Archive for July, 2010
Our pal Brent is a huge ERB fan, especially his John Carter of Mars series. So naturally, we take every opportunity available to torture the poor fellow by pointing out all the horrible adaptations of his favorite books.
Well, here’s another one for you, Brent: Dynamite Comics is publishing a Warlord of Mars comic book series. Which may not actually be a bad one, as writer Arvid Nelson has good indie cred with his series Rex Mundi, plus his Robert E. Howard adaptations for Dark Horse. And from what I remember, artist Stephen Sadowski is a solid storyteller.
But this being Dynamite, you know every issue is going to ship with half a dozen variant covers. And for every classic pulp-style cover from the likes of Joe Jusko…
…you’re going to get at least two bad-porn covers by the likes of J. Scott Campbell:
So, you know, your mileage may vary.
Newsarama’s new feature Agent of S.T.Y.L.E. looks at the many (many, many) different outfits Cable has sported over the years.
Yes, Cable:
How many different costumes has Cable rocked over the years? Let’s just say there are over 40 images in the article. Including this one:
Yes, that’s John Romita, Jr.
No, seriously.
This week on Character Wednesday: Darkseid’s Boys! Yes, that’s Orion, the Dog of War, and Kalibak the Cruel! Unless Darkseid has some other little ones running around that we don’t know about!
Steve Black (Work in progress. This is his board as of yesterday.)
Steve Black again. This is his “color flats” study. I can’t find his web address right now.
Addendum: Ross Hardy!
Next week’s picker is Sean McGurr, and he’s calling for the black heart and bitter soul of Cleveland, Harvey Pekar!
Is this the climax of You Only Live Twice? No, it’s Jackson Guice during his far too brief stint on Nick Fury: Agent of Shield (issue 23, 1991). Guice channeled more than a little Steranko and added his gift for drawing babes to give us a 60′s flavored swingin’ spy thriller. A short-lived favorite of mine.
DC has tried to lure Alan Moore into writing a Watchmen sequel by offering him rights to the original series. He has refused, for reasons of his own for which we may be thankful.
But never fear; here’s one of the paragraphs from the Wired article:
However, DC Comics co-publishers Dan DiDio and Jim Lee said, “Watchmen is the most celebrated graphic novel of all time. Rest assured, DC Comics would only revisit these iconic characters if the creative vision of any proposed new stories matched the quality set by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons nearly 25 years ago, and our first discussion on any of this would naturally be with the creators themselves.”
Let me emphasize, “first discussion.” Dan DiDio and Jim Lee will take it from there. They know all about quality comics. They also know about creative bankruptcy and milking old concepts dry. I hope you guys enjoy reading this train wreck when it finally materializes.
Here’s how Steve described this week’s pick:
This will be a big one.
Giant of the industry. Attempt it if you dare.
Don’t be afraid of all the other amazing artists who have taken this on. Just try your best.
I pick…………..Tintin.
And special bonus material — here’s Steve’s sketch.
From the top to the bottom, that’s Steve Black, Sean McGurr, Andy B3nn3tt, me (Tony Goins) and then Steve Black again.
This is “ArchAndroid,” a new album by Janelle Monae. Here’s how she describes this album (and its predecessor, “Metropolis”)
The album realizes the next chapter in the story of Cindi Mayweather, the heroine of Monáe’s debut album Metropolis. She has been sent to free the citizens of Metropolis from the Great Divide, a secret society using time travel to suppress freedom and love throughout the ages. “It’s said that when the ArchAndroid returns, it will mean freedom for the android community,” explains Monáe. “Cindi Mayweather realizes that she is indeed the ArchAndroid.”
So it’s hip-hop, r&b, a little rock, a lot of sci-fi … and a little bit of showtunes. If you ever wondered what it sounds like inside my head, here you go.
(Apparently, I can’t embed a video. So here’s a link to a song I’m talking about, Dance or Die, and Tightrope (ft. Big Boi), and here’s the Janelle Monae website. )
News just came that Andy Davis, aka Andyman, DJ and Program Director of our independently owned alternative rock station, CD101, passed away yesterday. Details are sketchy, but apparently he was on vacation in Michigan with his family, and the cause of death was mentioned as drowning. He is survived by his wife and 3 young sons.
