Thursday, July 12, 2007

Reliance on old Jimmy Olsen Comics threatens Comic Blogosphere

The “Comic Blogosphere” is struggling to adjust after a blogger discovered the ‘inconvenient truth’ that nearly every Jimmy Olsen comic ever published has been effectively spoofed by someone with a Blogspot account.

A popular source of easy comedy, Comic Bloggers thought they had another few years left of relying on Jimmy Olsen’s crazy silver age hijinks. However, a recent study by blogger “Amazing Steve” has suggested that the supply of Olsen comics is swiftly drying up.

In his article “An Inconvenient Truth” posted last Monday on his Silver Age themed blog Amazing Steve’s World of Comix, he painted a bleak picture for the future of the Comic Blogosphere.

“If we maintain our heavy reliance on Jimmy Olsen themed content, Comic Blogging could become obsolete by the year 2012,” Amazing Steve posted. “In the short term, unless we act swiftly to curb excessive Jimmy Olsen postings we are going to have to start blogging about modern, contemporary comics. And has anyone read those things? They suck!”

Jimmy Olsen's wacky antics spell doom for comic bloggers

But Amazing Steve stresses that it isn’t too late to save the Comic Blogosphere. His proposal includes instigating a planned reduction of Olsen postings by 80% over the next eighteen months.

“This quota can be achieved if bloggers agree to start switching to alternate comedy sources like Golden Age Wonder Woman bondage covers and out of context panels of Green Lantern being misogynistic,” Steve claims. “Or how about comically bad anatomy in Rob Liefield comics? We’ll never run out of those.”

Many comic bloggers have embraced the bleak news and have begun to do their bit to forestall the impending catastrophe.

“I was going to do a hilarious post on an issue of Jimmy Olsen where he is forced into marriage with a gorilla by a feme-nazi alien whose affections he spurned,” said Gregory Dekraker of the blog The Phantom Zone. “But blogosphere conservation must come first.”

However, Amazing Steve has been labeled an alarmist by some members of the comic blogging community.

“There’s no valid, scientific proof that our supply of crazy Jimmy Olsen comics will ever run out,” posted Mack Grady on his blog The Quinjet. “This is all just a liberal conspiracy probably perpetrated by comic reading Zionists. Probably.”

Amazing Steve writes such as attitudes off as “right wing rhetoric”.

“We can’t afford to ignore this issue any longer. It’s not too late to save the Comic Blogosphere!” he says.

Monday, July 2, 2007

"Brad Meltzer" an Elaborate DC Hoax

DC has sent shock waves through the industry after revealing that their high profile writer “Brad Meltzer” is actually a sophisticated computer program.

Affectionately named after a trashy novelist Judd Winick happened to be reading at the time, the computer program was constructed after Dan Didio discovered that there was a formula to producing a successful comic book.

“Basically we put together a focus group and discovered that what readers want from their comics are superheroes standing around their headquarters referring to each other by their first names, endless confusing flashbacks to stories printed in the eighties and ham-fisted attempts to appear more adult by ramping up the sex and violence,” Dan Didio reveals. “When I saw the results I was like, we shouldn’t have to pay someone to write that crap.”

The Real Brad Meltzer

In the wake of this revelation, Dan Didio set about finding a cost effective way of producing these comics.

“Originally I was just going to pay a few Illegal immigrants to read some old eighties comics then re-write them with more references to rape and stuff,” Didio explains. “But then Greg Rucka reminded me that computers were officially the new illegal immigrants because I didn’t have to pay them fifty cents an hour.”

In the wake of a sellout run on JLA, Dan Didio acknowledges that the experiment has worked out better than he could have dreamed.

“At times I was a bit apprehensive…when I saw that its line up of the Justice League included Vixen, Speedy and goddamn Geo Force I wondered if we were pushing it a bit. I mean, who’s going to read that crap! One hundred thousand people a month apparently.”

But Dan Didio stresses that the computer program isn’t infallible.

“Just the other day, ‘Brad Meltzer’ spat out an issue of JLA that I could understand without the aid of Wikipedia,” Didio said. “I made it re-write it and it printed out a new script with 47% more references to some obscure 1980s issue of Batman and the Outsiders.”

While Dan Didio appreciates the success of the “Brad Meltzer” computer experiment, he is relieved that the cat is finally out of the bag.

“I was having a hard time keeping it all secret. For example, at a comic convention just a few weeks ago, some guy came up to me and told me that Brad Meltzer’s JLA was the best comic he’d ever read. I almost fucking lost it!” Dan Didio said, chuckling.