2009 December
Indy Comic Book Week preview: Dusk one-shot
Dusk
David Doub‘s Dusk one-shot joins Venger, Carnivale DeRobotique and many more indy comic books in select shops next week, as a part of Indy Comic Book Week.
“Eve’s life is a living hell of her own choosing,” Doub says about the story. “She struggles to survive in a dark world of magic and horror, all in an attempt to please her vampire master. Now Eve has crossed a line and and innocents have been harmed. This hasn’t gone unnoticed by a well meaning cabal of occultist that’s mandate is to police the occult world. What will happen when these two forces clash? Is there ever a ‘winner’ in the supernatural underworld of Dusk?”
If you have a comic book that will be in shops the week of Dec. 30 and would like to send us a few pages as a preview, drop me an email. Be sure to include all the pertinent information, like price, where it’ll be sold and all that good stuff.
Find out where to buy Dusk on Dec. 30 and check out some additional preview pages pages after the jump.
- December 21, 2009 @ 11:30 AM by JK Parkin
Paul Dini’s Jingle Belle returns as webcomic
Jingle Belle
Quick Stop Entertainment is hosting a webcomic starring Paul Dini’s Jingle Belle; the first one went up last week, and a Christmas Eve story will be posted Thursday. Dini also says Belle will return in 2010 with “more winter fun.”
- December 21, 2009 @ 11:00 AM by JK Parkin
I blame high cover prices (or possibly crystal meth)
Crime Does Not Pay #102
Caught between a worsening economy and rising prices, three comic-book fans in Chico, California, have apparently turned to … dun-dun-dun … a life of crime.
Police say the masked men, one of whom may have been armed, barged into into a house Thursday night, demanding comic books and cash from the three female occupants. When the women responded that they didn’t have cash or comics, the suspects made a third request: marijuana.
In the end, they settled for a $5 bill, which I guess would allow them to buy a comic to share among themselves.
The three suspects could face first-degree robbery charges with an enhanced sentence for the use of a firearm.
- December 21, 2009 @ 10:30 AM by Kevin Melrose
Stop the presses, Doop returns!
Guess who's back?
CBR posted some of Marvel’s advance solicits for next March, and it looks like we’ve all got a good reason to buy multiple copies of Nation X #4 … the return of Doop! The little green guy is front and center on the cover for the book, and the creative team for the anthology series lists both Peter Milligan and Mike Allred, who introduced us to Doop during their wild ride on X-Force and X-Statix. Merry Christmas, and God bless us, every one.
- December 21, 2009 @ 10:00 AM by JK Parkin
The Comics Reporter & The Cool Kids Table look back on the ’00s
from Blankets by Craig Thompson
As 2009 draws to a close we’re practically awash in Best Comics of the Year and/or Decade lists. But when it comes to breaking down the books that made a difference this decade, there’s more than one way to skin a cat, and a pair of sites have developed novel approaches to the traditional decade-ender.
First up is Tom Spurgeon, The Comics Reporter. This year he’s aiming his annual Holiday Interview Series squarely at “emblematic” books from 2000-2009 — “by which we mean favorite, representative or just plain great” — by hosting discussions with a series of critics, each one focusing on one particular book. So far he’s tackled Mat Brinkman’s monster-mash Multiforce with writer/artist/critic/bon vivant Frank Santoro, and Craig Thompson’s rapturous romance ‘n’ religion memoir Blankets with me. Further installments will roll out on (I believe) a daily basis until the New Year. If you’re the sort of person who loves to really dig into what makes a great graphic novel tick, these are for you.
Next we have Marvel’s Ben Morse, DC’s Rickey Purdin, and CBR’s own Kiel Phegley, who collectively park their online presence at The Cool Kids Table. In their ongoing look back entitled “Our Comics Decade,” the trio take a look at one comic per year that impacted their view of the medium. So far they’ve covered 2000, 2001, and 2002, and recounted their experiences with books ranging from Scott Lobdell’s Uncanny X-Men to Jeffrey Brown’s Clumsy. Personal and aesthetic history have a tendency to mix and match in unexpected and interesting ways, and it’s fascinating to watch these guys spill the beans on how it happened in their lives in such a methodical way.
So go, click the links and curl up with (a good post on) a good book…
- December 21, 2009 @ 09:30 AM by Sean T. Collins
Not comics: Captain EO returns to Disneyland
Captain EO
Speaking of Disney, they announced on their Disney Parks Blog that Captain EO, the 3-D film starring Michael Jackson and directed by Francis Ford Coppola, will return to Disneyland in February for a limited engagement.
