new look - part 2

The third post this week, this must be a new record. Here are the other news items that I found noteworthy that I couldn´t fit into the Monday post.

SEE WHO I AM


Since I have now finally managed to get audio on my computer here are some videos vom CBR TV. The first is Felicia Day, who you may know from LIE TO ME, DR. HORRIBLE´S SINGALONG BLOG, the web show THE GUILD about the adventures of a group of online gamers



the comic of THE GUILD or like me : not at all. If you want to find out more about her just google her or go to her official website. Anyway, she´s on CBR TV talking about THE GUILD and other stuff.

She was also on episode seven of season 5 of A ComicBook Orange but you´ve probably seen that episode already.

Also on CBR TV is Brian Michael Bendis writer of......well, it´s probably faster to tell what he isn´t writing at Marvel. As he has his fingers in so many titles he needs two videos, one from the New York ComicCon and one from ComicCon International in San Diego.

Ron Marz was the guy who turned Hal Jordan into a mass murderer and started the dark age in GREEN LANTERN history known as the " Kyle Rayner debacle " as well as one of the main writers for CrossGen. Here he talks about his upcoming column on ComicBookResources and his collaboration with Whilce Portaccio on TOPCOW´s series ARTIFACTS.

SYMBOL OF ETERNITY

To close the video parts and start with the Batman - centric part of the news David Finch, artist and writer on BATMAN : THE DARK KNIGHT does an interview on CBR TV. Best news of all : after decades of a ruined Batman costume David Finch has finally brought back the yellow Batsymbol. YESSSS !!!!!


Excuse me, while I do a little victory dance over here.

Finally all the indignation is over and Batman is back to his former glory. I don´t know what else Mr. Finch will be doing but he´s already my hero. Yay ! Long live the yellow Batsymbol !

BAT COUNTRY

Now onto more Batnews. I have missed Grant Morrison´s BATMAN R.I.P. and BATTLE FOR THE COWL which may be a blessing. I´m also - for the moment - not reading THE RETURN OF BRUCE WAYNE since it´s almost over. At least to my knowledge. The trade has already been announced so it doesn´t make any sense to jump on the book right now. I´m reading the BATMAN series published by PANINI Germany ( yay, german comis ! ) that has the regular Batman series, starting with the Batman Reborn story where you - know - who takes up the mantle of Batman and BATMAN & ROBIN of which I only read the first three issues that were drawn by Frank Quitely.


So for all readers like me here are some infos on all the things going on in the Batverse. Bob Harras, former Editor in Chief of Marvel and now Editor in Chief at DC talks about Bruce Wayne´s new status quo ( warning : contains spoilers for Batman & Robin 16 ), Paul Cornell talks about his storyarc in Batman & Robin 17 - 19 which will be drawn by Scott Mc Daniel, Grant Morrison talks about his new series BATMAN INC and Brian Azzarello writes the new series BATMAN EUROPE.

Drawing the first issue of BATMAN EUROPE will be Jim Lee who has an interview on Mtv about the release of his artbook ICONS - THE DC COMICS AND WILDSTORM ART OF JIM LEE and one on Publisher´s Weekly that takes a look back at his twenty year career in comics.

And to close up this round of Batlinks here´s an interview Chris Mautner did for The Comics Journal with Jerry Robinson, the creator of the Joker.

COME BACK BABY COME BACK

Yes, it seems 2011 will be a great year in comics - at least for me. This really is the year of the comeback. JOHN BYRNE´S NEXT MEN is coming back, the 2.99 $ comics are back, the yellow Batsymbol is coming back and now over at Marvel THUNDERSTRIKE is also making a triumphant return.


Back in 1991 Eric Masterson took up the mantle of Thor after Thor had been banished at the end of a really great storyline. Not as used to the role of a hero Eric had to learn the ropes of the superhero business ( the idea was later copied by DC with Kyle Rayner ) and I really liked him as a character. When the real Thor eventually returned Eric got a mystic mace and continued the good fight in his own series THUNDERSTRIKE that started in May 1993.


The series didn´t last long ( at least for the standards of that time ) and after 24 issues the writers decided to kill him. I don´t know why but it seems writers are rather willing to kill a character when they end a series than to have him quit. I means James Robinson´s STARMAN did it and the comic universe didn´t break in half.


