mentioned last week) – sadly, it’s the only track on the album that I like, but it is a strong standalone song. So strong, it has survived 100+ forced viewings of the Bayonetta commercial that Canadian cable seems to play once EVERY FUCKING COMMERCIAL BREAK!

Link Stew

Holy Christ–Sega has released an emulator app for the iPhone built around in-app game purchases. Comes with a free game; Sonic and Golden Axe are among the initial game offerings. PLEASE, Nintendo, DO THIS NOW.

Holy Christ Again–Square Enix is putting out the original Final Fantasy and Final Fantasy II in iPhone versions. PLEASE, Nintendo, GET ON THIS BANDWAGON.

David Brothers is nearing the top of the roller coaster hill that is his yearly Black History Month posts. They’re always an exceptional read.

Kalinara begins her noble mission of dissecting Jean and Scott’s sex life. It’s just as amazing as it sounds.

Speaking of Jean and Scott…

Max Huffman’s Mocktopus continues to be completely batshit awesome. Look at this strip and tell me I’m wrong.

Guess which video game Chris doesn’t want to play. Ever.

PHYSICS FOR THE WIN!

SHELDON FOR THE WIN! The lack of laughter is at once jarring and illuminating. The laugh track always seemed to be a crutch popular in North American sitcoms, but shows like The Office have proven that funny is funny, no prompting required.

Etc.

“I found your assistant, and he’s dope.”

@mwachsmann: To me, the most unsettling thing about Avatar is wondering how many couples have incorporated the phrase “I see you” into their lovemaking.

Alert Nerds Sarah and Jeff enjoy BS-ing about random stuff. Sometimes their friend Caroline from Fantastic Fangirls enjoys joining them for such things. Last week, a bunch of big-ass comics news came down the pike and the internet got its bitch on and the emails between this mighty trio flew fast and furious. Here’s what transpired.

Caroline: Let me tell you, I was happy last week when a couple pieces of what I’d call Very Good News dropped in a row. (1) Marvel announced that Kitty Pryde is returning to Uncanny X-Men and (2) DC announced that Gail Simone is returning to Birds of Prey.

I feel like the comics Internet has really been needing some good news — or at least, some news we weren’t going to be able to fight about — and the return of a popular character and a popular title seemed to fit the bill. For me, personally, they weren’t the very best pieces of news I could imagine. I was never a Birds of Prey reader — I just wasn’t into DC at the time Simone was writing the book. As far as Kitty goes, I like her fine, but if I had to pick an X-lady I’d like to see back in action, I’d prefer the return of Jean Grey — or Rachel Grey and Polaris coming back from space exile, or even just an active and interesting role for Storm. Still, new Kitty stories and new Birds of Prey are going to make a lot of fans I know very happy, and both returns look like positive developments for female characters (not to mention fans and, assuming this is the book Simone wants to be working on, at least one female creator).

At first the reaction I saw to both announcements was really positive. But then I started to notice a thread of criticism, first about the Kitty news, and then eventually tying the two announcements together. That was the idea that because both of these announcements involve returns, they are signs that the big companies aren’t moving forward, or that they’re basing their sales pitches and storytelling on nostalgia.

My first thought was that this criticism didn’t seem to fit the particular news. Kitty has only been “missing in action” for about a year and a half, and she was written out in a story that went to great lengths to avoid killing her. I always assumed this was because an imminent return was part of the plan! And Birds of Prey has only been cancelled for about a year. It’s been a bit longer since Simone wrote it, granted, but it’s not like we’re talking about a long-dead character or a long-cancelled series.

Although…there certainly has been a lot of big news about long-dead characters and long-cancelled series lately. So, I’m wondering — am I offbase in my thoughts about the reaction to the recent news? Are the reappearing Kitty and the resurgent Birds part of some big trend? Or are people responding to a trend that does exist, and just using ill-fitting examples in this particular case? And if “nostalgia” is the word of the moment, is this a bad thing?

