More photos of this awesome mural (and some backstory) over at Mission Mission. Additional photos on my old friend Doctor Popular’s blog and flickr stream. And some more over at what I’m seeing.
Check out the new banner that Mike created!
The banners will rotate randomly. Right now only two are in rotation, and I have a clear preference for the new one with Serenity prominently featured.
Update (by marty): Now there are three in rotation! Click below to see all three.
The next ReadComics book club is planned for Saturday, July 11th, or two weeks from this coming Saturday. We hope to have all the regulars, and some supporting cast for this book club, when we’ll talk about Annihilation, books One, Two, and Three.
Annihilation Books 1, 2, 3
Saturday, July 11th 1PM
Florence & Marty’s apartment
Sharyn (whose birthday it is today, happy birthday Sharyn!!!) sent me a link to this crazy relationship map. Click the thumbnail to see it full size. She found this over at UncannyXmen.net, which appears to have a whole crap-ton of x-men comic synopses, as well as loads of other x-men content.
Jason points out that, in all those characters, he could only find one same-sex relationship in the whole map, and two same-sex crushes.
This is another “what are we reading” podcast, touching on the following topics: Bean World, The Unwritten, (and various other black-haired bespectacled wizard boys), Chew, The Gaylaxicon booth at Pride this year, Jan’s Atomic Heart, by Simon Roy, Richard K. Morgan’s sci-fi novels, including Altered Carbon and Market Forces, Hawkeye’s new limited series, The New Mutants, Garage Band by Gipi, Gigantic, Ignition City (Warren Ellis), Shazam! The Monster Society of Evil, Civil War, and the deaths and subsequent rebirths of various super heroes, including Captain America and The Flash.
Listen to ReadComics.org Podcast Episode #035 (34 MB, 75 minutes)
We have allready seen two Dark Horse presents Dr. Horrible Comics. One featuring Captain Hammer, the next was about Moist. And now here is the third. Written by Zach Whedon
I really hope to see more of these, they really flesh out the world of the web series. Of course I would love to see a sequel to the musical, and now that Dollhouse, How I Met Your Mother, and Castle are all on summer hiatus it may happen.
Here is a really well done fan trailor for a hypothetical green lantern movie starring Nathan Fillion.
This comic book book club had us all reading Green Lantern. This book was selected by Jason J, who forced Chad to join our regular cast, Marty, Florence, Mike, Jason T. and Susie. We shared our opinions about the comic, and the many decades of backstory leading up to this run. We also allowed Chad to choose next month’s book club pick: Annihilation. Finally, special thanks to Ookla the Mok, whose song Theme from Super Skrull we use to close out the episode.
Listen to ReadComics.org Podcast Episode #034 (42 MB, 91 minutes)
The usual cast of pods in this episode: Florence, Marty, Jason, Mike and Susie. We hope you enjoy listening to this as much as we had fun making it. Topics in rough order of appearance:
Listen to ReadComics.org Podcast Episode #033 (22 MB, 49 minutes)
Free Comic Book Day was Saturday, and I hit four stores, only two of which were worth going to. The Source and Big Brain always do it up, though, and I amassed a full run of the FCBD offerings…minus Nascar Heroes. I opted not to get that one. It was probably really well written and would’ve changed my life forever. I’ll have to make do with Blackest Night #0 instead. I also made a point of buying stuff at the three stores that actually gave me free comics.
At the Source, I picked up my pull of comics, which consisted of RASL #4, and also the DVD of Black Orchid, a Doctor Who story which I hadn’t bought yet. At Big Brain, I bought Queen & Country Declassified Vol. 1, which I had been looking for for some time. Nice price for the trade, less than ten bucks! And at Beyond Shinders, I grabbed issues 3 and 4 of Billy Batson and the Magic of Shazam. It was my first trip to Beyond Shinders, and while quiet, it was very reminiscent of the old downtown store. I’ll have to go check out the suburban stores, which are actually in old Shinders locations.
The next ReadComics book club is planned for Saturday, May 16th, or two weeks from this coming Saturday. We hope to have all the regulars, and some supporting cast for this book club, when we’ll talk about Green Lantern, The Sinestro Corps War, volumes 1, 2, and if you can get your hands on it, Tales of the Sinestro Corps, which collects the final (auxiliary?) bits.
