Current Transmissions
Yon Gomix #7">See exciting Asian comic artists with Yon Gomix #7
If you’re looking for vibrant, new styles of comics, you have to look beyond the shelves of your local comics shop sometimes. One of several groups of artists I’ve followed over the years is the Southeast Asian artists group Yon Gumix. For the past seven years they’re released an anthology highlighting their skills, and their newest is now available worldwide for anyone with a credit card.
Yon Gumix #7 features group stalwarts Zid, Eisu, Aimo and Hanie, along with guest artists Pinax Pinakes and Nanzo doing pin-ups, homages and comics that really shows of what they can do. Although all of the artists are relatively unknown in English-language comics, Zid worked with Steve Niles on a comic series for Radical and Eisu has a long-running webcomic set in a comic shop called No Pink Ponies.
Fans of creators like Bryan Lee O’Malley and Corey Lewis would do well to check it out.
- December 26, 2011 @ 11:00 AM by Chris Arrant
The best of the best of the year lists
Spider-Island
As the end of 2011 approaches, websites and publications are unveiling various year-end lists. Here’s just some of what’s been released in the past few days:
• Brian Truitt at USA Today looks back at the year that was in comics, naming best writer (Scott Snyder), best non-superhero artist (Rob Guillory), best fight (Spider-Island) and many more categories.
• Kaleon Rahan takes an alphabetical approach to the year in comics, where “A” is for Action Comics, “J” is for Jim Lee, “S” is for Schism and “W” is for “What the Hell(boy).”
• Dan Kois and Glen Weldon at NPR both name their favorites of the year.
• Cap’n Carrot at Dad’s Bug Plan lists his favorite ongoing series of the year, including Daredevil, Secret Six, Darkwing Duck and Batgirl.
• iFanboy lists the top 10 comic events of the year.
• Sean Gaffney discusses his favorite manga titles of the year.
- December 26, 2011 @ 10:00 AM by JK Parkin
Legends anthology">Stan Sakai participating in next Mouse Guard Legends anthology
Mouse Guard by Stan Sakai
Although the Mouse Guard series is David Petersen’s sandbox, he has been known to let others in to play with his toys. For instance, the first Mouse Guard: Legends of the Guard series featured stories by Ted Naifeh, Gene Ha, Jeremy Bastian and many others.
We know that a second volume of the anthology series is in the works, and it looks like one of the contributors will be Stan Sakai, who shares one of his pages on his LiveJournal. Sakai of course has been doing Usagi Yojimbo for decades now, so it isn’t surprising to see him drawing anthropomorphic characters, but it is a rare treat to see his work in color (beyond the Usagi covers, of course, and the occasional graphic novel or anthology submission).
- December 26, 2011 @ 09:00 AM by JK Parkin
Watchmen prequels">Nite Owl, Comedian art emerges for long-rumored Watchmen prequels
Note: The artwork originally accompanying this post has been removed following a cease-and-desist letter from DC Entertainment’s legal affairs department.
Any doubts regarding the accuracy of reports about DC Comics’ long-rumored plans for Watchmen prequels may have eroded over the weekend with the emergence of character art by J.G. Jones and Joe Kubert and Andy Kubert.
Bleeding Cool characterizes the illustrations of Nite Owl and The Comedian as cover art for the projects, purportedly being assembled under the code name “Panic Room,” but considering the characters’ names are written on the pages, it seems more likely they’re concept designs.
The four prequels to the seminal 1986 miniseries by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons are said to also involve Darwyn Cooke, J. Michael Straczynski, John Higgins and even Gibbons himself. Cooke, however, seemed to dismiss reports he was working on one of the miniseries, telling CBR News recently, “Ah, get out, man. That’s like three years old.”
- December 26, 2011 @ 07:00 AM by Kevin Melrose
Happy Holidays from Robot 6
from Matthew Petz
It’s Christmas Eve, and we’re winding down here at Robot 6 to go spend time with family and friends. Before heading off to celebrate, though, you’ll find a collection of holiday-themed links after the jump, along with this year’s collection of holiday cards we received.
On behalf of all of Robot 6, have a great holiday and stay safe. We’ll see you next week.
