Read Comics

Recently the new Spider-Woman series by Brian Michael Bendis and Alex Maleev hit the stands. It may also surprise you that they’ve also released a “motion comic” of the series on iTunes as well.  In fact, if you read much of the promotional interviews and articles bout Spider-Woman, you’ll find that Marvel is pushing the motion comic more than the printed comic.  In addition, they just announced that the first arc of Astonishing X-Men (“Gifted”) by Joss Whedon would be released as a motion comic as well, complete with a media blitz to boot.  This follows DC’s jump into the genre with last year’s Watchmen motion comic that coincided with the movie.  So what’s the story on this hot new craze sweeping the comics world?  Is this the golden ticket that the big publishers were looking for to bring comics into the digital age?  And what is the difference between a motion comic vs. a cartoon?  Lucky for you, I’m here to help out. Read the rest of this entry »

Last weekend was Gaylaxicon in Minneapolis and Marty, Florence, Jason and myself were all in attendance. And a great time it was! We’ll podcast about it sometime this week but I wanted to make some call outs. First, Jason did a great job as the PR/Outreach coordinator for the convention. It was apparent by the turnout and the great time that was had by everyone that Jason worked hard in his role and it payed off. Also, the featured guests were excellent. Margaret Weis, Terrance Griep, Andy Mangels, Lawrence Schimel…they were all awesome and what I found great was that in a convention like this (as opposed to Convergence) was that you could interact with the guests of honor outside of the panels, and got a better feel for them as people. Finally, I loved the panels offered. All the panels I attended spoke to me as a gay geek and covered issues that were important to me. And it’s to the credit of the organizers that there were often tough choices on which panel to attend.

So that’s my brief Gaylaxicon recap. Next year it’s held in Montreal over Halloween weekend…I’m really interested in going!

Dark Horse Presents

And I have posted twice today. Nerd!

I have been reading Daredevil for a few years. While both Bendis’ and Brubaker’s runs were well written and had fantastic art, every other arc dealt with one or all of the following.

-Matt is doing what it takes to protect the city. But he’s going too far! But what choice does he have!
-The Kingpin is gone. Now he’s back! But he’s powerless. But he’s secretly pulling all the all the strings!
-Matt needs a personal life or he’ll go crazy. But being daredevil is putting them all in danger! But if he dosen’t have a personal life he is not a person! But they’re all going to die!

I read the first issue of Andy Diggle’s run, and it looks like more of the same.

Sorry DD it’s over. Call me if you get a fresh perspective.

We’ll be reading The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, the recent Marvel adaption by Eric Shanower and Skottie Young, issues 1-8. Tentatively scheduled for Saturday, 7 November.

I found a post on Violet Blue’s website compiling some sexy webcomics. I haven’t had a chance to check them all out yet, but I have listened to her interesting ‘open source sex’ podcast and have enjoyed reading her political/ cultural blog posts, and her links to pretty girls.

This link is definitely NSFW, and the site is >18yrs.

Yet another fascinating and tantalizing podcastical tribute to comics! This book club issueissode focused on the awesome Echo, by veteran comic creator Terry Moore.

Marty, Florence, Mike, Jason and Susie wax your ears off with unquestionable eloquence, only straying satirically from the subject for brief but satisfying interludes. (We’re segue savants, so of course you probably won’t even notice.) This episode is best enjoyed in the company of a well trained room full of monkeys with typewriters.

Listen to ReadComics.org Podcast Episode #039 (27 MB, 58 minutes)

