2009 August
Chicago Comic-Con ‘09 | Sunday
Chicago Comic-Con
10:00 am – After a quick breakfast and a quicker check-out, Jess and I are at the convention. We’re too slow for Grant who’s already here.
On the way in, we pass the Battlestar Galactica table and see that Michael Hogan doesn’t have a line yet. We stop briefly to shake his hand and gush a little. He’s sweet and graciously appreciative of our fondness for his work.
10:30 am – Visit Mark Kidwell’s table in Artist Alley. RD introduced me to Mark last night at the bar and Mark’s a smart, smart guy. He hooks me up with a few books including his Bump mini-series from Fangoria and Freedom, the Western he wrote for Image’s Frank Frazetta line.
- August 10, 2009 @ 11:30 AM by Michael May
Peter Parker on ‘The Mutant Problem’
The Mutant Problem
I really dig this mock-up of a New York Times piece by Peter Parker, talking about the Marvel Universe’s “mutant problem” in general and his fan-fiction friendship with former New Mutant Doug Ramsey in particular. Click on the photos to the right to see Peter’s thoughts on each of the mutants he took pictures of for his “assignment.”
- August 10, 2009 @ 10:50 AM by JK Parkin
Spider-Man cares about fuel efficiency
Spider-Man drives a Mini
The above photo was nicked from the Forbidden Planet blog, where they have other photos of a number of costumed folk enjoying the Edinburgh Festival Fringe’s annual Cavalcade.
- August 10, 2009 @ 09:50 AM by Chris Mautner
Straight for the art: Neely/Jo horror art
Neely's 'Terror'
Tom Neely (The Blot) and Hellen Jo (Jin and Jam) have an exhibition of horror-themed work up at the Grass Hut Gallery in Portland. If you can’t go though, you can see some of the work on display by going here and here (note: some of these images are a tad gruesome and may be NSFW) (link: Sean Collins)
- August 10, 2009 @ 09:15 AM by Chris Mautner
Man burns down house after mother tosses out Gundam models
Mobile Suit Gundam 00
Leave it to Japan to one-up the World of Warcraft-freakout kid.
Anime News Network reports that police near Kobe have arrested a 29-year-old factory worker suspected of burning down his own home … because his mother got rid of his “valuable” Gundam models.
Authorities say the man doused his room, and himself, with kerosene Sunday afternoon and, with a lighter, sparked the fire that engulfed his two-story house.
“My precious Gundam plamo were all thrown out by my mother,” Sankaku Complex quotes the man as saying. “I thought I’d die, too.”
The man and his 55-year-old mother both escaped unharmed.
- August 10, 2009 @ 08:37 AM by Kevin Melrose
Everyone’s A Critic: A round-up of comic book reviews and thinkpieces
Asterios Polyp
• The great and all-powerful Ng Suat Tong provides one of the most comprehensive and detailed critiques of Asterios Polyp I’ve seen online yet. Seriously, Tong’s one of the finest critics comics have ever had. The fact that he’s writing again, even if it’s just a one-time thing, is cause for joy.
• Frank Santoro reviews issues #1-4 of Richard Sala’s Ignatz series, Delphine: “The story surrounded me and carried me away to a very real world. It’s a cartooned, exaggerated world, but a real world nonetheless.”
• Johanna Draper Carlson reads a whole lotta vampire manga.
• Graeme McMillan offers 25 thoughts on Wednesday Comics. He also admits to liking X-Men Forever. That’s very brave of you Graeme.
• Similar to our Collect This Now feature is David Welsh’s License Request Day, where he picks manga that haven’t been translated yet, but should. This week he recommends something called Paros No Ken.
• It’s been up for a few days now, but I have to point an arrow towards Katherine Dac’s review of Children of the Sea, which is one of the best takes on the book yet.
