Steve Ditko’s ‘The Ever Unreachable’

For comic book readers, Steve Ditko is a name to be reckoned with. In a career spanning more than five decades, Ditko has drawn countless pages in every genre for every major publisher. Ditko has created scores of original characters and is probably best known for co-creating The Amazing Spider-Man. Ditko is also the author of many non-fiction essays on topics that range from the popular culture to metaphysics.

Several months ago, Big Hollywood posted Steve Ditko’s provocative essay, “Toyland”. It was a powerfully written piece on creativity, philosophy, heroism and the disturbing trend towards nihilism in the culture.  As a result, “Toyland” got some interesting comments and Ditko has prepared the following as a response.

Written especially for Big Hollywood, here is Steve Ditko’s “The Ever Unreachable.” (more…)

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Tags: 9/11, A is A, Aristotle, Bill of Rights, Comic Books
Posted Nov 21st 2009 at 7:03 am in Art, Books and Literature, Culture, Featured Story | 26313863 Commentshttp://bighollywood.breitbart.com/blash/2009/11/21/steve-ditkos-the-ever-unreachable/Steve+Ditko%27s+%27The+Ever+Unreachable%272009-11-21+15%3A03%3A42Batton+Lash

The Future of Comics and Other Publishing

You can probably date yourself by remembering how much comic books cost when you were a kid. Was it a dime, a quarter, a dollar? Can you believe they cost $4 now?

As the greenies would say, that’s unsustainable. Comic books used to be common. If you went in any kids house in the 50s or early 60s you would probably find some. Not so much anymore. Comics once sold everywhere magazines were sold. You could buy them in drug stores, supermarkets, seven-elevens, newsstands, even some liquor stores. But the so called “newsstand market” was a hostile place to comics publishers, and a shrinking one.

These days, it’s hard to find comics anywhere outside of the comic book store. That means that comics have become a “destination product.” It’s something you need to know where it’s sold, you have to physically go there and if you’re lucky, they might have what you’re looking for. However, most comics retailers order to sell out. So the odds are, you may be unlucky if you don’t come on “comics day,” the day the books come in from the distributor.

And that’s another problem with comics these days. There is only one distributor. When I got in the business in the mid 80s, there were around ten distributors. But over the years they all went under leaving Diamond Comics as the sole place publishers can distribute through to the “Direct Market,” as we call it. It’s like government run health care, if there’s only one place to go for your needs, you have to like their terms. (more…)

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Tags: "Direct Market", Comic Books, comics, DC, Diamond Comics
Posted Nov 14th 2009 at 6:22 am in Art, Culture, Featured Story | 25654286 Commentshttp://bighollywood.breitbart.com/jhudnall/2009/11/14/the-future-of-comics-and-other-publishing/The+Future+of+Comics+and+Other+Publishing2009-11-14+14%3A22%3A37James+Hudnall

Part 2: The Super-Hero’s American Exceptionalism

Editor: This is the second part of a two-part series. You can read part one here.

The 1970s showed the once-invincible comic book super-heroes to be losers, in attitude and sales. Watergate had disillusioned the super-patriot Captain America with a storyline implying Nixon was the head of a terrorist group. The Captain trashes his outfit and becomes Nomad, The Man without a Country. My 11-year-old mind thought this was ridiculous, as Cap was originally a Depression-era 98-pound weakling until given a Super Soldier serum to bulk up and fight Nazis. It was unlikely that one of the “Greatest Generation” would bail on his country so readily. Even then I realized that this development merely mirrored a hippie writer’s attitude more than staying true to a character’s origins. 

Super-heroes became bleaker and even homicidal in the 1980s. The Punisher, a murderous vigilante, has become a top Marvel character. The Dark Knight Returns, a re-imagining of Batman, introduced an elderly caped crusader fighting the corrupt U.S. government represented by a stoogish Superman. Watchmen was set in a dystopic alternate reality where Nixon is still president and the super-group is made up of, among other miscreants, a rapist and mass murderer. It was a transmutation of established super-heroes from the 60s with Steve Ditko’s Objectivist hero The Question recast as the psychotic Rorschach.  (more…)

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Tags: America, American Exceptionalism, batman, Captain America, Comic
Posted Nov 11th 2009 at 2:05 pm in Art, Featured Story, Politics | 259362143 Commentshttp://bighollywood.breitbart.com/mtodd/2009/11/11/part-2-the-super-heros-american-exceptionalism-by-mort-todd/Part+2%3A+The+Super-Hero%E2%80%99s+American+Exceptionalism2009-11-11+22%3A05%3A40Mort+Todd

Reporting From Comic-Con: Overlap

What does Voltron, Gumby, “Gods of War III” and Bone have in common? Nothing and everything. This is the great cultural collision that occurs at the San Diego Comic-con. I moved into my booth as all of the exhibitors to the world’s most popular cultural event prepares to overwhelm, nay, smother an unsuspecting public when the doors open.

