Well, the final episode of Who Wants to be a Superhero? aired earlier tonight, and it would seem that Feeback is the winner.

I certainly have to give him a fair amount of credit. The character idea is one of the more original ones I've seen/heard of in quite some time, and he seemed to "get" what Stan Lee was trying to coach out of each of the contestants more than anyone else. And, in that sense, it would seem that he was the ideal choice for a winner.

Of course, The Wife here pointed out here that, from a story-telling perspective, he didn't work quite as well as some of the others. I certainly epathized with him, as a fellow comic book fan, but she noted that he seemed a bit unstable. Fat Mamma also had concerns for his mental well-being throughout the show. Whether that potential for instability was played up by the editors/producers or he really is skating on the razor's edge of sanity, I don't know, but in either case, it makes him somewhat less engaging as a character. It's harder for people to identify with that -- and The Wife noted that she really had no interest in the show at all once Major Victory was eliminated.

Regardless, I do have to take some modicum of pride that the final victory was given to one of "us" -- one of the guys who goes into the comic shop regularly and takes his social cues from four-color heroes because no one else is willing to listen.

Today was my first time at my new local comic shop on a Wednesday. I'd avoiding intentionally before since I was trying to set up my pull list and get a feel for the layout of the store and such; I obviously didn't want to be tripping over all the other customers while I was doing that.

But I swang by today a little after noon today to pick up my new books, and I was surprised when I pulled in that the parking lot was relatively open. This shop is in sort of a ultra-mini strip mall -- I think there are four, maybe five other stores there -- so the parking lot is essentially just one row of spaces across the fronts of the stores. You could probably get 15 or 20 cars there before you'd have to start parking on the side streets or something.

When I had visited the shop prior to today, I had been there at what I'd consider "off" times. Three-thirty on a Thursday or something. There were around half of the parking spaces filled then, so I figured that at noonish on a Wednesday, the comic shop alone would eat up most of the "extra" spaces. I didn't figure the lot would be totally full, but I was betting I wouldn't have more than one or two spots to choose for myself. I was obviously quite surprised to see that half the spots were still open today!

And when I went inside, there wasn't all that much activity. Well, they had just gotten some cases of HeroClix and they were in the process of opening/sorting them, so there was activity, but not the kind I would've expected. There was one guy that walked in a little while after me -- evidently a regular who was into the gaming side of things -- and another guy who came in shortly before I left. He must've been fairly new to the store, too, as the owner didn't seem to recognize him.

I was looking at the calendar of events on their web site, and there's a lot of stuff focused on gaming. Maybe they've found that that's more lucrative for them, and their clientele is somewhat different than what I would consider "normal" for a comic shop. Just an unusual experience, not having to trip over half a dozen people to see the wall of new books.

Late last year, Planetwide Games released their Comic Book Creator software. It basically allowed you to take artwork and drop it onto a comic book page layout. Word balloons and sound effects were treated sort of like clip art, and you could essentially collage a comic book page out of whatever you felt like. My understanding is that many, if not most, people dropped in photos of themselves and friends and created their fumetti style comics. It's my guess that this wasn't a huge seller, but software standards, but...

I just learned that the same company is coming out (sometime in September) with licensed versions of the same product. I gather it's just about the same software, but it would include a gallery of, for example, Spider-Man clip art.

Now, I'm sure this is a great deal for Marvel. They can license their characters out to Planetwide Games and just rake in whatever cash PG agrees to. PG, though, won't be doing as well, I suspect. I expect that their original software has paid for itself by now, so there wouldn't be much in the way of additional development. However, I'm sure they had to fork over a decent pile of cash to Marvel, Sony, Speed Racer Enterprises, and whomever else they're getting characters from. And that, I doubt, will be covered by the sale of these newer products.

My bet is that people liked the original because they could put their own characters into it very easily. Whether that was their own character drawings or photos of themselves or whatever; it was very clearly THEIR comic book they were creating. But if you're going to create a Spider-Man comic, and you're limited to a handful of clip art drawings of him, you won't be able to create a story that's very original. It will look like a rip-off of whatever Marvel has put out that month, and it will almost inherently be inferior because of the limitations of the art. Why put in a lot of work to see the same couple dozen Spidey poses over and over, when you can drop three bucks on the latest issue of Amazing Spider-Man and get many more poses with what's likely a better story.

But what do I know? Maybe the licensing rights are cheaper than I'm thinking they'd be, and PG will make money hand over fist for almost no additional work.

I start my new job with GE on Monday, which is about 15/20 minutes south of where I'd been working at Wright State Univeristy. Now, I had been fortunate in that I had a comic shop only about ten minutes from WSU, which made it very convenient to swing over on Wednesday during my lunch hour to pick up my new comics every week. With this new position, though, I could maybe just about run up to the shop and back during my lunch hour with no extra time to look around or browse or anything.

Fortunately, I discovered that there's another shop only a mile and a half away from GE, so I can pick up my new comics on Wednesday's lunch break with even more time to look around. Of course, the issue is now I have to "break in" this new shop. They don't know me there, or know my likes or dislikes, or what I might want to chat about while I'm in the shop.

What I did, though, was make a couple of trips to the shop prior to my begining my new job. I met the owners and got my pull list set up. But now I have to get used to going to this new shop and how they're set up and all that. Plus, I learned that they've only been around for just three years -- that's great that they've made it past the first couple of years, but it's still early in their life as a comic shop and that could mean that they might not make it very much longer.

Well, we'll see how it goes. I've been lucky in frequenting gerenally well-run shops over the years, and I hope I can continue that trend.

