Comic Books Are Burning in Hell Episode 10

 

This week the Comic Books Burn In Hell Action News Team--that's Chris "Muscles" Mautner, "Professor" Joe McCulloch, "Angry Matt" Seneca and Tucker "Chester" Stone--tear into the humor early, with jokes that will leave you in stitches. Thanks to the crew over at Hooded Utilitarian and their delightful anniversary month of hate, the subject of Geoff Johns once again rises up as a topic of conversation. Yay! It's yaytime, you guys! First up, Matt talks about him for a long time, and the other guys respond. Tucker responds with an anecdote about an old roommate! Then Joe gets into his love of Shako, the polar bear. And let me tell you: his love may sway you. Shako really is the best. Joe's love of Shako gives way to an affectionate discussion about 2000AD--nobody does it better! After that, the affection passes on to Raina Telgemier, whose book Drama is on its way to the same bestselling status as her previous book, Smile. Everybody likes the book. Happy ending for us all!

Download Comic Books Are Burning In Hell Episode Ten

 

Comments

[David Robertson]

On representations of kids: what do you guys make of Scott Roberts' Patty Cake? I always enjoyed that.

[Blorg Fleebo]

Personally I think Geoff Johns doesn't get the right kind of derision for the Green Lantern stuff.

It's not that it's violent. It's that in the first or second issue of the reboot, Sinestro (I remember him from the movie!) is flying around after getting a ring again, talking to himself about Hal, and how Hal once referred to him as a FASCIST!

And I thought, why would this guy care? Would the word fascist even have any significance to him? "He said I'm pertaining to flesh, that upset me." If a guy rules his whole planet as a dictator, are you really going to shame him by pointing out that what he's doing is the thing that he is doing?

I couldn't get over that one single sentence, so I couldn't read it anymore. I dunno, that might be my fault.

[Christopher M]

The thing about Geoff Johns is that it's like his brain never developed past like fifth or sixth grade - you know, the point where D&D manuals seem endlessly fascinating and storytelling is more easily confused with the act of drawing up charts. And so we get the Geoff Johns guide to Emotion, where we learn that there are seven whole flavors of emotion - Fear, Will, Love, Anger, Latex Ladies, Zesty Onion and Franch - and each one comes with its own color, and this one over here has 16 charisma and 14 intelligence, but this one over here TOTALLY has 18 charisma and 12 intelligence, and roll this here to spit blood out of your face.

[Blorg Fleebo]

So Geoff Johns is like the Sammy Hagar of comics.

Willpower and fear are the two only ones that matter still, and then avarice and compassion and fuckin uh uh whatever the other ones are (mild concern, apathy, foot itching) are like the dummy prizes of rings. It's not that bad as a premise, but only if you don't do something really stupid and obvious, like treat fear as something that's inherently evil, just as will isn't inherently good.

Then again I haven't read a lot of Green Lantern things to know, there could be a lot of in depth deconstruction of the inherent traits and flaws of each emotion. All I know is that the comics have a lot of people or evil space cats flying around space shooting pshoo pshoo colorful lazoar blasts at each other. Granted that does make for a better actiony superhero comic than everyone standing around talking about their feelings (maybe crying, shooting hug rays from their rings). So in that sense Geoff does know what's best for the comic.

[gary]

I'd be curious what you guys think about Stars and STRIPE. That's early Johns where he's dealing with superheroes where he's sort of riffing on a James Robinson/Starman style. How does that fit into the grotesque component to Johns "Fist-In-Head."

[Briany Najar]

Hookjaw (the shark comic from Action) is being re-run in Strip magazine.
...
"Originally written by Ken Armstrong, who now lives in Australia, and drawn by Ramon Sola, Hookjaw is being remastered for STRIP Magazine in sparkling new colour, with no script edits (there will be no Greedo shot first type nonsense!)"

http://stripcomicmagazineuk.blogspot.co.uk/2010/09/hookjaw-to-return-in-strip-magazine.html

[Rob Clough]

Raina was nominated for Promising New Talent and Outstanding Minicomic at the 2003 Ignatz awards, but lost both times (to Derek Kirk Kim and Jeffrey Brown, respectively.)

Her big break came when an editor at Scholastic read an issue of a Friends of Lulu anthology called Broad Appeal. Her typically charming illustration style landed her the gig of doing the Baby Sitters Club books. That was kind of her master class for her future work, because it taught her how to crank out books under a deadline. The main problem with them is that her extensive blank space cried out for color.

On the side, she did Smile as a webcomic. That, and her success with the BSC, helped garner a look from Scholastic for her own original material.