We’ve lost another great influential artist, Hardin (Jack) Burnley, one of the first artists for the Man of Steel and co-creator of Ted Knight, Starman. :

Hardin “Jack” Burnley, the artist who made visible the Man of Steel’s inner strength and provided the prototype portrait for a universe of comic book heroes, died Tuesday in Albemarle County. He was 95.

Burnley was the first person to draw Superman, Batman and Robin other than their creators.

His drawing of the three heroes for the cover of an issue of “World’s Fair Comics” in 1940 marked the first time the crime fighters appeared together in public. He was also the first to carefully outline the caped crusaders’ muscle structures, setting the style for hundreds of heroes who followed.

“Just the fact that the creators let him take over says a lot,” said Beau Eichling, owner of Atlas Comics in Rio Hill shopping center. “The extra ripples and muscles is kind of the comic book hero style now. They’ve really embellished on it.”

Although famous for his comics, Burnley was an accomplished syndicated sports cartoonist working for newspapers during the 1930s. He worked for several years as illustrator for Damon Runyon before being hired to draw Superman and the syndicated newspaper strip “Batman.”

“I gave Superman a lot more muscle than he had originally,” he told The Daily Progress in 2000. “When I came into comics I had a background in drawing the musclemen and heroes of sports, so it was rather easy for me to make the transition to drawing the comic figures.”

Behind Burnley’s pen, the superheroes stumped for the War Department, fighting Nazis and encouraging the purchase of war bonds. Burnley’s drawings proved popular and he went on to create, with Gardner Fox, his own superhero, Starman. Starman, however, proved less enduring than Superman and Batman, and was given an early retirement when interest in superheroes dwindled after World War II.

The character, however, continued to pop up over the years, sometimes appearing as a member of the Justice Society of America, and has benefited from recent renewed interest in the characters from comics’ “Golden Age.”

Burnley continued drawing comics from 1940 to 1947 before returning to newspaper illustrations. He worked for the Pittsburgh Sun-Telegraph for four years and then the San Francisco News, from which he retired in 1976. He and his wife moved to Charlottesville in 1981.

“It was exciting growing up around them,” said Burnley’s niece, Elizabeth Hamilton of Charlottesville. He lived with her and her daughters Catherine and Elizabeth before his death. “I’d walk into his studio and there’d be these huge drawing boards with artwork on them. This was before [World War II] and my uncle and mother would be working on the lettering.”

Burnley is another famous guy in comics who’ll be very missed.

, interviews artist Scott McCloud. First, here’s a good part:

The Triangle: What influenced you to pursue a career in comics, and how did you get interested in comics in the first place?

Scott McCloud: I wasn’t interested in comics as a little kid, but I had a friend in junior high school named Kurt Busiek, who is also making comics professionally today. Back in junior high, he kept telling me I should check out some of his collection, and eventually it wore down my resistance, and I started reading them. It was less than a year after that that I decided I wanted to draw comics professionally.

Wow, so he knew Kurt Busiek in his youth. That’s impressive.

On the other hand, I must, well, partially disagree with him on the following:

s: How would you say that comic books and the comic medium have changed since you got started? And do you think it has evolved for the better?

SM: I think it has evolved for the better, and I’m very optimistic about the future. Comics is in great shape now, probably better than it has ever been, and I hope that it continues to grow into the future.

While I also hope that comics grow in the future, with the immoralities running rampant in comics today, I can say that any such dreams could end up remaining very far away. That’s why I think it’d be a good idea for McCloud to bear that in mind regardless of his own positions.

:

Recalling its socially conscious roots of the 1960s, Marvel Comics delivered the best comic book series of 2006.

Hmm, I fail to understand just what they’re talking about here. Back in the 60s, when Marvel did any take on the civil rights movements of the times, it was the battle of racial minority groups to gain genuine respect and legitimacy. It had nothing to do with whether you’re a legal resident of the country or not. And this is the best book of the year? Please. Frankly, I don’t think this year’s had anything real to crow over.

“Civil War” pitted superheroes against each other. After the government starts requiring all superheroes to reveal their secret identities and become federal agents, Marvel’s tights-and-capes community was at odds.

Captain America thought it was an intrusion on his civil rights. Iron Man declared it was the responsible thing to do. After all, policemen don’t hide their identities, Iron Man reasoned.

Oh, but there are some who do, and it can be if they’re going undercover to bust an organized crime syndicate, and nobody wants the crooks to know who they really are, or they’ll never succeed in stopping those mafiosos. Hence, I fail to see the logic in what was plotted.