Green Lantern: The Sinestro Corps War (Vol. 1, 2, etc.)
Saturday, May 16th 3PM
Florence & Marty’s apartment
I picked up Paul Hornschemeier’s Mother Come Home from the library because I vaguely remembered someone somewhere giving it a good review. I found it to be a profoundly sad and beautiful study of how children process loss. The core of the story is about seven or eight year old boy coping with the death of his mother and the resulting mental breakdown of his father. A subject that hits rather close to home for me. The loss of mother of the title has uprooted his father from reality, he loses track of anything other than his overwhelming grief, and the boy, Thomas finds himself in the care taker role. Thomas creates his own myths to explain his altered life, and clings to invented rituals to anchor himself in his now unstable world. The climax of the story involves his need to fix his father’s problem, and therefore fix his own life, which fails utterly. The book is narrated by an older Thomas, and it is his more mature understanding of the events that he is relating that keeps the story from being completely devastating. The art suits the story perfectly. It is straightforward and grim but at the same time innocent and childlike. I would recommend this to anyone who would claim graphic novels can’t have the same emotional impact of prose.
Jason, Marty, Mike and Florence are mostly all drunk, talking (slurring) about the following comic-related subjects (and many others less so): twitter and comics and facebook, Scott Pilgrim, Bomb Queen, New Mutants, Dark Avengers, Grant Morrison, Runaways, Frank Miller’s Daredevil, The Webcomic List, piperka.net, Susan Boyle and Marty’s mom. We hope you enjoy this rambling masterpiece.
Listen to ReadComics.org Podcast Episode #032 (17 MB, 37 minutes)
Forgive me ReadComics, for I have sinned. It has been AGES since my last post.
I’ve read tons of stuff lately. Two TPBs by Grant Morrison, in particular. First was Batman R.I.P., (pictured) which was basically about convincing us that Batman might die, or at least go insane, no maybe even die, no, just loose his mind, no, just die. I think in that order, although it hardly matters. It was only slightly more coherent than Kid Eternity, which was essentially about some folks in hell trying to get mankind to grow up and figure out this whole living on earth thing sucks. At least, I think that’s what the story was about… in the end. Both stories had lots of WTF moments, and neither really ties everything up to any satisfying degree. Both had incredible art, however, that, at least in the case of Kid Eternity, really went a long way toward making the trade worth consuming.
There have also been numerous single issues in the last few weeks. Florence and I have kept up on our pull, and last week in particular there were at least four new comics to read, including Sword, Echo, Doctor Sleepless and a new one by Warren Ellis called Ignition City. I’ll admit that I devoured Sword, (which had a satisfactory, if not overwhelming amount of content again this month) and Echo (which unfortunately didn’t) right away, but have yet to get to the Warren Ellis stuff. I’m behind on Freak Angels too, and in general have a lot of webcomics to catch up on when I get around to it.
I also want to announce that we know what comics we’re going to be reading for our next book club, even if we don’t know when it’s going to take place yet. Jason J has announced that we’ll be reading the Sinestro Corps War stuff. He hasn’t let me know exactly which comics yet, but wikipedia says it’s an “11-part saga was originally published between June and December 2007“. It goes on to say that “in addition to the main storyline, four supplemental “Tales of the Sinestro Corps” one-shot specials and a Blue Beetle tie-in issue were concurrently released.” So there are potentially sixteen comics for us to read. It looks like there are at least two trade paperbacks, and possibly a third with the supplemental stuff. Anyway, we should know soon enough when the Book Club will be, and there’ll probably be another post about what books to read then.
I saw the movie this week and I wil write about eventualy, but I had to post this video I just ran into on you tube.
Watchmen cartoon
It is brilliant! And not that implausible, I recall cartoons being made from innapropriate source material pretty regularly, although none of them spring to mind just this second.
Also It’s Just Some Random Guy has been doing a Watchmen series as well.
Random guy watchmen #1
random guy watchmen #2
random guy watchmen #3
Regardless of how I felt of the movie, the release has wrought these and that is good.