- August 10, 2009 @ 07:50 AM by Chris Mautner
Comics A.M. | The comics Internet in two minutes
Girl Genius
Awards | Girl Genius, Vol. 8, by Kaja and Phil Foglio, and The Graveyard Book, by Neil Gaiman, received the 2009 Hugo Awards last night for Best Graphic Story and Best Novel, respectively. The awards, presented each year at Worldcon, recognize the best in science fiction and fantasy. [The Hugo Awards]
Events | An art auction held Saturday at Chicago Comic-Con raised more than $13,250 for veteran writer John Ostrander, who’s been battling glaucoma. An additional $15,000 has been donated through the Comix 4 Sight website. [Comic Book Resources]
Publishing | Tom Spurgeon previews some of the fall’s more notable releases. [The Comics Reporter]
Twilight: The Graphic Novel
Retailing | Boston comic store Comicopia has launched a blog to update Twilight fans on the franchise’s moves into comics, and to recommend other titles (such as Vampire Knight). [Twilight@Comicopia]
Creators | Playing off of a recent article at The A.V. Club, Justin Zyduck considers 21 writers who changed mainstream comics, for better or worse. Among them: Brian Michael Bendis, Chris Claremont, Gardner Fox, Geoff Johns, Stan Lee and Harvey Pekar. [MightyGodKing]
Creators | Neil Gaiman discusses storytelling, the mainstreaming of comics, and working with Marvel and DC: “They’re sweet people and I love working with them but dealing with them is often a lot like being nibbled to death by ducks.” [io9.com]
- August 10, 2009 @ 06:50 AM by Kevin Melrose
Six by 6 | Six strips we’d love to see in a second Wednesday Comics
I was chatting with some friends the other day about DC’s Wednesday Comics series, which led to the inevitable “So which strips are your favorites?” conversation. It was also interesting to see such a wide variety in the ones people named as their favorites — for instance, one of my favorites is probably “Metamorpho,” which was on another person’s list as being one of the weakest. And I noticed that in this week’s Splash Page feature on the CBR home page, Chad, Tim and special guest Matthew J. Brady all listed “Kamandi” in their top five (with two of them putting it in the top spot), but I don’t think any of the folks I was talking to listed it as one of their favorites. So maybe there’s something in it for everyone.
In San Diego, there was some discussion at the Wednesday Comics panel about a second edition of the weekly series, and a few creators even talked about other people they’d like to see work in the format and what characters they might want to tackle next time. So I asked the Robot 6 crew what they’d like to see in the not-yet-announced-but-hopefully-inevitable Wednesday Comics II. Here’s what we came up with …
1. ‘Mazing Man by Bob Rozakis, Stephen DeStefano, and Karl Kesel: ‘Mazing Man‘s characters and subject matter are fairly well-suited for the “newspaper” format. It wouldn’t even have to be a continued storyline, just 12 standalone pages. Maybe Maze interacts with Denton one week, Guido the next, and Brenda and Eddie the week after that. (Tom Bondurant)
- August 9, 2009 @ 07:00 PM by JK Parkin
Chicago Comic-Con ’09 | I should also point out …
…that the cover to the Dark X-Men mini-series features two characters whited out:
Dark X-Men #1
which means it’s time for another edition of “guess who’s on the team.” I’m guessing that those two characters weren’t actually part of the Dark X-Men crew that is appearing in the Utopia crossover, otherwise why hide their identity? So who else do you think is on the team besides Dark Beast and Mimic?
- August 9, 2009 @ 05:35 PM by JK Parkin
What Are You Reading?
Pluto, Vol. 4
Another Sunday is upon us again. Time to kick back, crack open a Snapple and tell you all about the comics we’re reading. Our guest this week is Ivan Brandon, whose prose you may have come across in books like NYC Mech, 24Seven or the new Image series Viking.
To discover what Ivan’s reading, click on the link below, Snapple or no Snapple …
- August 9, 2009 @ 02:00 PM by Chris Mautner
Chicago Comic-Con ‘09 | The return of Nate Grey
X-Man, a.k.a. Nate Grey
The X-Men panel at the Chicago Comic-Con just ended; I wasn’t there, but CBR’s Shaun Manning covered it live. One of the announcements at the show is another Dark X-Men mini-series that kicks off in November, by Paul Cornell and Leonard Kirk. The pair worked together on Captain Britain and MI13, as well as stories in the Dark X-Men: The Beginning mini-series that ties into the big Utopia crossover between Dark Avengers and Uncanny X-Men.
