April 2010
44 posts
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Blinded by the Light or Running to Stand Still?
It kind of goes without saying, but I’m not really a reader of superhero comics anymore. I don’t really frequent comic shops anymore and most of what I buy, I pick up in collected form from bookstores, usually with something like Dark Horse, Fantagraphics, Drawn & Quarterly or Vertigo on the spine. I had been following Grant Morrison’s Batman & Robin series, but it...
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Guest Reviewer Month: Box Brown Reviews Jeffrey...
This is a difficult book to find! I was only able to procure one thanks to my friend Susie Cagle going to a small convention in California! But, I’m glad (and thankful) that she picked it up for me. Maybe I am the perfect audience for this type of material. Process by Jeffrey Brown is not just a mini-comic, it is a packet containing a mini-comic, various notes, actual comic making...
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Ellis on Comics Piracy
This kind of ties in with my post yesterday on the likely influence of comics piracy on sales of comics, now that the corporate superhero segment of the industry has embraced the $3.99 price point. Ellis discusses Previews and comics piracy, and says “If I were starting out today, I’d be thinking very hard about wrapping my comic into a .cbz container, slinging it on Rapidshare and...
Self-Serving and Slightly Less So
Hey, it’s not a big deal but still kind of cool to me. The latest issue of Powers (#4) by Brian Michael Bendis and Mike Avon Oeming, has in its letter column the interview Tom Spurgeon conducted with me about the book as part of his Best Comics of the Decade interview series around the end of 2009. That shouldn’t be a reason to get the comic itself, since the interview is still free...
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Guest Review Month - Chad Nevett on Spider-Man:...
Writers appeal to me for different reasons. Some dazzle you with their style or ideas, their sheer virtuosity or genius. You know you’re not likely to write anything like Alan Moore, or David Foster Wallace or Bob Dylan. Others are more approachable; when you read Robert Kirkman or Nick Hornby, or listen to Tom Petty, it’s more a feeling of being next to that person on the barstool,...
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GRM
I hope you’ve all been enjoying Guest Reviewers Month, a cheap and relatively easy way for TWC to class up the joint by inviting some our favorite writers-about-comics to drop some reviews. ADD and I have been more than pleased by the great folks who agreed to participate. So far we’ve had Roger Green, Johanna Draper-Carlson, Eric San Juan, Nina Stone, Jamie S. Rich and Jose...
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Have Shitty Comics Reached Their Platonic Price...
At The Comics Reporter, Tom Spurgeon dares speak the name of overpriced corporate comic books and wonders if a tipping point has been reached. Now, I often quote Tom as saying “The only comics that cost too much are shitty comics,” and certainly most corporate superhero comics are shitty comics, but $3.99 really does seem too expensive for most of what the Direct Market offers up as...
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Buffy The Vampire Slayer #34 Reviewed by Kevin...
Writer - Brad Meltzer Artist - Georges Jeanty Published by Dark Horse Comics Depicting sex in comic books can be tough.
It’s relatively easy when it’s the full-tilt boogie of a Tijuana Bible or the drawings of Milo Manara because then it can be explicit and explosive. There’s no need for subtlety because the images can leap off the page in all their pornographic glory.
But it’s much more...
Daily Breakdowns 076 - The Mammoth Book of Best...
The Mammoth Book of Best Crime Comics
Edited by Paul Gravett
Running Press. $17.95 USD (2008)
I don’t really recommend you follow my semi-ironic method of reading this book—in a glass repair shop after your car was broken into—but there are worse things to do in a paneled waiting room with a distracting fountain wall on one side and too-close restroom on the other, and there...
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Guest Reviewer Month: José Villarrubia on Deicide
I’ve been sometimes asked “who were your greatest influences when it comes to coloring comics?” The answer is easy. Growing up in Spain my two idols were Richard Corben and Moebius. In the 1970s these two giants changed the comics medium, including its colors. It is important to note that these two artists did complete art, including color painted by hand. The fact that they no longer color ...
