Since JUNE?!? Yikes.

And then there was the time I stopped blogging for four months.

I have to admit that my heart isn't in blogging and tweeting and all the online social stuff the way it is with producing my webcomics. (Not that I've been updating those particularly consistently either...) I often feel like I'm generating a lot of content that's sort of pointless and redundant and nothing to do with my real strengths. There are so many good, intelligent bloggers out there that it can get a little intimidating.

But by the same token, I've realized that I do spend a lot of time commenting on message board threads and whatnot, so why not just organize my thoughts elsewhere into coherent blog posts? Voila, free content.

Combine that with actually freeing up some time after a month and a half of being incredibly busy with illustration projects, and having some big projects on the boils, and I think I'm ready to do this again.

OK, so, where is we?

--I broke down and got a DeviantArt page. I still have some problems with DA, not the least of which is the name (which far too many contributors seem to take literally...part of the reason I resisted this for a long time is not wanting to get linked in any way to, say, people who draw anime furry panty shots), but it IS a good way to network and promote yourself as an artist, so what the hell. And immediately on the heels of sneering at people's sexy drawings, here's a bunch of sexy drawings I did for a local band (the somewhat less sexy cover of the album is here.) (Wait, I apologize to the band members of Disphraxia for suggesting they aren't sexy.)

--I'm on twitter, too, @prankster36 . I've always felt Twitter to be a bit of a waste of time, but again, promotional tool. Plus, I was reading an article with...I think it was Patton Oswalt, and he opened my eyes a bit, pointing out that Twitter can be a valid medium for expression, encouraging conciseness and discipline.

--I'm still cranking out reviews for Thor's Comic Column on Chud.com; over the past two months, of course, I've weighed in a bit on The New 52 (short version: it could have revolutionized comics, and instead DC decided to offer up a heapin' helping of the same-old, same-old, served with a generous dollop of sexism and a truly laughable nostalgia for the early 90s, which aren't ever coming back comics people.) In terms of comics that are actually good? G. Willow Wilson and Pablo Rivera's Mystic has been a wonderful surprise, an intelligent fantasy comic that actually manages to achieve a clever political subtext (as in, tied up with political concerns with our world, even though it's set in a fantastical universe) in an elegant and non-preachy way that you can totally ignore if you just want to read a comic that is basically Harry Potter meets Mean Girls, which is what this is. And Matt Fraction and Gabriel Ba's (and Fabio Moon's, though he's not drawing this arc) awesomely mind-melting Casanova has returned with a new miniseries, Avaritia, that tops the already-exemplary work these guys were doing. I just read the first of Michael Moorcock's Jerry Cornelius novels, and it's obvious that Fraction is basically attempting to do one of those, except on acid (and they were pretty trippy to begin with). READ THIS COMIC, people.

--I'm planning to participate in NaNoWriMo, though not in the conventional way. For me it'll be NaNoReNoWriMo (National Not Really a Novel Writing Month). More to come.

--Also probably of interest to no one but a certain blonde Dutch lady: you are the best girlfriend ever. Love you, sweetheart. And I promise I won't grow a mustache for next month.

Here endeth the lesson. Go forth and multiply.

Miss Me?

Been super-busy. Aside from trying to keep my head above water with Lemuria and Freak U (both of which will hopefully have new printed material by this summer) I've been tackling some major illustration work which will be keeping me busy for a few weeks yet. But I am going to make an effort to blog more; I've got two big ideas for ongoing posts which I'm hoping to launch within the week.

In the meantime, I'm still contributing to and now editing the new comics review column at JoBlo.com, so if you want to read more of my golden thoughts, there's the place! We're now weekly, with a new column every Tuesday.

Excuses, Excuses...

So Sunday afternoon I get home from a baby shower* with the coming week largely clear of obligations, professional and personal. "All right!" I think. "I can use this week to catch up and get get ahead on my webcomics!" So I sit down and pencil this week's Freak U. and Lemuria, going great guns, all fired up to keep the pace going for the next few days...and by the time evening falls, I'm feeling an ominous tickle in my throat...

