The staff of ComicBrain attended the MegaCon in Orlando, Florida this past weekend and an excellent time was had by all.

I usually don’t spend much time in Artist Alley at conventions. I’ve just never been all that interested in meeting industry professionals and getting autographs. Now, before anyone gets all worked up and wants to argue, I have nothing against people who get autographs and like meeting the pros. It’s just not my thing. (Usually, when I go through Artist Alleys I’m much more interested in looking for cool independent press comics than anything else.) However, with that preamble in place, I have to say that the highlight of the whole con was meeting Stan Sakai. For those of you not in the know, Stan Sakai is the creator/writer/artist of Usagi Yojimbo. Usagi Yojimbo is one of my absolute favorite comics, and if you don’t read it, you should.

UY 100

Art of Usagi Yojimbo

As a matter of fact, I’m going to make the evangelism of Usagi Yojimbo a full-fledged ComicBrain cause. I have to believe that there are so many more potential Usagi readers out there. If you like stories about feudal Japan, you will love Usagi Yojimbo. If you like stories about samurai warriors, bushido, and honor, you will love Usagi Yojimbo. If you don’t care about feudal Japan or samurais, but you do like stories about interesting, likeable characters I still think you’ll love Usagi Yojimbo. I’ll write more about Usagi later, but in the meantime, if you haven’t read the series, do yourself a favor and pick up a copy (either of the monthly comic, or better yet pick up one of the trades).

Back to the con. Mr. Sakai was as gracious and friendly a person as I have ever met at a comic convention. He drew an amazing sketch in my copy of “The Art of Usagi Yojimbo” hardcover, which makes that book even more cherished. Perhaps someday I’ll scan it and post it to share it with the world.

Ok, I’m done gushing.

Buy Usagi Yojimbo!

Iron Spider-Man

Ever since I was a kid, my two favorite Marvel characters have been Spider-Man and Iron Man. For most of the time Spider-Man and Iron Man have lived in very different worlds. Spider-Man/Peter Parker is a loner outcast hero who’s always broke. Iron Man/Tony Stark is a founding member of the Avengers with tremendous influence and one of the richest people in the world. Occasionally their paths would cross (seeing as how Spider-Man has teamed up with just about everyone at least one time, often in the appropriately named “Marvel Team-Up”) but overall there was very little interaction between the two characters. Then that New Avengers business started up and suddenly Spider-Man was thrown into Iron Man’s world. The characters hit it off and became quick friends. I really liked this part of the story. Part of why I liked it was that it combined the stories of two of my favorite characters. Another part of it was it made finding Iron Man stories possible during the ridiculously delayed Iron Man series relaunch-for-the-sake-of-a-relaunch. But I mostly like it because it “felt” right for the characters. I don’t know how much planning went into the Peter Parker and Tony Stark friendship, but it did not stink of editorial interference. That’s either a compliment to the creative teams or the editorial staff (maybe even both). I guess things were working out too well for our friendly neighborhood Spider-Man, and a monkey wrench had to be thrown in there.

The Marvel Civil War will be over in a couple of weeks, so those of us outside the company don’t know how it will end, but it looks unlikely that Peter and Tony will remain pals. In many ways that’s a shame. It’s a shame for many reasons, not the least of which is the loss of Spidey’s new duds. I like the Iron Spider-Man suit. I respect the iconic status of the classic Spider-Man suit, but it is not impervious to improvement. I should admit that I loved the black symbiote suit when it first appeared as well. (And the fact that it looks like Spider-Man is going to be spending some time “back-in-black” gives me hope that the Iron Spider-Man suit might be revisited in 20 short years or so.) Although I have to admit having only three mechanical “legs” sticking out of the back of the suit was a bad idea. I recall reading that Marvel EiC Joe Quesada designed the costume like that because he liked the way it looked or something (I’m still trying to find the original article, and until I provide a link you should consider my memory suspect). The problem is, the lack of a fourth leg is distracting. We expect bilateral symmetry in humans and spiders, and we expect eight legs on arachnids. The lack of a fourth leg makes the whole Doc Ock-ish leg thing seem just plain wrong. But I digress.

