mike norton
Battlepug brings the cute side of darkness to Dark Horse
It was, gee, just about a year ago when we posted the news that Mike Norton was turning his Conan-meets-canine T-shirt design Battlepug into a webcomic. It’s been a great year for the comic, which uses the framing tale of a naked lady telling a bedtime story to her two dogs as a starting point for a hilariously imaginative tale of a warrior bent on revenge and his two traveling companions, a lunatic and a giant pug. It’s completely incongruous, but it also makes perfect sense, in a weird sort of way: Norton didn’t just throw together a couple of disparate elements, he integrated them into a real story, using the tropes of fantasy literature but pitting his hero against cute characters gone bad, including a giant baby seal, gophers who unite to form a mega-gopher, and an evil Santa figure. A parody would have worn thin pretty quickly; with Battlepug, you keep reading just to see what crazy creature Norton is going to come up with next.
And now it’s coming to print: Dark Horse announced yesterday that they are collecting the story into a print edition, with volume 1 due on July 4. That’s pretty much it for details, but as Norton says, “When I first made the Battlepug T-shirt, people kept asking when the comic was coming out. So, I put out the webcomic and now everybody wants to know when the book is coming out! I guess now people will want to know when the movie is happening?” Not soon enough, Mike. Not soon enough.
- February 2, 2012 @ 09:00 AM by Brigid Alverson
Details emerge on Free Comic Book Day offerings for DC Comics, Image
DC Comics: The New 52
When the 2012 Free Comic Book Day line-up was announced, some folks mistakenly assumed that gold-level offering, DC Comics: The New 52 Special Edition would simply be a reprint of previously published material. As revealed on The Source today, that’s not the case.
The comic will feature “art by legendary illustrator Jim Lee and other top talents” and will “include a new story by New York Times bestselling writer Geoff Johns.” In addition, the book will also include previews of DC’s second wave of New 52 titles, including Batman Incorporated, Dial H, Earth 2, G.I. Combat, The Ravagers and Worlds’ Finest. They also say to stay tuned for “more surprises to come.”
In addition, the Free Comic Book Day site also has more information and a preview from Image 20, the 20th anniversary anthology of “six, all-new original stories promoting upcoming Image Comics titles.” Two of the titles will be Revival by Tim Seeley and Mike Norton, which you can preview on the site, as well as G-Man by Chris Giarrusso. The other stories will be announced at a later date.
The FCBD site also has previews from several other FCBD titles, including Oni’s Yo Gabba Gabba and Bad Medicine titles, and Viz’s Voltron Force, among others, so head over there if you want to check them out early.
Update: Apparently I misread the initial post and thought Jim Lee was drawing the new Geoff Johns story, but based on Brian Hibbs’ response in the comments section below, that may or may not be the case. I’ve updated the post above.
- January 30, 2012 @ 09:30 AM by JK Parkin
Battlepug makes the leap from T-shirt to webcomic
Mike Norton’s webcomic Battlepug launches this week, and it starts off with some mighty nice art and a cute back story, as explained on the About page:
Battlepug: The Web Comic was born out of desperate scramble to appease iFanboy. They contacted Mike to create a signature t-shirt for a new line of merch. However, Mike had been working exclusively with DC Comics for 4 years and had no original properties that he could reveal to the world yet. He drew the image you see above and had Allen color it. And lo, a BATTLEPUG was born!
That’s Allen Passalaqua, who is doing the coloring. Over at iFanboy itself, Paul Montgomery posts his version of the story and a larger version of the art.
- February 15, 2011 @ 09:00 AM by Brigid Alverson
Youth Gone Wild: McKeever, Norton team for Fear Itself: Youth in Revolt
Fear Itself: Youth in Revolt
Writer Sean McKeever and artist Mike Norton, the co-creators of the character Gravity, are getting the band back together for a miniseries that will team their creation with several other of Marvel’s younger heroes, including Firestar and various characters who were featured in Avengers: The Initiative.
Fear Itself: Youth in Revolt, a tie-in to Marvel’s big event, is “a limited series this May that will see former members of the Initiative drafted back into government service as the Marvel Universe begins to fall apart in a spiral of terror,” according to Marvel.com.
“With YOUTH IN REVOLT, we’re taking a look at how a palpable sense of fear and despair can affect the younger generation of heroes,” McKeever told Marvel.com. “In the first issue, they’re deputized by the federal government in anticipation of terrible things to come, but what then? When they’re rushed into action without any strategy, who suffers? When things get out of hand, who will step up and who will crumble? And how well can they stand up to their own fears?”
Some of the other characters mentioned as appearing in the series include Cloud 9, Prodigy, Thor Girl, Komodo, Hardball, Ultragirl and “other members of Marvel’s youth movement” who the creators wouldn’t reveal quite yet.
- February 11, 2011 @ 12:45 PM by JK Parkin
Pirate pugs and David Bowie invade Mike Norton’s 24-Hour Comic
For 24-Hour Comic Day this year, artist Mike Norton visited Challengers Comics + Conversation and created a sequel to the one he did last year. This year’s comic features the return of Baxter, the pug who caught the curse of the pirate and is forced to hobble around on a peg leg. It also features David Bowie, a bunch of goblins and a lot of swear words, so it may not be safe for work.
You can read the entire comic here.
- October 8, 2010 @ 09:30 AM by JK Parkin
Themed sketchbooks: Vito Delsante’s Robin
For my final installment in my spotlight of themed sketchbooks, I turn to comics’ most popular sidekick: Robin. Many men (and a couple of women) have stood at Batman’s side as the boy wonder, and since the character’s inception in 1940 he’s carved a mark in fans … especially comics retailer and comics pro Vito Delsante.
“I’m a fan of Robin the Boy Wonder. Any incarnation. So I have folks a million times more talented than I am draw him for me!” says Delsante. He admits to dressing up as the Boy Wonder himself on two occasions for Halloween, for as he puts it “It’s a great character for kids since it’s ultimate wish fulfillment; you can be a kid and still hang out with Batman? Sign me up!”
- October 4, 2010 @ 11:00 AM by Chris Arrant
Triple playmaker: an interview with Kurt Busiek
Grumpy Old Fan
Although I wrote quite a lot over the past year about DC’s weekly series Trinity, I kept coming up with questions that went outside the scope of my weekly notes. Fortunately, writer Kurt Busiek was nice enough to participate in the following e-mail interview, conducted after Trinity concluded (and after he returned from a well- deserved vacation).
We discussed the nuts and bolts of producing Trinity, its connections to a couple of Busiek’s other DC projects, a few nitpicky items, and what the year-long series leaves behind.
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- June 11, 2009 @ 03:00 PM by Tom Bondurant