In any case, now the time has come for all diehard THUNDERSTRIKE fans to celebrate as he´s making a glorious return at the hands of Tom DeFalco and Ron Frenz the original series creator. You can read all about it here

TELL IT LIKE IT IS

More interviews : Christos Gage on AVENGERS ACADEMY ( with a preview of issue 7 ), an interview with Jaime Hernandez at The Daily Cross Hatch ( part 2 and 3 of 4 ), 50 questions in 50 minutes with Mark Waid, and finally Sergio Aragones, artist on MAD, GROO and other great comics like FANBOY or SERGIO ARAGONERS DESTROYS THE DC UNIVERSE celebrates five decades of work as well as doing an interview for the AC Club.

COUNT TO TEN

To close things the usual top ten lists and other comic trivia :

10 lessons for better colouring

10 comic or pop art themed hotels

top 10 Invincible moments

10 insane facts comics taught us about american history

Douglas Wolk takes a look at the history of vampires and Frankenstein

First appearance in comics of :

Batman´s giant penny, half face Spider - Man, Avengers Assemble

LMDs, Jimmy Olsen´s signal watch, It´s clobberin´ time

the year of cool comics archive

comic strip characters as superheroes

Once again time to close the post for Today. As I have already posted two GREEN LANTERN related videos at the end of my last two posts here´s a third one. It´s a fanmade trailer and I wish the new movie is just half as Airwolf as this trailer.



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Always count your steps, you never know when you have to escape in a box.

One bat, two bats, the Bat triumphant !

Well, I had planned to do this post for quite some time but as usual reality collided with my plans. The idea was to first do a post on JACK STAFF and use that post as a segueway for other posts about British comics.


As usual I got sidetracked, first by the TORCHWOOD comic by Paul Grist and then I wanted to write about KANE which was the first Paul Grist comic I read. Still haven´t gotten around to do that. So, in our last post we had a lot comic news and since I try to mix the topics a bit it´s time for a comic review.

So I want to talk a bit about THE BAT TRIUMPHANT published by Terry Hooper at Black Tower Comics. It´s weird but the black tower thing keeps coming up in pop culture. Stephen King used it for his bestseller series, there is a German comic publisher called DER SCHWARZE TURM ( which is the black tower in german ) to which I have ties and Terry Hooper´s comic company is also called Black Tower Comics.

One of the reasons why it took me so long to write about THE BAT TRIUMPHANT is that it was difficult to do the research. Since it has its roots in the British comic scene I´m not so familiar with it and it´s not like I can go to my comicshop and do some research there. There are really a lot of confusing informations on the internet. You see, the character THE BAT in this comic was not created by Terry Hooper. As far as I can tell it was created by William A Ward, a British artist who created a lot of famous comic characters but seems to have faded into the murky British comic limbo.


There is more information about the publisher of the original THE BAT comics Gerald G. Swan. He was one of the most enterprising of wartime publishers in Britain. Although he established his publishing company in 1938, he stockpiled his books rather than distributing them and thus had a supply of paper when it was rationed during the war. As a result he virtually cornered the magazine market and released hundreds of publications in all fields of fiction. Most of his inventory was compiled in the 1940's from a mixture of home - grown talent and reprints from Columbia magazines, even though some of them were not printed until the 1960's.

Here is a small checklist with some of the titles he published :

Gerald G Swan checklist

Having a comic character named the Bat the first question you have is - of course - who was first ?


The Bat or his more famous American colleague the Batman ? And who influenced who ? Since I couldn´t find any facts to prove otherwise I´m going with the story that Batman, who first appeared in Detective Comics 27 in May 1939, was the inspiration for the Bat whose first appearance was in Thrill Comics 1 published in April 1940.

Another thing that made the research a bit difficult is that there were also two other comic characters called THE BAT. One, a British hero who has come back from Hell


the other a superburglar who battled the Phantom ( a British hero, not the famous creation of Lee Falk ).


And of course there are a lot of other bats in comics, first and foremost, the most famous Batman. Then there are all forms of other characters which are derived from him like Man - Bat a.k.a. Kirk Langstrom one of Batman´s rogues.