Regardless of Spider-Man’s fashion choices, I’m afraid I’m going to miss the Spidey/Shellhead camaraderie. I know that things need to change to keep the stories fresh and all that, but I wish we could have gotten at least another year or so of the Spider-Man Iron Man show.

July 21, 2007. That’s the date. “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows”, the last Harry Potter novel, will be released on July 21, 2007.

Now, chances are you already know that, what with having Internet access and all that and not literally living under a rock. If you haven’t pre-ordered it already, then take care of that immediately by clicking on the banner to the left.

I’m a fan of the series. The books are amazing and the movies are a load of fun. I’m excited to see how the books end, but I’m also a little down about the end of the stories in the marvelous world of Harry Potter and pals. The perfect solution for me would be a comic book series set in the Potter universe.

One thing that those of us with an appreciation for graphic literature regularly contemplate is how to get more people to enjoy the comic book medium. The first thing to do is to get more people into the shops. A Harry Potter comic book would do that.

J.K. Rowling has developed such a rich, wonderful world that there are no shortages of story opportunities. I’d love to read stories taking place in different times and different schools. There can be stories all around the wizarding world.

(I’m trying to resist the opportunity to make a cheap joke about a story line called “Welcome Back, Potter” where Harry returns to Hogwarts as a teacher and head of Gryffindor House, which has become overrun with delinquents calling themselves the sweathogwarts.)

Now that Stephen King has sort of entered comics with “Dark Tower: The Gunslinger Reborn” being published by Marvel, I thought it just might be possible that the world of Harry Potter might come to comics. So, I decided to check with my literary world inside sources to bring you, faithful reader, the inside scoop. Unfortunately I don’t have any inside sources in the literary world so I’ve got nothing. But when it is announced that the wizarding world will live on in comics you can rest assured that I’ll probably get around to writing something about it. Eventually.

Have our favorite comic book characters lost their innocence or have we?

When I started reading comic books as a kid, the world of super heroes was still more-or-less black and white. Good guys were good and had very clear lines that they would not cross. This environment is what made characters like Wolverine so interesting and appealing. His moral code was off-center from the rest of the heroes and he would cross the lines the other heroes wouldn’t if necessary. But he was the exception. In general, the heroes were suitable role models for kids. For the most part a child’s moral compass would work pretty well by asking, “what would Spidey do?” The comic book publishers gave us heroes we could admire, look up to and emulate. They were doing their part to help produce upstanding young citizens.

The problem was we liked Wolverine.

Wolverine

Wolverine represented the moral grey areas of life that we became increasingly aware of as we grew up. There was also a cultural swing toward violence. I think that part of this started as a way for entertainment, especially movies, to shock and surprise us. There were cases where non-violence didn’t make sense to us, so the moviemakers gave us violence. The cliché of the hero throwing down his weapon to face the villain in a fair fight had become stale. It became increasingly more difficult to understand the hero’s actions and we wanted something that seemed more reasonable. A classic example is in Raiders of the Lost Ark, where Indiana Jones is fighting off swarms of bad guys while searching for Marion. Suddenly the crowd parts and this large, imposing swordsman stands facing Indy, swinging his sword menacingly, preparing to attack. At this point, those of us seeing the movie for the first time expected a dramatic fight between Indy and the swordsman, but instead Indy simply pulls out his gun and casually shoots the swordsman dead, and then continues his search.

Audiences universally loved this scene. It was surprising and it made sense! When faced with this type of situation, it was ok for our hero to kill this attacker in self-defense. There was no moral obligation for a fair fight. But it didn’t take long before Hollywood took this too far with the Rambos and the Lethal Weapons where the “hero’s” body count became a measured statistic.

Comic books were certainly not immune to this cultural wave. Anti-heroes like the Punisher and Lobo became all the rage and the tried and true super heroes started becoming darker and grittier and placed in extreme situations where their moral codes were stretched and occasionally broken.

This was not necessarily a bad thing. Many of us yearned for stories that were more “grounded” in the real world. We wanted stories that required less suspension of disbelief that made the characters easier to identify with. This wave of change allowed the writers to give the characters more depth, and make them more human (even the mutants and aliens).

