Parker Brothers released the first video game to feature Spider-Man in 1982, about four years after the release of the first comic book inspired video game, Superman.  In the terms of that time frame in today’s market, that would mean a world of difference in relations to graphics, game play, and even A.I.  In 1982, however, it seemed to have made little difference.  Spider-Man for the Atari 2600 in terms of those three aspects, especially graphics and artificial intelligence, is about on par with those of Superman. The concept of the game is pretty straightforward, the player takes control of Spider-Man as he clings to the base of a yellow skyscraper and needs to climb to the top where the Green Goblin is flying back and forth setting off timed bombs, and essentially defeat, or in this case, prevent him from destroying the building.  The only way Spidey can advance up the building is with his web, you can shoot a web straight up or at an angle.  People appear in the windows of the building and if one appears in the path of your web, the line breaks sending you tumbling to the ground.  The same thing also occurs if you get hit by the Green Goblin or one of his bombs.  However, you can save yourself by recasting a web before you hit bottom.  Once you reach the roof it’s up to Spider-Man to diffuse a super bomb all the while avoiding the Green Goblin as he flies around.  If you accomplish this goal the level starts over with a more difficult variation added to it.

In much the same way Superman gave players the opportunity to navigate a rudimentary construct to accomplish a goal with a light concept or theme of Superman imposed upon it, Spider-Man presents a small scenario in a small environment, with limited capabilities in relation to those aspects of Spider-Man that make his character super.  The video game is more of a goal to accomplish than a narrative to drive.  Our window into the world the character inhabits is one of primary colors, presenting the environment in a side view only and moving simply up or falling down.  Once again, like its predecessor there is little in the way of physical presentation that acknowledges or references the source material.  Spider-Man is a collection of red and blue pixels that shoots a black line out of his being.  He fights no one at all, including the Green Goblin, who also does little to resemble his comic book counterpart aside maybe from his glider.  The only opposition Spider-Man faces besides the Goblin are the citizens looking out their windows.

Where the Atari Spider-Man does succeed, especially over the preceding Superman, is in terms of addressing the player’s hand at playing a moment in the life of everyone’s favorite web slinger.  While still nowhere near a narrative in terms of plot, the game’s function is essentially to pit the player, as Spider-Man, in an altercation with the Green Goblin.  If we were to examine any idea of structure then this would be a stripped down short story, a moment in Spider-Man’s life that you control against one of his greatest adversaries.  Perhaps a scene from an issue, played out as an objective to be overcome by the gamer.  The arc of the story in this case–to stop the villain from destroying a building with people in it–is simply a MacGuffin.  Once the arc has been traversed, or the level beaten, the player is rewarded with another level of slightly greater difficulty.  Most early Atari and Arcade games were designed around this structure; the real reward for the player is to accomplish the goal the most times in a single game with the most points earned.

I feel a game like Spider-Man offers the player a slightly greater feeling of reward when defeating a level than its counterparts.  Here we have an opportunity to strap on the red and blue pixelated spandex that adorn Marvel Comics’ flagship character and prevent one of his greatest villains from committing a heinous act.  In Superman, part of your goal was to stop Lex Luthor, but as the form of both comic books and video games dictate, visual acceptance and recognition is part of the experience of the game play.  And in this case is especially important as the game was created to give animated life to an iconic character and the world he inhabits.  Therefore, the rudimentary representations of the characters in Superman, like Lex Luthor, being far less convincing than here in Spider-Man, mean that Spider-Man does do more to fulfill the fan’s desire to play as the Superhero.  While the game is still far off from the immersive experience modern video games such as Ultimate Spider-Man and Spider-Man 3 gave us, Spider-Man (1982) was a small yet nice step in a more engaging direction.

There is also a version of the game that can be played on the net here.

“Ah’ll be back in a bit… And if there ain’t a clean glass when ah git back, there won’t be a saloon neither.” – Jonah Hex

Sometimes I really fear that this book will suffer the same fate as Howard The Duck and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. It’s a fun read and its regular done-in-one-issue storytelling makes it one of the most accessible books around, but it has the anchor of a godawful film adaptation that might stop people from giving it a try.

