2009 May
What Are You Reading?
Thunderbolts
Welcome to What Are You Reading! Our special guest this week is Kirk Warren, the brains behind the great blog known as The Weekly Crisis and all-around nice guy.
Remember, we want to know what you’ve been reading this week as well, so feel free to let us know what comics, strips, graphic novels and other assorted sequential art you’ve been perusing in the comments section.
To find out what Kirk and the rest of the Robot 6 crew are currently reading, meanwhile, click on the link below:
- May 10, 2009 @ 02:00 PM by Chris Mautner
Strangeways: The Thirsty – Week of 5/4
This week in THE THIRSTY: Father Murphy tells how Drytown got turned bad, we find that the vampire master has family amongst the defenders of Cedar Creek and the vampires themselves get to town just as the sun is setting.
Comics after the jump!
- May 10, 2009 @ 01:00 PM by Matt Maxwell
Tamakis, Beaton and Forsythe win Doug Wright Awards
Skim
The winners of the fifth annual Doug Wright Awards were announced last night in Toronto during a ceremony at the Art Gallery of Ontario.
Named for the late cartoonist Doug Wright, the awards recognize the best English-language comics in Canada. The winners of the 2009 Doug Wright Awards are:
Best Book: Skim, by Jillian Tamaki and Mariko Tamaki (Groundwood Books)
Best Emerging Talent: Kate Beaton for History Comics
The Pigskin Peters Award: Matthew Forsythe for Ojingogo (Drawn & Quarterly)
The late James Llewellyn Frise, creator of the comic strips Birdseye Centre and Juniper Junction, was inducted into the Giants of the North: Canadian Cartoonists Hall of Fame.
CBC News has a report on the awards, with comments from creators and judges.
- May 10, 2009 @ 08:33 AM by Kevin Melrose
Six by 6 | Six comic-related ‘mom’ moments
Martha Kent
Behind every good man is a good … mom. Comic books may not always be kind to moms — just ask Martha Wayne, Mary Parker or Lara-El — but the moms who do survive their children’s origin stories go on to do some pretty incredible things. So in honor of Mother’s Day, here are six comic book “mom” moments, where mothers really stepped up to the plate for their kids.
1. Martha Kent knits Superman’s costume: I’m not totally 100 percent sure if this is still considered to be in continuity or not, but it’s something I always accepted — that Ma Kent, Superman’s adoptive mother, made Superman’s costume. That’s probably because of my earliest exposure to the character (beyond the Superfriends cartoons, anyway) — the reruns of The Adventures of Superman I used to watch as a kid. The first episode saw Ma Kent sending Clark off to Metropolis with a suit made from the baby blankets in the rocket that brought him from Krypton to Earth, with the idea that the fabrics wouldn’t tear. When John Byrne rebooted Superman in the 1980s, he kept that element, sort of; in Man of Steel, Ma Kent makes Superman a skintight costume out of ordinary Earth fabric, so it will have “near invulnerability through its close proximity to Superman’s aura.” In any event, a good superhero needs a good costume to wear while fighting evil, and Ma Kent more than stepped up to the job.
- May 10, 2009 @ 08:23 AM by JK Parkin
Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now 2.2
Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now
Yes, of course I know now that his name is Sven and he’s not Mexican, but when I was seven, I wouldn’t have questioned anything my cousin Greg told me about Voltron. He was the one who introduced me to it in the first place and was my ambassador to shape-changing robots, evil fish-headed Kings and courageous princesses.
Eventually, my older cousin Marisol claimed the role of Princess Allura, Greg came around to the idea that being daredevil Lance was better than being Sven, and I took the role of Princess Romelle, who didn’t pilot a lion but did lead a rebellion against Prince Lotor — plus, she had horses. So it all worked out.
Those old Voltron cartoons are silly and simple to me now (though still hold a lot of nostalgic appeal), but they inspired my cousins and me, in our make-believe games, to re-enact and invent stories involving teamwork and bravery — and a little melodrama. Voltron has since become a comic published by Devil’s Due, but, honestly, I don’t think anything can compare to the Voltron stories my cousins and I made up in our family rooms and backyards.
And my cousin Greg? He’s the one who became the real pilot. He’s a captain in the Air Force and currently serving in Iraq, where he’s helping to train the Iraqi Army. This Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now is dedicated to him.
- May 9, 2009 @ 12:24 PM by Jennifer de Guzman
McFarlane gearing up for another Spawn movie — but will he direct?
Spawn
MTV’s Splash Page spoke with Todd McFarlane about the possibilities of bringing Spawn back to the big screen. The co-founder of Image Comics and creator of the long-running series said he has five offers on the table, and he is trying to decide between a low-budget film he would direct and a big-budget film he’d produce.