Monday morning I awaken to find myself buried under a pile of bricks. On closer inspection, the bricks turn out to be mucus, and Monday turns out to be Wednesday. Possibly time travel was involved. As far as I can remember.

At any rate, the biohazard seems to have receded to the point today where I can actually accomplish something beyond turning over frequently enough not to get bedsores. (OK, I exaggerate--I was briefly online, but I wasn't up to doing much of anything that didn't involve pressing a button or two.)

I mention all this because, despite the inauspicious start, I still have a fair amount of free time this week, and I'm hoping to use it so that you guys don't have to see anymore non-updated strips. Famous last words, I know...

Just so as not to leave this post as a bunch of whinging, here's a bit of linkblogging. The website Comics Alliance has made the wise move of employing comics blogger extraordinaire Chris Sims, and he, along with main editor Laura Hudson and...other guy Caleb Goellner, have been providing the vital public service of mocking some of the more idiotic and poorly-researched coverage of comics that have been popping up in the mainstream media of late. First they took on this eye-gougingly smarmy and cliche-packed CNN article, and now they've tackled a less absurd but still fairly dumb article about Mark Millar.

Oh, and speaking of ambitious plans of my own and entertaining comics blogging, I have a rather epic post about Tintin that should be going up in the next day or two. Yeah, Tintin. Can you stand the excitement?

*It's now pretty much normal for men to go to baby showers, right? I mean, I'm aware that's not how it was done, traditionally, but that tradition seems to have existed primarily because society wanted to keep baby-rearing squarely the responsibility of the ladies, which makes it pointless and outdated. And I've been to several amongst my baby-having friends. I'm not part of some cutting-edge progressive commune (contrary to what Americans seem to think of Canada) so I have to assume this is basically normal amongst my generation now.

Pop Goes the Drama

Andrew Hickey is a fine fellow who blogs about comics…or used to. He’s observed, lately, that there’s a bit of a malaise in the world of genre storytelling as a whole; everything seems to be, in his words, “soap opera” or (more rarely, in my opinion) detached idea-based fiction with a lack of real human interest. He’s issued a call for more “drama” or “pop-drama”, in his words, which essentially means “more stories about interesting characters which are also about something”. I’m not quite doing justice to what he means, so go read the post.

I may have more to say about this later—in fact, I may actually be working with Andrew at some point—but for now I wanted to riff on the idea he suggests down at the bottom there—the idea of posting proposals for revitalizing various pop-culture franchises. It’s actually very similar to what Chris Bird is doing with his ”I should write Dr. Strange” posts, but with the more unlikely premise that I’d be handed the keys to a major series of movies, TV show, or whatever.

The character I've decided to tackle: Doc Savage.

Now, I admit that my knowledge of Doc is a little shaky--I've read the first few stories and I know the basic history of the character (and of course, Wikipedia is my friend), but I don't claim to be an expert in the various details of Doc's adventures, or have an abiding passion for the character. Still, I think I know enough to be able to attempt this.

For those of you who don't know...and can't be bothered with the Wikipedia link...Doc is a character who hails from the pulp novels, and is in many ways one of the predecessors of the superhero. Like Superman, he's a paragon, an embodiment of human perfection, devoted unfailingly to justice and goodness (and he has the first name "Clark" and a Fortress of Solitude--yes, really). Like Batman, he's scoured the globe, devoting his life to self-perfection; even more so than Bats, in fact, as he's pretty much the best of the best of the best at everything. And I do mean everything. Doc has a band of erstwhile companions who are the most respected experts in their fields--an engineer, a chemist, a geologist, a lawyer and an electrical expert--and it's stated on a number of occasions that he's better than all of them.

Yes, Doc is considered to be the pinnacle of human perfection, having been raised since birth by a rather mysterious cabal of scientists assembled by his father (who, as the first story opens, has just died). Doc also has vast wealth, attained by his (re)discovery of a vast treasure trove of gold in a lost valley, guarded by an lost tribe of ancient Mayans. Who are oddly agreeable to letting this American tromp in and make off with their vast wealth. (It has something to do with an agreement they made with Doc's father, who arrived there years before, just as Doc was being born. But really it has more to do with the book having been written in 1933.)