The fallout is a sensational series that is a thinly veiled story about personal rights, civil liberties and, in many ways, unjust profiling.

Ah, now I see where this article is going. Now, they’re trying to say that it’s an analogy to the , whose dirty stunt, , was most likely staged in hopes of making a case for preventing authorities from profiling potential terrorists at airports. Yep, the MSM has done it again. When a case that should be considered serious comes up, they immediately jump on the opportunity to claim that a book like Civil War reflects that subject, all according to their own sidings and beliefs.

Just as it did in the 1960s, Marvel Comics dared to tackle tough issues and offered no easy solutions.

Yawn. Do tell.

Here’s a funny bit that follows:

DC Comics, on the other hand, had some brilliant ideas, but they were poorly executed. It was as if DC had a party for itself but didn’t invite the most important people - the readers.

I remember that two years ago, there were a few people/sources who seemed to take a negative stance towards Marvel’s own moves with Avengers: Disassembled, yet they went all the way with DC’s. This sounds almost like the opposite. Whatever be the case, it’s a nonsensical approach, since if what one company is doing is bad, then surely the what the other is doing is too? Not to mention that a lot of hard questions about DC’s own steps went almsot completely unanswered back then. Now, with an article like this, the same could probably be said for Marvel.

The writer then goes on to list what he calls the best comics of the year:

The best comics always hold a mirror to society. In this stark and tightly written miniseries, superheroes had to determine among themselves why do they what they do. Is it right to be a vigilante even if the cause is just? Eventually Spider-Man took sides, too, and in the process finally told the world he is photographer Peter Parker. “Civil War” is a thought-provoking nail biter.

LOL. It neither adds nor does anything for Spidey or any other superhero who unmasked during the miniseries. It’s just a publicity stunt, and as far as “thought-provoking” is concerned, gimme a break! And, what does he say about the Fantastic Four:

As a result of “Civil War,” the Fantastic Four was a family in crisis. The Human Torch was injured in a fight with pedestrians. Reed Richards took a defiant stand along the pro-government lines. Meanwhile, his wife and best friend, the Invisible Girl and the Thing, joined the opposing camp, making them outlaws. The heightened drama among the four main characters was riveting reading.

I’m sure there are and will be plenty of worthwhile stories in which the FF has a rift, but with what Civil War contains, this is not one of them. And I think I’m better off not knowing the outcome of Johnny Storm’s scuffle with a bunch of pedestrians.

I see that Brad Meltzer’s take on the Justice League is the only DC Comic featured here, and something tells me this was all part of the plan:

Best-selling writer Brad Meltzer, a fan of the Justice League’s 1970s run, takes over the series for the first time with interesting results. His bent toward personality over action occasional impedes the book’s rightful active flow, but never makes it disengaging.

Even at a glance, it doesn’t take much to tell that was doubtless padded out for a 12 to 13-issue trade paperback. What exactly makes Meltzer any better than the other writers in DC’s stable just now? The series is also one of a couple books that’s been facing disturbing delays, and after Meltzer’s now notorious act of yore, that’s the main reason why I won’t be buying this, even when it’s published in trades.

Overall, a pretty appalling entertainment column this was, written with some real cynicism indeed.

, and it looks like a lot of the high hopes they may have had sure aren’t as high as they might’ve hoped. I’ll take a look at a few of the things they have to say in turn. Of all the books they’ve put out, it seems that 52 is doing the best of all. I’m really not happy about that, not just because the stories and plots, even at a glance, don’t look like anything great. And, as the Beat contributor says here:

Reportedly, a weekly follow-up series is already in the pipeline, so it seems that DC are viewing the book’s frequency as a major factor in its success.

In all due fairness to the consumer, I gotta say, nice going there, letting them fleece you of your money over what already looks like a big nothing. As I may have argued , from the looks of things, they sure do seem to be dragging everything out more than need be.

On the Flash, sales are not good:

Flash keeps shedding units at an alarming rate, and online reactions to the book seem mixed at best. The current writers will be replaced in February’s issue #9, so DC probably concur. At this stage, though, it’s quite possible that the sales boost from June’s relaunch will have largely disappeared by then.

Unsurprisingly, if that’s what happens. Whatever the case, the reason I’m not waiting up for the new writer is simply because - it is Wally West I want to read about as the Flash, and while I do like Bart Allen, I feel they have rendered him as unrecognizable as many of the other DCU cast members these days, and frankly, he should really be retaining his position as what he first began: Impulse.

