Comic Book Resources

Gorillas Riding Dinosaurs: The Cowl, Super Maxi-Pad Girl, and the return of Rooster Jack

With the convention season wrapping up, I'm taking a break from longer graphic novels this week to finish up some shorter works that I've picked up at recent cons.

The Cowl

The Cowl
Written by Brian Azzarello; Illustrated by Benito Gallego
Based on characters created by Joseph Finder
JosephFinder.com; Free

One of the few highlights of this year's WizardWorld Chicago Comic-Con was Crimespree Magazine's booth and the focus on crime comics that it brought to the show. On one of my many trips to the booth I got handed a superhero mini-comic called The Cowl that was written by Brian Azzarello. The connection to crime fiction - other than Azarrello - is that it's a tie-in to Joseph Finder's most recent thriller, Vanished. Not an adaptation of Vanished, but a real version of a fictional comic created by one of the novel's characters.

It's only eight pages and mostly a teaser, so it's tough to review, but it serves it's function as a teaser very well. In some of the material that came with the comic, Finder talks about how he came up with the idea and asked a friend at DC for artist recommendations. After describing the style of art he wanted, Finder learned that he was looking for a modern-day John Buscema and was directed towards Benito Gallego. It was a good lead. I don't know if Gallego's intentionally trying to evoke Buscema for this project or if that's his usual style, but he does a fine job in the way he draws anatomy, poses his characters, and delivers action.

Even though the comic is essentially an ad for Vanished, Azzarello isn't wasted on it. The Cowl could have been - probably should have been, by all rights - a disposable superhero cliché. Certainly his costume is uninspired. But Azzarello gives him a couple of moments that are so cool - and a villain who's so immediately wicked and horrifying - that you can't help but hope to see him succeed. Only that's when you hit the cliffhanger and realize you're gonna have to read the novel. Nicely done.

Super Maxi-Pad Girl and Rooster Jack await you after the break.

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Gorillas Riding Dinosaurs: What Looks Good for December

Time again for our monthly trip through Previews looking for interesting new adventure comics.

Chimichanga

Albatross Exploding Funny Book

Chimichanga #1 - First of all, the title makes me hungry. Second of all, it's by Eric Powell. Third of all, it has a little bearded girl on the cover and she's holding the enormous, clawed hand of some kind of monster. I don't know why Dark Horse isn't publishing this; I'm just glad it exists.

Alterna

Adam Wreck and the Kalosian Space Pirates - Yeah, they pretty much had me with "space pirates." But I'll also take "shipwrecked on a strange planet filled with stranger alien creatures."

The Swiss Family Robinson

Campfire

The Swiss Family Robinson - Speaking of shipwrecks, I'm not sure how well this story will translate into comic form, but the pages from this preview are promising. The island looks inviting and I'm already jealous of the treehouse from just the little I can see on the front cover. And as everyone knows, the primary goal of any Swiss Family Robinson adaptation should be to make you jealous of the treehouse.

A Christmas Carol - The art's a little less even on this one, but I quite like the way Naresh Kumar draws the three spirits. Looks better than the Robert Zemeckis adaptation anyway. Ultimately though, my curiosity about it is related to an unnatural fascination with Dickens' original story and the choices people make when adapting it.

Martians, dinosaurs, talking gorillas, and more space pirates after the break.

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Straight for the art | John Pham's Sublife

Fantagraphics shows off a page from John Pham's forthcoming second volume of Sublife.

Straight for the art | Salgood Sam's Dream Life

Dream Life

Artist Salgood Sam shares some pages from a project called Dream Life he's working on. You can read more about the project here.

Six things an independent comics fan should do at SDCC

This was hard. Screw that, it was really hard.

When I first started thinking about this list I figured that I’d find maybe a couple of interesting topic-focused panels and then have to pad the rest of the list with booth visits and a few publisher panels. After all, with San Diego’s increasingly becoming a Pop Media Con, how much room is still left for talking about comics? Well, quite a bit actually.

