2010 October
Robot 666 | Parasomnia, Part Three
Parasomnia
Courtesy of artist Greg Hinkle, we’re pleased to present his horror comic Parasomnia for Robot 666 Week. Be sure to read chapter one and chapter two before reading chapter three, which is written by Jason McNamara and can be found after the jump below.
Here’s what Jason and Greg had to say about this part of the story:
“My contribution to Parasomnia is a little cautionary tale called ‘Baby Talk.’ This was an experiment in writing from someone else’s point of view. I had been finding a lot of Chick Tract comics around this time and wanted to try my own take on the format.
Because the short was appearing in a horror anthology I didn’t have to worry about establishing the genre in my script. Greg did such an incredible job of injecting dread into everyday locations, that when the super natural elements of the story emerge you were already expecting it. I enjoyed working with Greg so much that it inspired me to write more for him. Expect to see our full length graphic novel The Rattler sometime in 2011.”
-Jason McNamara (The Martian Confederacy: From Mars with Love, The Martian Confederacy)
“This story was simultaneously really exciting and extraordinarily disgusting to draw. It was easy enough to find some sewer references, but the rest… trying to research ‘fetus’ on the internet was a horrible, horrible idea. Jason was the only one of the writers to hand me a traditional script, with the page and panel breakdown. It was nice working with a script, since it let me focus more on each panel’s contents, rather than their layout. And I feel like Jason and I have similar tendencies when it comes to comics. We both get kinda bored easily, so he writes to keep himself interested and I’m having a blast trying to keep up.”
-Greg
- October 27, 2010 @ 01:00 PM by JK Parkin
Robot 666 | Exclusive: Marvel Zombies Supreme coming in March 2011
Marvel Zombies Supreme #1
Next March, the Marvel Zombies will rise once again, and this time they’re infecting the Squadron Supreme.
Courtesy of our friends at Marvel Comics, we’re pleased to bring you the first look at Marvel Zombies Supreme, a five-issue series by writer Frank Marraffino (who wrote the Haunted Tank miniseries for Vertigo a couple years back) and the art team of Fernando Blanco, Jason Paz and Chris Chuckry. Michael Komarck provides the covers.
The story revolves around Jill Harper and her “super-crisis special-ops unit,” who investigate an underground research facility where a new virulent zombie strain has infected the Squadron Supreme. It’s up to Harper and her crew to keep the zombies from escaping the facility to devour the rest of the planet.
First launched in 2005, the Marvel Zombies series of miniseries have shown us what happens when you mix superheroes and zombies — it usually ends badly for the heroes and the people they protect. The original series featured a decimated Earth-2149, which was overrun by zombie versions of Spider-Man, Wolverine and other Marvel heroes. The zombies have gone on to appear in the regular Marvel (616) universe, in a crossover with Dynamite’s Army of Darkness movie adaptation and even in a Spider-Ham one-shot.
Check out the full solicitation info and the cover to the second issue, also by Komarck, after the jump.
- October 27, 2010 @ 12:00 PM by JK Parkin
Six by 6 by 6 | Van Jensen’s six favorite horror comics & movies
House by Josh Simmons
Editor’s note: As a part of Robot 666 Week, we welcome guest contributor Van Jensen, writer of Pinocchio, Vampire Slayer and its upcoming sequel.
by Van Jensen
I was on a panel with Steve Niles and Bernie Wrightson to discuss horror comics earlier this year, and I admitted that I didn’t really like horror as a genre. I can’t even see a trailer for Saw MCXVII (or whatever number they’re up to) without feeling repulsed. But Steve and Bernie talked me down from the ledge. The problem isn’t so much with the horror genre, it’s with the trend of comics and movies that use gore as a substitute for real fright. So here’s my list of favorite horror comics and films, and they’re all projects that rely heavily on atmosphere and thrills (the real hallmarks of horror) rather than buckets of blood.
1. House, by Josh Simmons.
Simmons’ debut graphic novel is a relatively simple story, with three teenagers exploring a giant old house in the woods. Things go wrong, which is predictable, but in an unpredictable way. Simmons uses no words through the entire story, but his real accomplishment is utilizing the design of the pages to deliver an increasingly claustrophobic, disorienting and terrifying story.
