and Dead Tree Comics

[Mongrel]

There's a lot of other things which come to mind as well.

Like the way the European comics industry as a whole remained shockingly racist well into the 90's and how that ties into the broader phenomenon of Europeans societies trying to avoid a reckoning with their own racism to this day. There is in fact a very excellent short comic about this by Moebius - look up "White Nightmare" if you can.

Or the almost complete absence of women in any way shape or form from Tintin comics, other than a terribly small number of shrill shrews (one, really, as it's effectively just Castafiore). Once you notice THAT, you can't unsee it, and it's pretty hard NOT to notice.

[Thad]

Marvel is publishing a reprint collection of Rom: Space Knight.

This is the second-most surprising news I've heard this week.

(And I can't help but wonder if this means Transformers and GI Joe are going to end up back at Marvel. Hasbro still hasn't announced a new comics licensee since their contract with IDW expired.)

[Thad]

Cartoonist Ian McGinty died at 38 this week.

AFAICT no cause of death has been released, but his friends say that like many people in the industry, he was overworked and underpaid and didn't have health insurance. This has led to the #ComicsBrokeMe tag trending on Twitter.

The industry remains predatory and horrible.

[Thad]

(hey remember that time Scott Kurtz explained that all that shit's all better now and people should stop complaining)

[Thad]

Robert Kirkman almost managed to pull off another "Surprise! This is the final issue of Walking Dead!" day-and-date reveal, though he didn't quite make it and this managed to leak last week.

The twist to Void Rivals #1, the new sci-fi comic by Kirkman and Lorenzo De Felici, is that it's a Transformers/GI Joe relaunch.

[Thad]

It's...kind of like the first episode of a spinoff, in the way that something happens for the sole purpose of connecting it to the other thing and it's completely unnecessary to the plot. Like Bones showing up in Encounter at Farpoint to tell Data he kinda reminds him of Spock.

It's a story about two members of warring alien races who crash-land on a planetoid and decide to work together to escape. In act 2 they find another crashed spacecraft and restore power to it and it transforms into Jetfire and he's like "I have to go now, my planet needs me" and they're like "huh, well that was weird" and then move on. You could take those few pages out and lose basically none of the story.

If Kirkman can keep the crossover elements on the periphery I think this has the potential to be a good solid story in its own right, but there's a lot of potential for the frosting to overwhelm the cake. Guess we'll see how it goes.

[Mongrel]

[Thad]

Disney's gone and put out a Stan Lee hagiography that's got the same old arguments spinning again. Neal Kirby isn't happy, Mark Evanier has some thoughts, and Rob Salkowitz has a nice concise summary titled Stan Lee Keeps Getting Credit For The Wrong Thing, which I think is the crux of the biscuit.

It's not that Stan Lee doesn't deserve credit. He does deserve credit: for recognizing and recruiting talent, for writing snappy patter that appealed to readers, for overseeing a standout line of comics and marketing the ever-lovin' blue-eyed hell out of it.

He deserves credit for all that. It's a shame he insisted on taking credit he didn't deserve, too.

[Thad]

Did not care for the new Black Panther #1. Everything about this T'Challa feels wrong; his costume is too complicated and his characterization is too simple. (Black Panther stopping a purse-snatcher just feels incompetent, even before it turns out they weren't really a purse-snatcher and he fucked up.)

I might give it one more issue but I feel like the new team just doesn't get BP.

[Thad]

It was a slow week for my pull list so I figured what the hell and picked up Ultimate Invasion #1.

It's...look, it's exactly what you expect.

I was expecting a plot I straight did not give a fuck about, full of continuity details I do not understand because I noped out of the Ultimate line somewhere around Ultimates 3 or Ultimate Avengers or some damn thing, where the entire first issue is just table-setting, but presented with some solid and kinetic Bryan Hitch "widescreen" art that, while not as revolutionary as it was 25 years ago, would serve as a reminder that he's the guy who defined the visual style of Marvel in the comics and movies alike.

I got exactly what I expected.

So, y'know. It's fine. Hitch remains an excellent storyteller. His action sequences impress, though honestly my favorite part of the whole issue is a little character moment.

See, the hook is Evil Reed (see, I didn't even know Ultimate Reed turned evil, that's how checked out I am from all this shit) is recreating the Ultimate Universe. But before he does, he stops by Miles Morales's apartment to say "You and I are the only survivors of a universe that no longer exists. I'm going home. Do you want to come with me?" and Miles is like "Nah, I'm good."

Now, maybe this will be important to the plot later? But I'd like to think it isn't, that it's just a small little character moment that tells us a little bit about these two guys.

Anyway. It was fine. It met my expectations. I do not expect to pick up #2, but who knows, if I hit another slow week and also issue #2 costs substantially less than issue #1's $9 cover price, it's not out of the question I guess.

[Thad]

I might give it one more issue but I feel like the new team just doesn't get BP.

I gave it one more issue and okay, "Deathlok is under the control of supervillains because he got phished" is a delightful enough setup that I think I'll probably go at least another month.

[Thad]

Fantastic Four #8 is a really interesting and formally experimental issue; it's told from Alicia's perspective and leans on the fourth wall by having her describe how blind people experience comics (she talks about how Ben reads them to her and the visual bits she likes him to describe in detail versus the ones she's not interested in).

...and I just realized the original FF#8 was Alicia's first appearance, so that's a fun continuity nod.

