IDW will make comics out of several Cory Doctorow stories.
David Malki ! of Wondermark wrote an excellent installment of the Comic Strip Doctor about recontextualized comic strips such as the Dysfunctional Family Circus, The Garfield Randomizer and, my favorite, Nameless Dread.
This is the cover I most associate with Crisis on Infinite Earths. It really sums up all the chaos that's going on throughout the multiverse.
We begin with the Luthor kid who has grown to adolescense in just a few days. Oh, and the Monitor is keeping him in a big glass sphere. Fortunately, Luthor Jr. has developed cognitively as well as physically so he can speak English (or whatever language they speak in Monitorland). Harbinger reminds us via internal monologue that she's working for the Monitor's adversary and then she goes off to report to said bad guy.
Harbinger meets Psycho Pirate who was obviously picked on a lot when he was in school. I love it whenever anyone calls Psycho Pirate by his villain name because it always sounds like a rude insult. "Nice going, Psycho Pirate!"
Unnamed bad guy shows himself to be as tired of Psycho Pirate as the rest of us are. He also shows himself to be a bit off the mark when he claims to know what the Monitor is up to "as he thinks it". Um, so, are you aware he knows about the Harbinger-bot who's been programmed to kill him? Huh? Huh?
Bad Guy apparently doesn't have access to comic books in the negaverse, either, because he says, "The dead can present no threat". Dude, the dead show up and threaten things all the time. Oh, well, your funeral.
Now I begin to show my ignorance of DC history. The Flash was exiled to the future? Fair enough. I was just unaware of that. Anyway, Flash is living in Central City in the future of Earth-1 and things are breaking up there, too. He relaxes his internal vibrations to return himself to his proper time. This is why I love the Flash. Hell, this is why I love comics. The Flash is living in the future because he has changed his vibrational patterns!!!! Damn. That is awesome. All he has to do is stop the "future vibrations" and he snaps back to the 20th century.
Flash shows up in the middle of The Teen Titans and The Outsiders who are trying to keep everything from being erased. Here's another scene which reminds me that I was not reading DC in '85. I don't recognize several of the combatants. I know Nightwing, Changeling and Metamorpho, of course but Katana, Kole and Captain Sideburns (Jericho) must not have stuck around much past the turn of the decade.
I'm serious about the sideburns:
"They were called The Losers. But they were winners to the end."
Diesel Sweeties provides The Official Internet Bumper Sticker:
It's like an ironic hat for your blog!
Animation Magazine reports that Platinum Studios is gearing up for a 2nd Comic Book Challenge. New and unpublished comic creators are encouraged to submit their ideas for a chance to have their property developed for print, online, film and television. Go to ComicBookChallenge.com
Holy Monster Pockets! Check out this essay by Greg Burgas! When the words "Moore" and "Morrison" are mentioned in the same article the author is contractually obligated to include "deconstruction" and/or "postmodernism". Burgas does both! It's a long, well-written piece which covers literary elements in comics and why screwing with the status quo is a good thing.
Added to the sidebar: Inside Joke Theatre
Shortpacked echoes my feelings about Darwyn Cooke's The Spirit and Frank "Testosterone" Miller's involvement in the proposed movie.
What I said about it wasn't as funny but it does have a keen scan of an old-school Spirit cover.
Three of the mainstream titles in my holdbox were disappointing. Only one of them was bad enough to make me drop the book. Let's start with that one:
Moon Knight #8 - Marvel (2007)
I'm a big Moon Knight fan. He was the first inductee into the Badass Files. I've been enjoying this revival of the character by Charlie Huston and David Finch enough to keep it in my holdbox but no longer.
I read this issue twice and I have no idea what the hell was going on. The dick-swinging contest between MK and Captain America was boring and everything else was just confusing. I'm tired of this demon hallucination thing, I'm tired of the poorly-executed gritty tone and I'm tired of Finch's little-faces-on-big-heads art.