Jeff: Nostalgia is a bit of a tightrope act. Too much of it and new readers complain. Too little and old readers complain. To people who like the incremental and glacial forward motion in the linewide storylines, nostalgia can be a slap in the face. To other readers — and I’ve covered enough “Marvel: Your Universe” panels (and the DC equivalent) to have heard this exhaustively from fans of all ages — it’s a comfort, a security blanket. “No matter how screwed up and chaotic real life is, I know that at the end of the day Bruce Wayne is Batman,” or something similar.

I know that I’ve joked about DC’s rapacious tendency to capitalize on nostalgia as though it were some kind of precious, avarice-invoking ore culled from the heart of the earth, but really, I don’t think that bringing BoP back is an example of that. It had a pretty healthy run (127 issues is huge these days) under some fan-favorite creators and it got shuffled off the schedule pretty unceremoniously. The characters are still popular and relevant and this is a relaunch more than a reboot or re-envisioning. It’s not even a long-overdue return (from my perspective as a Gail Simone mega-fan, it seems long-overdue but it’s been about two years, only, or five days in comic-book time) to most people.

You’re spot-on about Kitty, too, Caroline. Pains have been taken to make her not-dead. Good-as-dead? Maybe for awhile. The only bad thing about Kitty’s return is that it mucks up the Space X-Men pitch I’ve been meaning to harangue Axel Alonso about — the one that starts with the giant Breakworldian space-bullet hitting a Celestial.

I think that timing is an issue here — we’ve heard a lot of news in the past few weeks about reboots and relaunches and resurrections and these are the unfortunate stragglers that managed to get announced just after we’d hit our nerd news saturation point.

Of course, some of these news bits — like Paul Levitz’s Legion of Super Heroes book or the return of the JLI — are bald-faced nostalgia grabs. The example may be flawed, but the problem just might be real. If we want to characterize it as a problem.

Sarah: Yeah, I am so nostalgic! For 2007.

Seriously, I think “nostalgia” is one of those hot-button nerd words that gets thrown around when maybe it isn’t exactly…fitting. But beyond that, the fixation on comics companies needing to just forget about the past has always struck me as a little weird since these characters have endured for decades and there’s, you know, a reason for that. It’s not that I want everything to remain the same all the time, or that my brain is permanently stuck in 1985, but if you can capture that thing that made some of those older stories resonate in the first place, maybe you’ll snag younger readers who are just as passionate as us old fogeys.

Perhaps I’m just old-fashioned?

The bottom line: I just want, say, the return of Kitty Pryde to be a good story. You can bitch and moan all you want about dead meaning dead or whatever, but if the creative team pulls it off, no one cares. (I always think of last year’s Star Trek flick and why there are so many reasons it shouldn’t have worked, so many reasons the fankids could’ve bitched…and, well, most of them didn’t. Because it was good. So it didn’t fucking matter that, like, Scotty was balding. You know what I’m saying?)

I also always thought the return of Kitty was a given. Then again, I thought the return of Jean Grey was a big, fat given, and…that still hasn’t happened yet. And maybe this, once again, marks me as old-fashioned, but I don’t mind this sort of thing being a given. One of the reasons I like comics and sci-fi is that people can come back from the dead, usually in ways that are impossible to explain without some sort of complicated-looking graph or pie-chart.

On a purely fangirlish note, I’m thrilled about Birds of Prey. Gail Simone writing dialogue between Oracle and Black Canary is one of my most favoritest things in comics and if that’s nostalgia, well…I was “nostalgic” for it the minute the series ended. How the return of such a smart, fun, kickass lady-type book could be seen as a bad thing is way beyond my powers of comprehension.

Caroline: I think this is what I’m worried about: someday — not as soon as all three of us probably would like it to be, but someday — someone at Marvel will write a return of Jean Grey story. I’ll be absolutely over the moon about it, and then someone will talk about how people only want Jean Grey to be back because they hate for anything ever to change, and then I’ll have to use my psychic powers to stab them. I’ll be thrown in jail, and then I won’t have any access to comic books. They probably won’t even let me read Twitter in my cell, so Jean will finally be back and I will never get to find out what happens.

Okay, that is probably not the precise thing I should be worrying about. But. Is fear of change really the only reason that somebody might want to read a story about Jean? From my perspective, the reason I’m so desperate to read about this character again is that I don’t feel as though her story got a proper finish. I don’t want to read the same story over and over again; I want to find out what happens to my favorite character next.

