Phil Kauffold

Digital Comics are here - don’t fight the future

I love comics and comic strips. I like reading them on a regular basis. I like seeing the stories unfold over time. I like discovering new material and immersing myself in it. I like finding obscure but amazing stuff and telling anyone who’ll listen (and plenty of people who’d rather not, for that matter) about it. 

As Steven Colbert put it, “I want and iPad. Give me one.”

Yet I almost never read online comics or comic strips, and considering how much time I spend parked in front of the computer that doesn’t really make much sense. There are tons of new strips out there, and the Internet would seem to be the ideal place for new artistic work to flourish. And flourish they do. Like flowers. And weeds. Mostly weeds.

I’m not going to belabor this point because it is stating the obvious that there is plenty of lousy work all over the Internet. Whether you like movies, books, comics, paintings, or clog dancers, you’re going to have to do some panning for gold. That’s just the way it is. 

What really keeps me from diving more into online comics and such is where I like to read. I like to read on the couch. At coffee shops. In bars. In parks. On trains. Actually, pretty much anywhere that isn’t the chair in front of my computer is a place I like to read. I don’t have an iPad yet, and yes, I could tote my laptop to many, if not all, of these places, it’s still awkward compared to a book or comic book. Or maybe I have a little bit of neo-luddite in me. 

Will digital comics featuring Magneto erase your hard drive? This needs to be researched….

The comic industry seems ready to embrace the iPad and start digital distribution, and I for one can’t wait. My comic reading habits have changed over the years from getting weekly issues to mostly trade waiting on all but a few titles. But I seriously miss the week-to-week unfolding of all the different stories, and the variety as well. Sitting down and reading six different comics is more fun than one trade with 6 issues of the same thing. 

As the occupant of a small apartment that can’t fit in any more long boxes of comics, I’m especially interested in the idea that I can consume without accumulating. I’m more interested in the stories anyway, and comic books really are no longer a collector’s item. But they’re too expensive to be considered disposable.

To me, this looks like a way back into weekly comic book reading. To the industry, it should look like a huge opportunity. But we’ll see. 

Carl Macek, American Anime Producer, Passes Away

If you’re a Robotech, anime, or animation fan, this is not a happy day. Carl Macek, who was instrumental in bringing anime to western audiences, passed away. 

Carl’s career was truly amazing, and for all the details I’ll let Jerry Beck, his friend and one time business partner, tell you all about everything he did. For me, the one I’ll always remember him for is Robotech.

The first time I became aware of Robotech was before it was even called Robotech. There was an add in the back of a sci-fi magazine for it, and had the above picture. Which had me hooked instantly. I mean, how could you look at that and not want to see it? You just can’t. 

I’d see it on television a few years later and, much to the annoyance of everyone who knew me, I became a somewhat unbalanced fan. I watched the episodes over and over and over again to the point that I, to this day, I could probably just lay back, close my eyes, and run the episodes in my head. They’re pretty much imprinted on my brain. But Robotech, and long with a handful of other shows and movies, was one of the key influences that put me on the path to becoming an animator.

In addition to contributing to my geekiness, Robotech brough anime to a broader range of people than ever before, and started the process of opening the floodgates of anime into the west. Carl cracked open the floodgates even further a few years later when he brought over the now-classic Akira not only to video but released it in theaters - which just didn’t happen at the time. 

He was, at times, a source of controversy for some of his dubs and some of the edits he had to make to some of the shows, changes that were largely necessitated by the way business dictated they be done at the time. But this isn’t the day for debating the good or the bad. Suffice it to say that anime in the west wouldn’t be what it is today without him. 

Nor would animation. He was also helped found Spumco with John K. That’s the studio that produced Ren and Stimpy. Imagine a world without that. Yeah, too scary. 

There is a great podcast interview with Carl that you can listen to here, at Anime News Network, and was recorded just this past January (the interview starts about 8 minutes in). It’s funny and absolutely fascinating for anyone interested in just how anime started making it’s way over here in the late 70’s. If you want to know why and how he did things the way he did…pretty much all the answers are there. It’s around a 2 hour interview and, honestly, well worth the time. Someone on another message board described losing Carl as being like losing a library, and I have to agree. He was heavily involved in the science fiction and fantasy world and his stories about those days are priceless.

For those interested, Robotech: The Macross Saga is available, free and legal, on Hulu. I’ll be doing a little binge tonight, and listening to the podcast while I work today. 

Carl Macek 1951-2010

An awesome Avengers Movie is now on its way. Maybe.

So far, the Marvel movies have been pretty good, and I’ve been excited for a long time about the prospect of a full Avengers movie. Yes, it may turn out to be an epic failure, but I think the odds of success just went up. 

While it had a metric ton of scheduling problems, Joss Whedon’s run on the Astonishing X-Men was the best X-Men story since Grant Morrison’s run, and if you put those two titles together, you’d have to back a decade or more to find anything better. 

Wolverine would never wear a yellow costume. Ever. Period. End of Discussion.

Whedon’s run in particular was notable because you needed a bare minimum of backstory to follow all the action. In fact, if you had seen the movies, you probably could have followed what was going on without much confusion. Morrison’s run was similarly but every so often would go off the deep end. But that’s Grant Morrison for you.

What Whedon did in X-Men was capture the characters once again. For a long time, the X-Men in the comics were little better than parodies of themselves, with depth almost being a thing of the past. Whedon brought back the complexities and, maybe even more importantly, the humor. Wolverine as a bit of a…wuss, I suppose…was priceless. But it all worked.

Anyone familiar with Whedon’s work shouldn’t be surprised that he’s capable of handling an ensemble cast - Buffy, Angel, Firefly…all ensembles with fleshed out casts and diverse characters. Dollhouse was probably like that, too, but I haven’t seen it. In spite of what my blogging might indicate, I don’t spend all my time watching TV.

And that’s what the Avengers really needs. The only way it’s going to work is if all the characters are fleshed out and the personalities can bounce off each other. I’ve heard some say that Whedon can’t direct action the way it needs to be done, but honestly, that’s a secondary consideration. At least for me. There’s plenty of dumb, special effects filled action movies down there that blow things up real good, but not so many where you actually care about the outcome of the fight. And the only way you care is if you care about the characters. 

And that’s what Whedon’s really good at, especially in genre work. We do get 3 more movies before the Avengers will come out - and by the way, how fantastic is it that Ken Branagh is doing Thor - so he won’t have to start from scratch.

So that’s where my optimism comes from. Mind you there’s quite a bit that can go wrong between now and then, and Marvel has a reputation for keeping a hand in and controlling their properties, but to date that hasn’t been a bad thing. The adaptations that didn’t work out so well were out of their control, so they make a good argument for knowing how to translate their properties to big screen.  

Besides, Whedon owes us all for that “What happens when a toad gets hit by lightning line”. I don’t care if it wasn’t delivered right. He owes us.