Tonight’s podcast was just Marty Florence and Jason when we began, but then Susie joins us about ten minutes in. It’s a shorter one, but we manage to at least mention offhandedly the following topics: The Muppet Show Comic Book #1, Boom Studios new Pixar licensing, DC’s After Watchmen …what next? campaign, Ex Machina TPB #7, Batman RIP, old standby topics: Grant Morrison and Walking Dead, Angel: After The Fall, Blank It webcomic, Menage A 3, Piperka, Sister Claire, Promethia, and all female comic book podcasts: Comic Racks and Birds of Geek.
Listen to ReadComics.org Podcast Episode #031 (18 MB, 38 minutes)
Comics read since last time:
Justice League of America 17-21
Marvel Boy 1-6 (Morrison series)
Titans East Special #1
The Titans 1-6
Iron Man: Director of SHIELD 29-32
Secret Invasion: Fantastic Four 1-3
Hedge Knight II: Sworn Sword 1-6
Man, I’m so far behind on these. I probably can’t legitimately write too much about my thoughts on the above, since it’s been weeks now since I’ve read them, and so much has been read between then and now. Let’s see what I can remember…
Morrison’s Marvel Boy. Dig that kooky retcon, man. He’s been brought into the main Marvel continuity as part of the Dark Avengers, but when did he move from whatever earth this six-issue mini took place in to the regular Marvel Earth?
The Titans relaunch…nothing too exciting. It’s basically getting the band back together, isn’t it? Have they become the Rolling Stones of superhero teams? And it just seems wrong to have it not drawn by Perez. Trigon’s new look works for him. Did I say Rolling Stones? Trigon was definitely modelled after Ozzy.
Iron Man’s art was a little disturbing. I got kind of an uncanny valley experience looking at the people’s faces and how their bodies were positioned. How many stories can we have that are about Tony dealing with the unintended consequences of his actions regarding technology?
I like these Hedge Knight stories. Who knows, maybe I’d actually enjoy Martin’s series about pageantry and heraldry. Mike has been recommending it again and again.
This bookclub podcast was all about Thor, issues #1-600 (all 13 issues). BRAKKA-DOOOOOOM! We have Florence, Marty, Jason, Mike, Susie (actually present!), and Jason Johnston with us for this lively discussion of Straczynski’s run of Thor.
Listen to ReadComics.org Podcast Episode #030 (26 MB, 57 minutes)
It’s time for me to finally do the post about webcomics I have meant to do since Christmas.
Here are three I don’t think have been mentioned on this site yet.
I love this strip! It is about a young Swedish couple who are having a baby, and probably shouldn’t be. Given that Anders can’t stop getting involved with other women, and Maria can’t seem to grow up. It is wickedly funny and terribly authentic. The art work some how manages to be simplified, and sophisticated at the same time. I was really tempted to buy an original page, but unfortunately the I did not get my tax return before the half off sale ended. It should be mentioned that even though the people are drawn in a very non photo realistic manner, 60% of the strips have included extremely explicit sex, that is probably not safe for work.
This strip is only a few months old. It follows the adventures of a very naive young girl who was raised by nuns. It is drawn in the style of kwai(cutesy) anime. Claire wants nothing more in life than to be the best nun ever, while still getting to indulge in all things sweet and cuddly. Unfortunately for her a sexy messenger from God disrupts her cloistered existence. I am totally digging it!
Finally we have Finn and Charlie are Hitched
It is a slice of life styled strip centered around a gay male couple and their circle of friends. It is not as serialized as the previous two I mentioned, going with the more traditional 3 to 4 panels leading to a gag format. It is consistently funny and done by local Chicago artist.
Thanks to Jason, I actually knew when MarsCon was this year (for the first time). I went to a few panels, and the highlight of the ones I made it to was the WebComics Panel, with Rob Balder. Rob is the writer for Partially Clips, which I had seen before, and Erfworld, which I hadn’t. I hadn’t been particularly interested in Partially Clips when I discovered it the first time, and a re-visit today confirmed that it’s amusing, but again holds very little interest for me. Erfworld, on the other hand, is now something I’m totally going to devour in little chunks until I catch up to the 131 pages they’ve got in the archives thus far.
Once I do catch up (and even before), I’ll be using the awesome Piperka to keep track of my progress! Rob mentioned Piperka in the panel, and it’s basically a very light-weight site designed to do nothing more than keep track of your progress in all the webcomics you read. The sweet thing is that it lets you know which comics have new entries since you last visited, making it a perfect one-stop location for webcomic reading.