Jonah Hex is, at its core, a classic spaghetti western: bad ass main character looking out for himself, nasty villains, gray morality and lots of blood and bullets. You can almost hear the Ennio Morricone soundtrack while reading it. I really don’t know how a filmmaker can screw that up, especially when the biggest video game of 2009, Red Dead Redemption, was….a spaghetti western.

The latest issue has Hex seeking a bounty alive when the bounty’s brother wants him dead, all the while Hex is being stalked by a masked vigilante from his Confederate past. You’d think that a masked and costumed character would look out of place in the gritty Hex world, but Bernet’s art and design makes him look more like a frightening Klansman pulp character than someone you’d see the Justice Society fighting.

Bernet’s art deserves some applause here. He hits the perfect balance between gritty realism and comic book action. His actions sequences are top notch, as illustrated by one in this issue where Hex fights an armed mob single-handedly in a dust storm, wielding only an axe. Bad ass.

Seriously, folks. Do what I do and pretend the movie doesn’t exist. Give the comic a shot. It’s incredibly easy to jump into, the art is great, the dialogue is fun and with the success of games like Red Dead. there couldn’t be a better time to be a cowboy.

MIKE’S RATING: 4/5

—————————————

R.E.B.E.L.S. #20
Writer: Justin Gray and Jimmy Palmiotti
Artist: Jordi Bernet

“You cannot match wits with me. You don’t have the bandwidth.”– Brainiac

I love this book, but it really needs a different title, like “L.E.G.I.O.N.,” as the protagonists really haven’t been “rebels” since the opening Starro arc ended five issues ago. I can’t help but wonder if the title has stopped people from giving it a try.

When I try to describe this book to people, I usually explain the “hero” of the title, Vril Dox, by describing him as Benjamin Linus of ‘Lost’ as the C.E.O. of Blackwater in space. He’s the sort of guy who will save your planet from invasion, as long as your check clears.

And like Ben Linus, Dox has daddy issues.

Dox’s father just happens to be intergalactic tyrant and mass murderer, Brainiac. Dox had managed to lock his father up on their homeworld of Colu, only to have him escape when Dox’s own son, Lyrl (styling himself “Brainiac 3”), attacked the planet with a massively powerful A.I. Star to steal the planet’s data core and kill his father in the process. Only the Greek gods have a more dysfunctional family.

Now that all hell has broken loose, Dox has unleashed his old employee, Lobo, on the planet as a last ditch gamble to take out both the schemes of his father and son. Now I’ve never been a huge Lobo fan, but the way he’s used here is a lot of fun, as his violent, irrational id is put up against Lyrl’s helplessly logical doomsday machine. All I know is, if someone sent Lobo after me, I’d run. Even if I were a doomsday machine.

The issue also has what may be the greatest deus ex machina I’ve ever seen in comics, as the chronically curious Brainiac cannot help but download the quarantined sections of Dox’s brain, unleashing all of his son’s walled-off adolescent fears, pain and insecurities into his brain. Teen angst as a weapon of mass destruction. Weapons grade sadness.

I really like what Bedard is doing with this title, and I can’t wait to see how the long hinted-at conflict between Dox’s profit-based law enforcement and the more altruistic Green Lantern Corps pans out.

If you’ve been looking for a book where you can really root for the “bad guy,” please give R.E.B.E.L.S. a look.

MIKE’S RATING: 4/5

Why the huge disparity?

Most of the weekly Syndicated cartoons in the ‘70’s & ‘80’s  were produced for theatrical release as far back as the ‘40’s. None of the kids of the day gave it much thought, but the “classic” Bugs Bunny and Woody Woodpecker cartoons were all made when their PARENTS were children. In most cases, that didn’t matter- a fall down the stairs is funny no matter what… but in some cases, there were very specific “of their day” references that simply flew past the minds of the kids watching them.

