Just got to Paris. Haven’t had much chance to explore, but the room I’m sharing with Mike is tiny but with a neat window—tall frame, wrought-iron grate, long flower pot, and no screen, just like in the movies.

Also Keith sends along a link to some bad comics by Nedroid. Of course, they are hilarious bad comics, especially when read many at a time. I laughed out loud at #21, and then felt kind of bad about it because it really is quite stupid, while #22 is in fact quite good.

Just came across a link noting that Marvel’s working on a Captain America movie with a script by David Self (who also did the screenplay for a more self-contained comic adaptation, Road to Perdition). Marvel Comics’ President of Production Kevin Feige is quoted as saying:

“The good news is Marvel is perceived pretty well around the world right now and I think putting another uber Marvel hero into the worldwide box office will be a good thing.”

Uh, and the bad news is that America’s not perceived quite as well worldwide, and we’re talking about a dude literally wrapped in the damn flag. (Side note: if Captain America gets caught on fire in the line of duty, does anyone involved take flak for flag burning?) Feige continues:

“The script that David Self is writing, the director that we end up hiring, and certainly we’re going into it with our eyes open and these are all things that we have to deal with much the same way that Captain America when thawed from the Arctic Ice entered a world he didn’t recognize and had to deal with changes… whether it was when Stan did it in the early 60s and that world that Steve Rogers was coming into or the world of 2009.”

Come on. The dude is dressed in a freaking flag, funny-looking boots, funny little wing-ear thingies, and so on. There is no way this will not look totally stupid—unless they stick it in the ’40s and let us watch him punch Hitler and battle Nazi tigers. That could be cool.

There is a sweetly unsettling similarity between this real-life story and Scott McCloud’s The Right Number (here’s a summary of the major premise).

Keith sends word of these funny comics panels. Might as well follow this up with the sad truth that Superman is a dick.

The BBC reports that Iran has accused the recent box office hit 300 as an attack against its history.

Javad Shamaqdari, a cultural advisor to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, said it was “plundering Iran’s historic past and insulting this civilization”.[...]

“Following the Islamic Revolution in Iran, Hollywood and cultural authorities in the US initiated studies to figure out how to attack Iranian culture.

“Certainly, the recent movie is a product of such studies.”

I simultaneously envy this guy for getting the job of “cultural advisor to the president” and pity him for being ridiculous and ignorant.

Frank Miller, who created the Sin City comics and is credited as co-director of the movie of the same name, wrote and drew 300 as a comic several years ago. This was well before “graphic novels” even had their own section in bookstores, so even if Miller were inclined to sell out to The Man, it’s pretty unlikely that this book was informed by a government research commission. Also, it just happens to be inspired by a major historical event.

The movie is admittedly a big expansion on the comic, and I’m inclined to agree that it will probably appeal to broader American audiences with the good guys being white (“Spartans”) and the bad guys being Persians. I wonder if it would have even been made in the first place if the roles were reversed. You had to see this coming as soon as you saw the trailers, right?

Still, government conspiracies in this administration seem much more focused on money, sex, and lying unconvincingly; Hollywood, meanwhile, seemed to think Garfield was a good idea for a movie. I wouldn’t trust these guys to hold my drink at a party without spitting in it or dumping it down their own pants, let alone give them credit for an insidiously clever propaganda conspiracy.

CNN reports that Captain America has been shot dead as part of Marvel’s ongoing “Civil War” crossover event. Fortunately, news outlets learned something from the misguided media frenzy surrounding Superman’s death in the 1990s, and the article at least notes:

Still, one has to wonder: Is Captain America really dead? Comic book characters have routinely died, only to be resurrected when necessary to storylines.

[Marvel Editor in Chief] Joe Quesada agrees—but said times are different now.

“There was period in comics where characters would just die and then be resurrected. And the death had very little meaning and the resurrection had very little meaning,” he said. “All I ask of my writers is if you’re going to kill a character off, please let that death have some meaning in the overall scope of things.”

Which doesn’t mean he’s really dead and won’t come back, of course, but it at least suggests that this isn’t just a publicity stunt. Which, of course, it is.

Besides, he said, there are other important questions left unanswered.

“What happens with the costume? And what happens to the characters that are friends and enemies of Cap?” Quesada said with a smile. “You’re going to have to read the books to find out.”

Actually, you don’t. These answers and more will be available soon via Wikipedia, which already offers more in-story information about Cap’s death, and which offers more information on a single comic book character than for some countries and the entire Pacific Ocean. Check back there next month to see if Cap’s alive again yet! Or maybe they’ll wait until the summer crossover event…

If you’re looking for a good urban sci-fi mystery, look no further than Paul Pope’s Heavy Liquid. If the übergeek in you just really wants to see Batman in a setting with dirty-looking flying cars and architecture seemingly inspired by Michael Venturi and Blade Runner, that’s another matter entirely. Personally, I thought the detective story in Batman Year 100 served more as filler for the beautifully rendered and expertly paced scenes of guys dressed like Judge Dredd beating the hell out of Batman (and vice versa). Pope’s sci-fi Batman picks up where Frank Miller left off in his Dark Knight stories, leaving one odd paradox unanswered—why does Bruce Wayne never get old?—and blowing the rest up in your face: shouldn’t Batman have decent boots, broken ribs, a collapsed lung, scary teeth, a craving for medium-rare steaks, a more practical utility belt, and a foldable motorcycle that hangs like a bat until he’s ready to peel off on it? And the answer is surely yes—yes, he should.

Some Emerson students aim to make a video game in a semester. Kind of reminds me of 24-hour comics, a concept invented by Scott McCloud to inspire people to think beyond creative boundaries. I once did a 24-hour comic (pshhht—before it had its own holiday and over a thousand entrants), but I think I need to suck up to more programmers before attempting something like what Emerson’s doing.

“You know, what it is, really, it’s a man, a grown man obsessing over something that happened twenty years ago…. I mean, my parents are dead too, but I don’t dress up as my favorite animal and declare a war on, you know, exploding planets.”

This is funny.

As some of you know, Doombot is built on a foundation of trust, honor, and Kai’s free web space. When the internet was young—back when you might have insisted upon spelling it with a capital “I,” and seriously wondered whether “a series of tubes” was just a funny metaphor or God’s honest truth—Kai joined a collective of web developers maintained by a fellow who owned a hosting company. It seems almost sinful not to use that free space, so we slowly fill it with blog posts about TV shows and video games. But why not, you may ask, come up with a way to leverage that for some cash?

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