“If I go with the lower-budget movie, they’ll let me direct it. And if I go bigger, than I sit in the producer’s chair; if the budget’s too big, they’re not going to give me the chance at [directing] it. So I’m trying to decide whether I want to go big production, bigger money, bigger marketing — or just do something that’s a little bit smaller, more rock ‘n’ roll, and the way I’ve had it in my brain for the last five years.”
He also said he’d want the film to be less of “big comic-book movie” and more of a crime flick, a la The Departed or L.A. Confidential. Spawn would forgo his traditional outfit in favor of an all-black ensemble. McFarlane also would take a “less is more” approach with the character. “To me, it’s more along the lines of ‘Jaws,’ where you didn’t see [the shark] for half the movie, and then you caught glimpses of him.”
The first Spawn movie came out back in 1997 and starred Michael Jai White, John Leguizamo and Martin Sheen. I don’t think I’ve ever actually seen it all the way through, only bits and pieces of it on cable. But the idea of doing it more as a crime movie with Spawn as some sort of shadow-y figure sounds more appealing than watching Leguizamo walk around in the clown outfit. What do you guys think?
- May 9, 2009 @ 10:31 AM by JK Parkin
Jeffrey Brown’s ‘Not If, But When’
from Not If, But When
Each month Creative Time Comics “invites artists to produce new, online comics that address the issues facing our world.” This month’s guest artist is Jeffrey Brown, who creates a strip about a trip to the museum with his family.
Related: Kiel Phegley talks to Jeffrey Brown about process + several of his books
- May 9, 2009 @ 09:26 AM by JK Parkin
Jeff Smith’s RASL to have fewer pages on a bimonthly schedule
RASL #5
Earlier this week Jesse Reese at the Are You A Serious Comic Book Reader? blog noted that the biggest drawback of Jeff Smith’s RASL was the relaxed publishing schedule.
“The biggest problem with RASL is its slow production schedule,” Reese wrote. “A general problem with serialized comics, especially when a creator has a larger picture in mind, is focusing obsessively on what is the equivalent to a single chapter in a book. RASL suffers intensely from this reading experience.”
(I should note that the rest of the review, which focused on the story itself, was very positive and is definitely worth your time if you’re interested in learning more about the book).
Apparently Jeff Smith has heard Reese and other readers who have had similar concerns, so he’s moving the book to a new schedule. Starting with issue five, the book will be fewer pages — 24 versus 32 — and in the fall Smith will publish it bimonthly.
“When I came up with this format, I thought the extra pages would make up for a slower release schedule, but the demand for more issues gets louder every time a new chapter comes out,” he writes on his blog. “I think everyone I heard from liked the extra pages, but they’d rather have less time between issues.”
He also notes that he has a “secret project” he’ll be working on in the late summer timeframe, which is why the bimonthly schedule won’t kick in until October. He also notes that this means he’ll publish more issues of the book, as he still plans for it to be about “350 pages or so.” Click on over to read his full post and to see some work-in-progress blueline images.
- May 8, 2009 @ 04:07 PM by JK Parkin
Blink and you’ll miss it: Scott Morse’s Dawn of the Gearheads
Dawn of the Gearheads
Scott Morse recently finished posting page by page a complete comic up on his blog. Called Dawn of the Gearheads, he said he was “shooting from the hip” with both the writing and the art. The comic will be available for a limited time, and it’ll also appear in a San Diego Comic Con special project he’s working on.
- May 8, 2009 @ 02:36 PM by JK Parkin
This Ghost Rider villain kinda freaks me out
Skinbender
Maybe it’s the abnormally sized eyes or lips that reek of collagen injections gone wrong, but this image of SkinBender, a new villain introduced in Ghost Rider #35, will likely give me nightmares tonight. Artist Tony Moore calls her a “hot leathery Japanese nightmare,” and she debuts just as Moore wraps up his run on the book.
- May 8, 2009 @ 01:39 PM by JK Parkin
Strangeways: The Thirsty – Page 068
Bravely, the vampires soldier on through the (now-fading) sunlight to claim their prize. Ya gotta admire perseverance like that. Oh, and scroll to the end of the entry to find out the first winner of the MURDER MOON giveaway.
Written by Matt Maxwell. Art by Gervasio and Jok.
Catch up on the story at the archives page.
And congratulations to our first winner of the weekly MURDER MOON giveaway: Matt Spatola, who comes to us all the way from AOL. Really? They still have AOL addresses these days? Seeing that really takes me back to the nineties, I tell ya.
