and Dead Tree Comics

[Mongrel]

Are you sure this isn't just an April Fools joke

A bit early, but uh, maybe we can hope?

[zaratustra]

[Mongrel]

What book is that?

[zaratustra]

Unbelievable Gwenpool. First issue came out this month, I think.

[Thad]

They really should have called her Deadgwen.

[Mothra]

Saga continues to be an incredible read. Cannot get enough of this series.

Started reading the 1986 World of Ginger Fox comic Dogstar gifted me a few Dirty Santa's back. It's really charming so far. A little simple and overly concerned with depicting Ginger as completely without fault, but I like the story, and the majority of characters are more realistic than you'd expect in a series like this.

Also picked up one issue of Alan Moore's Swamp Thing (#21, the one where they discover how Swamp Thing lives without functioning organs), and was utterly gripped throughout. Planning on reading the rest once I get my hands on a compilation.

[Thad]

There's a lot to unpack about DC firing Shelly Bond, and how it's the latest piece of bad news for Vertigo.

There's a real catch-22 here: Vertigo's on the decline in part because of its increasingly hostile contracts, but it was already on the decline before it introduced them -- and it's not about to roll them back, because it's making good cross-media money on properties it either owns outright through work-for-hire agreements (Lucifer) or at least owns the TV and movie rights to (iZombie). (Never mind that Bond was one of the people responsible for iZombie even existing, and I think she was an editor on Lucifer as well.) But at this point, well, it's hard to see why anyone would choose Vertigo over Image unless they already had connections at DC.

Young Animal definitely seems like an attempt to recreate what Vertigo was at the start: a mature-readers line that's still work-for-hire and (sort of) set in the DC Universe.

(Of course, it also once again raises the question of what the fuck DC was thinking when it brought Constantine, Swamp Thing, Shade, et al back into the DCU proper.)

The pointed discussion among fans and some pros about how DC didn't fire Eddie Berganza when he was repeatedly accused of sexual harassment but just fired one of the best editors it's ever had is a whole other subject. But I think it's a fair thing to point out in criticizing the company's priorities.

It bears noting that the only Vertigo book I'm currently reading is Astro City. Which is fully creator-owned, and predates Vertigo's current restrictive contracts. (Indeed, the reason it wasn't originally published by DC was due to contract language Busiek didn't approve of; he took it to WildStorm instead, which at the time was an Image imprint but which Jim Lee later sold to DC; Astro City moved to Vertigo because WildStorm no longer exists.)

Anyhow, if you want to read an article and comments section filled with people praising Shelly Bond, Heidi MacDonald has you covered.

[Thad]

Welp, the new Thunderbolts is not very good, which is disappointing.

Zub's writing combines all the worst trends of modern #1's: an in media res opening followed by an unsatisfactory explanation for how we got here delivered through stilted expositional dialogue, a bunch of pages where nothing much happens, and then a cliffhanger that's simultaneously gratuitous and inconsequential.

It's still better than the art, by Jon Malin, who was trained by Rob Liefeld.

[Destynova]

Hellboy in Hell #9 came out a few days ago. A good issue but it seems it is a 'Get the full story in Hellboy in Mexico!' thing. Just one issue left of Hellboy and Mignola is done

[Büge]

Hellboy in Detroit #9

Hee hee hee

[Mongrel]

Just one issue left of Hellboy and Mignola is done

Oh wow.

Is it... uh... actually any good? Because I started to become very disenchanted with Hellboy around Darkness Calls and The Storm and the Fury was just awful. Some of the short stories, like Hellboy in Mexico, were still good but the last long-form Hellboy story I thought highly of was Makoma. It just really seemed to go downhill as Mignola tried to move (achingly laboriously) towards wrapping up the overarching metaplot.

[Destynova]

I enjoyed it and soppy heart I am I thought King George reborn in The Fury was great. HiH is more of short stories with Hellboy wandering around a Dark Soulsish Hell where things are falling apart.

[Büge]

Darwyn Cooke in palliative care for cancer

[zaratustra]

that... that's not the good kind of care, is it.

Edit: No, it isn't. RIP

http://www.comicbookresources.com/artic ... asses-away

[Mothra]

Just read New Frontier a few weeks ago, floored by the writing and the art. Awful, awful news.

[Thad]

that... that's not the good kind of care, is it.

Per a comment by Jason A Quest at The Beat (who in my experience typically knows what he's talking about), it depends; it means they're treating the pain rather than the cancer. Sometimes it means they're no longer being treated because they're recovering from treatment.

But no, not this time. Sad to hear.

There are going to be some good retrospectives in the coming days. Gail Simone just reposted something she wrote in 2010 about her first meeting with him.

New Frontier was a career highlight (maybe I'll watch the movie tonight; it's easily the best of the various direct-to-video movies DC's put out); his Parker adaptations are a great take on the gritty crime novel; and who could ever forget:



And he's got some new work coming up in the Hanna-Barbera line; I didn't catch whether he did any interiors or just covers.