The more “grounded” or “realistic” portrayal of super heroes has become the norm. Even the paragons of virtue, the Justice League of America, have been shown to make morally questionable decision and actions. We have gained deeper, more interesting characters, but we have paid for them with our role models.

Maybe that’s ok. Everyone and everything has to grow up and lose their innocence eventually. Even Superman. Maybe the problem is that we have hung onto the classic characters too long. Once innocence is lost, it can’t be found again.

But that’s the way things are supposed to be.

There is a need in the comic book world for new characters. There is a need for innocent characters that have not been dragged down by the weight of the world. Perhaps there has never been a better time since the early days of Marvel in the 1960’s to create fresh new characters in a fresh new universe for a fresh new audience. Wouldn’t that be something?

We’d finally have the best of both worlds.

 

There is a classic moment in “The Blues Brothers” where the band shows up at Bob’s Country Bunker and Elwood asks the lady at the bar “What kind of music do you usually have here?” and she answers “Oh, we got both kinds. Country and western.” I think the view point of some comic readers is similar. I can imagine asking someone what kind of comics they read they’d answer “I read both kinds, Marvel and DC”. We all need to continue to grow and to promote awareness about the diverse options in comic books.

In an earlier post I examined the growth of the super hero genre and the growth of the comic book medium. When I talk about growth in the comic book medium I’m mostly talking about growing in diversity. The way I see it there are three forms of diversity in comic books: publisher diversity, artistic diversity, and genre diversity.

Publisher diversity includes a wide array of options. Sure there are the differences between Marvel and DC, but there are also the differences between all of the independent publishers. Publisher diversity also includes differences in format. We have more choices then ever in monthly comic books or collected trade paperback (TPB) reprints. If you like the TPB, then you have a huge assortment of options from top quality hardcover reprints to small digests. Another major form of publisher diversity is between traditional American style comics and Japanese style manga.

Artistic diversity covers all of the elements of comic book creation. Some people love to complain about the “decompressed” or “writing for the trade” style that is very popular in comics today, but I think it just represents the growth of the medium. There are many comic books that offer a variety of writing styles. There are a growing number of styles of art being published as well. I find it particularly exciting to see the amount of artistic diversity showing up in mainstream super hero books. You can even find diversity in coloring. The tools that a modern comic book colorist has at her disposal are allowing a whole new dimension of artistic diversity to develop.

Genre diversity is probably what most people think about when they hear the term “comic book diversity”. Comic books are still dominated by the super hero genre and likely will be for many more years. But there are so many other types of stories already being told. Books like Usagi Yojimbo, Y the Last Man, Criminal, Jonah Hex and Walking Dead clearly show the amazing potential of the medium and the ongoing growth in genre diversity.

One thing that comes with growth in diversity is that nobody is going to like everything, and that’s ok. By and large I think that all forms of diversity are vital for the comic industry to grow. But there is one big downside. There is such a thing as too much choice. With so many titles being published in so many different forms and styles, it can be overwhelming to figure out what to get. The industry needs some ways of helping people connect with the comic books that are right for them. This is a big problem with no clear solution

But I’m working on it.

How would you like your own suit of Iron Man inspired battle armor?

Iron Man

 

 
So here we are well into the 21st century. Technology has been moving along at a fantastic pace. This all leads me to one question: how far off are we from being able to actually build some form of Iron Man like armor?

This may come as a shock to many of you, but you see, I am not a professional writer. I am, in fact, an engineer. Due to my technocentric leanings, I’ve always been attracted to the speculative technology in comic books, with my favorite being Iron Man’s armor. So I decided to do a little research into possible technology for use in building some super-powered battle armor.

 

 
These are the basic requirements as I see them:

• Super Strength
• Armor
• Flight
• Man-Machine Interface
• Computing and Communications
• Power
• Repulsor Beams

Here are some interesting technologies that could give us a start.

I’m going to go out on a limb (pun intended)
and say that the part of the system labeled
“buttery pack” should in fact be labeled
“battery pack”, but I’ve been wrong before.