“Continuity” has gotten to be a dirty word in comics, and not without reason. But taken literally, isn’t “continuity” what we want out of any kind of storytelling — the beginning leads to the middle leads to the end? That’s not geeky nitpicking, that’s Aristotle’s Poetics.

The tricky thing with comics is that every reader is coming into the story from a different entry point. The arcs aren’t intrinsic to any individual story; we have to construct them for ourselves. My version of the story is not exactly the same as Sarah’s, which is not exactly the same as Jeff’s — and we’re three people who have read a lot of the same comics and like a lot of the same characters. Cast your net a little wider, and there’s even more of a difference. I guess that’s why I get so frustrated when some fans start making assumptions about other fans’ motives. Where I might see the ending of an old story, someone else sees the beginning of a new one, and neither of us are wrong.

I’m starting to wonder if nostalgia can have any real meaning in a genre where the whole idea of beginnings and endings, of what’s old and what’s new, is constantly in flux. If we can all agree that a new Keith Giffen JLI series is a pure nostalgia-grab, and that a relaunched Birds of Prey is nothing of the kind, where does that leave an event like “Blackest Night”? On the one hand, it’s introducing new elements into DCU mythology; on the other, it seems to be doing it by digging up dead characters. And what about the X-Men Forever phenomenon of going back to old stories but taking them in a direction they’ve never gone before? Does that count as old or new?

Sarah: If you do end up psychically stabbing people, Caroline, I will bake you a jailhouse cake with Jean Grey comics hidden inside.

You know I’m with you on the Jean thing! I also feel like a lot of the stories that are being told currently could benefit from Jean’s presence; I don’t know if that’s because she’s my favorite or because I can’t let go or because…I feel like there could be some terribly fascinating and provocative interactions, given where some of the characters are in their lives (no, Cyclops, I don’t mean like “threesome.” Not that kind of provocative). And I’d like to think this isn’t because I fear change and just want to read the same old stories: I mean, if I want to experience the gentle, soothing feeling of a more retro Marvel U with Jean Grey in it, I can just dig through my back issue bins or read X-Men: First Class (which I guess is how I think of things like X-Men Forever: “Here is something to soothe you, old-ass comics fan. There, there.” I personally don’t see anything wrong with this, but probably the ideal situation is a book like First Class, which seemed to have a lot of potential appeal for new fans as well, or at least people who aren’t saddled with years of continuity).

Anyway. I suppose pre-judging something before you can actually read/watch it will always be part of fandom, as will the suppositions geeks make about their fellow fans’ motives. But it would be nice if, you know, we could occasionally take a few deep breaths and maybe look for the good. Like, one of the first things I thought when I heard about Kitty was, “Oh, Dan Faust will be so happy! I do believe I am quite happy for him!” You know?

Yeah, I don’t know when I turned into Mary Fucking Comicfan Sunshine. I’m basically making myself want to vomit at this point.

Jeff: The best comic book stories, at least in the current “age” of the medium, are the ones that take the old stuff and make something new out of it. That’s where “Blackest Night” succeeds. That’s where “Siege” succeeds (because the light at the end of the tunnel is a more ’60s-esque Avengers lineup, yes?). My gut reaction when I look at “Generation Lost” is that it doesn’t add anything new, doesn’t build on the old stuff. It just builds next to or around the old stuff. I’m going to make myself pretty unpopular by saying that I was done with JLI before it stopped being published back in the ’90s. The first few years of it were superlative, but the jokes got too omnipresent and too old and too uninspired. And every relaunch we’ve seen for that particular team harps on the silly shit to the point where it’s a major turn-off to me. In fact, maybe that’s how we ought to define nostalgia in comics — a forced attempt to recapture a moment whose zeitgeist has passed. Bring back Firebrand II? Not a bad idea inherently. Make everything like it was when Roy Thomas was Geoff Johns? Nostalgia.