Rob (and the other panelists) also mentioned a bunch of other webcomics, including Menage a 3 (which florence and I just read all the way from the beginning–contains mild nudity). If I find more good ones, maybe I’ll post them here also.
We’re having our next book club this Saturday, March 14th, at 3PM at Florence & Marty’s apartment with our special guest, Susie!
This month we’ll be reading’s Mike’s selection: Thor #1-600 (it actually covers only 13 issues because of their crazy numbering logic).
Thor #1-600, J. Michael Straczynski
Saturday, March 14th 3PM
Florence & Marty’s apartment
Check out this awesome and unlikely combination: Spider-Man + Broadway musical+ Julie Taymor directing + U2 composing = Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark.
I adore Julie Taymor and her entirely unique twisted dynamic view, so I can’t wait to see this show. They have cast Evan Rachel Wood as Mary Jane. I loved her as a young lesbian on ‘Once and Again’, and I thought she did a decent job in Julie Taymor’s ‘Across the Universe’. No casting for Peter Parker yet, but they’re supposed to start rehearsing in the fall and debut in January 2010.
In this episode of the ReadComics podcast, Marty, Florence, Jason and Susie talk about the biggest comic book event of the week: the Watchmen movie. Marty and Florence saw a sneak preview of the movie last night, but we took pains not to spoil anything. (Short review: It’s AWESOME, go see it!!!) We also discussed the following topics: Marty and Florence’s visitor Flat Stanley, movie special effects and CGI (at length, including Watchmen, Star Wars, Hellboy II, Pans Labyrinth, the Oscars and Batman), Dr. Manhattan’s BIG BLUE PENIS, other movies we want to see this summer (Super Capers, Wolverine, Harry Potter, Year One), the possibility of an Elfquest movie, Johnny Hiro, Scott Pilgrim, a bunch of comics we have read recently (Wonder Woman, Tek Jensen, Ender’s Game, Batman), Kevin Smith’s batman, the trend toward comic book continuations of TV shows (Farscape, Buffy, Veronica Mars, Pushing Daisies), and Jason gives a shout-out to the GridCycle GeekCast, a new video game podcast.
Listen to ReadComics.org Podcast Episode #029 (30 MB, 66 minutes)
Those who know me realize that I haven’t been posting much on here because I’ve been focusing most of my extra-curricular efforts on developing a puzzle game for the iPhone. But that’s not why I’m writing today! I actually just read over at massively.com that there is going to be a Watchmen game for the iPhone released at the same time as the movie (this Friday). As far as I know, this is also going to be the first MMO (massively multiplayer online) game for the iPhone. There is also a video of some interviews with the developers, and it shows some of the gameplay too. Interesting stuff.
I found this somewhat lengthy article on the WIred site. It’s a very informative look into Moore’s past, present and upcoming projects.
http://www.wired.com/entertainment/hollywood/magazine/17-03/ff_moore_qa?currentPage=1
Comics read since last time:
Birds of Prey 118
GeNext 1-5
Ms. Marvel 25-30
Invincible Iron-Man 1-7
Punisher War Journal 18-23
JLA 72-76
Teen Titans 24-26, 29-33, Annual 1
Outsiders 24-25, 28
Robin 146-147
Infinite Crisis 5-6
Jack of Fables 17-21
And I thought I had a lot of comics to talk about during my trip. Apparently, I’ve been on a bit of a binge lately, and have just been tearing through the trades. Again, I’ll break this up into a few posts for manageability.
Birds of Prey 118 was part of the Dark Side Club crossover that had been happening in Teen Titans, with Misfit and Black Alice duking it out for the entertainment of the masses. I liked this single story better than any of the ones with the Titans, probably because it seemed to have a bit more background on what was going on with the club. A bit of gruesomeness with Misfits powers, not to mention a deepening mystery surrounding her and Black Alice. Too bad the series is getting cancelled. Maybe DC will turn the Bat-family books into an anthology series. That would actually be kind of nice.
GeNext was kind of disappointing. I think that I’m looking for the classic Claremont that I remember from the ’80s, and I’m just not going to find that. I either have to accept him for how he writes now, or just give up on him completely. Personally, I think he’d be better off staying off the mutant books and writing something completely different. His history with the X-Men is going to colour everything he writes with those characters from now on. GeNext really seemed more like a marketing plan than a good story. It feels like Marvel trying to invent schemes to find the “youth market”, like a new young set of mutants set however many years in the future, tying into a few other titles of a similar theme. But hey, I was part of the youth market once, and I got into comics because I enjoyed the stories they were telling in the regular books at the time. I still think that they don’t need to trick kids into reading comics, they just need to have comics where kids are going to find them.