Jonah Hex #17 - DC (2007)
The Tallulah storyline gets wrapped up in a nearly-satisfactory manner. I would have preferred more meat to the story but it hit all its marks. The art is excellent but I liked the visuals from the earlier issues better.
The only big complaint I have about this title is the dialects. Just write actual English words. We get that they're in the old west. We're not going to mistake this for a P. G. Wodehouse story! Drop the occasional "g" but stop with the "yore" and "caint" stuff. You aren't even using them properly half the time.
Green Lantern Corps #10 - DC (2007)
First, the cover. Nothing even remotely like this happens in this issue. I know, I know, it's a comic book. I shouldn't expect a scene from the story but this one doesn't even reflect the tone or theme of the comic.
Speaking of tone and theme, this issue barely had one. It was a disjointed combination of two-and-a-half storylines which will probably get fleshed out in future issues. This wasn't a bad issue it's just that not much happened. The stuff that did happen involved my favorite Lantern, Dr. Natu! The cover of #11 features Natu and her new partner. Looks like fun.
I finally saw 300. It's good. You can read actual reviews of it all over the web. All I'll say is that 300 was exactly faithful enough to the original material (both the visuals and the story) to still be an enjoyable movie. Sin City, on the other hand, was fanatically faithful and the movie suffered.
Here's something I didn't know about: Stan Lee Media (no longer associated with Stan) sues Marvel for ownership of many characters.
Comics Should Be Good continues its Comic-Book Urban Legends series with one related to Captain America #25, sort of.
Added to the sidebar: Comic Pants. Randy Lander and a veritable Spartan army of other dudes post here. And there's a podcast! Do I have to click the link for you?!?
The Internet's Dave Campbell speaks the magic words and posts about Lame-Ass Villain #18.
And now: Rot Lop Fan
I have a lot of issues...of Fantastic Four! My mom bought me subscriptions to FF and Marvel Team-Up back in the late '70s and I kept them up until the mid '80s. In going through the issues, I realized that FF covers generally fall into two catagories:
1. The FF fight something huge.
2. The FF are dead.
The covers below stand out for me because they break the pattern.
#257
The little, floating FF heads kind of dilute the impact of this image but it says something that when I dredge it from my memory all I see is the awesome split Galactus/Death visage.
Oh, and because this is a Marvel comic book, the Death's head on the cover isn't a metaphor. Death actually shows up in the issue. Wotta revoltin' development!
#276
I remember taking the brown paper off this one and thinking "Wow!" It still has that effect on me. This simple, striking composition combined with the narrowest of palettes conveys the level of power our heroes are up against. Also, the title's awesome.
#240
This is my favorite FF cover of all time. It's also my favorite FF story. You know how Attilan, the Inhuman's home city, is on the Blue Area of the Moon? No? Is it just me? Anyway, this is the issue where they moved there! That's a whole, freakin' city they're levitating! Fantastic Four is best when the stories are big and this is one of their biggest.
It showed off the Inhumans kewl powerz along with developing them as people. Awesome stuff. Also, Black Bolt actually shouts! I bet he enjoyed that.
The image above makes me happy. You know how much Tegan likes Aquaman? That's how much I like the Green Lantern Corps. There's a review of the latest GLC issue on the way but until then enjoy Sinestro Triumphant!
Click here for a bigger version from Newsarama.
I really liked the first issue's cover but this one is confusing. It's hard to see what's going on and the perspective is weird. Still, it's got that cool Statue of Liberty way in the background and an ape in the foreground. "You Maniacs! You blew it up! Ah, damn you! God damn you all to hell!"
On to the issue:
First off, we take a trip to "The Dawn of Man" to meet Anthro. I suppose his brothers "Psych" and "Poli-sci" are back at the village. The Dawn of Man bit is for real. Anthro's dawning all over the place. He gets three full pages all to himself which, given how much stuff Wolfman and Pérez had to cram into this issue, is a lot of real estate.
Anthro is the first Cro-Magnon and he's surrounded by Neanderthals. I know how he feels; I used to work for the government.