Tune in on Monday for a fresh page, and then Wednesday for the next installment of the giveaway. Tell your friends! Tell your family! Tell anyone who’ll stand still for thirty seconds and listen! Just don’t get arrested doing it.
And for those of you who are Kindle-enabled, I’m translating MURDER MOON to Kindle and DX-ready formats. I’ll let you all know when they become available. Considering iPhone development as well, but those screens are on the itty-bitty side of things. However, I tried out the iPhone version of PROOF, which had a lot of good buzz going for it, and found it surprisingly readable. Looks like a fair amount of work to make it iPhone-readable, but you know, people are always going to sit on busses needing something to do.
- May 8, 2009 @ 01:00 PM by Matt Maxwell
Slash Print | Following the digital evolution
The Iraq War Stories Anthology
Webcomics | Starting this Sunday, the webcomics collective ACT-I-VATE will run The Iraq War Stories Anthology, edited by Nick Bertozzi. Per the press release, Bertozzi asked the students in his Comic Book Storytelling Workshop at The School of Visual Arts to adapt stories that took place in Iraq during the War.
“The majority of the stories were found on blogs, a few were adapted from stories told to the students by friends, and one student, himself a veteran of the Iraq War, wrote and drew a story based on his own experience,” the release says. One story will appear each Sunday for the next 13 weeks.
e-Devices & Webcomics | Here’s a fun case of sibling rivalry — Peter Timony has released The Complete Sir Roland, previously available on the web, as a comic for Amazon’s Kindle device. Not to be outdone, his twin brother Bobby has released a 24-Hour Comic, The Ballad of Basil the Bunny, for the Kindle.
Webcomics | Daryl Cagle discusses the pluses and minuses of allowing other sites to easily embed political cartoons from his site — something that’s becoming the norm in the world of Web 2.0 and YouTube. [Hat tip: The Comics Reporter]
e-Publishing | Range Murata, the creator of anime like Last Exile and Shangri-La, has released his self-published magazine Throw Line dōjin on iTunes.
- May 8, 2009 @ 11:27 AM by JK Parkin
PictureBox goes the pre-order plea route
Powr Masters 3
Dan Nadel posted a press release at Comics Comics yesterday that, in addition to announcing two upcoming books from PictureBox — Powr Masters 3 by CF and If n Oof by Brian Chippendale — asked fans to ensure these books got printed by ordering them now:
These two books are among the best graphic novels of our time, but they need your support. Like a lot of publishers, PictureBox is looking for new ways to navigate the current terrain. To that end, we are attempting to raise the money for these books ahead of time. It’s all an experiment these days.
So we are looking to you, as a community of readers, to help make these books a reality. Everyone that orders advance copies of one or both of these books (up until August 1) will receive the book itself and a signed silkscreen print upon the books’ releases. Everyone that orders in advance by June 20, 2009 will have their names hand-lettered in the book with their corresponding level of support (see below). We need about 400 of you per book to step up and help make this a reality. Let’s come together as a community.
Nadel has PDF previews up at the site, and he’s also offering an interesting, PBS-style tiered system of support, where, say, $45 nets you both books and the prints, but $150 nets you the books, the prints and a full color drawing by one of the artists.
It will certainly be interesting to see what the response to this idea will be. The ability to gain two prints by ordering ahead certainly is tantalizing, although now I’m suddenly worried that PictureBox is in worse financial shape than I had previously thought.
You can read Nadel’s full press release after the jump:
- May 8, 2009 @ 10:45 AM by Chris Mautner
I’ll see your two Kirks and raise you a Shatner
The Village Voice cover, by Ward Sutton
Cartoonist Ward Sutton provides a Star Trek-themed cover for this week’s Village Voice and, as the blurb suggest, imagines a scenario in which William Shatner meets the 1960s Kirk and the 2009 Kirk in a comic called The Shatner Menagerie.
- May 8, 2009 @ 09:47 AM by Kevin Melrose
DC reveals Batgirl creative team — and who did that cover
Batgirl #1
Earlier this week DC teased fans with an image of Batgirl on their Source blog, leaving fans wondering who was behind the mask and who drew the image. Now they’ve revealed the answer to one of those questions — the image was done by Phil Noto.
(If we’d been taking bets, it looks like Brandon Perlow would be the winner).
They also gave the lowdown on the Batgirl creative team. Smallville writer Bryan Q. Miller, who is also writing a Teen Titans storyline that starts in July, is writing Batgirl. He wrote the “Hex” episode of Smallville that featured Zatanna earlier this season. Lee Garbett and Trevor Scot are the art team.
- May 8, 2009 @ 09:20 AM by JK Parkin