As the DJs have already mentioned, Andyman was the heart and soul, not to mention the face and voice, of CD101. He was heavily involved in the community, and every December hosted the Andyman-a-Thon, where he stayed on the air for 48 hourse straight as part of their fundraiser for childrens charities. According to the station website, last year’s Andyman-a-Thon raised $42,000.
I met Andy on a few occasions, the first time was when I did a “CD101 Guest DJ” stint many years ago. The next time was when Wendy and I had dropped by Andyman’s Treehouse (the bar with the tree growing in the middle that he co-owned for a few years) and he was there, having a drink with friends. He always seemed to have a smile on his face.
As I type this, they are holding a tribute to Andyman on CD101 by playing his favorite artists, starting with a Jeff Buckley tune, and on to Johnny Cash and The Replacements. The DJs there are all chocked up, and Joe Jewett had a hard time just breaking the news. It really is sad, especially to think of his young sons.
We’ll miss you, Andyman.
Some great tips here that apply to comics as well as animation. Probably known to most artists, but nevertheless, a good reminder and fun to see how artists/storyboarders are trained in Simpsons land.
The preeminent indie anthology of the 80s and 90s, Dark Horse Presents, is returning to print sometime around March 2011. It will supposedly feature established and newer talent. And yes, Paul Chadwick’s got a new Concrete story planned for it.
Some Australian fans of Brian Maruca and Jim Rugg’s cult-hit Street Angel comic (about a homeless, skateboarding ninja girl) have made a fan film. You can catch the trailer for it here. It’s making the indie film festival circuit, and will be showing at Comic-Con.
The OC Weekly gives you a list of Six Crime Comics You Haven’t Read From the Past 10 Years. And it’s not the usual suspects. In fact, one of them involves a bunch of anthropomorphic dogs and crows.
So I was cleaning out the ton of spam we get in the comments section of this blog, and noticed one that was clearly mislabeled as spam. Check it out, it was from President Obama! An here’s what it said:
“This is a really good read for me, Must admit that you are one of the best bloggers I ever saw.Thanks for posting this informative article.”
Oddly enough, the link below his name took me to some site with the words “hot” and “teen” in the URL, which is weird, because I thought his website was whitehouse.gov.
I also saw comments left by “gas scooters for teens cheap” and “penis enlargement pills,” which are really weird names for folks, but I guess that’s what the kids are calling themselves these days.
Man, we’re really bad at posting Character Wednesday on a Wednesday. Anyway, we had a small turnout this week, so in the interest of making this post look more substantial, I’m going to show you Steve’s piece from conception to finish. Matt Kish Craig Bogart had picked this week’s character: Kree Sentry #459
Steve Black:
Craig Bogart:
Steve picked next week’s character to be Herge’s famous Belgian boy detective, Tin Tin.
It’s the return of our semi-regular feature, 7 Covers!
This time out, I’d like to present 7 covers by multimedia artist Tom Taggart. For a brief period in the 90s, he created very unusual, very cool sculptures/3D art that were used for the covers of some DC books (Mainly Doom Patrol). The uniqueness factor alone was enough to make them stand out from the other 4-color covers on the stands. But I also really liked his style, especially on the Cliff Steel pieces. He didn’t stick around for long, but here are a few of my favorites:
(Have a favorite series of your own? Or an artist? Character? Submit your own set of 7 covers by sending me small files (i.e. 72 dpi for the web) to ferret at ferretpress dot com and include “7 covers” in the subject line. Also, let me know if you have a blog or website you’d like me to link to.)
As every American schoolchild knows, Howard the Duck achieved such popularity during his heyday that he drew the attention of Disney, who sued because the cigar-smoking misanthrope with the nude model girlfriend would be too easily confused with Donald Duck. The outcome: Howard had to wear pants to distinguish himself from the other fowl, who is apparently a pervert who goes pantsless in public.
When Steve Gerber returned to write Howard in a 2002 mini for Marvel’s MAX imprint, he ended the first issue on a cliffhanger by turning Howard into… a big mouse.
And now Disney owns Marvel, but many of their characters are still not required to wear pants.
Art by Phil Winslade, a more recent favorite of mine.