Anthro tries to stop a stampeding herd of wooly mammoths from squashing his village. Y'know like the anti-matter is doing to EVERYTHING ELSE! Man, where do I come up with these parallells? Genuis! Anyway, hijinks ensue. It's a regular prehistoric sitcom even after Anthro gets a vision of 30th-century Metropolis.
Which is where the mammoths end up. That's right, due to the multiversal freakout, a herd of raging proto-pachyderms goes tearing through the Legion of Super-Heroes HQ. This is all a setup for Brainiac-5 to use his enormous thinkin' powers to determine that everything's gonna go away real soon.
Cut to Batman interrupting one of The Joker's lamest schemes ever. Joker has killed this rich dude in order to get the rights to colorized silent movies. However, the caption just before this revelation states clearly that the dead dude has heirs. Maybe Joker's gonna kill them, too. He is totally batshit.
Anyway, Batman has enormous thinkin' powers along with enormous ass-kickin' powers. Before he can completely kick The Joker's ass, though, The Flash shows up and dies horribly. He just withers and turns to dust. "WTF?" says Batman. This scene is seriously creepy and Pérez really sells it.
Pérez is not just a good artist, he's one of the best visual storytellers in the business. This whole Joker-Batman-Flash sequence is a masterpiece of panel arrangement. Things are placed in an unconventional manner but it all works so well that I didn't notice any of it until my second readthrough. Pages 13 & 18 of this issue should be included in textbooks about sequential art.
The pace picks up at this point, which is saying something. The fifteen super-beings recruited by the Monitor in issue #1 are sent around the multiverse to protect these big-ass tuning forks which are supposed to mitigate the anti-matter energies. Man, I love comic-book physics!
The Guardians of the Galaxy get their collective ass handed to them by the still-unseen bad guy and Kal-El Baby Luthor (remember the one from Earth-3 in the first issue?) starts growing faster than a soap-opera baby. I don't have a good scan of the Luthorbaby so I'll substitue this image of Pip the Troll.
Quick note: House of the Ded is back online. Pudge Heffelfinger commands you to click the link!
I found another really good "Nameless Dread" to share with you:
Making fun of Family Circus is always a good thing but adding Lovecraft lines to it is G-E-N-I-U-S.
By the way, if you want to screw with some Bill Keane drawings, yourself, go here and try it. It's fun for the whole fungoid family!
No, really! This one has a story about Nebraska in it.
The next installment of "Blogging the Crisis" will be up tomorrow. Until then, here are a couple more links:
The Freemont Nebraska Tribune has an article about a stolen comic book worth $4,000 - $5,000. It was recovered, which is good, but the article left out the most important bit of information. What was the comic?!? Was it that super-hot-hot-hot Captain America #25?
In non-Nebraska news, IF Magazine has an interview with Scott Allie, editor of Buffy the Vampire Slayer - Season 8. Man, there sure is a lot of space between each paragraph. It's like those papers I did in high school which had to be a certain page count so I pushed the margins in and triple-spaced all the text.
Also, in honor of Boom! Studios' excellent Cthulhu Comics, here's one of my favorite "Nameless Dreads" -
Oh, Jeez! Comics Oughta Be Fun brings us the adventures of The Mighty Clor.
There was a lot of stuff wrong with comics in the '90s. Comics Should Be Good highlights an issue which exemplifies all of it.
Jonah Hex is one of my favorite comic characters. I even kinda liked it when he was in that cyberpunk setting. Anyway, Scott from Polite Dissent discusses What's up with that freakin' scar. Also, there's a picture of a disfigured Britney Spears. Bonus!
Y'know something else I like? Jimmy Olsen's wacky adventures. Jake from Ye Olde Comick Booke Blogge does too. The difference between us is that Jake got a bunch of comic artists to sketch Jimmy for him.
I like GI Joe. I like the animated series, I like the action figures and I really like the comic books. Below are some of the covers that stand out in the nostalgic sludge I call a memory.
The first cover is much more recent than the second two but it's a cover that seriously did it's job. I bought it because I had to know the story behind that image. Also, the style and composition just scream "Comic Book!".