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Everything Dies Reviewed by ADD
Box Brown’s cheerily-named Everything Dies has its mind on some weighty philosophical issues. Three stories are split into multiple chapters across the two issues, one called Heart of Stonework that focuses on a Buddhist monk and his student, another called The Book of Job that recontextualizes the Biblical tale into modern times, and a third split into chapters called Alpha and Omega that...
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Guest Reviewer Month - Johanna Draper-Carlson on...
When I started writing about comics about a decade ago, Johanna was already an established voice, often of reason and always of authority. I don’t think our tastes overlap much, but I’ve always respected what she had to say, and those who don’t do so at their peril. Because aside from the absolute clarity and efficiency of her style, one of my favorite things about her is the...
MoCCA 2010
This year’s MoCCA was the best ever, in my opinion.
The feedback I got from a lot of people at tables was that traffic was light, but it didn’t seem that way to me. Sunday was much less crowded than Saturday, but that’s to be expected.
Here’s some random highlights and memories:
* Is it just me, or does MoCCA really need to sell coffee?
* Meeting Jaime Hernandez for the first time was...
Daily Breakdowns 075 - It's A Living
Everyone has their own ideas on what critics should be concerned about, should focus on. Some don’t think one should write about whether something is worth the price being charged for it—they might not even list the price. I get that, and that’s something I struggle with and upon which I don’t have a definite stance.
I also struggle with just how useful, or how fair,...
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Black Blizzard - Review by ADD
Yoshihiro Tatsumi’s Black Blizzard is published by Drawn and Quarterly, but looks and feels unlike any of the author’s other works previously released by the publisher. The Push Man, Abandon the Old in Tokyo and Good-Bye were all stately hardcovers, elegant and thoughtfully designed, obviously worthy of the visionary comics they contained. Tatsumi’s mammoth autobiography A...
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CA and ADD Go After The Eisners
CA: I rarely comment on the Eisners or other comics awards, but in reading this list a few thoughts occurred and I wanted to get ADD in on it. We both freely admit we haven’t read a lot of the nominated work here, so will not weigh in too much on who should win/what’s best/etc., but there are some books worth talking about for sure, as well as some other stuff related to the whole Eisner process....
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Guest Reviewer Month - Nina Stone on Garth Ennis'...
I don’t really know Nina Stone. I don’t just mean that she’s relatively new to writing about comics (and reading them!). I mean that of all the people I invited, she’s the only one I haven’t had any direct contact with, as her husband Tucker has been the intermediary, which I find rather touchingly protective. But I really wanted to get her in on this little project...
Daily Breakdowns 074 - Spider-Man: Fever
Spider-Man: Fever #1 (of 3)
Writer/Artist - Brendan McCarthy
Colors, Digital FX & Letters - Steve Cook & Brendan McCarthy
Publisher - Marvel Comics
I think McCarthy is a really interesting talent, but despite over 30 years of work in comics and other media, I can’t really point to anything of his I’ve read aside from that final issue of the late, lamented DC series, Solo....
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Guest Reviewer Month: Eric San Juan on Cerebus...
It would be dishonest to suggest that an examination of the final collection of Dave Sim’s sprawling Cerebus saga can take place without at least some discussion of Sim himself. As Cerebus wore on, Sim began to put himself front and center, making himself an explicit part of the story both literally and figuratively. His views became impossible to untangle from the narrative....
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PR: Details on April 25th Albany Comic Con
From the official press release: The city of Albany’s instantly recognizable skyline will be featured on a special edition cover of Magdalena #1, published by the Image Comics imprint Top Cow Productions. The exclusive, variant edition cover will only be available at the Albany Comic Con, to be held 10 a.m.-4p.m. on April 25 at the Holiday Inn on Wolf Road in Colonie. Admission is $3. The special...