In addition to being the world's greatest scientist and inventor and all-round expert on everything, Doc is in physically perfect condition, knows dozens of martial arts and modes of hand-to-hand combat, and has some other odd quirks that make him seem somewhat inhuman. His physical appearance, for instance, is described as being "bronze"--not just tan, but as looking exactly like a bronze statue. He also apparently produces a weird, high-pitched noise in times of stress that has a "calming" effect on those around him, as well as providing a rallying call.

People have attempted to adapt Doc into movie form, and he occasionally makes a brief appearance in comics (just in the past few months, he's crossed over with Batman as an attempt to launch a new line of pulp stories at DC) but I think it's pretty obvious why the character hasn't really found a foothold the way that, say, Tarzan or Zorro has. He's too perfect. In fact, it gets a little creepy when you consider that he's essentially a walking experiment to produce an "ubermensch" type, an idea that...well, let's just say that however well it went over in the mid 30s, by the end of the next decade people had lost their enthusiasm for it. (There are even creepier ideas at play in some of the stories--in one, Doc apparently isolates the gland that causes "criminal behaviour" and operates on criminals, transforming them into model citizens. Gosh, that couldn't possibly go wrong!)

Even putting that aside, Doc comes off as an utterly paternalistic and smug figure, inhuman and unlikeable. We simply can't relate to a guy who's that perfect, and who smacks of authorial fiat besides. But that's the essence of the character--to graft on some human weakness would be a betrayal of the whole concept. How do you deal with that?

Alan Moore, as many know, essentially remade Doc Savage as Tom Strong, and found an interesting hook--focusing on the psychology of the man who'd been treated as an experiment for his entire life, who could do almost anything when it related to pure talent but struggled to understand his own humanity. But Moore had the luxury of an all-new character, one whose backstory he could shape in whatever direction he wanted.

My own suggestion for reworking Doc is very simple: make him African-American.

This is actually something I've been chewing over for years--the fact that there's a distinct lack of truly iconic black (or any other minority, really) adventure heroes. I mean, yes, there are action-adventure stories and movies and comics starring black protagonists, but none of them have that kind of iconic central figure who stands astride the narrative, your Indiana Joneses and James Bonds and whatnot.

Furthermore, Doc being black creates a whole new social context, even if it's never overtly referenced in the story. Suddenly the motives for having his father push him into this rather harsh lifestyle are a little more understandable (even if we still don't fully condone it). Doc becomes the Jesse Owens or Tiger Woods of adventure heroes, a guy with something to prove just by existing. And of course, the underlying politics of this previously simplistic story suddenly get rather complex and certainly very relevant in the age of Obama (I'm also assuming that these would be set in the present day, rather than the 30s). What's great, though, is that this doesn't change anything about the actual stories you can tell with Doc. He can still fight giant spiders and men from the earth's core, solve mysteries and invent incredible new surgical procedures. The subtext springs into being, fully formed, from the new element of Doc's race. And suddenly a relic of the past becomes a hero for the future.

Because I Was Losing Track of Which Earth This Was

OK, so I just learned about this. More details here (warning: link to AICN).

My first thought: this could be big. Very, very big.

Don't misunderstand me. In terms of the actual stories they apparently plan to tell, this sounds, um, inessential. Well, OK: unbelievably boring. But I'm saying that from the perspective of a longtime superhero comic reader. From the perspective of a teenager who hasn't read a Superman or Batman comic before--which, let's face it, is by no means improbable these days--this could only be somewhatboring.

Um. I'm getting a little off track here. Let's circle round and come back.

