May 2010
29 posts
Bright and Shiny?
I got suckered in to buying a copy of Avengers #1, I’m not entirely certain how, but a few pages into the thing I was already taken out of the book. Steve Rogers is putting together his new team of heroes and he’s telling them all of the qualities and virtues that they exhibit; “…nobility and strength”, “cunning and bravery”, “power and...
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ADD Reviews Wilson by Dan Clowes
As Dan Clowes has matured as a cartoonist, his storytelling has undergone a fascinating inversion. In his earlier serialized works such as Like a Velvet Glove Cast in Iron and Ghost World, the reader could take the events presented for exactly what they were. As baroque or surreal as Clowes might present the events in the lives of his characters, the reader could be reasonably certain, within the...
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Daily Breakdowns 087 - Siege/Avengers Wrap
Siege #4, Avengers: The Initiative #35, Dark Avengers #16, The New Avengers Finale #1.
Writers - Brian Michael Bendis, Christos Gage
Artists - Bryan Hitch, Stuart Immonen, Mike Deodato, Olivier Coipel, Jorge Molina, Others.
After basically ignoring most Marvel series the past few years (getting a few in collections such as Captain America and, more recently, Agents of Atlas), Siege was a way...
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The Invincible Iron Man -- from the big screen to...
I confess to having a large zone of ignorance when it comes to some superhero comic books. I have, if you will, a Phantom Zone of knowledge but a Negative Zone of ignorance.
Oh I know who Jason Blood, Kent Nelson and Chuck Taine are (they are The Demon, Doctor Fate and Bouncing Boy).
But like a Democrat (or Republican) who only looks at one party and does not care what the other side has to say,...
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Daily Breakdowns 086 - Wilson
Wilson
Writer/Artist - Daniel Clowes
Publisher - Drawn & Quarterly. $21.95 USD
Hi, brother, how’s it hanging?
You like the internet, huh? Ha ha. Maybe it really can bring humanity together, a world community, our bonds intangible and yet as strong and real as the wireless signals used to create them.
Jesus, your skin is ghastly. Do you ever fucking go outside?
...
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Sticking the Widow with You
Others have taken their shots at Pat Lee and NRama interviewer Troy Brownfield’s softball question about his “bit controversial” past (as a guy who didn’t pay his talent). But I think it’s more fun to just substitute “pay” for “prove” in this part of the interview:
Nrama: At this stage of your career, does Pat Lee have something to pay? ...
3 tags
Daily Breakdowns 085 - The Invincible Gene Colan
The Invincible Gene Colan
Edited by Clifford Meth
Published by Marvel Comics. $19.99 USD
Tom Spurgeon puts it well in his essay in this book where he points out that Gene Colan was almost alone in not trying to emulate Jack Kirby’s style in the ’60s, following his own moody, atmospheric path, and how his contrasting style (as well as those of Steve Ditko and Wally Wood) gave Marvel...
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Guest Reviewer Month: Tucker Stone on Blue Spring
I’m late to the party, but I’ve really been enjoying the criticism of Tucker Stone this year. He’s usually funny, often scathingly insightful, and I always respect someone who will intentionally “throw” a review by writing about something not at all related to the work in question, just because it’s more fun to do a little short story, piece of dialect, or...
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Daily Breakdowns 084 - Area 10
Area 10 Written by Christos N. Gage Art by Chris Samnee Published by Vertigo Comics. $19.99 USD
It’s hard to figure out the publishing strategy for this Vertigo Crime imprint, but the common elements seem to be to avoid straight crime fiction and instead introduce a fantastic element. I kind of like the smaller-than-comics size, though.
Gage is a prolific comics writer, and it seems that...
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Daily Breakdowns 083 - Rip Kirby 1946-1948
Rip Kirby Complete Comic Strips 1946-1948 By Alex Raymond and Ward Greene Published by IDW Publishing. $49.99 USD
IDW has done remarkable work the past few years with their imprint The Library of American Comics collecting so many of the great newspaper strips like Dick Tracy, Little Orphan Annie, Terry and the Pirates and so on. Rip Kirby is one with which I had no familiarity before reading...
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Giffen vs. Janson
Diversions of the Groovy Kind has a nice group of splash pages from Keith Giffen’s 1977 run as penciler of Marvel’s The Defenders. It makes me kinda want to read them, which I think I have somewhere, but what struck me first is not so much what Giffen brings to these pages but what you get from Klaus Janson. Giffen and Janson are credited as the “artists,” which can cover a...
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Fever Fervor
I think it was appropriate for Brandon Soderberg at ComicsForSerious to call out Brendan McCarthy’s Spider-Man: Fever #1 for a scene that he finds to be “insanely racist.” I’ll be honest, I didn’t think anything of it at first, and even as I started to post this I was disagreeing with Brandon. I mean, “thass” is a stereotypical pronunciation of...
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I saw Iron Man, Too
Damn you, Kevin Pasquino and your well-written review! I agree with all of it. Not as good as the first but well-done and pretty character-driven. More than ever, you equate bad boy Tony Stark with bad boy Downey but his momentary fall from grace is justified in the film. That was an uncomfortable scene, drunk Tony in his suit, especially as I think it featured the late DJ AM. Wasted potential...
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It's not the suit, it's the man in the suit: Kevin...
It’s an interesting experience, watching a movie based on a comic book when the only thing you know about the comic book is what you’ve learned from the movie.
It was surprising for me to realize that given all my years of comic book collecting that the only “Iron Man” comic book I had read before seeing the first movie was the classic Demon in a Bottle storyline. And even that storyline I knew...
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Daily Breakdowns 082 - Abbrev.
I hope you’ve been enjoying Guest Reviewer Month, which has obviously extended on into May due to some delays on our part here and there, plus our general no-post-on-the-weekend rule. We actually have a few guest reviews still to go, so check those next week and then we’ll be well and truly done.
Working on some bigger books for next time, so just a few short takes this time out.
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Guest Reviewer Month - Steve Hockensmith on I...
If someone tries to tell you Fletcher Hanks was a genius, don’t believe them. If someone tries to tell you Fletcher Hanks was an important figure in the development of superhero comics, don’t believe them. But if someone tries to tell you Fletcher Hanks was one strange, f-ed up bastard who created some of the weirdest, creepiest, and (entirely by accident) most revealing comics of the Golden Era,...
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ADD Reviews Drawn Together: The Movie: The Movie!
I’m a fan of the first season of this Comedy Central series, but never got around to watching the second or third seasons. The network pulled the plug after the third season, which prompts the events of Drawn Together: The Movie: The Movie! If you’re not familiar with Drawn Together, the premise is that a group of cartoon icons are living in a house making a reality TV series. As the...
