Comic Book Resources

SDCC '09 | BOOM! Studios exclusives, plus signing and panel schedule

BOOM! Studios has several SDCC exclusives this year, including hardcover collections of their recent Incredibles, Muppet Show, Cars and Farscape limited series. They'll also have a preview book of their upcoming Kill Audio comic by Claudio Sanchez. And signing at their booth during the con will be Sanchez, Mark Waid, Muppet Show writer/artist Roger Langridge, Farscape creator Rockne S. O’Bannon, Eureka’s Andrew Cosby and Ed Quinn and many more.

Check out their full schedule after the jump.

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Talking Comics with Tim: Roger Langridge

The Muppet Show #4

Given today's announcement that Roger Langridge will be appearing at this year's San Diego Comic-Con, it seemed like the ideal time to run my email interview with him regarding his Muppets work at BOOM! Langridge's industry profile has been elevated by his recent Muppet work, and it was my pleasure to interview him about it.  His grasp of the Muppets characters is amazing and given that I'm a longtime fan of the Muppets, I'm truly enthused when he says some of the characters have "hidden depths you could spend a lifetime mining." I could spend a lifetime reading what Langridge mines, honestly.

Tim O'Shea: Your Muppet work for BOOM! Studios was the first time I saw you work in the Muppet-verse. But you worked with the Muppets back with the Disney Adventures magazine. How much has your Muppet style changed (if at all) between the Disney era work and now?

Roger Langridge: The Disney Adventures stuff was a bit less on-model; they'd been running some Mickey Mouse cartoons by Glenn McCoy that were drawn in a raggedy, undergroundish sort of style and they were popular enough that they were looking for something similar with the Muppets, so I was encouraged to just go with my own style entirely. The BOOM! material, being more in the nature of a piece of official merchandise, is stylistically somewhere between that and the official models: not entirely my own take, although still recognisably "me."

O'Shea: How did the Muppet assignment come about--did you contact BOOM! or did they seek you out?

Langridge: They found me! I guess the unpublished Disney Adventures material had been circulating behind the scenes, and I suppose somebody liked it well enough to track me down.

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Straight for the art | More Roger Langridge HeroesCon art

Go Alfred!

I linked to some of comic creator Roger Langridge's HeroesCon sketches last week, but he's added a few more that people have scanned in and emailed to him, and they're just too fun not to point to again. So go check out Sandman drawn as a Muppet, Tom Waits and, as seen above, Alfred doing the Batusi.

Straight for the art | Roger Langridge's Krazy Kat

Roger Langridge does Krazy Kat

The Muppet Show writer/artist Roger Langridge shares a really awesome Krazy Kat commission he did in exchange for some books. He really manages to capture the spirit of George Herriman's creations, from the mischievousness of Ignatz Mouse to the surrealism of the setting to just the overall playfulness of the layout of the piece.

This is what we call the Muppet Show!

From "The Muppet Show" #1, by Roger Langridge

I never thought I'd miss "Can't Wait for Wednesday," the labor-intensive comics-of-the-week feature I wrote with Chris Mautner at our former online home. But this is one time I wish we were still doing the column, if only so I could name The Muppet Show #1 as my Pick of the Week.

I grew up with The Muppet Show, both in its original run and in later rebroadcasts, so my opinion is undoubtedly tinted a little by nostalgia. But, man, Roger Langridge really nails it. This first issue -- out today -- is the next-best thing to watching the TV show. All that's missing is the celebrity guest host.

If you need more convincing, Langridge provides a glimpse of a panel from Issue 3, featuring Gonzo as the Mad Hatter.