Take, for example, one of my favorite all time Bugs Bunny cartoons, “Slick Hare.” The basic set-up was that Bugs was running around a restaurant which was, in the ‘30’s and ‘40’s, the haunt of many a famous Hollywood actor. While at the time I recognized only Groucho in the many cameos of “Slick Hare,” when I see that cartoon today I am surprised how clever it was in it’s use of celebrities. When I first saw it, I really didn’t understand why Bugs was willing to be eaten by some “famous” woman, even to the point where he tells the Chef, “…The Customer is Always Right…” Knowing what I know now, having Lauren Bacall as the “Customer” who “is always right,” was really a master stroke…

Today’s lesson in Failure is: The Customer Is Always Right.

I am not even going to sugarcoat this- believing that the “Customer” is always right in Indy Comics is going to lead you to either the insane asylum, the poorhouse or both, and that is a stone cold, 1000% Truth.

That being said, while you need to throw out “The Customer is Always Right,” and move on, I think it’s important to break down WHY this idea is so problematic.

First of all, let’s start from the beginning. Who IS “The Customer?”

Well, that depends on what you are selling, doesn’t it? And yes, you HAVE to sell your comic to even start this discussion, because unless someone is giving you money, you don’t HAVE a “Customer.” That means if you only do a free webcomic, you may have Readers, but you DON’T have Customers. And if you give a print Comic or a mobile Comic away, the person reading THAT is not your Customer either. And while it’s a good thing to care what your readers think, you honestly don’t OWE those people anything. You gave them something for nothing- unless you want to make problems for yourself, it’s your option as to whether or not you listen to what those people think.

Now, I am NOT saying be rude to people, but if a person who gets free Comics from you is mean, demanding or in any way tries saying anything to you that you don’t appreciate or agree with, feel free to ignore them.

Let me give you an example from my own personal experience- If you go on the Android market and look at the comments left by people who got issue 1 of Robot 13 for FREE, you will find that there are far more negative comments than for either issues 2 or 3 (which you have to pay to read). What ARE most of the negative comments? Why- bitching about the fact that issues 2 and 3 cost money, of course! Funny thing is- out of the 175,000+ people that have downloaded all 3 issues of Robot 13, almost all the negative feedback comes from “Customers” who aren’t Customers at all… Paying Customers, on the other hand, have much more positive feedback, and even the few that have criticisms do so in a much more civil and constructive manner.

While that may SOUND like an anomaly, I assure you it is not. If you haven’t learned this yourself yet, self publish for a minute and you will- quite often, the less a person pays for something, the more vocal and negative they are with their opinions. And yes, opinions are like elbows… everyone has them and most don’t know the difference between that and a hole in the ground. So while you should encourage Readership whenever possible, you NEED to encourage Customers to become return Customers. If that means ignoring some who only Read your comics to give your attention to the people who actually BUY your comics, then so be it.

(Cont.)

The Backroom Comics crew analyze everything related to reading comics: how they read them, what they have been reading, and discuss the review process.

This episode is available on iTunes and Zune. Additionally, we have a RSS feed and it is available on Miro.

Read Along with Greg and Kevin as they continue their in depth analysis of the entire Sandman series. In this episode read along as they start the fifth volume, A Game Of You.

This episode is available on iTunes and Zune. Additionally, we have a RSS feed and it is available on Miro.

It’s not that this kid thought it all SOUNDED the same… He told me that it all had the same message. What “message” was he getting from Heavy Metal that he liked?

“Never give up,” I was told, “Never… ever… ever.”

Today’s Lesson in Failure is: Know When Enough Is Enough.

Why, you may ask, does Heavy Metal music scream the battle cry of, “Never Give Up?” Part of that may be the fiery trappings of Mythology that so many Heavy Metal bands use as part of their persona. In all the medieval Heroic stories that form the basis for the cover of many a Metal album, there was always that point of surrender that the Hero had to push past to prove himself…

On the other hand, just as many Metal songs are about not giving up on Metal itself as they are metaphors for something greater.

The boss says, “Cut your hair!”

“Never Give Up!”