#27 possesses the platonic form of a GI Joe cover. Storm Shadow and Snake Eyes kicking each others asses in the middle of a city isn't enough for the Joe team! No, we've got to throw in a gunship! "Clearance be damned, sir, there's a ninja on that train!".
I'm cheating a bit by posting the cover for #21 because, while it is an awesome cover it's actually the contents of the issue that stand out. This was the Silent Issue. The story was told with nothing but pictures. No word balloons, no captions, nothing. It blew my little comic-reading mind at the time and it still holds up as an excellent story.
And here's a bonus cover 'cause it's got dudes with chainsaws attacking a freakin' plane! Man!
While I'm at it, here's an installment of Comic-Book Urban Legends from a while back about the Joes.
I'm a big Lovecraft fan. I also like a lot of the Cthulhu Mythos writings by other authors over the years. This comic goes in my "like" list. It also goes in my hold box. Here's why:
First off, the art. A good Mythos tale is about atmosphere. Cthulhu stories aren't always scary, as such, but they should always be eldritch and creepy. Jean Dzialowski's art conveys the proper atmosphere. There were a couple of frames where it was difficult to figure out what was going on but nothing that ruined the story.
Dzialowski switches styles a couple of times to show that the action has literally moved into a different realm. The majority of the book has a painterly, stylized look to it which is enhanced by the dark, narrow palette. The art in the Dreamlands sequence is more traditionally comicky and reminds me of Watchmen-era Dave Gibbons.
One of the advantages of writing a Cthulhu story is that there are libraries full evocative, creepy lines from earlier stories in the Mythos. Michael Alan Nelson uses these previous writings to great effect. The story features Abdul Alhazred, the Mad Arab who wrote the Necronomicon. When your main character is the batshit-craziest dude who ever lived you've gotta try hard not to get a good story out of him.
Some knowledge of the Cthulhu Mythos is useful for full enjoyment of this sequential-art product but not essential. Nelson does a good job of filling in the blank spots and Dzialowski draws the hell out of it.
In a time where Cthulhu is the punchline of jokes made by people who have never actually read Lovecraft, it's nice to see someone bringing the creepy back to it.
(see what I did, there?)
Students in Indiana create a comic book to combat bullies. 'Cause nothing keeps the bullies away like being a comic-book geek.
FirstShowing.net just posted a pretty-good article which touches on what makes a good comic movie and what doesn't. I didn't like the Sin City movie but I agree that it's as if the graphic novels jumped up on screen and started talking to me.
The Toronto Star shows off their up-to-the-decade reportage with this May 8th piece on the Dark Tower comic.
Well, mostly new. Two of these are from last week's pull but they're still on the shelves.
Helmet of Fate: Zauriel #1 - DC (2007)
I've always had trouble reconciling the Christian mythos with the DC Universe. Apparently, so does Steve Gerber. It's like he can't decide whether to play it straight or to camp it up or to make a statement about faith, dogma and reality. There are elements of all these things in this issue and they add up to a diffuse mess. Peter Snejbjerg is a good artist but his work on this book isn't helping Gerber's script. It doesn't seem to fit with any of the attempted tones and, in fact, confuses things further. The horror elements did not come off as scary and the "people exploding messily" section had no emotional impact. I liked all the other Helmet books but this one felt empty.
X-Factor #16 - Marvel (2007)
This one deals with Christianity, too. Sort of. It has a tense, touching story about Madrox retrieving one of his duplicates. Also, Siryn and Monet blow up big chunks of Paris. You could read the Madrox part of this without having read the previous issue. Good stuff from Peter David and Pablo Raimondi
Supergirl and the Legion of Super-Heroes #27 - DC (2007)
This title seems to have lost its focus since Supergirl showed up but it's still a fun read. This issue has more superpowered beings than you can shake a Durlan in the form of a stick at. Lots of stuff blows up and robots turn on their fleshy masters.