- October 27, 2010 @ 11:00 AM by JK Parkin
Quote of the day | Kate Beaton on sexist “compliments”
“dear internet, you are well meaning, but I’d like to make a point. when you tell a female creator you like her work so much you want to marry her and have her babies, you’re not doing anyone any favors. first of all, as cute as it sounds in your head, it’s a shitty, disrespectful ‘compliment.’ No one makes comics looking for sexual attention. secondly, by doing so you invite others to critique that person’s works based on their looks, which is uncomfortable, sexist and unfair.”
–Hark, a Vagrant! cartoonist Kate Beaton, on the obliviously sexist compliments with which women creators are bombarded every day. (And yes, she knows these people don’t literally want to marry her and have her babies.)
A useful rule of thumb when discussing the work of a woman artist, positively or negatively, is to ask yourself if what you’re about to say would apply to identical work that just so happened to have been created by a man. If the answer is “no,” then you’re not talking about the work at all.
I was bummed to see that Beaton got a lot of pushback on this topic, too. Even putting issues of sexism aside, refraining from doing something that makes someone else uncomfortable, when there’s no possible way that refraining from it negatively affects you — that’s just simple common decency.
- October 27, 2010 @ 10:30 AM by Sean T. Collins
So should we have Everybody Draw Bill O’Reilly Day?
The cartoon in question
If you follow the national news, you may have heard that Juan Williams was let go from NPR for, NPR claims, a variety of offenses, just the most recent of which was stating on the air that he got nervous when he saw Muslims in Muslim garb on airplanes. This caused a firestorm over at Fox News, where Bill O’Reilly and other commentators complained that NPR was stomping all over Williams’s right to speak his mind.
But when the shoe was on the other foot, O’Reilly did a little stomping of his own: He took offense to his portrayal by political cartoonist Mike Thompson and … well, let’s let Mike tell it:
He then gave out my work e-mail address and instructed his viewers to “let him know what you think.” O’Reilly stressed that his viewers should take the high road in their e-mails to me, which is a little like placing a bowl of Halloween candy in front of kids and telling them not to gorge themselves. O’Reilly’s smart enough to know what would happen.
Yup, the high road was definitely the road not taken. Thompson received over 2,500 e-mails, many of them in all caps, discussing exactly what people thought of him and his cartoon and what they would like to do to him.
- October 27, 2010 @ 10:00 AM by Brigid Alverson
Robot 666 | Fantagraphics gets frightening in a pair of kids’ comics
Something spooky this way comes: Over on the Fantagraphics website, you can find previews and pre-order info for a pair of creepy kids comics from European comics superstars. First up is Toys in the Basement from Blab! mainstay Stéphane Blanquet, about a kid who shows up for a friend’s Halloween party in an embarrassing bunny costume, only to get stranded in the basement with a secret society of very pissed-off toys. Fanta puts it this way: “Imagine Toy Story as reimagined by David Lynch and Charles Burns and you’ll have a good idea of what this story is like. And yes, it is for kids!” Sold!
Next up is The Littlest Pirate King by Epileptic genius David B., adapted from a story by Pierre Mac Orlan. In this tale, a baby is adopted as the mascot for a crew of undead pirates, but things change as he grows up. Fanta notes that this will be David B.’s first full-color graphic novel to be released in English, and that alone makes it worth the price of admission even if you don’t enjoy pirate skeletons, in which case I don’t wanna know you anyway. All-ages meets All Hallow’s Eve!
- October 27, 2010 @ 09:30 AM by Sean T. Collins
Summary and response: Shaenon Garrity sees the future
This is the future: Writer Molly McIsaac reads Hellboy on Women Read Comics in Public Day
Web comics creator and manga editor Shaenon Garrity has penned a ten-point manifesto on comics at comiXology that is well worth a read. I’ll summarize her ten points here for brevity, but you should really go over and read Shaenon’s explanations, as she expands on every point:
1. Newspaper comics are dead: I don’t think this comes as a surprise to anyone. Most of their creators are dead as well.
2. Monthly comic books are dead: Shaenon chalks this up to the deficiencies in the direct market.
3. Format is infinitely mutable: It’s all comics, and people will read it in the format that suits them.
4. The audience is infinitely fragmented: When you take the wider view, lots of people are reading different types of comics, and they no longer fit the standard stereotypes. ” Open the discussion to webcomics, and the audience fragments all the way down to the tip of the long tail; on the Internet, everyone is famous for fifteen people.”