There was a lot of buzz back in September about the movie potentially returning to the park. Attendees at the D23 convention expected an announcement during the theme park presentation, based on the buzz we heard in the audience, and they were disappointed when that didn’t happen.
Captain EO played at Disneyland from 1986 to 1997, when it was replaced by Honey I Shrunk the Audience. There’s no word yet on how long the “limited engagement” will run.
- December 21, 2009 @ 09:15 AM by JK Parkin
Straight for the art | Disney Underground
"Flight from Forest" by Regina Alphonso
From Marvel’s Strange Tales to Bongo’s Simpsons Treehouse of Horror, it seems everyone wants a little avant-garde excitement to spice up their beloved cartoon icons these days. Disney turns out to be no exception: The House of Mouse has commissioned a gaggle of artists from the pop-surrealism scene to create fancy-pants prints reinterpreting some of Disney’s classic characters. The results, called “Disney Underground,” are available for purchase at such retailers as Entertainment Earth and Acme Archives Direct. Mirror, mirror on the wall, who’s the weirdest of them all? Click the links to decide for yourself…
(Via Topless Robot and Stitch Kingdom)
- December 21, 2009 @ 08:45 AM by Sean T. Collins
Straight for the art | Danny Hellman’s Mad Men
Mad Men by Danny Hellman
Don Draper, Joan Holloway and the rest of the Mad Men crew grace the cover of the Boston Phoenix‘s Christmas issue, thanks to artist Danny Hellman. Hellman talks about the process for creating the cover over on his blog. There are a lot of fun little references here, like the mistletoe over Peggy, as that weasel Peter Campbell looks at her longingly, and Harry ensuring their clients’ commercials are shown on TV. Fun stuff.
- December 21, 2009 @ 08:00 AM by JK Parkin
Another roundup of best-of lists
Irredeemable, Vol. 1
You didn’t think everyone was finished with their best-of (and wort-of) lists, did you?
• David Mazzucchelli’s Asterios Polyp, R. Crumb’s The Book of Genesis Illustrated and Apostolos Doxiadis and Christos H. Papadimitriou’s Logicomix: An Epic Search for Truth all make the San Francisco Chronicle’s list of the best books of 2009.
• Writing for The Japan Times, critic David Cozy names Yoshihiro Tatsumi’s A Drifting Life among the best books of the year.
• Matt Price, features editor and comics blogger for The Oklahoman, returns for a rundown of the best periodical comics of 2009. Among them: The Unwritten, by Mike Carey and Peter Gross; Irredeemable, by Mark Waid and Peter Krause; and Resurrection, by Marc Guggenheim and Justin Greenwood.
• At our sibling blog Comics Should Be Good, Brian Cronin picks his Top 10 comics of the year, including Roger Langridge’s The Muppet Show and Chris Onstad’s Achewood.
• At Forbidden Planet International, writer Paul Cornell and writer/editor David Bishop talk about their favorite comics (and other entertainment) of the year.
• At Reverse Direction, John Seven lists the best graphic novels of the decade, including Emmanuel Guibert’s Alan’s War, Jeff Lemire’s Essex County Trilogy and Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home.
• At io9.com, Graeme McMillan takes a year-by-year look at the most important comic-book events of the decade.
• Blogger David Harper casts a wide net for his best of 2009, covering categories like best cover, best webcomic, best story arc and best writer.
• Comics Alliance counts down the 15 worst comics of the decade.
• At Techland, Lev Grossman names the best characters of the decade, including Roast Beef from Achewood and Rick from The Walking Dead.
- December 21, 2009 @ 07:00 AM by Kevin Melrose
Breaking down the Arkham Asylum 2 trailer
I pulled Batman: Arkham Asylum out again a couple of weeks ago, so I could play through it one more time and focus more on solving all of the Riddler’s riddles that are sprinkled throughout the game. The first time I played through it, I didn’t pay as much attention to them, as my only concern was saving Gotham from the Joker, but the second time through was a bit more leisurely and fun. If you haven’t played the game (and you should — it’s my favorite game of the year), the riddles revolve around various Bat-related characters who aren’t in the game … the riddles send you looking for Mr. Freeze’s ice-coated cell, Hugo Strange’s transfer papers and Penguin’s umbrella, for example.