As a story there's not much to this one; #7 set everything up (another "something weird is happening in a small town" plot) and #8 is mostly the resolution, big fight scene that hinges on a couple of character moments, it's not bad but Alicia's narration (and her digressions about comics) is the thing that sets it apart from any other big fight scene comic.

The latest arc has the FF living on Aunt Petunia's farm in Arizona, and I thought #7 did a better job of showing plausible Arizona scenery than most comics do. (Yes, I'm still salty about that Deadpool comic from like a decade ago that made Flagstaff look like a goddamn Speedy Gonzales cartoon. Flagstaff is in the mountains! Pine trees and snow, you dinks, not cacti and Spanish-tile roofs! This isn't the 1960s; you have Google Image Search now!) #8 abandons all that in favor of a big fight in a "small Arizona town" that looks suspiciously like a generic-ass comic book city. Yes, Marvel artists, I know you like drawing tall buildings, but what the hell is the point of setting your story somewhere other than New York if you're just going to draw it like it's New York anyway?

[Büge]

[Thad]

Willingham Sends Fables Into the Public Domain

I...don't really get Willingham's politics. But if there's one thing history has shown us, it's that "DC/Marvel fucked me over" is a sentiment that transcends the political spectrum from Steve Ditko to Alan Moore.

The most interesting bit:

Note that my contracts with DC Comics are still in force. I did nothing to break them, and cannot unilaterally end them. I still can’t publish Fables comics through anyone but them. I still can’t authorize a Fables movie through anyone but them. Nor can I license Fables toys nor lunchboxes, nor anything else. And they still have to pay me for the books they publish. And I’m not giving up on the other money they owe. One way or another, I intend to get my 50% of the money they’ve owed me for years for the Telltale Game and other things.

However, you, the new 100% owner of Fables never signed such agreements. For better or worse, DC and I are still locked together in this unhappy marriage, perhaps for all time.

But you aren’t.

[...]

Mark Buckingham is free to do his version of Fables (and I dearly hope he does). Steve Leialoha is free to do his version of Fables (which I’d love to see). And so on. You don’t have to get my permission (but you might get my blessing, depending on your plans). You don’t have to get DC’s permission, or the permission of anyone else. You never signed the same agreements I did with DC Comics.

"Fables by Mark Buckingham and Steve Leialoha but not Bill Willingham" sounds pretty damn great, actually.

And hey, I wonder if this means Chris Roberson can self-publish that third Cinderella series that DC shelved because he said mean things about them?

[Niku]

oh hell yeah

greg weisman is returning to writing spider-man next year in a book starring both peter and miles

calling it "The Spectacular Spider-Men" is going to put my expectations unreasonably high

[Thad]

Oh boy, can't wait.

Which reminds me, I need to read more of his Young Justice comic. I only read the first trade (which takes place in-between the first few episodes of the cartoon, introduces Artemis and how she met Green Arrow, has a solid haunted-computer story with the Joker and Snapper Carr in it, and some other stuff that I can't remember offhand but remember was a lot of fun).

I haven't read any of his Gargoyles comic, either. One of these days I really should finish season 2 of the TV series. I remember watching everything that was out on DVD back when I was getting Netflix in the mail, but that only got up through the first half of season 2.

(Apparently Disney's bringing Gargoyles back as a live-action reboot that Weisman isn't involved in and...is that a thing anybody was asking for?)

[Thad]

Pretty big Hellboy bundle on. It looks to include all 12 volumes of the main series, both volumes of Hellboy in Hell, and a pretty decent (but not complete) selection of the spinoffs.

If I have a gripe, it's that the $1 tier isn't necessarily the best place to start. Vol 1 seems like it would be, but it's early Mignola and he's still getting his sea legs (and not scripting it himself yet; he asked John Byrne for help on the first arc). The Ghost/Hellboy Special and Itty Bitty Hellboy aren't exactly representative, and Odd Jobs is a prose collection. The Hellboy Winter Special is a pretty good sampler, but if I were choosing books for the dollar tier I'd have probably chosen some more anthology-style books like it.

That minor complaint aside: Hellboy is fucking great and if you've never read it you should give it a shot. It's really a fantastic mashup of superheroes, pulp adventure, horror, monster movies, and mythology. There's an arc, but I prefer the weird one-off stories. The art is fantastic; Mignola himself has a unique style (and aside from Hellboy his most memorable work is probably on Batman: TAS, where he designed Mr. Freeze) but a shitload of talented artists have done their own Hellboy stories over the years (looks like there's some Richard Corben in this set).

[beatbandito]

This is the first time I gave in to a humble book bundle. I assumed pdf/epub/cbz meant all were available, but it looks like some are pdf, some epub, and I see nothing for cbz. Am I missing something or is that how humble rolls?

[Thad]

It varies, but yeah it's not unusual for it to be a mishmash of formats, sizes, and quality.

I guess I'd expect the prose books to be EPUB.

(Also, meant to put this in the Free and Cheap Comics thread but it was past my bedtime and I was tired.)

[Büge]

(and aside from Hellboy his most memorable work is probably on Batman: TAS, where he designed Mr. Freeze)

Don't forget Atlantis: The Lost Empire

I'm still sad that Mignola never finished his Fafhrd and Grey Mouser adaptation (and that the original masters of the comic were lost, so they can't reprint them with proper fidelity).