Ms. Marvel is more Secret Invasion side story. I’m expecting the actual Secret Invasion trade from the library soon, so it’ll be interesting to see what I think of that after having read all the side stories first. Maybe I’ll enjoy it more that way; the biggest complaint I’ve heard about it is that nothing really happens issue after issue. That’s probably because everything is happening in these crossover series. Ms. Marvel seems to be a bit more bloodthirsty in this trade, pretty much deciding skrulls during wartime are fair game for slaughter. Melo’s art is very reminiscent of Chaykin, especially considering the violence involved in the Battle of Manhattan arc.
Speaking of Chaykin, I think he’s a good fit for Punisher War Journal, at least as good as Steve Dillon on the Punisher Max series. I’m not sure what I think of Matt Fraction and Rick Remender on this series. It could just be that the character is hard to identify with, and it really depends a lot on how he’s being written. Garth Ennis did such a great job with Punisher Max, and the regular series, and PWJ has seemed a little….silly in comparison. Of course, more than anything, I think the Punisher is more of a foil than a character in his own right. This arc kind of ties up a few things about his history, right in time for the next arc to connect into Secret Invasion. The whole thing about a SHIELD agent obsessed with the Punisher has seemed a little contrived to me, and now having him in a crossover with skrulls? It’s getting a little cosmic for Frank Castle. Next he’ll end up in a team-up with Rocket Raccoon.
Fraction is also writing the new Invincible Iron Man series. I’m not sure why another Iron Man series was necessary to complement the current Leader of SHIELD series. Maybe they just wanted to give Fraction more work. The interactions between Tony, Pepper and Rhodey are great, but it seems to be retreading a lot of Orson Scott Card’s Ultimate Iron Man series. (Yeah, I read the Card series–he’s a bastard, but I got them from the library, and I’m a sad completist fan).
I never read The Question in the ’80s when it was coming out, but since DC seems to be publishing everything that Denny O’Neil wrote, and I can get it from the library, I figured why not. I really liked how the character was used in 52. This run is very different from that portrayal, with Vic Sage being a bit more of a bastard. I’d read O’Neil’s run on Green Lantern/Green Arrow, and he’s very topical. I wouldn’t say these Question stories are dated, in fact, I think they’re kind of timeless, but you get the same sense of the ’80s as you do when you watch a movie like American Psycho. Cowan’s art also defines the era, with the women’s hairstyles and shoulderpads. The art reminds me of Sienkewicz. I wonder if the Ditko stories have been collected anywhere. I’d love to read those and see how the character differs.
I loved the New Warriors comic in the ’90s, and I’ve recently started hunting them down at conventions from the quarter bins. Even when I got out of collecting in the ’90s, I would still stop in at Shinders and read this one on the rack during my lunch break. I’d never read the reality show mini-series version, and having them be the fall guys for Civil War (not to mention killing off half the team) left a sour taste in my mouth. The current run feels like it’s building to something, but taking its own sweet time to do it. There’s definitely plenty of action, but some of the secret motivations are going too long without a reveal. I know that the next arc ties in to Secret Invasion, and I’m enjoying where the creators are going with it as a counter to the registration act policies. It’s a bit of a stretch to suspend disbelief with the amount of tech they’re supposed to be reverse-engineering, but I guess it is a question of whether you can believe this but not this. Comics do seem to be in love with child geniuses these days, particularly of the technological variety. There’s Amadeus Cho in the Hulk/Herc comics, Marvin and Wendy in Teen Titans, the Blue Beetle’s posse, and now Kaz, Grace and a third whose name I forget in New Warriors. Oh, and the Japanese Toyman in Superman/Batman. Must be the new math.
Speaking of stories going on and on, the Gog/Magog story in Justice Society of America, tying in the Kingdom Come continuity is something I’m ready to be done with. I’m still enjoying the writing, and the characters, but I just don’t care about Kingdom Come enough. It was an okay series, but I just didn’t connect with it as anything other than an Elseworlds story. More interesting is the tie-in story bringing Power Girl home to Earth-2.