Now, an interesting note about…variant covers! Supergirl and the Legion of Superheroes appears to be one of the titles using them:

The sudden increase is due to a variant cover edition, one copy of which could be ordered by retailers for, you guessed it, every ten copies of the standard comic. It’s a nice increase, certainly, but it’s unlikely to have any beneficial effects on the performance of subsequent issues.

Well, here’s something where I sure find fault. Variant covers are no substitute for good storytelling, and if people are really buying multiple copies of the book just so that they can get two or more variants, then that shows that the effort to move away from the collector’s market never came to be. In other words, they’re not trying to offer good storytelling, but rather, just trying to make extra bucks off of variant covers. The new volume of Justice League of America is also using them, and that too is pretty tacky.

On the Outsiders, there too is sales decline:

The book’s sales decline accelerates. Over the last several months, something seems to be going horribly wrong with Outsiders. The book used to be one of DC’s most consistent performers since its launch in 2003, but now it has shedded almost 10,000 units in a period of six months.

Well it wasn’t really much of anything to begin with, and if they’re going to just toss out some of the cast members who could’ve used some development (Jade, Starfire), then I guess that could explain why it’s going down now. And Judd Winick is no genuine writer, as some people have hopefully begun to realize by now.

Robin and Green Arrow’s numbers have also declined. Perhaps they could’ve allowed William Messner-Loebs to be writer on the latter, and come to think of it, the former, instead of limiting him to a one-shot issue? Man, that was a real cheat they pulled last year, when as it turned out, Loebs only wrote one issue of GA.

I’ll just note one more item, that being the Uncle Sam and the Freedom Fighters mini:

Sales are bottoming out, slowly but surely.

, if you ask me. If the miniseries is going to be more about political biases than anything else, then noone with common sense need apply.

And so with that, it looks like DC’s One Year Later stunt isn’t proving as successful as they may have hoped. IMO, if they’re going to show the kind of contempt for the readers they’ve been for the past two years now, they’re practically asking for failure. That said, it’s still a shame that people are wasting their money on 52, which, IMO, does not sound as appealing as they must want people to think. I would strongly urge anyone still buying it to drop it as soon as they can.

I found a that featured the following data on Marvel’s mutant singer:

Dazzler: 1981-1985

Dazzler proved a success, largely due to guest-starring several key Marvel Comics characters in its first few issues: Spider-Man, The Human Torch, Dr. Doom, Galactus, The Hulk, The X-Men, and Klaw were just a few of the several guest-stars who placed Dazzler squarely into the Marvel Universe. Dazzler herself also guest-starred in Marvel titles, such as X-Men, The Avengers, and the Marvel crossover, Contest of Champions.

The series, however, was not free from critique. Several readers disapproved of the “real life” focus of Dazzler, including the focus on “soft plots” — career, family, relationships — rather than action-based and more traditional superhero plot devices. Dazzler’s “superhero” outfit was her performance outfit, which also serves as a major disconnect from the superhero staples of the day. Years later, DeFalco reflected on these criticisms as an inherent hypocrisy with the readership: on one hand, readers clamored for something “new,” which was how Dazzler was conceived. Yet on the other, they wanted Dazzler to be a superheroine in the mold of Phoenix and conform to other superheroic stereotypes.

Thinking about this, if the material here makes sense (since anyone can write the entries, I always have reservations about Wiki) it makes me wonder if what readers wanted then was something more akin to…DC Comics? That would suggest that what they were more interested in was a simpler concept that didn’t rely much on personality.

If that’s the case from back in early 80s, it certainly does make me feel surprised. After all, personalities and personal problems were something that Marvel did master in one way or another, and if they could pull it off, then they should be lauded for it.

I’m not saying that personalities are that important when creating the characters, but, if they have been created with them and it works, then there’s no need to complain about it.

To me, this also sounds a little like a reverse take on what mistakes DC’s been making today, which is not that they’re giving their characters personalities, but rather, that they’re making their lives needlessly depressing, and so too their stories, without giving them any convincing developments. Personalities and human relations are always welcome, but that doesn’t mean that what’s required or what would work is darkness.

On another note about Dazzler, :

Blaire moved to the Los Angeles area from New York City, and formed a romantic and professional relationship with Hollywood celebrity Roman Nekoboh. Nekoboh produced a motion picture (which was never released) featuring Blaire, and persuaded her to reveal publicly that she was a superhumanly powerful mutant. The revelation backfired, stirring up renewed public hostility against mutants. Blaire was virtually blacklisted in the entertainment industry, and had to take primarily low-paying obscure jobs in order to continue her singing career.