So much so that I’ve had to leave out a lot of good stuff in order to get this list down to six things. In fact, my original plan was to make a more comprehensive list that divided a lot more stuff into six general categories. The result was extremely busy though and some of the things I was most excited by got lost in the crowd. This then, is the really, really good stuff.

Crime!

1) Attend a panel on crime comics. Max Allan Collins, Darwyn Cooke, Greg Rucka, and Steve Lieber will be talking about the resurrection of the crime genre in comics on Thursday from 2:00 – 3:00 pm (Room 5AB). If they’d also gotten Ed Brubaker and Brian Azzarello, my head would’ve exploded.

2) Welcome Mike Mignola back to Hellboy. Mike Mignola’s Hellboy panels have been fairly movie-focused the last few years, but with no new film in sight and especially with Mignola’s returning to art duties on the series next year, Saturday’s panel (4:30 – 5:30 pm in Room 4) with editor Scott Allie should be the most exciting for comics fans that these have been in a long time.

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Gorillas Riding Dinosaurs: All-Action Dracula

All-Action Classics, Vol. 1: Dracula

All-Action Classics, Volume 1: Dracula
Written by Michael Mucci; Illustrated by Ben Caldwell
Sterling; $6.95

Adapting classic literature for a younger audience is tricky business. I mean, any kind of adaptation has its challenges, but taking a novel intended for adults of a century or two ago and making it exciting for modern kids has to be daunting as hell. Especially when that novel is Dracula, which has a difficult narrative style with all those journal entries and spends a lot of time building dread by prolonging events. It's also violent and bloody.

I'm curious to see how Dynamite's Complete Dracula handles the slower parts of the story. And how much use they'll make of captions as opposed to letting dialogue and images tell the story. That's got to be a hard job and Dynamite has the advantage of targeting an adult audience with presumably longer attention spans. Plus, lots of blood will be welcomed by grown-up vampire fans.

Not that younger readers don't also appreciate lots of blood, but I imagine that some of their parents aren't quite as excited about their being exposed to it. Michael Mucci and Ben Caldwell had some hard choices to make. Fortunately, they made all the right decisions and have created an adaptation that's perfect for their audience - including grown-ups in the mood for a fast-paced, exciting version of Bram Stoker's story.

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Robot Review: Chicken with Plums

Chicken with Plums

Chicken with Plums
Written and Illustrated by Marjane Satrapi
Pantheon; $12.95

Chicken with Plums is a misleading title for a murder mystery, but it’s especially appropriate for the one Marjane Satrapi has created. Chicken with Death or Murder with Plums: then you know what you’re getting into. Satrapi sneaks up on you though. You think you’re reading a slice-of-life story about her great-uncle and then you realize that he’s about to die and you’ve got no idea why. The twist that he’s going to kill himself makes it that much more intriguing.

Nasser Ali Khan is a great musician in Iran, but when his wife destroys his tar in the latest of a series of escalating arguments, his efforts to replace the beloved instrument are fruitless. In despair, he takes to his bed and gives up on life, declaring that he's going to die in a week, presumably from starvation since he won't eat. He won't even take his favorite meal (you only get one guess as to what that is), which I guess represents the joy of life that Nasser Ali Khan has now turned his back on.

It's such an implausible scenario, but Satrapi pulls the reader along with a strong characters, a delightful voice, and subtle clues that there's more to Nasser Ali Khan's anguish than a broken frickin tar. Why is he really killing himself? There's the mystery.

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Gorillas Riding Dinosaurs: Age of Bronze, Volume 2

Age of Bronze, Volume 2: Sacrifice

Age of Bronze, Volume 2: Sacrifice
Written and Illustrated by Eric Shanower
Image; $19.95

The second installment of Age of Bronze wasn’t at all what I expected. Volume One ended with a thousand (or so) Grecian ships sailing towards Troy, so I fully anticipated the battle to begin in Volume Two. Not so. But rather than allowing me to become frustrated at the delay, Eric Shanower used his 200-plus pages to build tension, keeping me completely immersed in the story the whole time. More so even than in the first collection.