I have known about and avoiding this manga sequel from TokyoPop to the classic Jim Henson movie the Labyrinth, for a few years now.  The Labyrinth is one of those special movies that I have watched many times since I was a child, and treasure as much now as then.  So when, around  five years ago I stumbled across the listing on Amazon for the first volume, I was taken aback.  I could not help but be worried that the people producing this series would miss the charm and wonder of the original.  I did not even want to take the chance that it would disappoint, so I left it alone.  I am not sure what made me check if the library had them now, but I am glad I did.  No, author Jake T. Forbes has not quite created a story as brilliant as the movie.  He has crafted a narrative that pays homage to the original, while cutting it’s own path through the Labyrinth. This time it is Toby, whom you may remember as the baby that heroine Sarah had to rescue from the Goblin King, who is the teenage hero. He finds himself pulled into the Labyrinth and makes friends both new to the audience as well as familiar ones.  His adventures in the first volume while not boring, do feel a little like a retread. However  it is as the story progresses and we learn of King Jareth’s designs for Toby and his motives and also as we get a broader view of the world he inhabits that I found my self truly invested in the story.  Volume 3 took the plot in a direction I was not expecting, and of course left us with quite the cliffhanger.  There is one more volume  in the works however it looks like the books have been released at least two years apart and number three  just came out last May, so I will be waiting for the conclusion for a while.  I especially appreciated that the author planted references to other Jim Henson fantasy works, such as the Dark Crystal, Fraggle Rock and the Story Teller.  Jim Henson’s work from the Muppets and beyond, was my very first fandom and it is still my most favorite.  Sorry Joss, I love you too!  I am really glad my fears for this project were completely unfounded.  If I have a small complaint, it is that the creatures that were created just for the manga don’t look like they were created by the same person who created the creatures for the film.  And of course they weren’t, Brian Froud designed the firies, Ludo, and Hoggle for the film, while Chris Lie is the artist on the manga.  It also would be nice if the series was in color, but then it would take even longer to be published.  The series has it’s own website and forums at goblin.net.

My next comic book club selection is Terry Moore’s Echo, issues #1-13. The first 10 are collected in two trade paperbacks already.

Echo is his latest creation, but I have been a fan of Terry Moore’s earlier series, Strangers in Paradise, since college.  I am looking forward to hearing everyone else’s opinion about how this new story plays out from the beginning.

We’ll meet on Sunday, September 20th* at 3PM at Florence & Marty’s apartment.

*We are postponing from the 13th to the 20th to protect visitors from our flu.

Jackson Ferrell, of This Week in Webcomics has interviewed the co-creators of the Blank It webcomic, Aric and Lem. He is going to post this interview tomorrow in webcomic form, and was kind enough to send over a sneak-preview for ReadComics.org readers. (Unfortunately, I didn’t check my email all day, and it’s not much of a preview anymore, but hit the jump below for a couple of images from the interview.)

Update: The full interview has been posted, so you should go over there and read it!

Read the rest of this entry »

This book club episode of the podcast was composed of the melodic and intellectual voices of Marty, Florence, Mike, Jason, and of course the disembodied Susie, whose choice it was to read American Born Chinese & The Eternal Smile, by Gene Luen Yang (with Derek Kirk Kim on The Eternal Smile). Both books are well worth a read, and we go into great detail about their plots and allegories and meanings contained therein. As with all our bookclub episodes, it’ll be a more entertaining listen if you’ve already read the books in question. Feel free to leave your own commentary and opinions in the comments.

Listen to ReadComics.org Podcast Episode #038 (24 MB, 52 minutes)

Thursday night, August 13th at The Riverview (the best movie theater in Minneapolis):

“Can’t Stop The Serenity is the annual global browncoat event featuring Serenity on the big screen with all proceeds to benefit Equality Now, Joss Whedon’s favorite charity. Equality Now is an international non profit organization working to end violence and descrimination against women and girls around the world. The now-annual event began in 2006 when over 40 locations around the globe raised over $60,000 for Equality Now! The 2007 global events topped that with gusto by raising over $100,000 for Equality Now! Minnesota’s participation provided over $2,000 in 2006, and tripled that amount in 2007 by raising $6,160! We raised over $7,200 in 2008!”

More information is available at mnfirefly.com

While I was out of town, a co-worker sent out a link to these awesome one-liner comics inspired by spam email subject lines. As you can see, an ironic meaning is often illustrated, rather than the one the often broken english subjects are meant to invoke. The illustrations/comics are drawn by graphic designer Elliott Burford, whose other projects (in the site’s navigation) are well worth checking out.