Wanna hear something funny? X-Men #112 was one of my favorite Kitty Pryde issues ever. I like Kitty — not as much as I like Jean or Logan or Beast, mind you, but more than I like Colossus or Cyclops — and it’s the one where she takes Peter’s ashes to Russia and then quits the X-Men. Then she just goes off to college, and I was happy with Kitty just walking away there, maybe taking a lengthy absence from superheroing and maybe coming back eventually, but I rooted for Kitty to go off and have a normal life. I get where you’re both coming from in wanting to know “what’s next,” but I’m equally happy when we hit one of those endcap moments. Like, if you killed Hank McCoy right now but made it great — like they did in Ultimate X-Men — I wouldn’t beg for him back, because he made the story better. Now Jean…I’ve gotten up during a Marvel panel and been one of those guys who asks Joe Quesada when Jean is coming back — I offered him a bribe, too — because the way that Grant Morrison killed her off (and I am totes Team GMozz most of the time) was wasteful and thoughtless and cheap. On a certain level, I grok that that’s the point of “Planet X,” but she never should have stayed down this long. And I know that she’s not really dead, yadda yadda, but that’s even more frustrating because her story isn’t done yet and Marvel keeps reminding readers of that. I think I joked with Caroline the other day that the X-office’s marketing strategy for every single thing they promote is to try and trick readers into thinking that this is the book where Jean comes back.

Caroline: One of my favorite things about Watchmen is that Alan Moore has Dr. Manhattan say, “Nothing ever ends” — and then he ends it. Moore acknowledges the potential to keep the universe he created going on forever, in one direction or another, but is smart enough to realize that a text being finite can make a story more powerful.

Wow, do I sound pretentious today! Sorry, about that. But, yes, Jeff, I see where you’re coming from. There are plenty of moments I can point to — not just in comics, but in television shows or series books that have gone on too long — where I can say, “That character’s story ought to end there!” Your example about Kitty is a really good one. Kitty could have left there, or Cyclops could have gone to live on his shrimp boat after Jean died in the “Dark Phoenix Saga” (for the benefit of readers who may not be X-geeks, feel compelled to emphasize that this really happened; the shrimp boat is not a metaphor), and it would have been a good story. I can even understand that somebody who felt like Morrison’s resolution of Jean Grey’s story in New X-Men was satisfying — that sending her to the White Room represents some kind of spiritual transcendence and not a fridging wrapped up in mystical nonsense — doesn’t feel the need to see the character again.

On the other hand, Joss Whedon did bring Kitty back, and she had grown up and this was worked into what turned out to be a damn good story. If she had come back as the teenager Joss had a crush on when he was a teenager (and, dude, I bet the guy regretted telling that story in print years before he ever knew he’d be writing X-Men), I think it would be different. Astonishing X-Men ended up being anything but an exercise in rote nostalgia. The way I read the run, anyway, it’s a story about dealing with the past in order to move forward. The past is present as a measure of how much things have changed.

At the end of the day, it’s not how much of the past you use, but what you do with it. I’m with Sarah in seeing the First Class series as the best of both worlds. There was a while when X-Men: First Class and Wolverine: First Class literally kept me reading X-books, because they were the only places to get characters I cared about. This isn’t just me being picky about who I’ll read; it’s a reflection that, after Kitty disappeared at the end of Astonishing, there was literally no place to read about female X-Men characters who had any kind of established personalities and weren’t evil, in comas, being tortured, or Emma Frost. I’m not saying that as a slam against Emma, either; it’s just that for a while there, she was nearly the only game in town. First Class was giving me stories about Jean Grey and Wanda Maximoff and Kitty Pryde, so you bet I was looking there.

I’m hesitant to take my personal likes and dislikes and frame them as a female representation issue, but when established female characters are killed or written out, or the books featuring them are cancelled, there is a representation issue.

Sarah: Oh, yeah — I have some very strong dislikes that are most definitely wrapped up in female representation issues. And I realize that what I’m about to say is going to make me sound like even more of an old fogey. Maybe that’s what this conversation is ultimately revealing to me about myself. Maybe I am a shameless nostalgia buff, goddammit!

