First I wanted to mention a celebrity birthday that´s kind of comic related : french model Marie - Claude Bourbonnais who has appeared on comic conventions as Susan Storm celebrates her 32nd birthday. So I wanted to use this opportunity to wish her a Feliz cumpleaños ! and to remind my readers who still haven´t googled her to do so or use the link on ComicBits Online to be found on the blogroll. You won´t regret it !
IF YOU CAN´T BE WITH THE ART YOU LOVE LOVE THE ART YOU´RE WITH
It´s no secret that I´m a big fan of Arthur Adams ( as you can see by me declaring October Arthur Adams tribute month ) and I´m lamenting that he doesn´t do more monthly sequential work. He just recently finished his ULTIMATE X work - at least for me since I´m always a few months behind - and although he´s doing a lot of covers and variant covers right now I am already starting to miss his art on the interior pages.
It doesn´t even have to be 22 pages each month and I thought after the good experience Marvel had with him and Frank Cho sharing art duties on HULK they would continue in that direction.
Since cloning still hasn´t reached the point of perfection where you can just clone as many Arthur Adams as you want safely, Marvel has done the next best thing : getting somebody who draws in a similar style. Which in this case means Nick Bradshaw, whose art I first saw on the awesome cover below that you can see in full size in CBR´s article about Adam Kubert and Nick Bradshaw´s POINT ONE variant covers . I think I first came across it on a post on Pedro Angosto´s MAN OF BRONZE blog ( which also can be found on the blog roll ) titled ARTHUR ADAMS IS NOT DEAD BUT LONG LIVE NICK BRADSHAW.
On Friday I was at my usual comicshop and among others I also got issues 39 / and / 41 of ASTONISHING X - MEN that are part 3 and 4 of the MONSTROUS story Jason Pearson started. I´m not sure how this will be collected into tradeform but I think it´s a good idea to have the issues in - between, that are done by other artists because the main artist needs more time to finish his issues, deal with a different story.
I haven´t had the chance to read the issues yet but I like Nick´s art. Like Terry Dodson, who for the longest time got all the jobs Adam Hughes couldn´t take, Nick Bradshaw´s going to be compared to Arthur Adams for a long time - you can see the big influence he has on the art - but if I should describe his artstyle I would propably say it´s part Arthur Adams part Ed McGuiness with a dash of Jim Cheung.
Speaking of Jim Cheung : AVENGERS - THE CHILDREN´S CRUSADE is finally being released in Germany and in it´s unimitable way PANINI GERMANY has picked the worst ever translation for a Marvel title with YOUNG AVENGERS - DIE KREUZFAHRT. I know, some people may once again accuse me of bashing the translators at PANINI because they have the job I would love to have but if you don´t know the difference between a cruise and a crusade you should be looking for another line of work. And for those who say I don´t know what I´m talking about : try translating a sentence like " Pero la gorila estupida era demasiado tarde y el loco brillante tuvo hoyos en cerebros y ahora usted comedores carnosos de uva estaran en un apuro ! " without having the actual comic in front of you, which means you have no idea of the context, and then we´ll talk.
More AVENGERS news : at the Avengers panel at the New York Comic Con new information was released about Avengers - Shattered Heroes with a lot of upcoming covers like this one for Alan Davis´upcoming run on CAPTAIN AMERICA ( pencils for his first issue ) .
The other Avenger related news is that Brian Michael Bendis and Mark Bagley are reuniting for the upcoming AVENGERS ASSEMBLE ongoing series which will feature the same team that is in the upcoming AVENGERS movie. Wow, it took Marvel how long to get the idea to do a comic, that resembled what actually happened in the movie adaption so movie - goers who where unfamiliar with the character could follow it ? Nine years ? That´s what I call quick thinking.
So far I have mentioned a few of my favorite artists so I couldn´t leave the fact that the first preview for UNCANNY X - MEN 1 by Carlos Pacheco is finally available. Carlos is one of my all - time favorites and although he had some bad luck with his inkers in the last few series he looks pretty good again. I think my favorite comic by Carlos is still JLA / JSA - VIRTUE AND VICE with SUPERMAN / BATMAN - ABSOLUTE POWER a close second, because he had already begun to draw superheroes less iconic and more mundane in it. Now with the X - MEN franchise this new look may be more suited as far as I can judge by his Point. One issue with Magneto and the first issue of X - MEN SCHISM - which I sadly didn´t get signed since I didn´t have the opportunity to go to the XII Jornadas de Cómic y Manga de Leganés. Well, I´ll get my Power Girl piece one day.