This week's episode of Psych featured Shawn and Gus tracking down a kidnap victim who had planned on attention the fictional Tri-Con in Santa Barabara where George Takai was a guest. Shawn, a fake psychic, felt out of his element but still managed to blend in well and Gus, resident geek, not only fit in, but knew several of the convention-goers. ("The guy in the codpiece? Yeah, I know him. His name's Dave. And he's a nice guy.")

I enjoyed the episode because, while it still played to some stereotypes of geeky comic book fans who can't get dates, it also noted that two of the main characters -- Gus and Juliet -- are comic book fans and still reasonably well adjusted. Not all comic fans are slobbering geeks, not all fans dress up in colorful cosutmes, and not every fan breaks down into tears when his personal Holy Grail is ripped in half.

So, kudos to the writers of the show for that!

Now, what I'm concerned about it is that the show, on the whole, can easily go down the same route as Monk. Great concept, cleverly designed characters, but no consistency. Any single episode of Monk is pretty good in and of itself, but taken as a whole, the character of Adrian Monk is all over the map. He's deathly of afraid of whatever makes things convenient for the writers for that particular episode and that's it. My concern with Pysch is that Gus seems to be the resident geek with an unusual knowledge of "geeky" trivia regardless of what aspect of geekdom is present. He's already shown a high interest/knowledge in locks/security, comic books, and spelling bees. That's not infeasible, but will we see him expert in computers, video games, and ham radio next season? Keep in mind, too, that we're not even talking about his day job as a pharmaceutical salesman!

Anyway, it was an enjoyable way to end the first season. Let's see how well they do come January.

Tom Brevoort's been high on my list of Grade A-1 editors for many years now. Probably almost as long as he's been an editor. I'm having trouble verbalizing at the moment the influence Tom has had on my perception of comics, but that's not what I wanted to write about now anyway.

What I wanted to note was that, over on Tom's Marvel blog, he's been hosting a 'game' where two fans get to play editor for a couple of weeks. They post their ideas on what they would each do with a number of titles, and Tom responds with how their actions impact the books' sales and the creators' schedules. It's all fiction, of course, and using a drastically accelerated schedule, but it's doing a phenomenal job of showing some of what goes in to editting a monthly comic book. I mean, it's all well and good to say, "Well, I'd just put such-n-such creator on the book and watch sales skyrocket," but it's another thing altogether if that very creator has absolutely no desire to work on the book. Or what about office politics? It's easy to say, "We'll throw in Venom for a guest appearance," but what if the Spider-Man office has the character tied up for the next year?

As I said, it's all fiction and much of it is being written by Tom. Would Al Williamson really turn down a one-issue fill-in job? Woudl Travis Charest agree to do covers for Daredevil? I can't say with any degree of certainty, and I dare say Tom can't say with 100% certainty, but he's knowledgable enough about the industry -- from the inside, out -- that he's coming across as a very fair and impartial judge. (No surprise there.) And in the process, the audience is being told a thing or two about what kinds of things go on inside the Marvel offices and what types of things one has to deal with as an editor.

Kudos on a great idea, Tom!

I just finished reading Craig Thompson's Blankets. Clocking in at just shy of 600 pages, it looks a little daunting at first, but it was in fact a pretty smooth read. I probably could have finished it much sooner than I did, but I tried to make a point of spending some time studying some of his page layouts and individual illustrations.

The story is autobiographical. It relays the story of Thompson's first love and his coming to grips with his own religious beliefs. But that hardly says much about the book, does it?

Let me say first that the artwork is wonderful. There's a deep richness in Thompson's illustrative style, and his brush work gives everything a very lush depth. He also uses it to great advantage when trying to communicate the mood of any given scene. The illustrations themselves, too, take some cues from Japanese comics. Not that the book appears manga-ish in any way, but Thompson's backgrounds are detailed and realistic, while the characters themselves are simplified and iconics -- allowing for the reader to more easily become in touch with them. (Something I -- and I suspect Thompson -- picked up from Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics.) Further, there's some excellent visual symbolism throughout the book, and Thompson clearly has a solid mastery of comic book storytelling.

Although it's not split in two quite so decisively, half of the book concerns Thompson's first love and half concerns the evolution of his religious beliefs. Speaking as someone who pretty conclusively decided to become an aetheist in his early teens, I found it difficult to relate to the religious parts of the book. Not counting weddings, I can count on one hand the number of times I've been in a church of any denomination. I'm just not a religious guy, so I had a lot of difficult in relating to those portions of the book.

That said, though, I identified quite heavily with the love story and felt that worked extremely well. While I can't say that I've had quite the same physical or spiritual experiences in my love life, I can easily see myself in the emotional experiences. Thompson seems to do a very effective job of drawing the reader into the story, and it's largely my profound lack of faith in a supreme being that prevented me from becoming even more engrossed in the story.

With all that said, I really enjoyed most of the book.

Most.

I was really disappointed with the ending. Oh, I could handle the fact that it doesn't exactly have a "happily ever after" ending -- some of my favorite stories in fact are center on dystopian futures where the protagonist dies -- but I felt that the ending suggested that, because Thompson drew this story out, the actual events of the story were irrelevant to his life. I suspect I'm reading something into his book that wasn't intended. I suspect that he's shooting more for a kind of "it's better to have loved and lost..." but I don't know that that comes across as strongly as it should. For as strong as the rest of the story is, and how clear as the rest of it is, the ending just seemed to fall a little flat.

But, hey, that's just my take on it. Overall, it was still worth reading and I'm glad I had the chance to read it for myself.