- October 27, 2010 @ 09:00 AM by Brigid Alverson
Busiek offers a glimpse at The Witchlands
The Witchlands
Here’s one I’ve personally been waiting for … writer Kurt Busiek previews his The Witchlands project over on his blog, offering a look at the cover by Zachary Baldus and some of the interior art by Conner Willumsen.
The project was first announced in San Diego in 2009 at the WildStorm panel and was originally titled Kurt Busiek’s American Gothic. With WildStorm going away, he told Heidi at The Beat that it will likely be coming from somewhere else within DC.
Be sure to click on over to his blog to see Willumsen’s interior art.
- October 27, 2010 @ 08:30 AM by JK Parkin
Comics A.M. | The comics Internet in two minutes
Nook Color
Digital publishing | As expected, Barnes & Noble on Tuesday unveiled its Nook Color e-book reader, priced at $249. The 7-inch LCD touch tablet runs on the Android 2.1 operating system, and offers web browsing, audio and video playback, and basic games (CNET notes that Barnes & Noble is pushing the device as a “reader’s tablet”). The device ships on Nov. 19. [CNET, Salon, paidContent]
Internet | PayPal has announced its much-anticipated micropayments system, with Facebook and a number of other websites lining up behind it. PayPal describes the new product, available later this year, as an “in-context, frictionless payment solution that lets consumers pay for digital goods and content in as little as two clicks, without ever having to leave a publisher’s game, news, music, video or media site.” Scott McCloud is quick out of the gate with reaction: “This is so close, in almost every respect, to what we were asking for over a decade ago, it’s almost eerie. They’re even using the same language to describe it.” [TechCrunch]
- October 27, 2010 @ 07:54 AM by Kevin Melrose
Robot 666 | Putting the ‘goth’ back in Gotham with Frazer Irving
from Batman & Robin #14 by Frazer Irving
Over on the CBR mothership, Batman & Robin artist Frazer Irving stops by The Bat Signal column to talk to Kiel Phegley about, among other things, his work with Bat-maestro Grant Morrison. Naturally, Irving dishes on some of the darker moments he’s drawn for the Dark Knight and his associates:
- October 27, 2010 @ 06:00 AM by Sean T. Collins
Food or Comics? | This week’s comics on a budget
Beasts of Burden/Hellboy
If it’s Tuesday, it must be time for Food or Comics?, where every week some of the Robot 6 crew talk about what comics we’d buy if we were subject to certain spending limits — $15 and $30. We also talk about what we’d buy if we had extra money to spend on what we call our “Splurge” item. Check out Diamond’s release list to see what arrives in comic shops this week,then play along in our comments section.
Michael May
If I had $15:
I’d start with the Beasts of Burden/Hellboy one-shot ($3.50). I’m not sure how this mash-up of my favorite monster hunters is going to work – the tones are so completely different – but I’m dying to find out. After that, I’d add Billy the Kid’s Old Time Oddities and the Ghastly Fiend of London #2 ($3.99). In real life, I’m waiting for the collection, but I loved the first Old Time Oddities mini-series so much that I’m certain to enjoy this one too. I’d follow that up with a couple of series I’m curious about featuring favorite heroes of mine: Wonder Woman #604 ($2.99) and Zatanna #6 ($2.99). Total: $13.47.
- October 26, 2010 @ 04:00 PM by JK Parkin
The Middle Ground #26: Filled With An Unknown Terror!
When it comes to horror comics, there are comics that unsettle and comics that disturb, and there are those that just fail to do anything other than ellicit a shrug and a yawn and make you want to read something else. But there’s only ever been one comic that’s stuck with me as actually scary, even though it really shouldn’t have been the case, and that’s The Thirteenth Floor.