The last ten or so years has seen a deliberate migration of Hollywood into what used to be a convention to celebrate just comics. A general sense of grumbling can be heard from the true comic fans who resent the beautiful rich crowd carpet-bagging onto Will Eisner’s turf. But what many don’t realize is that this has contributed to the mainstreaming of comics into the rest of culture. With entertainment’s money comes stability of the comics medium, a broadening of a market, more books sold, artists, writers, publishers and bookstores able to stay alive a little longer this is good for our tribe. (more…)

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Tags: Comic Books, Comic Con, graphic novels, transformers
Posted Jul 22nd 2009 at 10:28 am in Art, Entertainment, Film | 18942259 Commentshttp://bighollywood.breitbart.com/dtennapel/2009/07/22/reporting-from-comic-con-overlap/Reporting+From+Comic-Con%3A+Overlap2009-07-22+17%3A28%3A19Doug+TenNapel

Comic Con International Through the Years

It’s hard for me to believe that the San Diego Comic Con International is now close to 40 years old. I’ve been going to them since 1975. Since 1981 I have only missed 2 Cons. Over the years I’ve seen it grow from a small local convention for comic book collectors and fans of geek culture, into a vast industry unto itself. Something that rivals Cannes for cultural significance.

In many respects, Comic Con International (aka the San Diego Comic Con to us attendees), is America’s Cannes Film Festival. But it’s much, much more.

Cannes is basically for film industry people only and the press. Comic Con is for everyone, and it’s becoming more relevant to the entertainment business as the years go by.

When I went to my first convention, I was in high school. I lived in San Diego at the time. I attended Point Loma High, so it was local for me. Only a couple thousand people attended. It was held at the El Cortez hotel which once dominated the San Diego skyline downtown. Now the El Cortez is a converted condo complex, dwarfed by the surrounding super condos. (more…)

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Tags: Chuck Norris, Comic Books, Comic Con, comics, fans
Posted Jul 21st 2009 at 3:25 pm in Celebrity News, Entertainment | 18835826 Commentshttp://bighollywood.breitbart.com/jhudnall/2009/07/21/comic-con-international-through-the-years/Comic+Con+International+Through+the+Years2009-07-21+22%3A25%3A20James+Hudnall

Captain America Returns: Will He Remain MIA Against Jihad?

Captain America was born to fight America’s real world enemies. He was first seen punching out Hitler on the cover of Captain America Comics #1, a year before the attacks on Pearl Harbor. But nearly 8 years after the attacks of 9/11, Cap is yet to be unleashed on Jihad. Not long after 9/11, likely feeling they had no choice, Marvel Comics made a half-assed attempt to pit Cap against what seemed to be an al Qaeda type group, but it was forgettable, with the terrorist leader having his ‘reasons’ and with Cap apologizing for us. It’s a sign of the times that there was not a Captain America movie on the fast track in Hollywood right after 9/11.

[click to enlarge]

I’m told that it would be considered ‘controversial’ for such a pop icon to take on today’s jihadists, but the controversy to me is that the most patriotic superhero of all time is still MIA against Jihad. For a time after 9/11, I was naive enough to believe I could write and draw a Captain America story where the jihadist’s get what’s coming to them, with no apology and with full fury. I stopped cold when I realized there’d be no chance in hell of Marvel Comics allowing Cap to say and do what had to be said and done against this enemy. I wised up and created the perfect enemy against Jihad. For more on that, please visit my blog. (more…)

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Tags: Captain America, Comic Books, jihad, marvel, pop culture
Posted Jun 22nd 2009 at 9:27 am in Art, Military, Politics | 1654823 Commentshttp://bighollywood.breitbart.com/bfawstin/2009/06/22/captain-america-returns-will-he-remain-mia-against-jihad/Captain+America+Returns%3A+Will+He+Remain+MIA+Against+Jihad%3F2009-06-22+16%3A27%3A49Bosch+Fawstin

The Superpower Behind Bauer

Pigman, from ProPiganda: Drawing the Line Against Jihad

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Tags: 24, bosch fawstin, Comic Books, graphic novels, Jack Bauer
Posted Mar 31st 2009 at 10:48 am in Entertainment, Political Humor | 93402One Commenthttp://bighollywood.breitbart.com/bfawstin/2009/03/31/the-superpower-behind-bauer/The+Superpower+Behind+Bauer2009-03-31+17%3A48%3A00Bosch+Fawstin

Holy Terror, Batman

Part One:

In 2006, I had a minor low pressure area in my brain and conceived a P.R. campaign directed against Islamo-fascism which I posted on Nate Tabor’s “The Conservative Voice.”  The results were swift and devastating.  Like any other branch of the entertainment industry, liberalism is the default position of most comic book creators and fans.

Liberalism has a long and honorable history in comics, nowhere more apparent than in the groundbreaking Green Lantern/Green Arrow comics by Denny O’Neil and Neal Adams which dealt with drug addiction, the trial of the Chicago Seven, corporate pollution and overpopulation. In “Death Be My Destiny,” O’Neil posited a planet called Maltus where over-population was out of control. Denny was channeling the Reverend Thomas Malthus, a nineteenth-century Brit who predicted a Paul Erlich-like doom. In “The Population Bomb” Erlich predicted: “In the 1970s and 1980s . . . hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now.” (more…)

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Tags: 300, Badger, Chicago Seven, Comic Books, Dark Horse
Posted Jan 29th 2009 at 12:51 pm in Entertainment, Media Criticism, Politics | 2859758 Commentshttp://bighollywood.breitbart.com/mbaron/2009/01/29/schadenfreude-in-the-kultursmog-mike-baron/Holy+Terror%2C+Batman2009-01-29+20%3A51%3A49Mike+Baron