stephen king
What Are You Reading? with Comic Book Resources
Officer Downe
Hello and welcome to a special birthday bash edition of our weekly “What Are You Reading” feature. Typically the Robot 6 crew talks about what books we’ve read recently, but since it’s our anniversary, we thought we’d invite all our friends and colleagues from Comic Book Resources and Comics Should Be Good! to join in the fun.
To see what everyone has been reading, click below …
- January 1, 2012 @ 03:25 PM by JK Parkin
Previews: What looks good for February
Judge Bao and the Jade Phoenix
It’s time once again for our monthly trip through Previews looking for cool, new comics. As usual, we’re focusing on graphic novels, collected volumes and first issues so that I don’t have to come up with a new way to say, “ Wonder Woman is still awesome!” every month. And I’ll continue letting Tom and Carla do the heavy lifting in regards to DC and Marvel’s solicitations.
Also, please feel free to play along in the comments. Tell me what I missed that you’re looking forward to or – if you’re a comics creator – mention your own stuff.
Archaia
Judge Bao and the Jade Phoenix - A detective story set in ancient China. Plus: cool name.
Avatar
Dicks #1 – Garth Ennis and John McCrea’s humor makes my top hat explode and my monocle fly off my face, but I remember this being pretty popular back in the day and I imagine that it’s new presentation in color and leading into a new storyline could make it popular again.
Bongo
Ralph Wiggum Comics #1 – This, on the other hand, is exactly my kind of funny. Kind of like 30 Days of Night, I’m astonished no one’s thought of it before. Too bad it’s just a one-shot, but hearing that Sergio Aragones is one of the contributors makes me want to poke myself with my Viking helmet to see if I’m dreaming.
- December 8, 2011 @ 02:02 PM by Michael May
Comics A.M. | The once and future Extreme Studios; Colleen Doran’s digital success
Youngblood
Creators | With the announcement that Rob Liefeld’s Extreme Studios is back in business, former Extreme Studios employee and current Image Comics publisher Eric Stephenson reflects on his time with the studio. “From 1992-1998, Extreme Studios was more or less my life. Youngblood, Supreme, Brigade, Bloodstrike, Team Youngblood, New Men, Prophet, Youngblood: Strikefile, Bloodpool, Glory… We put out a lot of comics, and for the most part everyone involved was incredibly young. Rob and I were amongst the oldest at 25. So many of the artists involved in various aspects of production were just out of their teens, and that made the work as frustrating as it was fun. But looking back, the main thing I remember about that time is Rob wanted to share his success with people who loved comics and wanted to make a living in the business as much as he had.” [It Sparkles!]
Webcomics | A Distant Soil creator Colleen Doran, who began serializing the comic online in 2009, notes “my bottom line is up significantly, and my online audience is ten times higher than when I started the five day a week online serialization of A Distant Soil 2.5 years ago.” She also shares advice she received when she started the endeavor that hasn’t worked for her. [A Distant Soil]
- October 17, 2011 @ 06:55 AM by JK Parkin
NYCC | A round-up of news from Thursday (and before)
Green Arrow
The New York Comic Con officially opened its doors this afternoon, but comics publishers and distributors have been releasing announcements leading up to it all this week. Here’s a round-up of news from today, as well as some that hit earlier this week.
• DC Comics, who were having a pretty good week already, announced two creative team changes for the New 52. Ann Nocenti of Daredevil and Longshot fame will write Green Arrow starting with issue #7. She spoke to Comic Book Resources about her approach to the series: “I have a particular way of writing a comic. Comics are short. They are only twenty pages, so you can take a year of comics and that can be your opera, and the opera can have a lot of different passages in it. I kind of believe every issue should be a single story, just a complete story. But there is a momentum that forms like triptychs over it, and then it forms your big overtures, and then the whole thing ends up kind of operatic. I also want a beginning, middle and end, a classic short story approach to every single comic. What I do is I try to figure out, what is the kick in this comic, what is the main feeling I want to get, and everything in the comic has to serve that.”
• And Marc Bernardin (Monster Attack Network, The Highwaymen, The Authority) will take over the writing duties on Static Shock beginning with issue #7. “As a fan and as a writer, one of the great things about Static isn’t just that he’s a new hero, it’s also that he’s a young hero,” Bernardin told CBR. “He will make the mistakes of youth and, even though the New 52 is resetting a lot of heroes to their early days as do-gooders, there’s nothing quite like the fumblings of a teenager.”
- October 13, 2011 @ 08:54 PM by JK Parkin
The Fifth Color | Forward into the Past with Marvel for June ’11
Fear Itself #3
[Editor's Note: Due to technical issues, Carla's column from last Friday was delayed until today.]
