Poor Mojo's Newswire

* How cool is this! The four-part comic book Models, Inc. will debut on August 26th, and the first issue will feature Project Runway star Tim Gunn ... as himself. Wait, It gets better! "The New York Times reports that in the second story of Issue 1, the 55-year-old Gunn dons Iron Man’s armor to save a fashion exhibit from evildoers." Best of all, the cover is by renowned out artist Phil Jimenez.

Taken 4.00, Saturday morning…

One swing of that hammer with your man-arms and my head will be pasta salad!

Join me now on a trip to the distant past, that dimly-remembered ancient shore men once called "1992." Here's the way I've reconstructed the story, based on what several of the people involved told me. Darryl Edelman was the brand-new editor of Archie Comics, hired away from his post at Marvel to bring some contemporary, X-Men magic to the still-popular but creatively stagnant Archie titles. ... Darryl took to the task immediately, updating the gang's clothes and hangouts, replacing Archie's broken-down 1920's jalopy with a broken down 1970's Mustang, replacing stories about the kids going roller-skating with stories about the kids going roller-blading - I'm sure you get the idea. One of Darryl's notions was to revamp the long-running title Betty and Me. The problem with the book, as he saw it, was that it wasn't particularly about Betty. So Darryl called up some writers and asked for pitches that would put Betty front and center. Eventually, he chose a proposal from Matt Wayne.... Matt thought about it for a while, then called Darryl up, "Can I do a story about drugs?" "No." Darryl wasn't that crazy. "Okay, can Betty date a black guy?" "Ummm..." ... In an extra twist to the set-up, Betty would fall for Dexter and be torn between him and Archie, in much the same way as Archie was torn between Betty and Veronica. ... At some point, someone higher in the Archie Comics pecking order read Matt's outline....we'll call the boss guy something innocuous, like "Doctor Victor von Doom." So Victor had a talk with Darryl. Darryl had a talk with Matt. "This is a really good story but what if it wasn't Betty dating the black guy? What if it were a friend of Betty's?" ... The book was penciled, lettered, inked and colored before Darryl found himself back on the carpet. Darryl called Matt with the bad news. Dr. Doom had literally thrown the issue at him. He hated the stuff, wanting to know why Dexter was so much more accomplished than Archie, "What is he, super-Negro?"

Comics is changing. Behind the drawing table, people who would have been content splashing about in other fields a decade ago are swimming to comics’ deep end without even taking a breath. And on the drawing table, there’s a growing understanding of comics’ power to relate emotion, POV, and the warp and weave of memory. The compact, literal, rat-a-tat of post-Kirby mainstream storytelling that I started out reading is finally giving away to something far deeper, stranger, and potentially more beautiful.

Comics may not have its Beethoven yet, but he/she might just be reading this stuff in a year or two, between Math and Social Studies, and realizing for the first time just what they want to do when they grow up.