The crucial thing here is not the story, it's the publishing strategy. These are trade paperback OGNs aimed specifically at the book market, with a major publisher providing the marketing muscle. That's the potential paradigm shift here. In terms of sales, what the Big Two have been doing wrong has has less to do with their subject matter than their ability to break out of their fanatically loyal but tiny audience pool. Recent attempts to do so have largely been well-meaning but somewhat doomed, because they were creating material for new readers with no way for those new readers to get to them. Not only were they sold in the terrible pamphlet format, which in and of itself is forbidding to anyone who isn't a hardcore nerd, they were plunked on the direct market store* shelf alongside Rape Avenger and BoobGirl or whatever. And since "new readers" generally translate to "kids", you can imagine how well these have raked in the newbies.

This all seems pretty obvious to me, and I doubt many people would disagree, though given that a lot of people have a vested interest in the direct market they may balk at what needs to be done. But there's been pretty much no excuse for DC and Marvel to keep doing this; their job, or the jobs of the comic divisions at least, is to get their product out there, and they've suffered from an appalling lack of leadership in this regard. You get the definite sense that it's a combination of nerdy short-sightedness and fogeyism; bizarrely, a lot of comics publishers seem to be genuinely convinced--still--that the gold rush of the early 90s is going to return, and that that was ever a logical model for selling comics in the first place. I think that's part of the emphasis on the pamphlet format, and the reason they charge so much per issue; they're still stuck, if only subliminally, in the collector's mindset. Or rather, a lot of their readers are, and attempts to force them to move on have failed, so they figure they may as well keep catering to that attitude.

This, of course, goes against the whole reason pamphlets were created in the first place: they were cheap. You could buy a stack of them and not be out much money, which meant that your buying habits could be dictated by nothing more than "that looks cool". Which is how people would prefer to buy things, generally. When the prices get jacked up to the level they're at it becomes a matter of YOU MUST BUY THIS ISSUE BECAUSE IMPORTANT CONTINUITY STUFF HAPPENS, which is a pitch that only appeals to the hardcore. I really do think it's as simple as that.

So. Now we have DC launching this series which will be more accessible (it's an odd fact that Graphic Novels, even if they're more expensive than the individual issues that make them up, still feel more satisfactorily priced, because you get the sense that you sat down and read a full story), and are going to be plunked down where the non-hardcore can see them. I don't think a lot of Jane Austin fans are going to be compelled to pick this up, but the vast potential audience of "kids and teens who saw the movie" are actually being reached. Combine that with some actual marketing which, again, will presumably go beyond "Previews", and you've got the potential for superhero comics to actually become a popular genre again.

Now, I still think there are a lot of potential missteps here, starting with the subject matter. No one, and I mean no one, needs a new retelling of Superman or Batman's origin at this point. DC is clearly playing it safe, the way they've done with their animated movie series, but I think they're misjudging the market a little. The kid's and young adult's book audience is not as pathologically addicted to comfort food as the adult superhero audience; they're probably, on the whole, more likely to be looking for something new and different, especially if they're picking up a graphic novel for the first time. A new story featuring either of these two characters would probably go over better with new readers, not to mention the many lesser characters DC can't peddle to geeks but who could be big with kids. (If their next offering is a well-done Wonder Woman story, I think it could be huge--the ratio of girls looking for stuff to read is immensely higher in "real" bookstores.)

And it doesn't look much like these stories are aimed at younger kids, which is already a fairly successful audience for graphic novels that make it to bookstores. Likewise, even aside from the tiresome grim 'n' grittiness of many current titles (and both Straczynski and Johns are guilty of this) there's a sense of self-importance around superheroes that has led to lousy storytelling--decompression, talkiness, cloying pop culture references, you know the drill. These comics are so busy trying to be REAL ADULT DRAMA that they've forgotten the fun and imagination that appealled to kids, which is how they saturated the culture in the first place. If these new books are too heavy on the "standing around angsting" school of comics, they may not find traction.

But this might not matter. I think that a lot of comics fans--and I'm guilty of this--focus too much on the nitty gritty of the stories, thinking that there's some magic element we're missing that will achieve popularity. It's good in a sense, because it keeps us honest, and anything that can draw superhero comics back from the morass of self-referential wankery that they're constantly threatening to fall into is a good thing. But the fact of the matter is, there are a lot of cruddy movies, TV shows, and books that achieve massive popularity, and they're not, on average, any better than the average lousy comic. So I'm led to believe that yes, it is a failure of delivery rather than a failure of content that's been holding comics back. The new approach is a huge step, and it might be all it takes to break the logjam. I'll be watching this with interest...