But listen: if you look at the X-Men landscape in particular, all the iconic male heroes from the olden days are pretty well-represented. Cyclops, Colossus, Wolverine, Beast, etc. Whereas a lot of the ladies who I think of as legacy characters, as icons with a lot of history, are either “sort of dead” (Jean) or missing (Kitty) or shunted off to the side (Storm). I enjoy the introduction of new awesome X-personas, but why does it have to be an either-or situation? One of the things I loved about the oldey-olden days is that, like, Storm developed a really lovely mentor-style relationship with Kitty. Maybe, you know, Kitty will mentor someone else upon her comeback — there are plenty of new stories you can tell with Ms. Pryde. And for now, I’ll try not to get into how my dream OLDEY THYMEY line-up would include Jean and Storm and Kitty and Rogue. With big ’80s hair. And fancy, Dynasty-style bejeweled outfits. And a Debbie Gibson-heavy soundtrack.

Uh, what was I saying again?

Oh, right: ultimately, I think Caroline’s point brings it home. “It’s not how much you of the past you use, but what you do with it.” I come back to my mention of the Star Trek reboot: if something’s good, it doesn’t really matter what past elements it includes or how much “nostalgia” it brings up or if the characters do, in fact, sport fancy, Dynasty-style bejeweled outfits (secret dream! You listening, X-pencillers?). That’s why the premature bitching and the snideness towards people who might be excited for a Kitty and/or BoP resurrection is so fucking annoying. Will there ever be an instance where comics fans don’t pile on with the pre-judging? Am I asking for too much here?

Jeff: I sure want to say that you aren’t, but I think we all know the real answer. The comics internet will find a way to complain about anything, and that’s just a super-condensed version of the way that cliques in comic shops act when they hang out all day and just talk about what they’re reading. I think it’s interesting that no matter what the news is, the response always trends negative, even if opinion changes later. Like the new Blue Beetle when it launched a few years ago. Remember all the moaning about Ted Kord being killed off/replaced with a more “multicultural” hero (same with Firestorm when that book rebooted with Jason Rusch in the starring role)? A few months after the Jaime Reyes version of the character debuted, a lot of that negativity had gone quiet and Jaime is generally regarded as one of the best new characters out of DC in the last decade. But that initial reaction always assumes the worst. Heck, the intimation that we’re going back to a more classic Avengers lineup after six years of loud fanboy negativity about New Avengers — even that is being complained about and you’d think that people would be wolfing that down like free pizza.

Sometimes I think that being a comic fan is a bit like being in an abusive relationship, the way you get trained to expect things to be terrible, but never to actually walk away; when things are as good as we should expect them to be, we act surprised. Part of that might lie in the fan entitlement mindset. I’m sure we all know at least one long-term fan who stopped being invested in the “what happens next” aspect of the shared universe and clings to “what I want to happen,” which is a surefire way to get bitter fast. And that’s why I think a lot of new developments in comics unfairly get labeled as nostalgia-mining — because the gripers need to label it as something.

There’s no old character that can’t get some new life breathed into him or her or it. Every once in awhile, as a writing exercise, I flip open to a OHotMU entry at random and try to jot down a list of new story seeds for that character, the lesson being twofold — that any character can be made to work (even if it’s some lame one-off villain like the Star Tsar) and that even old things can be made relevant.

Caroline: I feel like, by the time I get to the end of these conversations, I’m always saying some variation on, “Can’t we all get along?” But, well, “Can’t we all get along?” It’s not like Kitty coming back is going to push everybody else’s favorite characters to the sidelines. (That’s what we have three separate Deadpool titles for!) I like the idea of different generations of favorite characters teaming up to learn from each other. It seems to be a formula that Geoff Johns and his collaborators made work in the Justice Society books, or the way the current Batgirl title teams up Barbara Gordon with Stephanie Brown. I’d like to see Marvel accomplish something like that. Obviously, every writer can’t use every character; that just turns into a mess. But shunting a whole generation worth of characters off to the side reduces the options that are available. I’d like to see a more fluid Marvel Universe where team-builders have more options to choose from. And they can’t all be Wolverine.

No offense, bub.

Sarah: Coming in 2010 — Star Tsar: The Ongoing Series. Set in 1985. With a bunch of Wolverine clone sidekicks.