The Priest at your brother’s wedding says, “It’s not safe OR appropriate to wear a pentagram covered codpiece that wizzes fire inside a church!”

“Never Give Up!”

The wife says, “A 350 lbs. man in his 50’s shouldn’t wear purple spandex in public!”

“NEVER GIVE UP!”

We can all chuckle at the above scenarios- unless you set fire to the church with your flaming codpiece, then it’s not funny…

But in any case, I think you get the point- to say that someone should NEVER give up isn’t always the best idea. Knowing when you should struggle defiantly and when you should make a change or move on to something else is a very important Skill- in both Comics and in real life.

Now, when I say “Make a Change,” it could very obviously mean one of two things- moving on from a specific project to do something else, and leaving comics all together to explore other pursuits. Everyone who has done the Indy Comics grind for any length of time has thought about the latter- throwing in the towel and planting a garden or something and never drawing or writing again. Those of us who are still here, however, have come to terms with the fact that making funny books are in our marrow. We have to make comics, and that is just that…

Some of us may change our way of working, though, such as focusing on writing or penciling or coloring instead of doing everything, but most people who stay in comics over a long period think about quitting at least occasionally. For the purpose of discussion today, however, I want to talk about when you should stop doing one thing in comics and move on to something else.

At what point, you may ask, should I “Make a Change” when it comes to Indy Comics? While I can’t specifically tell you what to do in a case by case manner, I can give you a couple of questions to ask yourself which may help you make the right decision yourself.

First of all, you need to ask yourself if you are thinking about moving on because of laziness or ADD, and not something based on the work itself. The reason that I say you should ask yourself THAT question first is that if you are too lazy or lack focus to finish what you started in comics, then you really need to consider if you are cut out to do comics at all. Yes, I said I wasn’t going to discuss reasons to “retire” from comics, but that isn’t what I am talking about. What I mean is- if you can’t finish what you start in Comics, you suck and should have never gotten into Comics in the first place.

While that may sound harsh (and it is) you need to understand that starting ANYTHING really isn’t an accomplishment. FINISHING what you start is EVERYTHING. Notice I didn’t say “Everything in Comics?” That’s because finishing what you start is the only way to measure accomplishment in any aspect of life, and Comics are just a part of it. While there are many valid reasons to stop doing a particular comics project, if deep down you are quitting out of laziness or lack of focus then you need to walk away from comics and find something to do with your time that you are motivated to complete. There have been enough Comics “creators” who never amounted to squat because they were talented but lazy. We don’t need any more of that mess than we already have.

If, however, you can look into the mirror and look yourself in the eye and know you aren’t a lazy sack when it comes to Comics, then there are a few other things you need to consider before you decide to move on to a new project. One of the valid concerns you need to have to wrestle with is have you, in fact, is do you have more to say with this project? Have you painted yourself into a corner to the point where there isn’t a logical next story to tell?

While every Comics creator wants to create the next Spider-Man or Hulk, sometimes a character is bound to the story he or she is in. Think of Bone, for example- Jeff Smith had a very specific story he wanted to tell, and when it was over it was over. Yes, there have been some “prequel” Comics which have filled in elements of the back story, but Bone isn’t the kind of story that SHOULD go on forever, regardless of it’s popularity. Luckily for us as Comic fans, Jeff knew that and told a very satisfying and finite story with those characters. Maybe YOUR idea is better off being finite. There is nothing wrong with that at all…

Once you have decided that yes, there are still stories you can tell within the Comic project you are working on, you need to look outside yourself and get a sense of your audience. Are THEY still interested in reading more? Have you hit a wall with your audience? Does anybody CARE if you are doing your current project or not? While popularity of a project isn’t the only criteria in deciding whether or not to continue on, it’s something to think about. For example- for every long running, popular Webcomic there are scores of long running Webcomics that have almost zero readership. Maybe that creator is persevering and working hard until people notice, and maybe they are just the Comics equivalent of the 350 pound man in the purple spandex. And that is NOT to say that a person who has been going on for years with no real readership should quit all together- but what it may suggest is that it’s time to try something different. While you may be attached to that long running Comic idea, it could be that you aren’t suited to what you are doing.