Also in my inbox this morning, (or, perhaps in my twitter stream) was a link to Opertoon‘s iPhone/iPod Touch app Ruben & Lullaby, which is a self-described: “digital comic/game (we call it an “opertoon”) that lets you shape the emotions of a quarreling couple with a touch”. I haven’t downloaded this yet, but I will be checking it out sometime in the near future. It looks quite interesting.

Join us tonight, dear friends, as we delve once more into the madness that is the ReadComics podcast. Subdued madness, in this case, as we talk about our trips to the comic shop and the library, and what we found there. Mike bought Marvel, Jason checked out some Tezuka, and Marty waxes wanly about Thor. We also prepare for the San Diego Comic Convention, which none of us will attend.

Listen to ReadComics.org Podcast Episode #037 (21.1 MB, 46 minutes)

So, here’s some cool news: Joss Whedon’s brilliant Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog is up for an emmy award for the ultra-obscure Outstanding Special Class Short-Format Live-Action Entertainment Programs category. Which, appropriately enough, sounds like it should come from a Whedon musical.

In related Emmy news, Dr. Horrible Star Neil Patrick Harris was nominated for his supporting role in How I Met Your Mother. He’s also hosting the show! Yay!

The director’s cut of the Watchmen movie will be hitting theaters Friday, July 17th, for one week only. And only in four U.S. theaters. Luckily one of them is in the Twin Cities – at Apple Valley’s Carmike 15.

Zack Snyder confirmed again that there will be a limited theatrical release of an extended director’s cut of Watchmen in July, and revealed that the opening title montage featured two deleted shots

Apparently one of the scenes depicts the brutal murder of the original Nite Owl, Hollis Mason. If you can’t make it to the theater this weekend see it on YouTube, or wait for the director’s cut release on DVD and Blu-Ray July 21st.

I finished my cover-to-cover reading of this amazing book this morning on my way to work. Upon first glimpse, I figured I would simply be reading the cartoons and be done with it, but when I dug in, I actually found the commentary by Richard H. Minear to be so integral to the viewing and understanding of Dr. Suess’s political cartoons that I simply couldn’t proceed without devouring every paragraph. (I even read his analysis at the end, which while it was not quite as entertaining as the guided tour of Dr. Suess’s brilliant cartoons contained within, was still quite entertaining and enlightening.)

Essentially, Dr. Seuss was the editorial cartoonist for a New York political magazine called PM, for two years from 1941 to 1943. In that time, he was incredibly prolific, and wrote/drew over 400 cartoons.

One thing I took away from this book was the evidence that Dr. Seuss was unfortunately, not immune to the plague of racism that he himself rallied so strongly against. His treatment of the Japanese, even before the bombing of Pearl Harbor was pretty despicable, (although some might argue justified given the circumstances, I would tend to disagree). However, to his credit, and at least partial redemption in my eyes, he actually visited Japan in 1953, and subsequently wrote Horton Hears a Who.

This book is a must read for fans of Dr. Seuss, and I think it’s also a very handy history lesson (from the perspective of someone who has never successfully completed an American History course). If you want to just read the cartoons, or supplement the book material, the University of California San Diego’s website hosts an awesome archive of all 400 of Dr. Seuss’s political cartoons. (Only 200 are reprinted in the book.) I wish they’d been scanned (or made available) at a higher resolution, since the details really are what makes this work stand out, but nonetheless it’s an awesome archive of an absolute master of the art.

Susie has picked American Born Chinese by Gene Luen Yang, and The Eternal Smile by Gene Luen Yang, and Derek Kirk Kim. We will be discussing them on August 16 at 2 pm

Today we sat around and shared our impressions of the Annihilation series. This was Chad’s pick for the book club, and he, Florence, Marty, Mike, Jason, Susie (and Tony, who joins us after a while) all give their impressions of the series, or what they read of it.

Listen to ReadComics.org Podcast Episode #036 (36.1 MB, 78 minutes)

My mega talented coworker Sally did this amazing Batman mural for a lucky kid’s bedroom wall.