So the Dark X-Men are hanging around after Utopia, in some form or another. And it sounds like another old character we haven’t seen in awhile is making his return, based on this quote: “This also has something to do with an X-Man named… X-Man.”
Per an additional article on CBR, Nate Grey/X-Man is indeed back:
- August 9, 2009 @ 11:51 AM by JK Parkin
Chicago Comic-Con ‘09 | Saturday
Chicago Comic-Con
8:30 am – Breakfast at the Embassy buffet again. Tried the build-your-own omelet today. Tomorrow: bagels and cream cheese!
10:30 am – I arrive at the convention a half-hour after it opens. There may be something to say about my not being excited to get there, but really it was mostly me waking up a little late and taking my sweet time getting ready.
I spot Edward James Olmos and Michael Hogan from Battlestar Galactica at their tables and as much as I’ve complained about Autographapalooza, I admit to getting a bit of a thrill from seeing them. Not enough to stand in line and pay for whatever, but man that was a cool show and it’s cool to see them in person.
- August 9, 2009 @ 12:48 AM by Michael May
Your Mileage May Vary: Cry For Justice #2
A particular scene from James Robinson’s Cry for Justice #2 has sparked a lot of interesting discussion.
Jason Fliegel at Howling Curmudgeons thinks it’s boneheaded:
First, I understand that in real life, sometimes people have threesomes. So I’m not going to automatically cry “sexism!” just because some writer decides to have one of his male characters get in bed with two women. There probably is some amount of … sexism is the wrong word, so let’s go with pandering … there probably is some amount of pandering to the typical readers’ fantasies in describing a M-F-F threesome instead of a F-M-M threesome. And while one incident does not sexism make, I’d be willing to bet that if we got 100 threesomes in mainstream superhero comics, damn near all 100 of them would involve two women. So while each of the individual writers describing these threesomes wouldn’t necessarily be sexist, it does (I would think) create an environment that probably makes women less likely to read mainstream superhero comics.
Second, this just seems inappropriate for a comic like this one. This isn’t even a “mature readers only” comic. Even if it were, I’m all in favor of mature comics, but a mature comic doesn’t just throw out sexual references for titilation purposes. If you want to do a “mature readers” Justice League comic that explores human sexuality — well, I think it’s probably a bad idea, but a good writer could make it work. But this is just a one-off crude joke.
Third, it is completely out of character for Green Lantern, it is completely out of character for the Huntress, and I don’t know a damned thing about the current version of Lady Blackhawk, but from what I hear, it’s completely out of character for her, too. So now we’re ignoring the nature of the characters in order to shoe-horn in an inappropriate joke that panders to our readers and helps create a climate of sexism.
- August 8, 2009 @ 08:45 PM by Melissa Krause
Chicago Comic-Con ‘09 | Friday
Chicago Comic-Con
7:30 am – Breakfast with Jess at the Embassy’s free buffet. Talked over some plans for a comic we want to do about a jungle girl who gets captured by pirates and has to fight intelligent, evil sharks. Great conversation and the sausage was pretty good too.
10:00 am – The show officially opens for the day. I check back on my press pass and though my printed name tag still hasn’t arrived, the woman offers me a wrist-band that’ll identify me as press and get me into the show. She’s just as nice and helpful as the woman from yesterday and says that I can check back on my badge later.
On the way into the exhibition hall I’m offered a flyer explaining that Michelle Rodriguez and Rhona Mitra will only be signing 750 autographs each and that you really should buy a $45 ticket to make sure you get one.
A few steps later and I’m passing a booth that will take your picture and PhotoShop Hayden Pantierre into it. I’m curious how much they charge for that, but I’m afraid to hear the answer.
- August 7, 2009 @ 11:05 PM by Michael May
The Fifth Color | Man Made Monster
There it is. Bask in its glory. There is so much in so little that this teaser image can be dismissed as cheap marketing, stringing readers along, chasing after a dead horse in the form of the zombie bandwagon, even vaguely familiar. But, the longer you look at it, the more you start to see and if you really think about it, turning Frank Castle into some sort of sewn together undead abomination is simply what’s left, America.
- August 7, 2009 @ 02:55 PM by Carla Hoffman