Just Sayin'--My Favourite ComiCon Announcement

You ever notice most of these ComiCon announcements you hear on the blogosphere are really kind of . . .well, you wonder why they went at all, really, they seem to hate the experience so much. When you couple that with the fact that most of what goes on there now seems to have only a passing relationship to, y'know, comics, one might be forgiven for questioning its relevancy.

Anyways, one of the standard blog posts that everyone's doing now is documenting their favourite announcement or the one they found to be the most exciting or whatever. For most people, it was the news that Marvel Comics bought Marvelman/Miracleman, and thus bought a passel of mediocre Silver Age comics and potential lawsuits and the promise of necessary payoff and releases for the next decade or so. (as Rich Johnson details in a rare example of doing his job) Counting on the fact that most comic fans were so blinded by nostalgia and have poor reading comprehension skills to automatically assume they'd gotten the 80's stuff (which was the whole reason anyone wants Marvelman in the first place.) and therefore would go lunar at the prospect of having those long-out-of print (and perpetual eBay retirement funding) issues back in print.

(By the by, if my crack about the poor reading comprehension of comics fans seems a bit harsh, need I remind you the wailing and gnashing of teeth that came with the Siegel lawsuit, wherein comic fans cried the blues that Superman would stop being published or moved over to Marvel, etc. Seriously--people actually beleived this. )

But none of this was my favourite announcement from Comicon. I could care less about Marvelman, honestly--we've seen Marvel's take, it was called The Sentry and the less said about it the better. No, what I was looking for from ComiCon was confirmation of my low opinion of the comics industry at the moment, some perfect grace note that would sum up the rampant sense of doomed mediocrity that's had this business in a stranglehold since the turn of the century, when the comics industry all but gave up trying to expand its audience for good and all, and committed themselves utterly to fleecing the rubes in the basest, most obvious way possible.

I shouted to ComiCon, "Show me comics at its most stupid! Show me something that no one in their right mind would possibly buy and yet people will buy by the ton! Show me something no one asked for!"

Comicon gave me this: Marvel announces the debut of Red She Hulk.

Red. She. Hulk.

Good lord. Someone thought the Red Hulk was a good character, but would be awesome with boobs. What the hell is wrong with people? Who in the flaming blue hell thought this was remotely a good idea, and when they received that grievous head injury, did they receive proper medical attention?

I've spoken over my loathing of Jeph Loeb's never ending (and ever stupid) Red Hulk stories, but the fact that they're pushing this even longer and eventually going to make it a line-wide crossover leaves me flabbergasted.

That said--I guess this is his idea of a "strong female character?" HA HA! Remember--the 7:30 show is completely different from the 9:30 show--drive safe everyone!

Y'know--I find I enjoy comics a LOT more now that I consider it to be one long, never-ending pratfall.