*I happen to be lucky in that I have always had access to appealing, well-run comics stores; Toronto probably has more of these per square mile than any other city in North America, except maybe San Francisco. But even here, I've encountered enough of the traditional fleapits run by people with terrible social skills to relate to the horror stories, and let's face it, the very material offered by the comics industry lends a certain off-colour character to all but the most specialist of stores.

Whoot

Look at the awesomeness! I got this piece of Lemuria fanart from one Steph Cherrywell:



Steph, it turns out, is the creator of Intragalactic, a comic that I shamefully hadn't heard of--shamefully because I love space travel humour strips. I've been letting my webcomic trawling slide quite disgracefully over the past year, actually. Anyhoo, the strip's about a futuristic ice cream truck...ship and its zany crew, led by captain Benjamin Glee, who despite the name is a woman. In fact, she's an almost dementedly brave, cheerfully oblivious woman who's packing some extra pounds.

I think you can see Ms. (Mrs.?) Cherrywell and I seem to be of one mind here.

The strip's absolutely hilarious, and the archives aren't too huge, so go read it right now!

Children of All Ages

Chris Butcher is wise. I might quibble a little with some of his points--I think there are successful "All Ages" books when you step outside the superhero paradigm, like Bone--but I am not a man who has made a living as a comics retailer at one of the best comic book stores in the world, so feel free to ignore me and listen to him.

And It's Volume THREE, Dammit

As usual, comics bear the brunt of small-minded douchebags who would like to control everything we say, read and hear. But cheers to the Kentucky Library Association.

I Want 15 Minutes of Internet Fame Every 15 Minutes

Hey whoa!

I kicked back this weekend and spent a goodish chunk of it reconnecting with "friends" and "family"--you know, those things that interfere with making webcomics. But before I took my little hiatus from cyberspace, I read Chris Sim's Invincible Super-Blog, as I do pretty much every day. I'm sure anyone reading this knows of Chris, and he doesn't need my pathetic pimpage, but he truly is one of the most hilarious and enthusastic comics bloggers around. There are a whole ton of great comics bloggers out there--I should probably do a post linking to my favourites--and many of them are intellectually invigorating and funny, there's a certain collective sense of grimness hanging over them, a despair at how far the noble comics medium has sunk. Chris, along with Bully The Little Stuffed Bull, provides the vital service of keeping the comics blogosphere fun and engaging, and quite possibly prevents most of us who are still devoted to comics from slitting our wrists.

Anyway, while I'm sometimes a bit shy about pimping my stuff elsewhere, when Chris posted this, it struck me as a perfect opportunity to link to The Archon, not expecting more than a nod or two. To my surprise, I got a bunch of glowing praise in the ISB thread and a ton of hits, leading to a post on Johanna Draper Carlson's Comics Worth Reading blog. Which is another really excellent blog that I do read a lot. Sheesh, maybe I won't make a new post, this one has plenty of links.

It's not like I set the internet on fire or anything, but it was really gratifying to see something I've done get that much attention. A lot of the time I feel like I'm labouring in the trenches a bit, not making much of a splash out there in the comics world, so even a little thing like this means a lot to me.

Enough narcissism. The long and the short of this is that I'd been mulling over doing another, similar project--also featuring Dan DeCarlo style vs.comic-book SF--and this has made me determined to do it. More to come...


though I do find it a bit depressing how many intelligent, engaged feminist comics bloggers are



Which also means, incidentally, that traffic on this forum probably spiked heavily this weekend, for whatever that's worth...

Bits 'n' Pieces

A couple of things. First off, anyone going to the Toronto Fan Expo this weekend, swing on by the Durham Comics Guild booth! I'll be there all weekend, hawking the colour print edition of Freak U. book one, plus the special, one-time-only black and white Lemuria comic, 32 pages long and with a backup story not available online.