Finally, if you have stories to tell and you have a readership that wants to hear those stories, the last thing you need to ask yourself is this: Am I having any fun doing this? Believe it or not, Comics SHOULD be fun. Not every moment is a blast- some parts are hard work, and there are ups and downs to everything, but you need to have some level of enjoyment in what you are doing or it isn’t worth it. If only a handful of people are reading your Comic, and you struggle to figure out what to do next but you really, truly LOVE doing this particular Comic then I say go for it. While it’s hard to quantify or break down into specifics, you can usually tell when someone really loves doing a particular book. It shows on the page and usually gives it “something” that other comics lack. And besides, unless you one in ten thousand, you aren’t making much money from Comics anyway, so you might as well be having a good time.

What if you are on the other end, though- you are doing something people like, there are more stories to tell and you DON’T enjoy what you are doing. That’s a harder decision, because hitting on a popular Comic idea is exponentially harder than winning the lottery, and there is NO way to be sure that people will follow you from your old project to something new. That new Comic might make YOU happy, but it also might flop…

The other side of the coin is, just because you are doing something with a fan base doesn’t mean you have to work on a project forever to make them happy. You can bring a book to an endpoint and walk away to do other things, or you can do something less drastic and try and find out what EXACTLY is making you unhappy and try to fix that. Maybe the schedule you are on is unrealistic, maybe you aren’t crazy about the current storyline or maybe you need to take a break and do something else and come back to your “popular” project. In any case, what is sapping your joy in doing Comics may very well be something that can be fixed- if you can apply that fix and still maintain your following, regardless of how large or small that following is, I would recommend trying it.

You could take the above approach and avoid failure, or you can strap on that flaming codpiece and wear your purple spandex Unitard to your nieces christening this weekend. If you want to fail, I would suggest that you never, ever, ever, ever give up- especially when it’s obvious that a “good thing” has passed you by…

The Backroom Comics crew continue their look back on the complex history of the X-Men, preview Jet City Comic Show and Emerald City ComiCon, and check in on Ladies Night at Comics Dungeon.

This episode is available on iTunes and Zune. Additionally, we have a RSS feed and it is available on Miro.

To be truthful, ALL these are issues, but I don’t think any of them are really what Comic’s Creators FEAR. The one thing that stands in their way is what novelists have long had a name for… Writer’s Block.

Today’s lesson in Failure is: Direction Is As Important As Speed.

If you read the work of Scott McCloud at all you have learned one thing above all else, and that is Comics are READ, not just looked at even when there are NO words on the page. That point cannot be overstated- what it means is that “Reading” Comics is NOT just reading captions and word balloons. The sequence of Images on a page are ALSO read, and regardless of how much detail a writer puts into a script, there is an aspect of that which the Artist has to figure out in the same way that a Writer has to figure out telling the story on a script level. What that means to YOU, the Comic Creator, is that whether you are doing the Art or Writing the script, there is a potential that you will suffer from “Writer’s Block” at some point.

The problem with knowing that you could, at any time, be “stuck” for an idea is that in this case, being prepared doesn’t mean a thing. There is no formula or strategy for getting out of your mental block- proof of that is that people have been going through it for centuries and nobody has “solved” the problem. It’s something that happens from time to time to just about everyone, and there is no way to “fix” the problem 100% of the time.

“Why,” you may ask,  “even bring up a problem if it has no ‘solution?’”

I mention it for two reasons- first of all, mental blocks have killed countless projects. In fact, in the Independent Comics world, I think it’s fair to say that as many (if not more) projects have died an “early death” because someone was stuck and didn’t know where to go next as for any other factor you can name.