Sacrifice begins with Agamemnon’s fleet headed toward Troy with young Achilles and his warriors leading the way. But things go horribly wrong when Achilles spots shore too early, over-eagerly lands the fleet, and attacks Troy’s southern neighbor Mysia by mistake. The people of Mysia, thinking they’re being menaced by pirates, fight back and are no slouches. Even one of the King’s wives is a former warrior-princess and pirate-fighter. Though – in true comic book fashion – both sides eventually realize that they’re not actually enemies, they also both experience massive casualties. The Greeks are hit hard enough that they’re forced to return home for reinforcements. And with winter coming, they won’t be able to start for Troy again for at least another year.

I have to admit I was disappointed when Agamemnon decided to lead his fleet back home, but Shanower keeps things moving in a variety of ways. One of the best things about a story this epic is that there are multiple plots to bounce between, so while the Greeks are sailing Shanower can cut to Troy and let us see how Helen – just arrived with her new husband Paris – is being received.

Xena, horror, and more of that brat Achilles below the jump.

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Captain Blood and the Peril of Indie Comics

Matthew Shepherd, Michael Shoyket and David Hedgecock rework a few pages from Captain Blood to address the problems independent comics have with distribution, ultimately asking readers to "demand more from comics." And, in one panel, not to download comics ... which seemed very unpirate-like.

Gorillas Riding Dinosaurs: Robot 13 and a Luchador

Strongman

Strongman
Written by Charles Soule; Illustrated by Allen Gladfelter
SLG; $9.95

I said in the weekend’s What Are You Reading that I wasn’t sure what to make of the lucha libre genre. “I can easily embrace the sillier aspects of it,” I said, “but it’s off-putting to me that people in the stories always seem to take the luchadors so seriously. We’re asked to believe that the ridiculous masks are badges of honor that command respect. Strongman plays around with that idea and I appreciate that about it.”

Having finished the book, I’m not sure that “plays around with” is the right verb. What Strongman seems to do is acknowledge the irony of the concept, but ends up defending it. As writer Charles Soule says in the press release for the book, “The real-life luchadors were incredible, larger-than-life figures. They were basically real-world superheroes – many of them never took their masks off in public. These people were big deals. And I thought a story that played with their legend a bit, while remaining respectful could be something special.” Okay, so Soule uses “played with” too. Maybe that is what he’s doing. I’m not the best person to judge.

As an outsider to the lucha libre world, I see movie titles like Mil Máscaras vs. the Aztec Mummy and Santo vs. the Vampire Women and I think, “Awesome!” I’m not however thinking about how much I respect El Santo and Mil Máscaras. I mean, no more than I respect Indiana Jones or Batman.

More plus Robot 13 below the cut.

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Gorillas Riding Dinosaurs: The Apocalipstix

The Apocalipstix

The Apocalipstix, Volume 1
Written by Ray Fawkes; Illustrated by Cameron Stewart
Oni; $11.95

I first encountered the world’s greatest post-apocalyptic band in the Rumble Royale anthology from Canada’s Royal Academy of Illustration and Design. There was a Sam Hiti story in it I wanted, but it also introduced me to The Apocalipstix (and Chip Zdarsky, but that’s another story). It’s well worth tracking down.

Much easier to get is Oni’s publication of the further adventures of The Apocalipstix. The band is sort of the Mad Max version of Josie and the Pussycats. The world has ended in nuclear fire, but that’s not stopping Mandy, Dot, and Meg from going on tour. The End-of-the-World Tour, they call it. The book is made up of three stories, each of which more or less stands on its own, but are all loosely tied together by the context of the girls’ tour.

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Six by 6 | Six questions with Robot 13 writer Thomas Hall

Robot 13 cover

Writer Thomas Hall and artist Daniel Bradford have worked together since 2003, and in a few short weeks they'll publish a new title that really caught my eye when I received an email about it. Making its debut at the 2009 MoCCA Festival, which is presented every year by the Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art in New York, is the first issue of Robot 13. It's the story of an amnesiac robot who fights mythological creatures of destruction.

With a title like that, how could I not do an interview with Hall to find out more about Robot 13?