There are several research groups currently investigating powered exoskeletons. One that looks very promising is the HAL-5 Exoskeleton from Cyberdyne Systems. HAL stands for Hybrid Assisted Limb. The HAL-5 Exoskeleton employs several electromyogram sensors that detect the neural signals sent from the brain to the muscles. The HAL system decodes these signals and determines which muscles are intended to move and how much. It then augments the user’s desired motions using the system’s built in actuators. The more noble intended use of this technology is to help the elderly and physically disabled move around and lift heavy objects. But soup it up and there’s your super strength. (By the way, I did notice that the company has the same name as the infamous company in the Terminator movies that created the intelligent military supercomputer called Skynet which in turn triggered a nuclear Armageddon and then created the terminator robots to finish off the human survivors. Oh, yeah, and the HAL product itself shares the same name as the villainous artificial intelligence from 2001: A Space Odyssey. Fairly unsettling name choices if you ask me.)

Since we are talking about designing battle armor, we ought to, you know, have some armor. Fitting the armor discretely into a briefcase isn’t a requirement, but we do want it to be lightweight and flexible. For that, let’s turn to liquid body armor. The basis for liquid body armor is shear thickening fluid (STF). According to the article, “During normal handling, the STF is very deformable and flows like a liquid. However, once a bullet or frag hits the vest, it transitions to a rigid material, which prevents the projectile from penetrating the Soldier’s body”. So, the material is fairly lightweight and flexible, but when it’s struck it momentarily turns extremely rigid and protects the wearer. Also according to the article, liquid armor is much more stab resistant than conventional body armor, which might come in handy for confrontations with ninjas and people trying to replicate the technology used by a short Canadian mutant.

Jet-Man Flying

Ok, here is where we kick it into high-gear cool. I know that in the comic books Iron Man flies using boot jets. I don’t think that is going to work here. Instead we’re going to fly in style with a winged jetpack. (Remember, we are not trying to exactly replicate the Iron Man armor, just start getting close.) For that, we turn to Jet-Man. Swiss aviator Yves Rossy has developed a winged jetpack that looks amazing. The wings are worn on the back like a backpack, and fold up when not in flight. The technology is still being developed and currently he can’t take off or land using the jetpack. So to test the flight capability he puts on the jetpack, gets into an airplane, and when the plane is high enough he jumps out. The wings then unfold, the jets kick in, and he’s off. He freaking flies around for a while until he runs out of fuel, then he deploys a parachute and comes back down to Earth. Check out the video below to see the jetpack in action. This is so cool.

The extremis technology is nowhere to be found so we need to use a more primitive interface technology. (I’m still on the fence about the extremis technology in the comic book anyway.) There are already electromyogram sensors built into the exoskeleton, and these types of sensors could probably be used to further interface the user and the armor. There is also some early work being done on non-invasive brain-computer interfaces that could be incorporated into a helmet. Combined with an audio interface and a head mounted display we would have a good start.

This is the easiest part to take care of. There is no shortage of off the shelf technology for inexpensive computing and mobile communications. Building a cell phone and WiFi/WiMax into the armor would be relatively easy. Embedding a mobile computer into the armor would be pretty easy as well. The biggest question is which operating system to use. Windows is not even an option. I think I’d prefer to put together my own custom Linux distro. Call it something like Stark Linux.

This might be the toughest part, since we would want to operate without recharging for a long time. Battery power densities are not great, but with all of the work being done in electric cars and fuel cell technology research, there may be an answer. It would be especially nice if the same fuel could be used to power the jets and the rest of the armor.

Back off!

Repulsor Beam technology doesn’t quite exist, so the next best thing would be a laser. (I’m not real excited by the War Machine style shoulder mounted guns.) The lasers of choice would probably come from Wicked Lasers. I’m not quite sure how to mount them inside the palm of the gauntlet, but I’d like to try to figure it out.

 

 
So there you have them. The basic components for an experimental prototype suit of battle armor inspired by Iron Man. None of the technologies are ready for prime time, but the possibility is starting to come into reach. All we need now is a billionaire benefactor who is interested in funding the additional research and engineering required. Any takers?

 
P.S. I wonder how long until we see an Internet show called “Pimp My Battle Armor”. I think I should be the host.

 

Don’t forget to check out part two of the battle armor series!