The reason I say that with such confidence is that most Indy projects aren’t fully mapped out before they are begun. A Creative team may THINK they have planned out their book for X number of issues, but quite often that isn’t the case. I knew someone once who told me they had 150 issues of their Indy book worked out. Since we knew each other for quite a while, I asked to see what they had written & wanted to know where he was planning to take his characters that would take 150 issues… He told me, and I had to let him know that what he thought was 150 issues of plot I would do in about 20 pages or so. That’s not to say “my” way is the best or only way to do something, but there is a huge difference between an idea that you WANT to stretch out to an epic and something that a reader will want to read for the next 150 issues. While my friend didn’t agree with my assessment, when I read his finished book I found that his 150 issue plan wound up being 3 issues when all was said and done.

For a variety of factors, while most Creators have no problem coming up with a beginning, most have an issue with getting even to a midpoint. For some, they really don’t have an actual concept of what constitutes a story idea.

Rather than dragging out this point, I am just going to be blunt- a Story at its most basic is when you have a character (or several characters) and some action takes place which causes conflict to that character and that character changes in some way because of it.

That means:

A Character design is not a story idea.

A Character description is not a story idea.

All the detail you can gather about the “world” a character inhabits is not a story idea.

Even a Plot, in fact, is NOT a story idea, unless that plot has a focal point and you can demonstrate how that focal character changes in some way because of your plot.

That is why, for example, that News events are not stories in and of themselves. News only becomes a story when you are looking at the level of Human interest- 9/11, while a big News item and a tragic event, is not a “story.” Telling me about one person and what happened to THEM on 9/11 and how that changed them- THAT is a story.

What that means is that storytelling involves understanding that flow- whether you write or draw or both, you need to understand that you are doing more than walking your characters past events A, B & C… you are changing the character in some way during that flow. Now, to be fair, that “change” doesn’t have to be permanent and it doesn’t have to be some HUGE development. It can be something as simple as learning a “lesson.” The key is, however, that you need to convey that change and figuring out how to do that can be a puzzler.

While this isn’t true for everyone, I do think at times that we get blocked in Comics because we forget that we are telling stories and that telling a story has rules. Maybe you are legitimately stuck, and maybe you stopped telling a story and have resorted to just depicting events with a series of pictures…. You don’t know what comes next because there IS no “next” when it comes to a string of events any more than there is a “plot” to the morning newspaper. Once you get back on track and think about actually telling a story, you will often find that you aren’t stuck anymore.

That brings me to my second reason that I am bringing up a problem with no clear solution, which is a “solution” to what comes next in your story doesn’t have to be unique. No matter how “different” your Comic idea is from everything else out there, it is, on some level, a story. Other people before you have made Comics, and somewhere out there is a comic similar enough to yours to a point where you can learn something from it. Now, I am not saying, “If you are stuck, steal something from an already published Comic.” What I am saying, however, is there is nothing wrong with using someone else’s example as the starting point to fix your problems. What you need to avoid, though, is being “inspired” by something that is the unique selling point of someone else’s comic.

Say, for example, you are in the middle of the crazy action scene and you are stuck with how to move on from that to the next thing. Looking at how other people did a similar scene may help, or you may want to look at something in a totally different genre than you are working in and draw some inspiration from there. Many classic Westerns did just that- although they are set in the American West and feature cowboys, the best Western movies owe much of their plot and ideas to Samurai films.

While I wouldn’t recommend leaning on the work of others like Westerns did on the work of Akira Kurosawa, I do think that sometimes we are stuck because we are trying too hard to be “novel.” If your hero is in a diner having a cup of coffee, you don’t have to revolutionize the Comic industry with your “new” approach to that scene. Often you will find many people doing very similar things in similar situations, and if you are stuck, there is nothing wrong with that. The key in everything you do is to get past that bump in the road and move forward. And believe it or not, you actually CAN revise your work! That’s right- if you try something that is a pretty “average” solution to your problem now, you can always replace it with something cooler down the road….

On the other hand, if Failure is what you want then there isn’t much more of a Fail then to be stopped dead in your tracks. What’s more, it is extremely easy in the Indy Comics world to go from paused to stopped to having quit all together on an idea. Quit on enough ideas and you start building a whole portfolio of failed attempts at Comics. DO that, and you start making Failing your career.