Robserecaps Thirty Nine – the Alpha!
The Rob is back and so am I? Maybe? I did fall behind on many episodes of the Rob’s podcast, but if he’s back after taking six weeks off, I’m back after eight months off. The Rob’s social media of late has been a little…leaning. Usually the Rob plays things right down the middle for most polarizing political and social issues. But of late, the Rob has been taking hard stances against wokeness. This episode being about where have “the Alpha (dogs)” in arts and entertainment have gone, I fear where the Rob is set to tread.
- It is season six of Robservations so the Rob does give us a truncated version of his bibliography. The Rob cites he increased IDW sales on GI Joe from 2000 to 70,000 on his Snake Eyes miniseries.
- The Rob is going to investigate the how and the why if the Alpha Dog in comics has been hunted into extension.
- While nursing a cold during the break, the Rob watched the comic and movie industry grind to a halt. Movies such as Blue Beetle, the Flash, Black Adam and the Marvels are called ‘the last fruits of a failed agenda’, a slate of movies that didn’t connect.
- The Rob moves onto remarks made by ‘the old guard’ innuendo and punches that didn’t land. The Rob briefly mentions Mark Millar championing a bunch of stores getting him grief, citing the biggest problem with the comics industry is “the history of the patient is not being diagnosed.” None of this is follow up on or stated clearly.
- We now tangent to the great directors of the 70’s, starting with Francis Ford Coppola who threatened studios then something large falls in the background, the Rob calls attention to it and keeps going.
- The Rob is talking about a director’s roundtable he watched recently with Alexander Payne, Bradley Cooper, Michael Mann among others, talking about their process in directing being influenced by Clint Eastwood (no sitting, no hard rehearsals, not interacting with actors until take two or three, etc.). All examples of being an Alpha Dog.
- John Byrne, Frank Miller, Howard Chaykin and Jim Starlin are the Alpha Dogs of comics that the Rob’s peer group looked up to, citing Starlin taking over Adam Warlock akin to Jesus Christ Superstar.
- Then, we get a tangent of the Rob talking about the Frank Miller and Roger McKenzie Daredevil run and how influential it was but it didn’t really take off until McKenzie left the book. Or was forced off the book. That’s the Alpha Dog move, where the artist takes over the writing of the book as well.
- No one has come close since to the John Byrne run on Fantastic Four and this where the Rob explains to us what nostalgia. When excellence occurred on the calendar is history, not nostalgia!
- While recently championing new collections of the Byrne/Cockrum era X-Men, the Rob claims he was ‘dragged’ for daring to say this was the best era of comics. This does not happen in the music or film industry, which is why there is an issue with the comics industry.
- What are the biggest changes in the last 25 years of comics? According to Eric Stephenson of Image Comics, inconsistency of characters and the focus on writers, not artists, being the driving force of a book. The Rob feels this is because writers do not want another ‘Image Uprising’ like he was part of.
- The Rob gives props to Daniel Warren Johnson as a artist/writer who moves the needle and gets a big property (Transformers) to shape. The Rob mentions Peach Momoko doing the same on Ultimate X-Men in a very hand wavy sort of way. But none of this matter unless you are creating three year plus runs on a book.
- Jorge Jimenez as JUST the artist on Batman for the last three plus years, not good enough! If it was the Rob, he’d be writing that book as well!
- The Rob has an ‘open ended storyline’ he’s been working on the for last two years, will not be in a catalog or crowd funding, but will be sold by him direct to consumer and due to all the ‘scatter shots’ and ‘jack rabbits’ out there currently, he is very confident in this new project.
- This generation is no longer looking to be the next Frank Miller or Walt Simonson to do a multi year run and we, the audience, are suffering because of it.
- There are no artists today that floored the Rob’s like the stuff from the 70’s, 80’s and 90’s, there’s less personality in today’s work.
- After spending 40 minutes at his local comic store, Tustin Toons N’ Toys, all the traffic the Rob saw was 40 to 50 year old men, buying chromium covers, buying wall books and paying with credit cards. A bunch of teenagers came in, talked about Spider-Man and Deadpool but did not buy anything!
- The poor artists that have to draw the stories of failed screen writers. “You want writing? Go get a book!”
- The Rob was in Chicago for C2E2 and saw ‘Eyes Wide Open’ opening weekend in the same theater with Mark Waid who loudly proclaimed “This Movie Sucked!” But the Rob enjoyed it for what it what it was, so that makes Waid an old man yelling at clouds. Also, the Rob pronounces the director that movie’s name as ‘Cube Brick.’
- People like Taylor Swift and Margot Robbie are examples of women being alphas as well
- When Joe Quesada was shopping around Ash to Image, he wanted to be partner as well, and was immediately shot down. Sometimes the Alpha Moves end up in a no.
- As someone who recently got his account suspended with no reason or explanation, it hurts to hear the Rob say he really likes the recent changes to Twitter.
- Cliffhanger for next episode, the Rob is going to a new milkshake place and will report back next time how it was.
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