(Above: a Christmas showdown by Matthew Petz)
- December 24, 2011 @ 12:00 PM by JK Parkin
The Fifth Color | Don’t be the bigger man for Christmas
That's right - I busted out my Dynamic Forces cover for you guys!
It’s okay to hate the holidays.
Really, no secret Santa brigade will beat you into being jolly. In fact, it’s perfectly natural to get a sort of dread around this season. The sun doesn’t shine as much, the weather outside is frightful, it’s the end of a year and the approach of a new one that we can only hope is better. As much as festive decorations, carols and family dinners might say otherwise, this is the season for frustrations.
Dear reader, I understand this feeling. I work retail. It’s perfectly fine to hate the holidays, and it’s perfectly normal to wish things were better. Charlie Brown Christmas Specials are all well and good, and it’s great to aspire to that Rockwell painting of a warm Christmas dinner, but let’s face it: that’s not reality. Reality sometimes is that a roast is burnt, the family just bickers and drinks, and all those Peanuts kids dance like idiots.
We can’t get the perfect Christmastime we want so badly, but sometimes we can be Avenged. We can take Christmas into our own hands, show some Scrooges what for and make them kinder. We can look at all the little things that make this time, if not perfect, uniquely special. And we can rocket a perverted uncle around in a frilly brassiere once we’ve shrunk him to the size of an action figure.
Folks, this is Ant Man’s Big Christmas.
- December 24, 2011 @ 11:00 AM by Carla Hoffman
Batman, Incorporated: Leviathan Strikes!">Chain Reactions | Batman, Incorporated: Leviathan Strikes!
Batman, Inc.: Leviathan Strikes!
This past Wednesday saw the return of something I didn’t expect to see quite so soon or even ever again–the pre-reboot DC Universe. DC Comics released Batman, Incorporated: Leviathan Strikes! #1 by writer Grant Morrison, artists Cameron Stewart and Chris Burnham, and colorist Nathan Fairbairn, which collects what would have been issues #9 and #10 of the well-regarded series.
“See the last hurrah of Stephanie Brown as Batgirl, in a sinister school for suicide spy girls! Find out what caused the Batman and Robin team to split! And witness the unmasking of Leviathan in a shocking final page twist that sets up 2012’s Batman: Leviathan, the epic concluding act of a Batman story six years in the making!” Morrison said on DC’s The Source blog. While you can never say never when it comes to comics, this could be the final glimpse into the DCU of old.
So what are folks saying about the big finale? Here’s a sampling of opinions on the comic:
Chad Nevett, Comic Book Resources: “Ostensibly Batman, Incorporated issues #9 and #10, Batman, Incorporated: Leviathan Strikes! #1 ends the first ‘season’ of the title and sets the stage for next year’s return and conclusion to Grant Morrison’s tenure on the Batbooks. The wait for this comic may have been long, but with Cameron Stewart and Chris Burnham providing the art, it was well worth it. Morrison delivers both an entertaining ‘done in one’ style adventure spotlighting Stephanie Brown and an ambitious issue that pushes the story about as far as it can go before it breaks. It ends with the big reveal of who is behind Leviathan, the criminal organization that Batman has created Batman, Incorporated to fight. It’s the sort of issue that arrives just in time to remind critics that, maybe, they left Batman, Incorporated off their top ten of 2011 lists and that, obviously, was a mistake.”
- December 24, 2011 @ 10:00 AM by JK Parkin
NYT best-sellers: Scott Pilgrim’s finest hour
Tim Leong, the art director for Wired and former editor-in-chief of Comic Foundry magazine, has come up with a pretty amazing infographic tracking the titles that have appeared on the New York Times paperback “graphic books” over the past year. The chart is great, but Tim also did some solid number-crunching, and there are lots of interesting results, starting with the fact that the charts were dominated not by Marvel or DC, but by Oni Press and Image.
This doesn’t speak so much about comics as a whole as about a particular segment of the comics world: graphic novels and collected editions. Marvel and DC still dominate the world of single-issue comics sold in the direct market, but the Times looks at sales from independent and chain bookstores, online booksellers and newsstands, as well as comics shops. In that world, two indie properties, both backed by media tie-ins, ruled in 2011. (It would be interesting to see how the hardback charts compare; my guess is that they are more superhero-centric.)