Newuniversal #4 - Marvel (2007)
Holy crap, this title is good. Warren Ellis is at his best when writing science fiction. This is an epic tale of people suddenly burdened with powers and technology beyond their current understanding. I know that's also the plot of countless superhero stories back to the beginning of time but this one leans heavily toward the SF end of the spectrum. They have let Ellis run with this storyline and it kicks ass.
This issue moved more slowly than I wanted it to, however. Some of the scenes could have been compressed. I have no complaints about the story itself. I am intrigued and entertained.
And Salvador Larroca's art! It is so beautiful and it fits the story so well that I can't say anything more. It's simply beautiful. Check it out below. Larroca's just painting a bedroom there. A goddamn bedroom! And it's one of the finest pages I've ever seen in a comic book.
That's right, I said "yore". I'm gonna go all "I Love the '80s" on you and talk about three nearly-consecutive Uncanny X-Men covers from 1981. I don't have much in the way of commentary other than to say that when I saw each of these covers on the stand back in the day I said, "Holy Crap! What's gonna happen in there?" I then probably put my velcro wallet in my parachute pants and adjusted the epaulets on my Members Only jacket because, y'know, it was the '80s.
Each of these issues lived up to what was on its cover. The "Everybody Dies" one followed one of the most famous X-Men covers ever and had a badass story. The Kitty vs. Alien was thrilling and the Everybody vs. Doom was a study in why you don't go up against a smart, ruthless zillionaire. Also, Storm totally got turned into a statue and she made this super hurricane and it blew up Latveria!
Enjoy the covers. They did what covers were meant to do.
Kevin Church has reminded me of The Comics Curmudgeon's existence. I had the site in the sidebar for a long time but he must have moved. Glad to have it back on board. Now I have some catching up to do.
I added Bill's House O' Comics to the list a while back but forgot to mention it here. Sorry, Bill. This image (scroll down) from his site reminds me how much I Want Forge's House!!!
Enter TangognaT's Super Happy Fun Manga Giveaway!
Heidi Meeley lays down the Comic-Customer-Service Manifesto! Preach it! The discussion in the comments is good, too.
And now, a totally rad picture of Blastarr:
First off, Crisis #1 has a hell of a cover. Click on the image above to see an enlarged version. That's awesome. I use "awesome" in the sense of "actually awe inspiring". I mean, look at that! You've got a sampling of 1985's finest super-beings floating around The Earth as it gets TORN ASUNDER BY ENORMOUS PINK LIGHTNING BOLTS!
But wait! It's not just one Earth. It's, like, a zillion of them! Holy monkeys! Those Earths just go on forever (one might even say, "infinitely") and they're all getting the crap kicked out of them.
The foldout cover has nice design. You've got Harbinger in one corner and cosmic sad sack Pariah in the other. In the middle youve got some of the most powerful beings in the multiverse being tossed around like leaves in a hurricane. This cover lets you know that DC's not pussyfooting around.
The first few pages live up to the cover's promise. After a "First, The Multiverse Cooled" beginning Wolfman starts right in on wiping out huge swaths of it. In fact, it looks like everything's being erased. As if each universe is part of a comic book or something and the Great Artist is rubbing it out bit by bit. I bet no one has ever pointed that out before. I am a genius.
Then there's a nice scene where the Luthor of Earth-3 sends his son off in a spaceship before everything's destroyed. See, Earth-3 is where the Crime Syndicate live and they're evil versions of the Justice League. So, since everything's wacky, Luthor is the only superhero on the planet and he sends his son away just like... you get the picture. Anyway, it's actually quite well-written and touching interspersed as it is with images of the Bizarro League trying to save the world they have kept under their bootheels all this time.
Next we meet Lyla who is about to undergo a transformation sequence which rivals Sailor Moon. She turns into Harbinger who has the ability to split herself into many copies each of which is able to travel through space and time. Handy! The Monitor (who is just a shadowy figure and a voice at this point) sends her all over the multiverse to get the people he needs to help him save the few earths that are left.
So, where's the first place she goes on her recruitment trip?