Someone make this happen, please.

The Alert Nerd brain trust is pleased to announce another very special Mega-Blog Crossover Event…and YOU can be part of it.

In the grand tradition of last year’s amazing “What’s Your Scott and Jean?” Day, we present…

True Geek Confessions

The Date: February 17

The Background: Unpopular opinions: we all have them. Sometimes you stand alone in loving a super niche-y run of a popular comic book series (like Sarah and her Tefe Holland thing). Sometimes you’re the only person on the entire planet to ’ship a certain ’ship. Sometimes you simply Do Not Get a movie the rest of your geeky brethren is falling all over themselves about. And because a lot of fandom is about sharing loves and hates and communing with your fellow geeks, this can feel awfully lonely. But perhaps if we confess our most unpopular opinions for all the internet to see…well, we’ll feel just a little bit better.

Here’s what you do: On February 17, write up a blog post with your own True Geek Confession. Send your link to sarah AT alertnerd DOT com. We will add you to our master list blog post and you can link back to said post. It will be exciting and wonderful and will hopefully not provoke too many “die in a fire” type arguments.

Confirmed Participants: Fantastic Fangirls, Faust’s Fantastically Fantasmagoric Forum, The Book Smugglers, The Savage Critics’ Jeff Lester…maybe YOU?

We used to just like stuff every week. Now we throw that in a blender with links, videos, and random claptrap and we call it…THE BIN. It stinks like garbage but it doesn’t taste half bad.

Stuff We Like This Week

Chris: My Thor’s Chariot figure came in this week. This over-sized figure marked the return of Hero Clix from the brink of death, but only now came out, which suggests the new masters are going about business in a more canny fashion. And I’m all for it!

Also, I need to tell the world about Misfits – it’s an E4 show in the UK, about a group of juvenile delinquents who get strange powers. If you’re first thought is “Misfits of Science”, you get a cookie, but this show is way awesomer and you need to find it any way you can.

Matt: The other night when I was up with the infant, I noticed Logo is now running Buffy the Vampire Slayer reruns, and that lo and behold, “Once More With Feeling” was airing that very night at 2 a.m. I set up the DVR to tape it and I’ve only rewatched half of it so far. I’m finding honestly that Buffy is not aging that well for me; I don’t know if it’s the fact that I’m not as immersed in that world and the style of it as I was when it was on the air, or if I’m just getting to be an old fart.

However, what I can say, and what I like this week, is that the goddamned songs have not left my head since I watched the show. So I’ve spent the past several days humming the bridge to “Rest In Peace” over, and over, and over, and over, and over…and damn they’re fine songs. So clever and catchy. Fuck, Whedon, is there nothing you can’t do, you snarky bastard???

Sarah: One particularly annoying argument I saw articulated re: the whole Blake Lively/Carol Ferris thing was this: “Well, you know, it’s a love interest role in a superhero movie, so it doesn’t matter anyway cause that role will suck.” I’ve said this before, but…it doesn’t have to. In fact, it’d be awesome if it didn’t. I always think back to Margot Kidder’s Lois Lane — so smart and funny and no-fucking-bullshit, you know? So when I found myself overwhelmed by all the internet noise this week, I went to my happy place, which is Lois Lane at the end of Superman II, ordering Clark to go get her a goddamn hamburger at 9 in the morning. I like that. I like that a whole lot. (And I wish I could find a clip of it, but all the Supes II “ending” clips on YouTube pick up right after that moment, with Clark going to the diner.)

Link Stew

Sandy at I Love Rob Liefeld has taken up the Lord’s work of doing the yearly Best-Of Meta List that compiles every list in creation and scores them to create one super-comprehensive list of the best comics of 2009. Essential.

Ryan Kelly’s new Funrama Presents project looks fantastic.

Our friend Jill has a new column on Heartless Doll and it has one of the greatest names ever.

The Fantastic Fangirls ask us what piece of original comic-related art we would most like to own. We’re still mulling this one over.

Etc.

What will surely make your day is some brilliant Fake Beatles from Street the Beat (via Douglas Wolk).