There's a sale on his DC work over at Comixology. It's DC so it's DRM'ed, but if you're okay with that, well, New Frontier is the best thing in there, and I also highly recommend the Batman/Spirit one-shot (which is pretty much a Batman: TAS story, except with '60's Robin). Those issues of Jonah Hex are pretty good too. I haven't read the rest of what's on offer, but...it's Darwyn friggin' Cooke.

Also, I'm not sure why only his DC work is listed on that page, because there's also a sale on his Parker books. The first book will set you back $4 and the other three cost $5 each. Unlike the DC books, they're DRM-free.

For those not familiar, Parker is a classic series of crime fiction that started back in 1959; the books have been adapted to film multiple times but with the title changed at the author's request. (Point Blank and Payback are both adaptations of The Hunter.)

Cooke's adaptations (the first of which was done with author Donald E Westlake's collaboration prior to his death) take an interesting tack; they're monochromatic (first book all in blues, second all in yellows, etc.) and alternate between comics pages and illustrated prose. It's striking and it's different and I really like it; one of these days I'll get around to reading the last two.

[Thad]

I kicked in on Ditko's latest Kickstarter, so I've been reading a good bit of Mr. A. It's fascinating stuff and I'll probably have a lot to say about it, but some highlights:

* I think there's a Goldilocks ratio of word count to Ditko's work. Too few words and his work turns into abstract symbols shouting "Anti-life anti-reason" at each other. Too many and, well, it turns into Ayn Rand: characters posturing and delivering lengthy, didactic speeches about philosophy to reductive strawman villains. But when he hits a happy medium, man, he is one hell of a storyteller.

* It's also interesting to note the points where I actually agree with Ditko's morality. Most of it is incoherent (like the notion that giving monetary aid to countries where people are starving is immoral, but giving military aid to countries suffering under dictators is a moral imperative), but I share, for example, his disdain with news media who believe that "neutrality" means giving lies the same weight as the truth. Also, his stories can occasionally get surprisingly nuanced, as in one where a former criminal serves his time and then tries to go straight. At the climax of the story, another criminal tells the ex-con that he's being chased by a violent drug dealer and his life is in danger; when Mr. A bursts through the door the ex-con knocks him out. But once he realizes what he's done, he refuses to let the other criminal kill him. Mr. A judges that the ex-con has done right: he's atoned for his previous crimes, and while he made a mistake, it was based on faulty information, and when he learned what he'd done he immediately sought to make it right. Mr. A judges the man innocent -- white, no gray. I'd say that's actually a pretty gray take on morality, but I agree with its conclusion, anyway.

* Also, it's interesting to note that Ditko was derisively using the term "social justice" all the way back in 1975. Truly a man ahead of his time.

[Thad]

Also, my favorite thing about Ditko's shorthand is that he simplifies comic book cursing down to just a single # symbol. So now whenever I see a hashtag I read the hash sign as fuckin'.

[Thad]

Yep, this is a thing that is happening: grim-'n'-gritty reboots for a bunch of Hanna Barbera properties.

In Space Ghost's case, it will be the second one in twelve years.

So okay I read an interview yesterday with Jeff Parker and Doc Shaner, the writer and artist, respectively, of Future Quest. And it convinced me that, unlike the Scooby-Doo and Wacky Races comics, this is not a grim-'n'-gritty reboot; they're not attempting to subvert the HB characters, they're playing them straight.

So I went ahead and picked up #1, and it's really pretty great. It's got the usual #1 decompression problems going on, but it's fucking gorgeous enough that I can't complain. Shaner's work is beautifully suited to Toth's style -- and if that weren't enough, about a third of the issue is drawn by Steve Rude. When's the last time Steve Rude worked on Jonny Quest? I wanna say it was the 1980's.

Anyway. If you want a comic where Birdman teams up with Benton Quest, it's out, it's 32 pages, and it's $4.

[Sharkey]

* Also, it's interesting to note that Ditko was derisively using the term "social justice" all the way back in 1975. Truly a man ahead of his time.

That was actually kind of a thing among Randian types even then. I was just going through a Poul Anderson book from around the same time*, and bitching about Social Justice features heavily in his frequent author filibusters. The speeches are of course all delivered by a buff, nordic, omnicompetent, well armed, self reliant, sexual tyranosaur who just wants the bloodsucking socialists back on Earth to leave him in peace. It's not irredeemable, but it's packed with the kind of hacky Mary Sue shit that would make even late-career Heinlein blush. It'd be #1 on the puppy ballot if it were published this year.

*Avatar, which despite having no real relation to the film just coincidentally also has a planet named Pandora and a brief appearance of giant, crayola colored primitive aliens who kill a character by putting a huge arrow through his back. Truly there is nothing new under the sun.