Gorilla City
That's right! Talking gorillas, baby! If I had the power to go anywhere I'd hit the enlightened apes first, too. They are shown to be wiser than man. For example, King Solovar sentences a convicted murderer-gorilla not to death (as the barbaric men would do) but to "convesion". I don't know what "conversion" involves but it sounds about as scary as death, to me.
Anyway, Harbinger freaks out the gorillas and grabs the simian monarch while one of her replicants goes to the 31st century to pick up Dawnstar of the Legion of Super-Heroes in a place called Suicide Slum. Cheery! Also collected are Firebrand from 1942, Psycho Pirate from the nuthouse and Blue Beetle from Charlton Comics.
Some creepy-ass shadow creature infects one of Harbinger's replicants right before she collects Arion who looks like one lonely dude. He's pretty much just wandering around the Ice Age casting spells and stuff. Anyway, the shadow thing can't be good. Mark my words.
Speaking of bad omens, Harbinger uses Psycho Pirate (man, I can't express the pleasure I get just from typing "Psycho Pirate") to turn Killer Frost from Firestorm's deadliest enemy into his love slave. Morally questionable!! And she had to browbeat Psycho Pirate into it. I guess Monitor's philosophy is that to save the multiverse you've gotta break a few wills.
There's a beautifully-drawn one-page interlude during which The Monitor drops a little bombshell: Lyla's gonna kill him. So, he probably knows about the little shadow thing back in the Ice Age. I'm sure it's all going to work out fine.
The next scene is the kind of thing people read these big crossover events for. Lots of superheroes who aren't supposed to be together all in the same place. We've got all of the ones mentioned above along with Psimon the telepathic asshole, Dr. Polaris the magnetic asshole, Geoforce, Cyborg, John Stewart, and Obsidian. Oh, and the old, fat Superman. I know all their names because this is a comic book and they spend the entire two-page spread calling each other by name or thinking about themselves in the third person.
So, everyone gets to wander around a bit before they are attacked by a pile of those shadow guys. They discover that they can't do jack against them. My favorite line from Superman: "Punching them doesn't stop them!" Dawnstar, at one point, is shocked, SHOCKED! to discover that King Solovar is a talking gorilla. I've read a lot of Legion of Super-Heroes and I'm pretty sure they've got whole planets full of sentient refrigerators so I call bullshit on her freaking out about a super-intelligent ape.
Monitor shows up and dispels the shadow guys with a blast of light (their natural enemy) and then tells the assembled superheroes that the end is Extremely Fucking Nigh.
And that's the end of issue #1. Damn good start. It establishes the events, kills billions of people and lets us know the stakes are unbelievably high. Nice stuff.
See also: The pulse-pounding Introduction
swampfan87 has already blogged about this (scroll down a bit) but I am compelled to post yet another picture from the shapeshifting experiment:
Um...
More pictures at Chris Karath's blog (if you dare).
It turns out that despite its title Helmet of Fate isn't porn. Who knew?
DC's launching a new Dr. Fate monthly and his helmet is zinging around the DC Universe looking for a head to land on. This "event" is a series of one-shots featuring many of the Universe's magic-wielding people as they come in contact with the helmet.
I am a sucker for DC's old-school magic characters. This is one of the reasons I liked Morrison's Zatanna so much. Dr. Fate is among my favorites so I picked up three of the titles:
Sargon The Sorcerer #1 - DC (2007)
Nice work from Steve Niles (writing) and Scott Hampton (arting). There's nothing senses-shattering, here but it's a good story well told. The art and story mesh well. Much like Ibis below, this is an origin story. The original Sargon's grandson takes on the mantle and gets a spiffy new character design for his troubles. A good read with the best final page (in terms of art as well as writing) I have seen in a long time.
Black Alice #1 - DC (2007)
This one has my favorite cover. No, that's not Frazer Irving's work it's Duncan Rouleau's. The character design for Alice is very Klarion-like but she's a goth chick so that works. Alice has the power to steal (or copy) magic from other magicians and use it to her own ends. The Helmet shows up and teaches her a lesson. Good story, good characters and Gail Simone. WooHoo!