The Hollywood Reporter makes a big deal about The Walking Dead dominating the charts this past week, saying, “No graphic novel series has ever dominated the list quite like Kirkman’s Walking Dead,” although a glance at Leong’s chart makes it clear that Scott Pilgrim dominated even more, with the six volumes of Scott Pilgrim spending a total of 167 weeks on the charts compared to 102 weeks for the seven volumes of The Walking Dead. Incidentally, the next two books were Watchmen (of course!) and The Adventures of Ook and Gluck, Kung-Fu Cavemen from the Future, which is a kids’ graphic novel by the author of the Captain Underpants books.
Leong’s graphic provides a lot of food for thought. What happened in September, for instance, when all the Scott Pilgrim and Walking Dead books pretty much disappeared from the charts? (I looked at the charts for those weeks and nothing jumped out at me, but who knows?) What happened to the five books that came in at No. 1 and then disappeared? And is it better to hit the top spot for a couple of weeks or sit at a lower rank for almost a year? It’s hard to see behind the rankings to hard numbers, but it does seem that the bookstore market is nurturing some diversity.
- December 24, 2011 @ 09:00 AM by Brigid Alverson
Sweatshop">Collect This Now! | Sweatshop
You know what would make a great Christmas present? A publisher announcing they’re going to collect this great, lamentably short-lived series.
- December 23, 2011 @ 03:00 PM by Chris Mautner
Laura Lee Gulledge makes holiday magic
Laura Lee Gulledge has an interesting double life: She’s the creator of the graphic novel Page by Paige, which was published by Abrams earlier this year, but like many others in the field, she also has a day job. It’s a very unusual day job though: Gulledge is a scene painter for store window displays, and she worked on the holiday displays for several big New York department stores. She has posted some fascinatingly surreal videos and photos of the windows she worked on at her blog, It Needs More Glitter, and she told me that she painted all of the Saks windows herself, rather than working with a group, adding, “so you can recognize my inking style in the finished work.” Gulledge is working on a children’s picture book concept that is inspired by her Christmas-window work—a book that she would love to see as the starting point for a real store window, thus bringing the whole thing full circle. I was curious how she mingles her two careers in real life, so I e-mailed her a couple questions.
Robot 6: How do you integrate your graphic novel work with your store windows–do you have to set everything else aside when the holidays draw near?
Laura Lee Gulledge: Anyone in comics can tell you that there isn’t a lot of money in it, especially when you’re a new author building an audience. So working as a “holiday elf” for 4 months of the year has been a good way to supplement my income over the past couple years while working on my comic projects. Unfortunately, taking away time from a book when you already have a deadline (just so you can pay the bills) can be hard. With Page by Paige I gave myself only 7 months to draw it all out because I worked a season on Christmas windows, which was insane. For my next book I’m giving myself more time to draw it, so I might not be able to fit in another season of windows. It’s been a great learning opportunity to be a scenic artist, but ultimately I’d like to be drawing full time.
- December 23, 2011 @ 02:00 PM by Brigid Alverson
Industry vet Bart Sears releases first sketchbook
An interesting thing popped up in my morning stroll through RSS feeds of interesting sites: artist Bart Sears is doing his first sketchbook. Titled Odds-n-Ends, the book promises 52 pages “crammed with sketches, drawings, designs” including many unpublished works. It’s an interesting piece from an interesting, and largely overlooked, comic artist.
Sears is a unique figure in comics. He’s worked in most every corner of the comics industry, from Justice League Europe to Todd McFarlane’s Violator, and was even the art director at CrossGen for a time. Many fans probably remember him for his instructive art column “Brutes & Babes,” in Wizard magazine. In the past few years, Sears has worked largely outside of comics, as an in-house concept artist for video game developer Heatwave Interactive. The few comics he has done recently were published by Dark Horse: a miniseries titled The Helm and a two-issue Conan series with fellow CrossGen alum Ron Marz.