For those of you who "can't make it" because you "live miles away", and other such lame excuses in scare quotes, you can always buy the Freak U. book in print right here.

I'll be posting pics and so on; keep your eyes peeled.

In completely unrelated news, this is cool. So is this (click here for that second one in a variety of formats).

A Response to That Response to That Response

One of my favourite blogs is Christopher Bird's MightyGodKing, which happens to be a terrific overlap with my interests: he's a politically left-wing law student and comics enthusiast from Toronto. And he reviews movies sometimes. That's not to say I agree with him all the time (or even a lot of the time), but it's almost creepy how perfectly he suits my blogging needs.

Anyway, Chris has recently invited a bunch of co-bloggers on board his site, and one of them, Justin Zyduck, just posted this list of top 21 most influential mainstream comics writers, in response to a list of artists posted at the Onion AV Club a while back. This is great because a) it gives me an excuse to link to MGK, b) it gives me a chance to whip up some content for this blog, and c) it gives me a chance to argue.

Not that Justin's picks are particularly far off (though as he admits in comments, Will Eisner should be on there, and probably Dave Sim as well...some people are arguing Kurt Busiek, but much as I love the guy I don't think he's "influential" per se. But then, I'd say the same about some of his other picks as well.) Mostly I wanted to discuss his editorial comments. So onward!

1. Stan Lee

That the man was a huge influence on comics is undeniable. But--and bear with me here--I don't think it was as a writer for the most part. OK, the idea of superheroes who the audience could actually relate to was a major development. But everything else Lee did was more along the lines of editorial suggestion; as we all know, their working style was extremely loose and didn't involve scripts, and Kirby apparently felt free to ignore a lot of what Stan was saying when doing the breakdowns. Lee's input on the Galactus trilogy, for instance, seems to boil down to "What if the Fantastic Four fought God?" Even Lee admits that he didn't have anything to do with the creation of the Silver Surfer, and if a plot point that large can slip by him, you have to wonder just how involved he was in the "writing" in the first place.

Don't get me wrong: editors can be at least as important to stories as writers, so this isn't to disparage Lee per se. But I think his real contribution was in the comics culture he created--the rabid fanbase, the chummy, scrappy, underdog mentality, the due credit he gave to his artists (something most comic companies, let's remember, didn't bother with at the time) and of course, the hype.


2. Alan Moore
I disagree with Zyduck's contention that Alan Moore’s influence has been mostly destructive. I think most of the things you can point to as being directly influenced by Moore aren’t very good (though Astro City owes him a big debt, I think) but in a sense Watchmen represented a refinement of the Marvel Comics style of the 60s, bringing personalities and humanity to superheroes. Anytime a superhero is written naturalistically, for good or for ill, you have Moore to thank. And for all his grim ‘n’ grittiness in the 80s, Moore also played a big role in the opposite “Neo-Silver Age” trend in the 90s–his Supreme is, with Astro City, the defining comic for that era.

3. Chris Claremont
I'm not a big 70s guy, and haven't read much of Claremont. His influence seems pretty inarguable to me, though.

4. Neil Gaiman
I absolutely love Sandman--it played a major role in turning me into a comics fan--but Zyduck has him as someone of equal influence as the previous three. I really can't agree with that, even if you're willing to grant him the credit for helping to build Vertigo. After all, most Vertigo books aren't very Sandman-like; even the superficially similar Fables has a much more standard narrative structure. In the comments there's some mention of Ennis, Preacher in particular, and I'd argue that had a much stronger influence on the Vertigo style, inasmuch as there is one.

5. Jerry Siegel
Hard to argue with this. It is interesting, though, just how many aspects of superhero-dom were lying around pre-Superman, waiting to be fused together by Siegel.

6. Bill Finger and Jerry Robinson
It warms my heart to see these guys get their due over Bob "douchebag" Kane. Hopefully in another few decades they'll be getting the credit on DC comics and movies, not Kane.