Ibis the Invincible - DC (2007)
Ibis was the weakest of the three but it was still enjoyable. The main character is Danny Khalifa, an Egyptian-American teenager who keeps getting the crap kicked out of him by some freelance Homeland Security officers in the form of high-school bullies. It's another origin story but not as well done as Sargon. It was written by Tad Williams whose novels I have enjoyed. The writing's not actually weak, it just comes in third when it's up against the others I bought.
The art by Phil Winslade bothered me at first but once he started drawing Egyptian gods he really kicked ass. If you need a huge, tired, smartass baboon deity in your comic, Winslade's your man!
I'm a hard sell when it comes to origin stories where the protagonist has to learn everything as he goes and he's all "Woah! Yikes! I'm in over my head, dude!" Therefore, I am being harder on thiis than I otherwise would have. Also, I was hoping to learn more about the original Ibis since he's one of the magic guys I haven't seen much.
Last criticism: This story suffers from Too Many Words. Comics are a visual medium. You don't have to literally write everything out. Even Kevin Smith figured that out eventually.
Having said all that, this issue does everything a one-shot should. It tells an interesting, self-contained story and it ties up all of the loose ends.
Plus, big baboon god!
Hooboy! A superhero comic. With superheroes doing superhero stuff. I like Mark Waid and George Pérez which is good because they are the real team-up, here. The Brave and the Bold is a resurrection of one of DC's biggest hits. It was best known as a team-up title which introduced lots of new characters. More information can be found here. WARNING: The preceding link goes to Wikipedia so by the time you click on it the article may have been replaced by Alan Greenspan porn or something.
Pérez's art is spectacular in this issue. It's easy not to notice Pérez's stuff because his style is (to me) What Comics Look Like. People throw around the phrase "visual storytelling" a lot (well, people like me) but this issue is a textbook example of how it should be done. Pérez uses the whole damn page to convey the information. He overlaps panels and puts stuff in the gutters. It's artistic without being distracting.
Waid's script is excellent, as well. Batman and the Green Lantern are doing the things I read comics to see those characters doing. Each one gets to shine and the fact that they've known each other for a long time really comes through. Also, their banter during a fight for their lives says a lot about them.
I won't go into the story in great detail other than to say that there are some aliens involved in a murder mystery and it's off to a great start. The next issue has Green Lantern on his way to a planet called Ventura. Aren't Mike and Dorian from there? They'd better watch out.
I'm slowly making it through my latest (big) haul of comics. I've got some stuff to say about them but until that happens enjoy these piping-hot links.
New Hampshire Magazine interviews Jodi Picoult about her Wonder Woman run. It's a good interview when they let her talk and once they get past "Why in the world are you writing a comic book? You have so much to do."
The lovely and talented Comics Should Be Good continues its Comic-Book Urban Legends series with information about Namor, The FF and T.M. Maple
NBC Universal and Virgin say, "Hey, that Heroes sure is popular with the hepcat set. Let's make a bunch of pilot pitches comic books and see what happens." Yeah, copying the Latest Big Thing worked so well for those volcano movies. And the asteroid movies.
Heroes is popular because its well-written and cool not because it has people with kewl powerz. It's possible that these comics could yield something just as good but if the story's not there we just get another Matrix III.
Here's the last line from the NBC/Virgin story:
"Sci fi is a very underserved niche in comic books. There are plenty of superhero [books] and a thriving horror business. But there isn't a strong publisher focused on the sci fi genre."
That's pretty much true. There's Sci-fi stuff around but no imprint dedicated to it. I'm interested to see what comes of this. People like Warren Ellis, Brian Wood and Alan Moore write excellent SF. Maybe this thing will produce more like that.
Headed to a cocktail party this weekend? Impress your friends with your knowledge of the Korean comic scene.
Geoff Boucher of the Los Angeles Times blows the lid off wacky super-heroes of the past. He also reveals that there wasn't a great deal of continuity control back in the day. My, I did not know that.
For your viewing pleasure: Stills from the Spider-Man 3 game.