There is Die Fledermaus, a clear Batman parody on the indie comic THE TICK.


And here in Germany there is FLATTERMANN, written by Kurt Kofron and drawn by Wenzel Kofron for the German Polischansky Verlag.


I´m not sure how successful the comic was but it managed to get three albums printed and probably anybody who reads comics in Germany knows of this comic.


And that´s not counting other derivates like WATCHMEN´s Owl Man or the Owl Man of the Squadron Supreme, the Justice League´s evil counterparts. Also there was a character called Owl Man in some issues of THE OUTSIDERS, but since I left the title before that I don´t know much about it.

But back to THE BAT TRIUMPHANT ! It´s a new original story of William A Ward´s THE BAT, written and drawn by Terry Hooper under the name Terry Hooper - Scharf. The size is european album size ( about DIN A 4 ), 66 pages black and white. Originally a back up strip in Black Tower Adventure in 1994,The Bat proved very popular as an anti - hero. The story was never completed. It is now. And there was another Bat.

1952 saw George McQueen’s Bat appear to fight any and all supernatural menaces. This book contains an original strip plus a new one drawn in 2007. This is the complete book of The Bat!

Now what´s the story all about ? Since his beginnings are in 1940 it´s a bit difficult to have him walking around in our modern era. But Terry found a clever solution for this dilemma without resorting to the old " son takes up the mantle of the father " trick. Although that possibility still exists for a possible sequel.


In 1941,The Bat sets about modernising the backward Duchy of Stahl, over which his dynasty has ruled since 1410 A.D.. The Bat is soon involved in experiments with the infamous Count Cogliostro. One of these experiments involves suspended animation; The Bat deciding he will be the test subject. When he wakes, The Bat finds that not days have gone by but 51 years !

Worse, his kingdom is in ruins and an enclave of Kamora. The Bat tries politics to win back his homeland and when that fails he decides to fight for it! However, he is unaware that some old - and new - enemies ( who have such great names as Schwarzadler, Blaurabe and Stanislaus the Werewolf ) are lying in wait to stop him and all of them want one thing : The Bat dead !

Which is not as easy as they think. The Bat is really a badass hero if he´s really a hero. Mostly he´s described as an anti - hero which is probably more fitting since he has no qualms about using swords or even guns and ( unlike Batman ) has no problems with killing. I mean he liquidates one of his opponents for pulling a knife on him. You so don´t want to mess with the Bat, dude !

Ten lives for a life ! Twenty groans for a groan ! Such is the Bat´s vengeance !


Even as a reader who was not familiar with the previous adventures of the Bat I have to say that this is one fun, action - packed read. Terry Hooper manages to evoke the feeling of Silver Age heroes whose roots lie more in the pulp genre like the great classics without resorting to silly stereotypes or parody. The story is a faithful ( at least as far as I can tell ) addition to the lore of the Bat that doesn´t negate what has come before.

Too often writers think that they have to update characters to modern audiences by deconstructing everything that has come before - so that everything you thought you knew turns out to be wrong ! Like Grant Morrison in ALL STAR SUPERMAN Terry builds upon the existing foundation, filling the gaps in continuity and adding another layer. As well as evil villains, werewolves, the always mysterious Count Cogliostro ( who has appeared in uncountable works of fiction from SPAWN to the latest film about french masterburglar Arsène Lupin ) and a touch of the supernatural.


Artwise it reminds me a bit of the comics around 1940 which sometimes were drawn a bit crude ( you have to remember that a lot of the professional artists were drafted ) but still had a lot of energy and excitement. I mean on the Gerald G Swan checklist ( link above ) it says that all his publications were of irredeemably poor quality. So I don´t know how much of that is intentional. What I can say is that it has solid storytelling and that I especially like his use of blacks.

One of my favorite pages is this full page spread where the Bat confronts three soldiers at the Jugo - Hungarian border. It´s such a great composition. You can find more pages here


Besides the main story THE BAT TRIUMPHANT ! the comic also includes an introduction that explains the genesis of the story, a very brief history of the Bat & Stahl, an article about Bat creator William A Ward and one about the history of Cagliostro as well as other goodies.

interview with Terry Hooper - Scharf about THE BAT TRIUMPHANT

order from lulu ( with preview ) german page

the Terry Hooper - Scharf lulu storefront

order links on ComicBitsOnline ( for England )

order from pothi ( with preview )

So next time we will get to the second part of the comic news with all the creator interviews and the ever popular top 10 lists and other fun stuff I promised.