With all these references to other Bat-villains in the game, it’s no surprise that a few Easter eggs found their way into the Arkham Asylum 2 trailer that came out earlier this month. Gametrailers.com’s Pop Block, which is kind of like VH1′s Pop Up Videos show, points out some of these references in the trailer below. Keep an eye out for the Penguin’s Iceberg Lounge, a Sionus sign and a suspicious-looking black cat …
- December 20, 2009 @ 10:00 PM by JK Parkin
What Are You Reading?
The Umbrella Academy: Dallas
Welcome to another round of What Are You Reading. Our guest this week is blogger and critic Alan David Doane, who among many other places can be found at the swell new group blog Trouble With Comics.
We’ll be taking a break from talking about comics next Sunday, as it’s a holiday weekend and all, but for now, click on the link to find out what we’re currently reading.
- December 20, 2009 @ 02:00 PM by Chris Mautner
Your Mileage May Vary: Captain America Reborn #5
So Captain America: Reborn #5 came out this past week, and the miniseries is approaching its end.
Naturally, the linked articles and quotes contain spoilers.
- December 19, 2009 @ 08:53 PM by Melissa Krause
Zudist Colony: Talking to December’s Zuda Contestants
Every month, Zuda Comics hosts an online competition in which ten webcomics teams provide eight pages each of their comics, and readers vote on the winner. And every month we here at Robot 6 ask all ten creators the same five questions, in order to get a little more insight into both the comics and the creators.
I’m guest hosting this month, so JK can have a bit of holiday time off. So, on with the questions!
- December 19, 2009 @ 08:04 AM by Brigid Alverson
The Fifth Color – Is This the Real Life? Is This Just Fantasy?
My English teacher in high school taught me that ‘cavalier poetry’ was described at it’s time as so effortless and easy in its adventurous style as to be ‘written while falling off a horse’. This phrase stuck with me throughout the years and, little did I know, that it would come back once again to describe Brian Michael Bendis.
Some days, I wonder if DC fans feel this same way about Geoff Johns or Grant Morrison, that every time you open your mouth the name has to follow; it’s not that you’re centered on their work it’s that their work is so central to everything you read…
Anyhoo, Bendis. Bendis Bendis Bendis. Looking at the Sentry as he was created and written about way back in 2000 (I know! I’m surprised, too.) up to now, where Dark Avengers #12 has left us, it seems we’re at this great chasm between original and highly introspective concept and clearly repetitive character. Since ‘joining’ the New Avengers or Mighty Avengers (man, he’s really been on all three?), the Sentry has been out of place or out of mind; he’s ripped and tossed his way through some of Earth’s Mightiest Heroes’ dangerous and world-threatening villains like so many discarded gum wrappers, enough to where throwing your enemy into the sun is now an in-character in-joke. Or he’s flown past terribly human Hawkeye as he uses a glass cutter to break into the Avengers’ Tower. Or he’s been defeated by logic loops. Or he’s handily explained as ‘crazy’ and discarded off panel to explain his convenient absence.
Is this just poor planning on behalf of a man trying to tell a larger story than the characters that shape it? Or is Mr. Bendis truly writing poetry while falling off his horse?
(WARNING: Yes, I’m going to drop a fairly decent bombshell from Dark Avengers #12. Better you hear it from a real writer rather than me, so go grab a copy and learn first hand!)
Continue Reading »
- December 18, 2009 @ 04:10 PM by Carla Hoffman
Indy Comic Book Week preview: The Venger: Dead Man Rising #2
Venger: Dead Man Rising
Matt Spatola’s The Venger: Dead Man Rising is one of several books that will be available during Indy Comic Book Week, i.e. on Dec. 30, at select stores.
“The second issue is out now and will be available for purchase, as well as the first issue, at several of the Indy Comic Book Week supporting stores including Brain Storm Comics in Chicago and others that are still being finalized,” Spatola said. “The series is created and written by me, with art in issue 2 by Tim Baskin. The first issue featured art by Jason Ossman.”
Solicitation information and a preview of the first five pages can be found after the jump.
If you have a comic book that will be in shops the week of Dec. 30 and would like to send us a few pages as a preview, drop me an email. Be sure to include all the pertinent information, like price, where it’ll be sold and all that good stuff.
- December 18, 2009 @ 02:25 PM by JK Parkin