Till then I´ll have to settle for new issues of UNCANNY X - MEN.
Another favorite artist of mine - oh, I´m the slick master of the segueway, ain´t I - is Ed McGuiness and there is also a preview of AVENGERS X - SANCTION 1 available.
Other Marvel previews of note are ALPHA FLIGHT 5, FF 10, NEW AVENGERS 17 and ULTIMATE COMICS SPIDER - MAN 3 and you can follow the link for more Marvel previews .
Staying a bit with Marvel, school´s in with Matt Seneca who gives a detailed analysis of a Frank Miller WOLVERINE page in another installment of YOUR WEDNESDAY SEQUENCE that every comic artist or aspiring comic artist should read. As the bard puts it : " the whole thing is a piece of comics with a wonderful balance to it " and " the directionality of this page is like a thesis on effective flow. "
Just in time for Halloween is an interview with Scream Award nominee Mike Mignola and - another one of my favorite artists - mike Allred, about whose new series I ZOMBIE I wrote in my last weekend post talks in another interview about his unfinished series THE GOLDEN PLATES which is an adaption in comicbook format of the Book of Mormon.
I don´t think I have to introduce Adrian Tomine and Daniel Clowes who speak out about all aspects of their decades - long careers, and there´s a second interview with Daniel Clowes on his new superhero comic THE DEATH - RAY. It seems even the most hardcore non - superhero comic creators can´t resist the allure of superhero comics once they realize that you can tell every story in the superhero format.
Speaking of superhero comics that are not published by the big two, David Hine takes on THE DARKNESS and returns to THE BULLETPROOF COFFIN which was THE best superhero comic published in 2010, called " the WATCHMEN for a new decade " by some comic connoisseurs myself included. As the BULLETPROOF COFFIN sequel is slated to come out in January 2012 you still have time to get the first trade which is really a must read for fans of comics, superhero, rayguns, dinosaurs, or pop culture or any combination of it. And maybe I´ll finally get to write my incredibly brilliant and funny review of the book till then.
Like with most good comic I came late to the party because Ithe initial solicitation got lost in the shuffle of too many monthly books and when I finally read a positive review about it the series was well into it´s penultimate number. Therefore it made more sense to me as a customer to wait for the trade. Johanna Draper Carlson from COMICS WORTH READING has an interesting essay that takles the problems of indy comic series like late books or books that go on indefinite hiatus as one of the other reasons why many readers wait for the trade instead of reading the monthlies.
An example of an successfull indie comic creator is Dave Roman who turned his webcomic / minicomic TEEN BOAT into a collected version in the first part of his interview at THE DAILY CROSS HATCH. And staying on the subject of webcomics on warrenellis.com is an interesting post about the difference between webcomics and digital comics which is not the same. More internet / comic stuff : Graeme McMillan at ROBOT 6´s The Middle Ground number 72 explains Why Previews is still better than the internet, Sean Kleefeld takes a look on autobiographical webcomics and Author Paul Gravett has inaugurated his 1001 comics you must read before you die website .
Going from the producer side of things to the retail part the San Angelo Standard Times has a piece about Tom Moore, owner of Texas Comic Shop, how his passion about comic books became a successful career and Caleb Goellner from COMICS ALLIANCE reached out to a number of comic retailers to ask how they manage to keep stores stable in a down economy and how customers can help to keep their local comic shop open. I have been in a few really fantastic comic shops like FREAKS in Barcelona ( see my posts last months ) and comic shops where you can find almost everything like my current comic shop, the Sammlerecke in Esslingen and the articel has many priceless pointers for comicshop owners and comic readers.
Although I buy a lot of comics online nowadays ( mainly because of the price difference or availability ) I still think the comicshop is the best place to decide what to buy and what not. You can see the actual comics for yourself and hold them in your hand which can be the deciding factor, like in the case of the X - STATIX PRESENTS: DEAD GIRL miniseries. The preview pages looked really x - tremely garish but when I flipped through the pages in the comicshop it looked muc nicer. The comicshop is the best place to check out trades and hardcovers, to see if it´s just a book to read or if it looks sooo good you just have to get it for your bookshelf. And you can see if the art really grabs you.