In my last post I put up the clip for Gary Mitchell´s song IN BRIGHTEST DAY which could become the anthem for the new Green Lantern movie. Here´s another one that could be included : Ring capacity by the band Kirby Crackle.



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new look

As you may have noticed this blog has now a new look. Like I already suspected when I changed the look for Halloween I didn´t manage to get the old look back.


I forgot to save a copy of the old template and there is no other that looks like the old one I used. Additionally it seems that bloggers number of templates to use has changed from....I don´t know......how many where there ? Hundred ? Now it seems like they only offer....uh....ten. Okay. That´s not good.

Well, I was prepared that this would be the case so I hope the new look is not too distracting. As I had to recalibrate the monitor for various reasons I can just assume it doesn´t look too different. I probably won´t go over the old posts as I still try to find a way to get the old look back. In the meantime I´ll just keep tinkering with the layout till it looks right.

Another thing I lost due to the new look is the counter. I´ll add a new one when I find the time - and figure out a way how to do it. The last time I managed to do it was mostly pure luck.

It´s been a while since my last post because I was - once again - busy with catching up to all the new things on the internet. I think I was at least six months behind on solicitations so I had to sacrifice a few days for that. Right now I have - mostly - caught up on the DC pictures but I still haven´t finished the Marvel stuff.


I also am caught up on previews and man, you are really not up to date if the previews you have to do are from comics you already read last month ! And I also had to burn a lot of stuff on CDs as my computer was once again full with stuff. I just hop I managed to make enough free space to prevent the computer from checking out in the middle of a post.

But since this post is not just to bore you to death with the details of what I have been up to the last days here are some news, links, interviews, top ten lists and the usual collection of stuff for people who visit the important sites as irregualr as me.

COMIC INDUSTRY NEWS

Let´s begin with the most important bit of news which this time comes from the comic industry section.

Paypal unveils micropayments for digital goods

Yes, that´s right. Scott McCloud predicted it and now finally the micropayments are here. This is great news for all comic artists who are doing webcomics because so far the difficult thing was to somehow get money for your webcomic without having to offer a print version or having to charge a lot of money. And what´s also great is that facebook seems to be joining PayPal on this. Now I don´t know how good PayPal is as a payment service but at least this much needed from of payment is finally out there.

4chan piracy causes spike in sales for Underground

Like I already wrote in a post in 2008 there are ways for comic books to profit from scans on the internet. And it seems that Steve Lieber had the right idea when someone on 4chan scanned in all issues of Steve Lieber and Jeff Parker’s comic series Underground and posted it for all to read. Rather than pitching a fit ( which would have been perfectly justified under the circumstances ), Lieber joined the discussion and cheerfully suggested folks kick in a few bucks if they like the book or maybe even, you know, buy it. Then he posted it on his own site for free.

Why did it work out this way ? Perhaps the comic is that good ( I haven’t read it ), perhaps because 4chan helped it find its audience, and perhaps because Lieber took some time to engage the readers and establish himself as a real person — it’s a lot harder to steal from someone you know. I have always said that the music industry wouldn´t have lost so much money if they had spent less time criminalizing their customers and instead would have made more efforts to give them what they wanted : an easy and cheap way to download music.

I mean why is it that it´s easier for a person to get music clip from the internet in an illegal way than go to a music company website or a music store website and say, buy a DVD or Blue Ray disc that has my favorite 10 or 12 music clips ?


Back to Underground : it´s much easier to sell a product if the people already know the product and like it. If you read my post in 2008 you already know that a lot of the arguments in the whole discussion about scanlations and webcomics are totally bogus. People WILL pay money for comics they have already read. IF they like them. Hell, people pay money for comics they already have. There are comics in my collection that I have bought several times and some of them I will probably buy again when there is a new printing available.