It is more fun to announce things at comic conventions where there’s a live audience to ooh and ahh at all the new and exciting products you’re putting out than it is to post it on the internet. It’s the difference between selling your car in a showroom as opposed to an ad on Craigslist. I’m sure there’s a dirty joke in there somewhere, so feel free to fill it in for yourself, but the point remains. So that’s why we didn’t get the Marvel Comics solicitations for June 2011 when we usually do; as all the other kids down the block showed off their upcoming new comics, Marvel waited until C2E2 was over because the big show came first.
Or so I thought.
Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, Marvel Comics has unleashed the full power of their June line-up. They weren’t waiting for the live announcements to go first, they were keeping their readership safe from the imminent disasters that will befall us in the future! They were protecting us! They had only our safety in mind and now the true story can be told! I present the June 2011 solicitation list that will very nearly END EXISTENCE AS WE KNOW IT!!!
Anyone prone to heart conditions, seizures or who could be pregnant, read the following list of colossal entertainment at your own risk. These comics are rated M for “Oh MY God, these comics will crack the internet in half!”
- March 28, 2011 @ 10:00 AM by Carla Hoffman
Robot reviews: What’s up with Vertigo?
American Vampire Vol. 1
When DC announced it was shuttering the Wildstorm and Zuda imprints back in September, after having announced the shutterings of the CMX line less than six months ago (and only two years since they canceled the failed Minx experiment), all eyes started moving uneasily towards Vertigo, the first and final imprint DC had left. It didn’t help that DC had also announced they were going to be absorbing certain Vertigo characters like Swamp Thing back into the superhero fold. Add to that the recent cancellation of such series as Air, Unknown Soldier and Greek Street, and many ended up wondering not just if Vertigo was being sized up for the chopping block but when the ax would fall (I’ve got $20 in the office pool down for May 2011).
Mark Oliver Frisch aside, we don’t have access to DC’s actual, total sales numbers, however, so it’s nigh-impossible to tell exactly how well Vertigo books are selling and how essential the line is to DC as a publishing and licensing entity. Perhaps the only way we can make any assumptions at all about the health of the line is to look at the comics that Vertigo has published in the past few months. Which is exactly what I plan on doing after the jump.
- November 8, 2010 @ 01:01 PM by Chris Mautner
What Are You Reading?
Four-Color Fear
Welcome to another spook-tacular edition of What Are You Reading? Our special guest this week is writer Sam Costello, who operates and writes horror comics for the site Split Lip. If you’re looking for some spooky stories to read tonight, it’s a good place to start.
To see what Sam and the rest of the Robot 6 crew have been reading lately, click below, if you dare …
- October 31, 2010 @ 02:55 PM by JK Parkin
King: Vampires should be ‘stone killers,’ not ‘boy-toys with big dewy eyes’
American Vampire, Vol. 1
Bestselling author Stephen King, whose vast body of work includes Salem’s Lot, has some strong opinions about vampires. So it comes as little surprise that he would voice those views in an interview promoting the hardcover collection of American Vampire, the Vertigo series whose initial story arc he co-wrote, and in his introduction to the first volume.
“A traditional vampire is always a taker, and that’s the story of American expansion and laissez-faire and the rise of industrialism,” King tells USA Today, referring to his Western outlaw Skinner Sweet. “The idea that he wants to come back and get his vengeance and he wants to get it as fast as he can and as harshly as he can, that’s a very American desperado thing.”
In the collection’s foreword, reprinted at EW.com, King takes aim at the likes of Twilight and True Blood: “Here’s what vampires shouldn’t be: pallid detectives who drink Bloody Marys and only work at night; lovelorn southern gentlemen; anorexic teenage girls; boy-toys with big dewy eyes. What should they be? Killers, honey. Stone killers who never get enough of that tasty Type-A. Bad boys and girls. Hunters. In other words, Midnight America. Red white and blue, accent on the red. Those vamps got hijacked by a lot of soft-focus romance.”
Read the full introduction at EW.com. American Vampire, Vol. 1, by King, Scott Snyder and Rafael Albuquerque, is in stores today.
- September 29, 2010 @ 01:31 PM by Kevin Melrose
Mickey Mouse at the Mountains of Madness
rom
Good Lord, I sort of wish I hadn’t seen Vacon Sartirani’s “Mickey Mouse Against the Worms,” a monstrous mash-up of Mickey, Minnie, and gelatinous creatures out of Jim Woodring/H.P. Lovecraft/Stephen King’s “The Mist.” According to Sartirani, the piece is something of a racial allegory, which if my rudimentary Italian is any indication only makes it more troubling. You can check out the English translation at the link, provided you don’t much value your sanity and soul. And you can see more of Sartirani’s work at his website.