Another reason why I still go to my comicshop is that I have a pull list there - which is one of the ways customers can help their comicshops - although I don´t always clean out my box like the article suggests. One of the reasons why I don´t do that is that I like to choose which comics to get on each visit, something that my comicshop lets me do. I´m not always in the same mood when going to the comicshop and I also like to read some series in chunks. Right now the last 8 or 10 issues of TEEN TITANS is waiting in my box because there were other comics I was more interested in reading. And to get from Neckarweihingen to Esslingen you have to take the bus and the subway which alone costs 9 bucks ( getting there and back ) so it´s better to be sure that I have some stuff waiting for me in my box whenever I have to go there.
It may be for a regular visit but sometimes I have to go there because I need a certain book or because I have to return some copies my brother received erroneusly. On such occasions it´s nice that I can also get some new comics for myself. Another plus for comicshops is that you can have the best conversations with other customers or employees and I don´t think I can recall any visit to my comicshop where somebody hasn´t told me about a comic series I didn´t know or brought my attention to some up - and - coming writer or artist.
And they are always very generous with prospects and free stuff, in fact I managed to get four more free comics from GRATIS COMIC TAG 2011 ( which makes up for not receiving ANY of the FREE COMICBOOK DAY comics I ordered this year ) that I can review when I finally get to continue the review series I started. Which in turn means I can then go on to give all of them away for free, probably just in time for this year´s big FREE COMIC CHRISTMAS CONTEST on this very blog.
So like I always say : support your local comicshop.
CLOSING TIME, LAST CALL
It´s almost time for me to go to bed so let´s wrap up this post before the weekend finally is over. You are probably already tired of hearing me promising that I´ll get the ARCHIE trade by Norm Breyfogle as soon as it´s available so i´ll just mention that Archie Comics is resurrecting the NEW CRUSADERS as an exclusively digital comic series. I´m not that big into the whole digital comics thing but I´m familiar with the whole characters from on of their series at DC. I didn´t read the last one they put out ( if that really were the CRUSADER character ) but it´s nice to see these heroes return into digital comics and - possibly - a printed version later on.
Two other series I´m not reading, but that are on my radar, are IRREDEEMABLE and INCORRUPTIBLE and all fans of the books may be delighted to hear that superhero - turned - bad Plutonian is slated to go up against reformed supervillain Max Damage in the upcoming IRREDEEMABLE / INCORRUPTIBLE crossover.
This weeks notable independent previews are for SAVAGE DRAGON 174, a series that is always surprising and that I can´t recommend highly enough,
ELRIC THE BALANCE LOST 4 , which I also mentioned in my last weekend post, IRREDEEMABLE 30 and WAREHOUSE 13 number 2, one of my guitly tv pleasures. Here is the full preview list .
No funny Top Ten lists this time, but here´s a picture where the artist has hidden WALL - E between what is probably every robot in pop culture. I have seen Herbie, Big Guy, the hot Robot from Metropolis, Twiggy, a Cylon, something that might be a Cyberman but definitely a Dalek.
To better search Wall - E click the full size version once again courtesy by Los Comic Geekos.
Finally, it´s been a while since I did my last feature on cosplayers but Today´s candidate is Ormeli ( and again, by Los Comic Geekos ) who does some characters I´m not familiar with but also some I do know.
As with other female comicfans I previously featured on this blog the costumes are really spot on and she takes a lot of effort to get as close as possible to the original look as you can see in her photogallery . It´s definitely worth checking out and who knows - you might even get some ideas for Halloween. As for Ormeli : You go, girl !
Todays video at the end of the post is CBR TV´s an interview with Mark Evanier, partner in crime of Sergio Aragones on many occasions but probably best known for his long GROO series. Mark talks about how comics have changed in the last decade, what a great visionary Jack Kirby really was and an upcoming GROO / CONAN crossover.
New to the blog ? Everything you need to know about TALES FROM THE KRYPTONIAN : top ten posts / more posts of interest
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