My thoughts on ElfQuest are going to get their own post, I think.
Comics read since last time:
The Un-Men 6-13
The Mighty Avengers 13-15
Teen Titans/Legion of Super-Heroes Special
Teen Titans 15-23
The Question 13-18
New Warriors 6-13
ElfQuest 6-10
New Avengers 38-42
Jokers Asylum
Justice Society of America 13-18 + Annual 1
A whole bunch of comics this time, since I was unable to post during my trip to the Doctor Who convention. I’ll break this into a couple of posts, probably.
The Un-Men was just starting to get interesting, bringing in Swamp Thing continuity, when it got the axe. Referencing Arcane and introducing his insect creatures made me take notice of the series more, but I guess for sales it was too little too late. I suppose it’s nice that they even put the series out in two trades and I was able to get them from the library.
Mighty Avengers and New Avengers are both Secret Invasion tie-ins with these issues. I still haven’t read the main story of Secret Invasion yet, so I was afraid that there would be much spoiled, but so far, that hasn’t been the case. Part of New Avengers is set in the Savage Land, without explanation of how the team got there, but for the most part, both MA and NA are having stories set in the background. You get what are practically one-off stories, where the main event is being hinted at, and here you have all the cool stuff that’s going on while the big guns are off saving the world. I approve. I think that I could probably skip SI itself and still know what’s going on from reading these.
Teen Titans had a couple of story arcs, one of which I read a few years when I was getting caught up on all the Infinite Crisis lead-ins. The stories get pretty dark starting around this period, as the characters deal with the aftermath of Identity Crisis and Doctor Light regaining his memory, and finding out how fallible their heroes are, not to mention the possibility that they’ll grow up evil. I really enjoyed the introduction of Speedy, Green Arrow’s HIV+ protege, and the massive reunion of just about every former Titan. I’m surprised they didn’t get George Perez to draw it.
To be continued…
This podcast/book club features Florence, Jason, Mike, Susie and Marty, and is all about PS238: Volume 1, With Liberty And Recess for All, written and drawn by Aaron Williams. We stay mostly focused for the first 45 minutes or so, then veer off on a Dr. Who tangent in anticipation of Jason’s upcoming convention trip.
Listen to ReadComics.org Podcast Episode #028 (30 MB, 65 minutes)
Comics read since last time:
Incredible Hercules 116-120
PS238 0-5
Locke & Key 1-6
Captain America 37-42
Secret Invasion is kind of incidental to the events in the Incredible Hercules, almost a device to tell the larger story and to be honest, I think it suffers for it. From what I’ve heard, Secret Invasion hasn’t been nearly as interesting as the crossovers to it, but Hercules would’ve been better off if they found some other reason to get the God Squad together than to go after the Skrull deities. It’s kind of a neat idea for a team book, and there could be a lot more stories there, a la Fables. I like the historical cutaways, which a lot of comics seem to be doing these days. What was Hercules doing between the classical Greek era and the modern comics era? Amadeus Cho is a fun character, but he’s starting to get annoying. Having him be a little more fallible made him more interesting in this story.
Locke & Key was fascinatingly creepy. I’ve been left hanging after this first collection, and I want to know more. I want to know what the key is that Bode found. Hill is going to give his dad a real run for his money. I’ve complained in the past about decompressed storytelling, and whole issues where absolutely nothing happens. This series, while I read it in the trade, I think I would actually enjoy more in single issues, as each issue builds a bit more, moves the creepiness forward a bit. The art fits the otherworldliness of the story, the artist doing a great job at drawing sinister, scary and in the case of Sam, just a little bit dead inside. I desperately want to know where this is going to go.
Captain America is dead. Long live Captain America! But which one? Brubaker is going into the history of the character, by bringing back the 1950s Cap, who altered his appearance to look like Steve Rogers. At the end of this trade, he vanishes, but is clearly going to come back to battle Captain “Bucky” America again. Part of this story was set in Minneapolis, at a political rally. Nothing in the background was completely recognizable as downtown, but you could see skyways. I don’t think we have any news reporters who wear shirts that show their navels, though. Are there any serious female reporters that would wear a bare midriff shirt while on air?
Tune into the the next podcast to hear our discussion of PS238!