JK: Thanks for taking the time to chat with me. Can you give us a little bit of info on your background, like how you got into comics and when you decided you wanted to write them?

Tom: As far back as I can remember, I have always loved comics. Like a lot of kids, the first comics I ever had were given to me- some Archies, a few Legion of Superheroes books and a few Marvel books. One that I was obsessed with was an issue of the Incredible Hulk by John Buscema. I was three, and I stared at that thing all the time, and I don't know to this day exactly why. My dad read it to me, and I asked him how he knew what everyone was saying. He explained word balloons to me, and being three and naive, I asked him where the words came from. When he told me that it was someone's job to write comics, even at three it just blew my mind. From that point on, I wanted to be a writer of some kind.

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Gorillas Riding Dinosaurs: Charlatan and the Jinjurverse

Charlatan: Preludes

Charlatan: Preludes
Written by Gil Lawson; Illustrated by Eliseu Gouveia
General Jinjur; $14.95

I don’t think I’m a superhero fan anymore. Not as a genre anyway. I still have my favorite Marvel and DC characters, but I’m fond of them because I grew up with them and want to keep reading about them. By themselves, costumed heroes aren’t enough to get me immediately interested in a new story. In fact, whenever I hear about a new superhero comic from a new publisher, I have a hard time paying attention. If the word “universe” is mentioned, I pretty much write it off. Isn’t it conventional wisdom by now that new superhero universes are an automatic fail anyway? No one but Marvel and DC has really been able to sustain one for very long.

I’m doubtful that the Charlatan universe (called the Jinjurverse by its creators) is going to be the one to break that pattern. There’s reason for hope in this first volume, Preludes, but history is against it and the book is flawed enough to make me skeptical about its chance of success. That’s too bad in a way, because there are also some very nice things about Preludes that make me want to see it do well.

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Gorillas Riding Dinosaurs: Warlord of Io

Warlord of Io and Other Stories

Warlord of Io
Written and Illustrated by James Turner
SLG; $3.95

Writers like Jeff Parker, Matt Fraction, Fred Van Lente, and Paul Tobin rightfully deserve to be at the top of the People Who Make Awesome list, but they get something of an advantage by being able to throw stuff like the Hulk or MODOK or Galactus into their stories. Not that it's an unfair advantage. These guys got to play with Stan Lee and Jack Kirby's toys by first showing what they could do with the stuff in their own rooms. But right up there with them has to be James Turner.

He may not have the exposure of those other guys, but he's no less Rip-Your-Brain-Out-Of-Your-Head-Because-You-Won't-Need-It-Anymore-After-This Awesome. If you've read Rex Libris, you know what I'm talking about, but baby he was just getting warmed up there. Warlord of Io and Other Stories has five stories in it and they're all fantastic.

Half of it is the first chapter of the "Warlord of Io" story. I thought this was going to be a self-contained one-shot, but I'm happy to be wrong about that because I really want to read more of it. It's about a boy named Zing who just wants to be a rock star, but unfortunately has to take over ruling the moon-world when his father Emperor Zoz suddenly decides to retire to the Pleasure Domes of Zur with Enormous Breasted Space Amazons in Zero Gravity. What's a poor little Crown Prince to do?

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This weekend, it's SPACE in Ohio

SPACE

This coming weekend the Small Press & Alternative Comics Expo, or SPACE, blasts off at the Aladdin Shrine Complex in Columbus, Ohio. Admission is $5 a day or $8 for both Saturday and Sunday.

About 150 indie creators will be on hand to sell their comics and original art, including Eisner nominee Nate Powell (Swallow Me Whole), Ryan Claytor (And Then One Day), Jay Hosler (Optical Allusions) and Matt Feazell (Cynicalman). On Saturday, Carol Tyler (Late Bloomer, Weirdo) will display some of her work from her upcoming book You’ll Never Know Book One: A Good and Decent Man. The Ohio State University Cartoon Library and Museum will host a reception on Friday night to kick off the weekend and will feature original artwork from Bill Watterson, Jeff Smith and P. Craig Russell.

For more information on panels and other events related to th show, check out the official SPACE blog.