Editorial Control

X-Men First Class doesn’t come out for another six months, but it’s getting tons of publicity right now, mainly because its director won’t stop talking about it. Problem is, he seems to be saying all the wrong things.

In the same interview, he also stated that the movie has lots of Teen Angst, so “the Twilight girls will like it.” The problem is that I think a lot of the people who like Twilight aren’t the same people who are visiting comic shops to check out the latest adventures of Wolverine. I’m not saying there isn’t some overlap, but I don’t think it’s as much as Vaughn hopes there would be. Granted, if the movie opens and fights break out between nerds wearing Team Erik and Team Xavier t-shirts, I’ll be the first to admit I’m mistaken.

An even more interesting comparison is that he equates young Magneto to young Sean Connery era James Bond. I know throughout the years Magneto has oscillated back and forth between Good and Evil and has had several attractive women on his arm, but I’d never say he screams tuxes and martinis to me. It’s a really interesting comparison and I’m not really sure what to make of it.

The thing that is most upsetting is his rather flippant nature towards the comic book continuity and his movie continuity. Basically, Vaughn feels that since over the years the comic’s continuity and history has been retconned to fit with the times, that gives him a license to make any changes as he sees fit. While I’m not a die hard fan who feels that everything in the movies has to fit exactly everything in the comics, Vaughn’s comments feel like a slap in the face. Yes, some changes from the source material have to be made to make the story fit budget, time, or become filmable. The best example of this is how the Toby Maguire Spiderman naturally shot webbing from his arms. That Peter Parker was bookish, but wasn’t portrayed as the child-genius that the comics had contained for so many decades. Instead of spending the time to establish that genius nature and then show him inventing the web-shooters, it was much more convenient for them to spend 5 minutes showing him making hand gestures as he figures out how to shoot webs. Was it a change from the source material? Yes. Did it make sense in the context of the movie? Yes. Did it detract from the fun of the movie? No.

Comic movies can’t be made strictly for the comic fans alone. They need to be made for a mainstream audience. That mainstream audience doesn’t care that Jubilee is the teenager that falls in love with Wolverine, not Rogue. All they care about is that there is some teen girl who thinks Logan’s dreamy and that adds complexity to the story. At the same time, you can’t ignore (or outright insult) the comic fan base. A comic book movie would not exist without those comic readers. Without those legions of people who for decades paid money to read about these mutant characters 20 pages at a time, there would be no popular intellectual property worth spending millions of dollars making not one, but five different movies.

As comic fans, all we ask is that you treat what we love with the respect, unlike those people who would pick on us and force us to look to these brightly inked pages for solace. If you respect us, we’ll respect you and then amazing things can happen.

Travis, what’s on your pull list?

• Knight & Squire #4 - Through a royal screw-up on Diamond’s part Bedrock City didn’t get this 2 week old comic in until this week. Very good issue that gave some interesting backstory about Knight & Squire’s origin and relationship. I’m falling in love with Squire.
• Morning Glories #6 - Since I didn’t have anything else new this week, I also grabbed this issue from last week. It’s the first story of a new arc, so I wanted to see what all the fuss was about. It was definitely intriguing, but without the first arc I felt a little lost.

Kris, what’s on your pull list?

• Action Comics #897
• Detective Comics #873 - A good issue, exactly what I want out of a Batman story. After a joke in Batgirl, then Red Robin, and now the first section of this book, I feel like they are beating the “Dick is an acrobat” horse to death. He’s been a hero since he was like 8, and he was also a cop for a while. Shouldn’t we reference something else in his past?
• Fantastic Four #587 - A great issue, and I want to see what they do with this. I won’t spoil it for you though.
• Green Arrow #8 - A decent issue, but the whole story seems very unimportant. I miss the Arrow family and don’t really care about the forest.
• Infestation #1
• Justice League: Generation Lost #18 - This book is barreling towards it’s conclusion and I can’t wait. My only problem is, if they really kill Jaime Reyes, I’m going to lose a lot of faith in DC.
• Justice Society of America #47 - Wow, this is bad. Just something about it makes me not care. This book just seems so out of touch with the rest of the DCU.
• Shazam #1 - A cute, fun story about the Marvel family, but if this doesn’t end with Billy Batson back as Captain Marvel, then it will be forgotten in 6 months.
• Speaker for the Dead #1 - A wonderful lesson in why you shouldn’t turn 300 page science fiction novels into a 5 issue mini series.
• Teen Titans #91 - A pretty basic ending to the first arc of JT Krul’s run on Teen Titans. I’m glad he took over the book, I feel confident he can turn it back into a must read book.
• Uncanny X-Force #4
• Wonder Woman #606 - I’d be more into this book if I knew where it was going. I would be fine if they went back or kept the new continuity, I just want to know. I did love the inclusion of Giganta, Cheetah, and Artemis. I think that proves it’s in it’s own timeline to some extent, because Giganta was recently in Secret Six.
• X-23 #5 - I’m not sure how I feel about the big reveal at the end. I was really getting into Miss Sinister. I do love X-23 and the way she interacts with Gambit.
• X-Men #7 - Here’s the X-Men, they are superheroes, watch them be superheroes. Yes, I will continue to do so. If for no other reasons than I love Chris Bachalo’s full page layouts.
• Zatanna #9