Tag Archives: DC Comics

Fare thee well, Mr. Timm

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bruce_timm_by_dkdelicious-d3ezn9nDC Animated Producer, director, art director, writer, occasional voice actor and all around awesome guy Bruce Timm steps down.  And as long as everybody else is doing it, I call bullshit too.

If you’re even close to my age, when you think about DC comics, you can’t help but think about some of the incredible animated programs that have been created over the course of the last twenty-one years.  To most of us, we know that his work more or less started with Batman: The Animated Series, which eventually became The Adventures of Batman and Robin.  In truth, a quick look at Timm’s IMDB page will show you he actually started working with DC animated characters as far back as 1981 on The Kid Super Power Hour with Shazam!

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Gail Simone leaves Batgirl; Comics Weep

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I don’t read a lot of comics. I never really have, but when a friend started me reading comics, she reached into her long box, pulled out a long run of Gail Simone’s Birds of Prey and said, “Here, read this. It’s awesome.”

I now have a long box full of Birds of Prey. But only as written by Gail Simone. When she left Birds of Prey, I read a few issues, then was so disgusted with the way the story was going, I gave up. That was okay, though. Because then she started writing Wonder Woman. And all of a sudden, Wonder Woman was interesting! She was more than the pontificating diplomat. I didn’t buy a lot of Wonder Woman because I’d hit that graduate school stage of broke, but I got copies however I could. And then she was back on Birds of Prey and all was right with my world. Yes, I read other Batfamily comics, but that was only to get the context of the rest of universe in which Birds of Prey existed.

Oh, wait. Then DC rebooted. And we were losing Oracle, who I loved, and who Simone wrote so incredibly well. We had a character who was disabled and who still kicked butt, and we were losing that little bit of diversity. But Simone was going to write Batgirl, so that soothed the soul a bit.

Until today, when we discovered that DC fired her from Batgirl, leaving their most well-known female writer out in the cold.

I don’t know what to make of this. The Wired article I linked above points out that DC’s had plenty of problems with gender issues of late. What I am, however, is incredibly disappointed, because the woman who got me–and a lot of other girls–into DC comics–and who kept me interested in them over the last ten years–is no longer associated with them, and I see no good reason for it.

I don’t have a lot of analysis for this, partly because I don’t have a lot of insight into DC’s internal workings right now. But this decision hit me right in the feels, and I can’t imagine I’m the only one. Gail, have you thought about writing Star Wars comics?

So You Want To Get Into Comic Books

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So you want to get into comics… but you don’t want to read about the superheroes of the big two companies.  That’s okay because comics can be about so much more than just superheroes!  In fact, there are even more comic book publishers than just Marvel and DC such as Dark Horse, Image, Top Cow, and countless other independent publishers.  The following recommendations are mostly the products of a DC Comics offshoot publisher called Vertigo and represent a range of genres.  They are not, however, the only books in the game.  I also avoided recommending any tie-in comic books but if you are a fan of something like Buffy the Vampire Slayer or Star Wars, you could always begin with picking up those comic books as a way to see if you like the medium.  Although I’ve only included a few, I’ll also suggest that if you enjoyed a film or a TV show that was based upon a comic book that you pick up the first volume of that comic and give it a try.

Long story short, comics are great and are about so much more than just the Marvel and DC Superheroes.  There really is a book out there for everyone!  With that said, I’ll just get on with some of my own recommendations.

Watchmen
[Amazon – Comixology]
This is a very predictable way to start the list but Watchmen isn’t one of the best selling comics of all time for nothing.  Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons did some amazing work when they created this book.  It’s a sort of alternate history where Nixon never resigned and costumed vigilantes began popping up in the 1940s and 1960s.  The story opens with the investigation into the death of one of those costumer heroes, the Comedian.  Rorschach, a former teammate, figures out that someone is trying to kill their entire team and takes it upon himself to warn them and the tale progresses from there.   Not only is the book a critique of the concept of superheroes but it also presents readers with a few ethical dilemmas and you have to ask yourself if the villain is really a villain or perhaps actually the hero of the piece.  It’s certainly a darker comic than some of the others in this article but oh man is it worth it.

In all honesty, Watchmen is probably one of those comics that you will have to read at some point during your comic reading career because it is just that iconic.  I’ll even go so far to say that this book is essential reading even for people who aren’t into comics.  And then you get to walk around for a week afterwards asking yourself, “Who Watches the Watchmen?”.

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