‘I think today’s comic books are perfect reflections of their times: conservative, unambitious and self-congratulatory. A howling lack of imagination or direction runs through the mainstream, but that’s about to change. It’s easy to sense the upcoming wave. Reading most comics today is like wearing dad’s slippers and smoking his pipe – it’s an illicit thrill to be sure but not much of one…’

‘…the rumour, mentioned by a slew of people, over the shouting match that went down at San Diego Comic Con between Joe Quesada and Grant Morrison. Or rather from Joe to Grant, one phrase “You owe me!” being the most repeated on the convention floor the day after. Quesada had found out about the DC exclusive deal and he took it out on Grant with expletives that were definitely MAX labelled.

Reports indicate that Grant kind of shut down and went into a mini-coma, but did give out one response “Fuck You, Fuck your company, and Fuck your boss who’s the biggest arsehole I’ve ever met.”‘

• Reliving Comics’ Days of Infamy … ‘Sen. Estes Kefauver, the ambitious committee chairman, showed Gaines a cover of a comic book and threw this when-did-you-stop-beating-your-wife-style comment hardball: “This seems to be a man with a bloody ax holding a woman’s head up, which has been severed from her body. Do you think that is in good taste?”‘
• Coloring the Comic Books … ‘Women, meanwhile, ran the gamut from the masochistic 1940s-era Wonder Woman (who spent way too much time being tied up) to the vapid Invisible Girl of the Fantastic Four in the 1960s. In one early comic book, she chirped: “I can’t wait to surprise Reed with the new miniskirt costume I’ve been designing!” But Invisible Girl later morphed into Invisible Woman, a sharp character who now runs the Fantastic Four corporation…’

• Grant Morrison Exclusive To DC … ‘DC Comics has just announced that Grant Morrison has just signed a two-year exclusive contract with them. There is no news on how this affects his existing Marvel work. The superstar writer is supposed to be working on a Vertigo project with Frank Quitely which will be announced officially in Chicago. He’s also working on a DC Universe book…’
• Comments at Morrison’s Panel from Comic Book Resources: ‘The conversation inevitably shifted to “New X-Men,” which Morrison will be leaving as of #154 and will be destroying the Marvel Universe in issue #150 and #151! He also says that his final issue can be seen as the end of the X-Men if one so wishes.’
• Comments on Barbelith about GM’s Plans: ‘Marvel’s going quite rapidly to shit, innit?’

• Diana in the Mavel Universe — from Newsarama … ‘It was later confirmed for Newsarama that Diana would join, in some form or another, X-Statix.’
• Princess Diana, Superhero — Peter Milligan Comments … ‘Diana comes out of it a lot better than the British establishment. Indeed, a couple of old palace eminence grise types arrange for this resurrected mutant zombie to be killed. “And this time, let’s do it properly,” one of them says.’ [via I Love Everything]
• Guardian’s Pass Notes: Princess Diana, the Superhero … ‘Next up from Marvel Comics: Camilla Parker Bowles as Catwoman; Prince Philip as the Joker; Derry Irvine as Judge Dredd.’
• Diana in ‘Sick’ Comic — Daily Mail Article … ‘Marvel editor- in- chief Joe Quesada said: “Princess Diana is a mutant. Like every good superhero, she’s coming back from the dead. She’s going to join one of the X-Men teams. “If comics are anything, we’re subversive. This is really a wonderful story.” The monthly comic is already on sale in America and Britain and is expected to sell around 150,000 copies worldwide.’

• Promethea #26 … ‘This issue was ridiculously cool.’
• Barbelith. (Warren) Ellis. Cameron (Stewart) (and Fatbeards) … ‘ I am using the term “fatbeard” in an inclusive, spread-the-love term, as a reader of comic books myself (a closer reading may have noticed that nobody has actually mentioned liking or disliking particular comic books in this thread yet). As you say, I am posting about comic books on the Internet. I am clearly of the fatbeard nation. I get to use the term, you don’t, to paraphrase Richard Pryor. Except of course you do, because you are also posting about comic books on the Internet.’
• Sporanos Series 4 Discussion … ‘A wig!’

‘GROTH: I caught it about a week or two before we sent out the open letter. Just in the natural course of paying bills and looking over our upcoming list, something triggered this. I realized that things weren’t right, and that’s what did it. I called an emergency meeting with Kim and our accountant, and sat down to empirically verify my gut feeling that this was not good.

NRAMA: And the cold feeling in your stomach got bigger and bigger…

GROTH: Yeah. It was a real “Oh shit, we are fucked!” moment.’

‘…now that we have the idea in our heads that “intelligence” appears when systems become increasingly complex, we can approach my notion of “living comics.” Think of a STORY. My contention is that a story can be made sufficiently complex that it achieves some measure of self-awareness – in fact I believe this is what’s happening when authors talk about characters “taking control” or when they say “the story just took a turn I wasn’t planning…”. When I was doing The Invisibles, I was definitely aware of the book as a living entity which was interacting with me in many of the ways a human being might but at the time I was thinking of this “aliveness” as a kind of mystical quality not as an emergent property that could reproduced without recourse to the spirit world. I’d like to see if I can deliberately “wake up” a story and let it make its own decisions.’

• The League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen #5 … “I simply can’t let things go. Do you know what I mean?’
• Alias #22 … ‘My Head — it feels Strange! I – I need some air!’
• The Filth #10 … ‘Have you any idea what happens when you cross stupidity, a love of science-fantasy fiction, and blind idealism with humongous amounts of money?‘
• Reload #2 … ‘You think people want to know the American Government’s been run as a criminal enterprise for the last eight years?’
• 100 Bullets #44 … ‘Word on the wire is, you’re a fuckin’ Cop Killer. I’m envious, Dawg, Knowhumsayin?’

‘When you talk about movies, there’s always that which bookstores live by; the book is almost always better than the movie. You could have no better case in point than FROM HELL, Alan Moore’s best graphic novel to date, brilliantly illustrated by Eddie Campbell. It’s hard to describe just how much better the book is. It’s like, “If the movie was an episode of ‘Battlestar Galactica’ with a guest appearance by the Smurfs and everyone spoke Dutch, the graphic novel is ‘Citizen Kane’ with added sex scenes and music by your favourite ten bands and everyone in the world you ever hated dies at the end.” That’s how much better it is.’

‘BAGGE: …someone at Fantagraphics will hand me a graphic novel collection of something by Joe Sacco or the Hernandez Bros. and I don’t read it because I read it in the comics.

THE PULSE: You’re the one! You’re a pamphlet peeper, not a book buyer!

BAGGE: Yeah, it suits my attention span better. But also I just like the format. Its cozy.’