7. Bill Gaines and Al Feldstein
Zyduck's bang on that these guys laid the groundwork for Marvel. I would kill to see what EC would have evolved into had they survived into the 60s; I can't help but think they would have been very similar to The House of Ideas, though they probably wouldn't have been superhero-centric. But then, I'm positing a world without the Comics Code, which is impossible to speculate about. May as well argue what comics would look like if Hitler won WWII. (Actually, probably not that different.)

8. Harvey Pekar
Like a lot of people, I find Pekar a little self-absorbed and boring, but his influence is certainly significant (Zyduck correctly identifies him as an ancestor of certain styles of webcomics). Semi-related observation: in the extras to the "American Splendour" movie, Pekar snarks about how much better-looking all the actors playing him and his friends are. Pekar is played by Paul Giamatti. Just saying.

9. Warren Ellis
Zyduck gives Ellis credit for "widescreen comics" and the general style of modern mainstream superhero event comics, which I'd generally agree with. I think he also deserves a nod, though, for Transmetropolitan, which is THE defining cyberpunk comic.

10. Gardner Fox
Zyduck mentions Earth-1 and Earth-2 as Fox's major lasting contribution to comics. I guess that's true, although he's also pretty much the author of the Silver Age, along with...

11. Mort Weisinger
The thing I love about comics by Weisinger and Fox and the rest is that, as stupid as they might frequently be, they're like an undiluted fount of imagination, a bedrock of pure dreamstuff for the superhero medium. Later, more sophisticated writers can play around with these stories and ideas, deconstructing them, getting at the psychological subtext, but first they had to be introduced in their pure, innocent form. You can't get this kind of golden raw material anymore--everyone's too self-aware. Maybe if you took a lot of drugs and sat down at the keyboard you might come close, or got six-year-olds to write comics...

12. Len Wein
Another 70s guy whose work I haven't actually read a lot of, but the guy who created Wolverine obviously had a major impact.

13. Grant Morrison
I agree with some of the commentators that Morrison isn't hugely influential just YET, but I guarantee he will be in another decade or so. Already, some new young turks like Jeff Parker, Matt Fraction and Tom Casey are all clearly influenced by Morrison, along with Gerard Way’s “Umbrella Academy”.

14. Brian Michael Bendis
Don't know much about this guy's superhero work, honestly, but he seems way too recent to be on a list of major influences.

15. J.M. DeMatteis and Keith Giffen
A breath of fresh air at a time when comics were getting tiresomely "edgy" and self-important. I wish they were MORE influential, honestly.

16. Roy Thomas
I feel like Thomas started the rather annoying trend of tying characters together in unnecessary ways, not to mention molesting the corpses of Golden Age characters who were better left alone (Oh, Patsy Walker...) This is the kind of stuff that makes Bronze Age comics so hard for me to read.

17. Steve Gerber
...And this guy is the big exception to that rule. The "satire" was sometimes more bizarre than pointed, but hey, what's wrong with being bizarre? Married the underground and the mainstream, and they're still together today, though I guess it hasn't always been the happiest of unions...

18. Denny O’Neil
Those laughable "issue" comics were clearly influential, but I prefer his take on Batman, which I think was the last time the Dark Knight managed to be gritty and realistic and dark without being tiresome. O'Neil kept enough comic-bookiness about the character that he, perversely, managed to remain grounded. If only the balance hadn't been upset by...

19. Frank Miller
Monumentally influential, but he's one of those guys who frankly had good ideas in the context of bad stories. Of course, that's true of a lot of people on this list, but a little of Miller's brand of juvenile pulpiness goes a long way, and he's been milking it for 20 years.

20. Carl Barks
Absolutely. The guy was writing hilarious, affecting, and human adventure stories (which were, ironically, about ducks) at least a decade before most of the people on this list had done anything of note. If he wasn't a "funny animal" cartoonist he'd be considered in much higher esteem than pretty much anyone except Kirby, Eisner and Moore.

21. Geoff Johns
I've been unimpressed with his work, and he's too recent to be on this list. Boot him for Eisner. And boot Bendis for Howard Chaykin.

Another pointless list resolved! Whoot!