The Thirteenth Floor was a fairly long-lived British strip – it survived the cancellation of its original home, which either speaks to the possibility that the strip had similar responses from other readers, or that nothing else was really happening at the time – that came from the minds of John Wagner and Alan Grant (writing under a pen name), in full-on “stealing ideas and making them palatable for kids’ comics” mode (It wasn’t a 2000AD strip, but instead got started in 1984′s Scream, a horror comic from the same publishers). Really, what made the ten-year-old me scared of the strip wasn’t actually the story itself, but the backstory to it. I’ll explain. Continue Reading »
- October 26, 2010 @ 03:00 PM by Graeme McMillan
Robot 666 | A first look at the Mignolaverse titles for next February
Next February brings the second issues of two titles from the “Mignolaverse” that we first showed you last month — B.P.R.D.: Hell on Earth: Gods and Hellboy: The Sleeping and the Dead. And courtesy of our devilish friends at Dark Horse, we’re pleased to give you a first look at the covers and solicitations for those issues. Ryan Sook! Mike Mignola! Monsters! Volcanoes! Coffins! Floating creatures of death! Check out the complete covers and the solicitation text after the jump.
- October 26, 2010 @ 02:00 PM by JK Parkin
Robot 666 | Parasomnia, Part Two
Parasomnia
As we mentioned yesterday, we’re pleased to present Parasomnia by Greg Hinkle and a host of writers as a part of Robot 666 Week. Start off by reading part one, then come back here and read the second chapter.
Here’s what Greg and Storm, the writer of the second chapter, had to say about it:
“When I was writing Playing House, I was thinking about that old adage of “be careful what you wish for, because you might just get it.” As the ideas for how I would work with that theme coalesced, I found myself with one determined girl, a couple of dolls and a whole lot of–Oops! I almost spoiled it. It suffices to say that manipulating forces (or others) for your own gain is never a good idea.
Another goal of mine while working on this story was to have as few words as possible. I love writing dialogue (I grew up worshiping Chris Claremont after all), but I challenged myself to make the art carry the action. Greg’s rendition of the little girl and her dolls is even better than I envisioned (I had drawn very loose thumbnails) and his sense of drama permeates every panel. He did a remarkable job in bringing this story to life. I hope you enjoy it!”
~STORM
“This story was a lot of fun. STORM didn’t put much dialogue in his story, and (blindly) trusted in my art to get the point across. I love telling silent stories and I’m pretty happy with the results. Unlike the last chapter’s dream, this story plays with our sleeping girl’s memories a bit. We see a younger aspect of herself, and visit a more specific event that hits a little closer to home.”
-Greg
Check out the story after the jump.
- October 26, 2010 @ 01:00 PM by JK Parkin
Chew on this: Would you pay $13,000 for the first issue of the hit series?
The $13,000 copy of Chew #1?
Chew, the action-comedy series by John Layman and Rob Guillory, has been one of the surprise hits of the past year, earning critical acclaim, Eisner and Harvey awards, spots on The New York Times bestseller list, and the attention of Hollywood.
So you might expect the speculator market to take interest in the quirky comic, which centers on police detective turned FDA agent Tony Chu, a cibopath who receives psychic impressions from whatever he eats. But does that interest amount to, say, $13,000? For one issue?
Guillory points this morning to an eBay auction for a Certified Guaranty Company-graded 10.0 copy of Chew #1 — it’s billed as “the ONLY one” — for a starting bid of $3,500. Or you could buy it now for a mere $12,999.
“Will this sell?” Guillory asked. “WILL IT?” He goes on to call the “Buy It Now” price “a steal.”
When asked on Twitter whether the issue is worth that much, Guillory responded, “As co-creator and artist of the book, I can (without bias) say YES. YES, IT IS.”
If you have an extra $13,000 burning a hole in your pocket, take note: The auction ends on Saturday. Chew #15, priced at just $2.99, is set for release on Nov. 10.
- October 26, 2010 @ 12:00 PM by Kevin Melrose