Sears’s art style is like a dynamic mind-meld of the sinewy style of Barry Windsor-Smith crossed with the muscled men and women of Boris Vallejo. His work goes to the root of power-fantasy, making him hyper-specialized so that only certain kinds of books would fit his work. I wouldn’t be surprised if Marvel, DC or another publisher someday finds that right book that shows off Sears’ work to its fullest. This sketchbook offers a unique glimpse at what the artist himself might want to draw, and might give some ideas for readers and comics staffers as to where Sears could fit.
- December 23, 2011 @ 01:00 PM by Chris Arrant
Ilias Kyriaszis’ merry marching Marvel society
The Marvel 100
Earlier this month artist Ilias Kyriaszis shared a 52-inch long image of his favorite DC characters that was filled with all sorts of fun details.
Well, Ilias is back, this time with his top 100 favorite Marvel characters and with the same level of detail and humor displayed in the DC image. For instance, in the sequence up top, you’ll see multiple Madroxes, one being eaten by Venom, who is having a bad reaction to Banshee’s sonic scream. You’ve also got Nightcrawler “bamfing” in for a moment before he lands at No. 3 on the list. Elsewhere you’ll see Silver Surfer stealing the Infinity Gems from Thanos, Dead Girl showing up in two halves and Mystique bringing a little DC flavor to the mix.
You can see it in its entirety over at zoom.it, which will let you scroll through it from 100 on.
- December 23, 2011 @ 12:00 PM by JK Parkin
Superhero x-ray shirts offer a glimpse of what Superman sees
Ever wonder what’s going on inside your favorite super-hero? Beneath the mask, beneath the skin even… you know their real inner self? Well now you can in a an eye-opening series of shirts. Take a look:
Thanks to the ever-resourceful Mike Sterling for the find, you don’t have to burrow through Previews to see DC’s finest the way Superman can see them with his x-ray vision. The vision of a green-tinted skull with the superhero domino mask is frightening in itself.
I, for one, fully endorse this trend and hope the line is successful enough to we can see more shirts in the line. Who wouldn’t want to see how Plastic Man’s skeleton looks when it bends?
You can find images of each shirt after the jump.
- December 23, 2011 @ 11:00 AM by Chris Arrant
Dark Horse Presents #12">Nexus returns in Dark Horse Presents #12
Nexus by Steve Rude
This year was not only a challenging one for artist Steve Rude, but it also marked the 30th anniversary of his and Mike Baron’s Nexus. So it’s great that it is ending with a bit of good news for the artist — Dark Horse Comics announced this week that the Eisner Award-winning duo will bring their popular creation back to comics next May in Dark Horse Presents #12.
“Nexus has never been a stranger to different publishers. Last seen under the Rude Dude banner in 2009, Nexus has stayed in limbo, never quite knowing when to return, or if he ever would return. Things come together in strange ways. With the backing of Mike Richardson of Dark Horse Comics, Nexus will return to comics,” Rude said in a press release. “We especially look forward to the response of Nexus’s devoted fans, and thank them for the wonderful support and encouragement they’ve given us since the book’s debut in 1981!”
Nexus was first published in 1981 by Capital Comics. Since then, it’s been published by First Comics, Dark Horse and Rude’s own Rude Dude Productions. Dark Horse has collected most of the material in several archive editions.
- December 23, 2011 @ 10:00 AM by JK Parkin
The Activity #2 by Edmondson and Gerads">Preview: The Activity #2 by Edmondson and Gerads
The Activity
Courtesy of writer Nathan Edmondson (Grifter, Who Is Jake Ellis?), we’re pleased to present a preview of the second issue of The Activity, which goes on sale Jan. 11. Illustrated by Mitch Gerads and published by Image Comics, The Activity debuted this past week and focuses the U.S Army’s last secret special operations tribe, The Intelligence Support Activity, or Gray Fox. Within Gray Fox is a team of elite men and women whose mission is flexible, whose technology is bleeding edge, and whose execution is precise and lethal. They are Team Omaha, and they serve The Activity.
“After the overwhelming response to issue #1, we’re primed to light the fuse on issue #2, out in just two weeks!” Edmondson said about the preview.
Check out the preview and solicitation text after the jump. You can read more about the series in CBR’s interview with Edmondson about the book.
- December 23, 2011 @ 09:00 AM by JK Parkin