Today, one could easily wonder if that makes a good allegory to the anti-conservative sentiment in Hollywood, even though Alison would surely have to be a very apolitical person herself.

But that doesn’t mean that what the is talking about makes for good ones. Nor does it mean that they should exaggerate, which, from what I can tell, they are:

Superhero comics still dominate the industry - they have the biggest sales for their books and the biggest grosses for their movies.

Well I’m afraid that remains in question. Sales overall may be a few million dollars, but what is that really when compared to what movies and even novels make?

DC is in the midst of publishing an ambitious interconnected yearlong weekly comic - appropriately titled “52″ ($2.50) - that focuses mostly on six obscure heroes.

Ambitious? Ha. I’ve looked over the plot synopses for what’s been published so far, and to be quite honest, I don’t see what’s so great about it. It seems to me that the only purpose it has for Ralph Dibny is to put him throught the paces of madness in trying to get his wife back, and then even that’s done very irriratatingly. We’re even being annoyed with the idea of that Vic Sage will be replaced as the Question with Renee Montoya, a character whom Greg Rucka, whose credentials are iffy, turned into a lesbian a few years ago. Aside from turning her into a cliche, I’ve never considered Montoya very interesting. I vaguely recall reading some of the Batman x-over, Bruce Wayne: Murderer?/Fugitive, and she came across very annoyingly, due in part to the editorially mandated storyline.

Regarding the question of if the Question will be replaced by this cardboard character: if DC had really wanted to, they could’ve hired a writer who could breathe new life into Vic Sage, given him some new supporting cast members, and even returned him to Hub City, which mostly crumbled in the past decade for some new human interest stories. Denny O’Neil’s take on Steve Ditko’s late 60s creation was very good, and his 1987-90 series was also famous for not using sound effects like “BAM! POW!”, not even for the telephone ringing.

Unfortunately, in today’s dumbed-down world of comics writing, where human interest stories are almost non-existant, ditto anything even remotely thought-provoking, it seems as though they cannot think of anything more creative to do than to kill off the character who makes the role of the Question work, and replace him with another one whom they may not even try to muster any genuine character development from. That’s right, something tells me that, if they really do try and replace Sage with Montoya, that little’s going to come of it, if at all.

Whether or not that’s what’ll happen, I do not support it, and it’s one of the reasons why I decided not to buy 52, which, despite what they say here, doesn’t look very appealing at all.

Now, what’s this the Journal Sentinel is recommending as a holiday gift:

Jonah Hex, DC’s Wild West bounty hunter, is enjoying a bit of a renaissance. The first six issues of his current series were recently collected as “Face Full of Violence” ($12.99). And the Showcase Presents series of “telephone-book-size” black-and-white reprints published a Hex volume with more than 500 pages of his earliest Western shoot-’em-up action, for $16.99.

Wow! A work of violence, that’s what’s being promoted as a holiday gift? Frankly, I find that to be more than a bit irresponsible.

The Journal Sentinel’s recommendations for holiday gifts are slapdash at best, but then, with the way comics have become so dumbed down, I guess not much else can be expected of them.

The Geoff Johns’s, Richard Donner’s and Adam Kubert’s take on Action Comics:

When it was announced that DC superstar writer Geoff Johns and “Superman: The Movie” director Richard Donner were teaming up to write the Man of Steel’s comic book adventures, most fans were giddy with glee.

Well, I’ll hand it to them there, that they admit that it was most fans, which probably means not all. Because no, I can’t say I’m one of those who looked forward to this run. Not after what Johns did with the Turtle in the pages of the Flash, Captain Carrot’s Zoo Crew in the pages of Teen Titans, and couple of other things to boot. Put another way, I’ve lost faith in Johns as a writer, because I realize he’s no different, and thus, no better, than a lot of other recent writers.

Is it any wonder I can’t get as excited about Johns’ and Donner’s run on Action Comics as I’d like to be?

Welcome to the December 7, 2006 edition of the comic book carnival. Again, I’m posting the results a few days early, this time because on Thursday, I’ll be going on a day trip to the city of Acco, and have no idea if I’ll have time to post it on time then! So anyway, here’s the latest:

Alvin presents posted at . “Learn how to draw Anime/Manga!”

Hube presents posted at .

Googum presents posted at .

Adam Warlock presents posted at .

India Uncut presents posted at .

Hube presents posted at .

CAMB presents posted at .

Adam Warlock presents posted at .

Conan Stevens presents posted at . “Not a comic, but a Blog on my work as the Manthing in the movie adaption of the comic book character.”

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