Who's Who in the CBU 2009

Name: Regie Rigby

Regie is a strange, almost ethereal creature. Who can plumb the hidden mysteries of his dark and murky past - a past which contains a terrible secret. A secret that taught him that with great power comes great responsibility, that criminals are a cowardly superstitious lot and just who exactly knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men.

By day, he assumes the appearance of a mild mannered teacher, bringing the joy of literature and the English Language to classes of enthralled and enthusiastic students. But by night?

By night he goes home and writes lesson plans. Sorry. That's as interesting as he gets. Really.

The rumours about rooftop struggles with underworld uberfiends, the gossip about the hidden cave filled with hi-tec equipment and the suggestion that his car might be fitted with turbo lasers are all nonsense.

When he's not teaching he reads comics. Sometimes he combines the two activities. When he's not doing that he's either playing computer games or asleep.

Virgin On The Ridiculous

By Regie Rigby

‘Allo.

I have a lot of things on my mind this week – don’t worry; I probably won’t bother you with all of them.

First of all, are you reading Virgin Comics? If you’re not, you should. So far, I’ve tried Snake Woman, The Sadhu and Devi. You know what? They’re bloody good. Virgin supremo Richard Branson has fingers in many pies of course. His empire runs an airline, a mobile phone company, a space travel company (seriously – first flights sometime between 2008 and 2010) and a massive music publishing company. And a model agency (although that’s called “Storm” because even Branson felt “Virgin Models” was going a bit far…). OK, so he can’t get the trains to run on time, but he’s much friendlier than Mussolini, so I guess we’ll let him off.

The three books are very different in many ways, but there are some similarities that are worthy of note. First of all, although the art styles are very different each of the books looks simply gorgeous. Some care seems to have been taken to match art styles to narrative themes too, which is always nice. I’ve only read one issue of each, so it’s a little early to say, but thus far all the stories have managed to intrigue me sufficiently to put them on my dangerously expanding pull list.

The second similarity which is worthy of note is the fact that all three books draw heavily in Indian culture. This is something I’ve not really seen before in Western comics. The late lamented British fortnightly Revolver had a Hindu hero called Rogan Gosh, and 2000AD has Black Siddhu, but that’s about it. It’s a state of affairs that strikes me as particularly odd when you consider the large potential market in the west.

Never mind the large number of people in both the UK and US who would claim ethnic or cultural connections with the sub-continent – Indian culture has had pop-culture appeal in the West ever since the Beatles first experimented with Sitars and Joss Sticks. I’m genuinely surprised that there weren’t any comics in the sixties to cash in on the trend. At the time of course the section of the UK industry that wasn’t dominated by humour was somewhat preoccupied with shamelessly aping the Americans, which might explain the blind spot. (And it was you know. The Flying Viking was basically a Thor rip-off, and the whole Captain Marvel/Marvelman/Miracleman has been gone over so many times I need hardly explain it all again.)

So now we have a lot of non-western characters in non western settings, but not “ghettoised” or with a sense of “quota filling”. I’m very interested to see where all of this goes. So far we have action, horror and suspense well written and well Illustrated, and with really interesting stuff on the way – I’m particularly keen on the John Woo/Garth Ennis collaboration Seven Brothers.

John Woo and Garth Ennis? Bring it on!

Making me rather less happy is the latest issue of Powers. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a good book. Bendis writes Superheroes the way they should be written, and the current storyline is brilliant. No problems with the art either. Oeming has a hard edged slightly cartoony style that has always suited the book. Together, they’re an unstoppable team.

What they appear to lack is an editor that understands the English language. I’m sure James Lucas Jones is a very nice bloke, but he’s really dropped the ball. If my scanner was working I’d show you the page. Since it isn’t, I’ll just have to describe it to you. If you have the latest issue to hand, I’m looking at Issue #19, page 13. There’s some mid fight hero banter going on. In the last of the three panels on the page a character reacts to being told they should be demonstrating more class:

“Classy?
Do you see what your wearing?
Do you have a mirror?

I dispair, I really do. Grammatical errors like that really get on my nerves because they’re so easy to avoid. I know I’m not exactly the king of correct spelling, but I don’t have an editor, and I usually am on too tight a schedule to proofread the column. These guys are professionals. They are charging people for their work. The least they can do is maintain basic standards.

I can forgive the letterer. Ken Bruzenak might well have been up against it deadline wise. It’s not the sort of mistake he should be making, but we all do make mistakes. That’s what the editor is for, and here, he failed. And it annoys me.

Now, I know what some of you are thinking. Some of you are thinking “Oh, come on Regie, it’s only a damn homophone. The meaning is clear, it doesn’t matter, don’t get so uptight.” Well, you’re wrong. It’s sloppy. It’s lazy. It’s like writing “Spiderman” instead of “Spider-Man”, or “could of” instead of “could’ve”. (Note to non-Brits. That one is quite common in the North of England – I’m hoping it hasn’t spread elsewhere.)

Language is a precious and wonderful thing. Used well it can achieve tremendous beauty, astonishing emotion, amazing power. But you can’t do that until you get the basics right. It’s not as though that is a difficult thing to do. I see no reason why I should accept a product where any aspect of the construction is substandard. Surely I can’t be the only person that cares about this stuff?

(And yes, I know this isn’t the first, or even the worst example of this kind of lousy language use in comics, it just happens to be the one that’s sitting in front of me now.)

While I’m ranting, (and yes, I know I am) Civil War.

Anyone surprised that issue #4 looks likely to be put back a month? This is why I hate these crossover events. What are they going to do now? Published all the books that tie into #4 on schedule, effectively spoilering #4, or are they going to hold everything else back too? I know it’s not that important, but it is annoying. Marvel set the damn schedule. They really really have no excuse for not sticking to it. How’s about finishing the damn book before you start publishing? That’d work, and I don’t really see that with something like Civil War such a practice would be unviable.

It is all very unsatisfactory. I’m going to go and read some more Virgin Comics.