Smatterday 04/14/2012

As If We Didn't Have Enough Spider-Titles
So the cat is officially out of the bag on Brian Michael Bendis and Sara Pichelli's Spider-Men. It's going to be the current 616 Spider-Man (Peter Parker) meeting up with the new Ultimate Spider-Man (Miles Morales) in some sort universe-hopping adventure. As much as the Bendis-Pichelli team has been rocking it on Ultimate Spider-Man, I find myself not too excited by this series. I like that the Ultimate Universe is and always has been distinct from the 616 Marvel U, and because Ultimate Peter Parker is such a huge figures in Miles' world, and such a major factor in his origin story, I'd really rather have Miles never meet the man, even a version from another universe. Hopefully once the story actually comes out it will be handled in a way that's better than I am predicting, but either way, seems pretty dumb to mix these two universes that were, initially, all about existing apart from one another and telling different kinds of stories. Sure Marvel can change its mind (read: lie to its audience), but they better have a good reason for it.

Also, this is a good point.


FINALLY
Sin City: A Dame To Kill For is going to be a movie after all this time! I was exactly the right age (i.e. still in high school) when the first Sin City movie came out to totally fall in love with it and all it's splash-color, hyper-stylized, comic-aping nonsense. I hadn't read the comics themselves at that time, and still have not read A Dame To Kill For, but you better believe I'm going to now!

There is some doubt as to whether or not this is going to really come to fruition, but I have faith. Because the part of me that wants this movie to exist is still young enough to have faith in other people.


The Digital Age
The Chicago Comic & Entertainment Expo (C2E2) is this weekend, and one of my biggest personal takeaways from the coverage of the event, and comicbook news coverage in general these days, is that there is now a MAJOR push toward digital comics taking place. Of course, really this has been several years in the making, but the level of attention now being paid to digital publishing feels unprecedented and a bit sudden. Marvel's got a brand new digital comics store, DC and Archaia both have new digital-first comics titles coming, and Mark Waid is starting an all-digital comics website, Thrillbent.com. And most exciting/interesting, although perhaps the least likely to make a splash, is Edgar Wright and Tommy Lee Edwards' The Random Adventures of Brandon Generator, an interactive online comic experiment of sorts. I am also just the right age to LOVE having a hard copy of a comicbook in my hand, and am therefore resistant to this trend, but I appreciate its inevitability and hope that, at the very least, people do new and worthwhile things with this change in the medium. If we have to go digital, let's explore the possibilities and capabilities offered to us by doing so. Am I right?