- July 20, 2010 @ 11:30 AM by Sean T. Collins
Stephen King’s website premieres American Vampire trailer
From the "American Vampire" trailer
On the heels of this morning’s interview and preview, Stephen King’s official website has debuted a 40-second trailer, complete with an Omen-style musical score, for American Vampire, the author’s comic book-writing debut. The Vertigo series, by King, Scott Snyder and Rafael Albuquerque, premieres this week.
- March 15, 2010 @ 10:00 AM by Kevin Melrose
Stephen King talks comics, the dangerous undead and American Vampire
From "American Vampire" #5
At The Daily Beast, Shannon Donnelly speaks with Stephen King about American Vampire, his collaboration with Scott Snyder and Rafael Albuquerque that debuts this week from Vertigo, and offers a three-page preview of the first issue.
In the interview, King admits to the challenges of his comics-writing debut, and confesses his disappointment after learning that thought balloons have fallen out of vogue: “I got this kind of embarrassed call from the editors saying, ‘Ah, Steve, we don’t do that anymore.’ ‘You don’t do that anymore?’ I said. ‘No, when the characters speak, they speak. If they’re thinking, you try to put that across in the narration, in the little narration boxes.’ … I think it’s a shame to lose that arrow out of your quiver. One of the nice things about the written word as opposed to the spoken word in a movie is that you can go into a character’s thoughts. You do it in books all the time, right?”
- March 15, 2010 @ 04:20 AM by Kevin Melrose
Marvel to publish Stephen King’s N. comic
Stephen King's N.
Marvel announced yesterday that they will adapt Stephen King’s N., a short story that appeared in the author’s latest collection, Just After Sunset, into a four-issue mini-series.
The story also appeared online as a motion comic last year, which was co-produced by Marvel. Writer Marc Guggenheim and artist Alex Maleev will turn the story of “something terrifying hidden in Ackerman’s Field” into a comic.
“It’s absolutely thrilling for Marvel to be working on ‘N.’ again and having the honor to publish it as a comic book miniseries,” said said Ruwan Jayatilleke, Marvel senior vice president of development & planning, print, animation and digital media. “Both as a fan of the story and a producer on the ‘N.’ motion comic, I am absolutely psyched for the terrifying ride that Marc, Alex, and the editors have planned for readers!”
- December 22, 2009 @ 04:00 AM by JK Parkin
First look (I think) at the cover for American Vampire #1
American Vampire #1
Since Vertigo’s announcement late Sunday there’s been a lot of coverage in the comics and mainstream press about American Vampire, the upcoming monthly series whose first arc is co-written by none other than Stephen King.
But while we’ve seen several pieces of concept art by Rafael Albuquerque, I believe this is our first look at his cover for Issue 1, which debuts in March 2010. The art accompanies a brief Q&A in USA Today with writer Scott Snyder, who discusses the comic’s development, King’s involvement, and what he likes about Albuquerque’s art.
- October 28, 2009 @ 01:20 PM by Kevin Melrose
Stephen King helps to unleash American Vampire at Vertigo
Designs for Skinner and Pearl from "American Vampire," by Rafael Albuquerque
Late last night Vertigo announced the March premiere of American Vampire, an ongoing series by short-story writer Scott Snyder and Blue Beetle artist Rafael Albuquerque.
But there’s an even bigger name involved — much bigger: Stephen King, who will write one of the two stories in the initial five-issue story arc.
According to the DC Comics imprint, American Vampire will introduce “a new breed of vampire — a more muscular and vicious species of vampire with distinctly American characteristics.”
Snyder’s storyline, set in the Jazz Age, will focus on Pearl, an ambitious woman who dreams of becoming a star. King will provide the origin of the first American vampire — Skinner Sweet, a murderer and bank robber of the 1880s.
“I love vampire stories, and the idea of following the dark exploits of a uniquely American vampire really lit up my imagination,” King is quoted as saying. “The chance to do the origin story — to be ‘present at the creation’ — was a thrill. I owe big thanks to Scott Snyder for letting me share his vision, and sip from his bucket of blood.”
The Daily Beast has more details, including background from Snyder, who has written a Human Torch one-shot and an upcoming X-Men arc for Marvel.
For more, see Comic Book Resource’s coverage.
- October 26, 2009 @ 06:05 AM by Kevin Melrose
Straight for the art | Del Rey reveals Talisman cover
Talisman Issue #0
You may have heard that Del Rey was planning to offer a graphic novel adaptation of Stephen King and Peter Straub’s best selling novel, The Talisman, featuring art by Tony Shasteen and a script by Robin Furth. Now Del Rey has revealed that Massimo Carnevale (known for his work on Y: The Last Man) will be the cover artist for the monthly series. What’s more, a special preview ssue, as seen above, will be released at this year’s Comic-Con.
Full press release from Del Rey after the jump.
- June 16, 2009 @ 12:10 PM by Chris Mautner