So I have two questions for you. The first is, what comic themed mural assuming you had the space and property would you want?   Second, what comic or cartoon themed mural would your eight year old self want?  Now I think I would go for Fray in free fall surrounded by flying cars. At eight it would have been either Gem and the Holograms in concert, or the Thundercats in a group pose.   And you?

Written and drawn by Osamu Tesuka

I just finished this first volume of eight of the life of the Buddha, and I’m flabbergasted. Buddha is for everyone who thinks they hate Manga. Even more, Buddha is for everyone who thinks they hate comics.

I’ll admit, that I’ve had a prejudice against manga, even as there’s been some that I’ve read and enjoyed. I look at the shelves at the bookstore and at the library, and see the millions of volumes of Naruto, encroaching on the graphic novels. And I shake my head at what has happened to comics. Recently, however, I took someone else’s lead and decided to revisit the idea of reading Japanese comics, and looked up some suggestions from the Around Comics forum. That led me to 20th Century Boys and Pluto. Pluto is a retelling of the Astro Boy comics of Osamu Tezuka, who is given posthumous author credit. I read a little about Tezuka, and decided to look up some of his work. Paging through the volumes at the library, the first thing I noticed was how different the artwork is from my idea of Japanese comics. This was much more like something out of Segar’s Popeye or Barks’s Uncle Scrooge. He was known as the Godfather of Japanese Comics, whatever that meant, and almost all of his series have been highly praised. He was the creator of Astro Boy, both the cartoon and the comic. And, of course, I feel if it’s at the library, it’s worth a shot. I may check it out and return it after reading five pages, but it helps the library’s circulation numbers. With Buddha, I was hooked almost instantaneously.

With Buddha Kapilavastu, we witness the birth of Siddhartha, although this is more of something occurring in the background, while the lives of monks, slaves, pariahs and generals take the center stage. We meet Tatta, Narradatta and Chapra, Chapra’s mother, and General Budai. Some of them are introduced as villains, but over the course of the chapters, are given more rounded characters and you can’t help but warm to them. The stories of these characters are epic, with high adventure, humour, and romance, and more than a little violence. It was a brutal world at the time of the Buddha’s birth, and we’re witness to the cruelties of the class system of that era. It’s enough to bring you nearly to tears, reading how the world and society treat Tatta, the Pariah, and Chapra and his mother, both slaves by birth. Tezuka interconnects all these characters, weaving their lives into a tapestry, with the birth of Siddhartha currently just a slight embroidery at the edge.

The art, as I said, is quite different from most of the manga I’ve seen. There are traditions in Japanese comics, in the shapes of the faces, in the expressions and what sweat drops and shading signify. You can see that in this work, but it’s more of a hint than anything else. It reminds me a lot more of the animation styles in the French co-produced cartoon of the Mysterious Cities of Gold. From what I’ve read about him, Tezuka was heavily influenced by Disney, and Tezuka in turn influenced a lot of anime artists since then. As well as having his own style, he likes to play with panel borders, and includes several highly detailed panoramic landscapes in the volume.

While I don’t think I’m going to picking up every volume of Naruto or Dragon Ball Z, I am going to continue with Buddha, and checking out Tezuka’s other work, like Black Jack and Dororo. I might even watch some Astro Boy, having never actually seen it. I’ve just cracked the surface of this artist’s body of work, and there’s a lot left to see.

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 [07/30/2009] (by marty): Now there are three in rotation! See all three below.
Second Update [11/08/2010] (by marty): Now there are four in rotation! You can see the new one here.

You can click on each one to see them full sized.

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 (in print), the next was about Moist (in print). And now here is the third. Written by Zach Whedon

Penny Keep Your Head Up

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.

watch it on youtube

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:

• Handknit Heroes
• Love and Capes
• Piperka
• the new Star Trek Movie
• Star Trek the original series (on hulu and off)
• Wolverine
• possible Deadpool Movie
• Marvel Zombies
• Tony Kushner this Saturday
• superhero musicals, including spiderman
• Batman Cacophony, written by Kevin Smith
• Dollhouse & Fox TV
• various Simpsons comic topics

Listen to ReadComics.org Podcast Episode #033 (22 MB, 49 minutes)