Gone and Forgotten brings us a blow-by-blow review of Super Boxers. Spoiler Alert: It's about "boxers" and they're "super".
And because I love you, here's a snow sculpture of Super-Grover:
Added to the sidebar: Let's You And Him Fight
This post from Laura Gjovaag talks about Rick Olney who is the kind of person who would show up on Bullshit right before Penn Jilette would say, "And then there's this asshole".
More details on Unscrewed's Home Page.
In other news: Christ! What the hell is up with this cover?
I'm gonna get all "reviewery" in a minute but first I want to say a couple of things:
DOOMBOT!
HEADMEN!
SHANG CHI!
If someone had asked me for a list of things I wanted to see in a comic book at the same time, well, I would have said Monica Rambeau, Machine Man and Boom Boom. But if someone had asked me what else I'd like to see in a comic book I would have listed the three things with the exclamation points above.
Jimmy Palmiotti & Justin Gray are rapidly becoming my favorite writing team. They're doing Jonah Hex now, too. Seeing The Headmen at the end of issue #6 made me happier than anything in comics since Thor's unfettered might attack back in Secret Wars.
For those of you with social lives, The Headmen are evil science geniuses who are so evil and science-y that they have all replaced their bodies or heads with other things. Seriously. They consist of:
1. A woman with the body of a porn star and a head made out of one of those reflective balls people put in their gardens
2. Professor Gorilla-For-A-Body
3. Chondu The Mystic (who will put his head on anything)
4. A guy whose skeleton is too small for the rest of his body. OK, he didn't do anything with his head but that's because they couldn't figure out how to work with his little, tiny skull.
And these people are supposed to be intimidating. Well, I guess they are intimidating in an "I will do anything for world domination including cut off my own head" sort of way but they were just asking to be put in a humor title. Ellis was busy finding new, horrible things to do with MODOK so Gray & Palmiotti grabbed The Headmen and put them up against Humbug. Yes, the guy who can control roaches and stuff. This shit just writes itself!
There's another story involving Man-Ape, The Grim Reaper and Grindhouse which yielded the following line:
"We're villains...we don't roll over on each other like Captain America and Iron Man."
It says something about the current state of Marvel that the titles I like the most are the ones which make fun of current events. Nextwave doesn't just make fun of Marvel continuity it takes it into the alley and puts a bullet through its neck. You know all that stuff from the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe that made you slightly insane when you read it? Warren Ellis takes all of that, throws it in a blender and gives it a bottle of tequila. Then he makes it fight all the other weird stuff. He made Forbush Man sinister, for God's sake!
Stuart Immonen. Damn. His art is always good but he knocks this out of the park. He doesn't just draw Nextwave he designs it. Check out this page. Immonen (bless his li'l Canadian heart) is the perfect choice for Ellis's fucked-up script. The action and character design both have the right combination of cool and wacky. There is no disconnect between word and picture here and that's the highest praise I can give to a creative team.
This is the last issue of the run but there are solid rumors that Nextwave will live on as several miniseries. It ends the way it began: with explosions and expletives and other things that begin with "ex". The first trade is out and the last six issues should end up between two covers in the near future. If you didn't read the singles on this (shame on you!) pick up the trades. Unless you're, y'know, allergic to fun.
Jeff Wikstrom reads the daily newspaper comics so you don't have to! Here are some of his comments. But wait, here are some more: Click! Click, I tell you!
Mark Fossen says goodbye. Mark's blog is one of my favorites. If you haven't read it before take a trip through his archives.
I just found out about John Seavey's Fraggmented site. A couple of weeks ago he talked about Jonah Hex (one of my favorite characters in any medium) in his "Storytelling Engines" series.
Oh, and my FLCS was shorted on the last issue of Nextwave. If it's not waiting for me tonight I shall become rather cross. I may need herbal tea and a great deal of cushions to soothe my nerves.
"In many ways, I fear, the annual stunt has taken over comics publishing. If it isn't big, if heroes don't die, if worlds don't change, then, many feel the stories aren't worth reading."