So, kudos to Steve Lieber for having the cojones to do the smart thing. You can read more about it here :

Interview with Steve Lieber and Jeff Parker on comicbookresources

Interview with Steve Lieber on techdirt

comments about the case on the Warren Ellis forum

DC and Marvel lowering prices next year

It seems, 2011 will not be as expensive as 2010 as both - DC and Marvel are going to lower prices. As usual DC comics was first to announce that they are going to drop their co - features and lower the prices back to 2.99 $. They also will cut the story page count to 20 pages but before the bitching starts I want to remind people that back when I started reading comics the story page count was 17 pages.

Those were some really great comics and you have three pages more for whatever.


Now Marvel had to react to DC which they did by announcing that some of the new books in January will carry a 2.99 $ price tag. Say what ? Okay according to David Gabriel, senior vice president of sales & circulation the pricing structure is that " for limited series in the Marvel Universe they will price as many of those as they can for $2.99 for a 32-page book. " Oh, and Incredible Hulk will loose it´s co - feature ( did anyone really read that ) and go to 2.99.

So, is it just me or is it another case of DC acting and Marvel reacting ? When this whole thing started DC put co - features on all books they changed from 2.99 to 3.99. Marvel´s answer was to keep the page count as it was and only slowly put in extra content in SOME cases. While DC on made a part of their books more expensive Marvel put the 3.99 price tag on all new titles and most of their old books.

Now DC is changing the 3.99 books back to 2.99 while Marvel will put out some new titles that will have a 2.99 price tag. Marvel doesn´t take me serious. No, that´s how it is. First they say they will change some books to 3.99 and lo and behold, most of their bestsellers are included in that. As well as all new book. Which means if you put a new book on your pull list or have some of their good titles on it - you have to pay and arm and a leg. And now they say that the 2.99 price will be on INCREDIBLE HULK - which is dragging out it´s storyline forever so that most readers have already jumped ship - and new limited series.

Sorry, but that´s ridiculous. DC had to sell a few of their books for 3.99 and have now gone back to 2.99 with 2 story pages less. Marvel has increased the price to 3.99 on most of their books but now you will get the 2.99 price again - not on the books they are already offering but on some new ones.

That will not change anything. Here´s a quote from Jim Lee from this page :

If you're a lifelong comic book fan or buyer and are all of the sudden being asked to pay $3.99 for a book, it gives you a reason to stop collecting in general.


It breaks your spirit because you're going, "Comics cost way too much. This is weekly entertainment. They're episodic, and this makes it too expensive of a hobby to be in." So then they bail altogether... To me, this is all about keeping the hobby as affordable as possible while obviously keeping the same quality and level in the storylines. I think there is a psychological bond that is broken when you keep raising prices and assume they're going to keep buying it because they love the characters.

And one from Dan Didio :

Jim touched upon the unfortunate reality in the business right now is that if you push people out or get too pricey and too expensive, you're pushing them out completely. They're not just dropping one or two titles – they're dropping the hobby. That's the thing. They might come back for the occasional trade, but for me what makes comic book collecting is that periodical nature of going in month in, month out or week in, week out. That's what I love about it, and I think it's that sense of community, the shared environment and shared experience. With so much going on these days, people love that weekly experience. And we want to match that. We don't want to give them reasons to not be buying anymore. As a matter of fact, we're going the complete opposite way, which is one of the reasons why they continue to buy. The way to do that is pricing in a way that is affordable and makes sense and also make stories that they just can't put down and feel like they haven't seen before.

Just what I said when this all began. Marvel has always argued that people would stop reading one or two titles while they knew that in reality people will not just stop buying one or two titles. They will either stop buying Marvel comics because they feel cheated or they will stop buying comics at all. They will buy the occasional trade but that´s it.


So as usual DC is doing something to help readers while Marvel tries to pull another fast one. Not really a surprise there.

STATE OF THE INDUSTRY

Okay, how are comic books really doing ? Here are a few articles so you can make up your own mind. First, here´s an interesting Interview with Gail Burt, owner of Metropolis Comics, located in Bellflower, California, USA which touches upon a few important topics. Like all those variant covers from Marvel are not really incentives - so please, can we stop with that nonsense already ? And it´s not really that profitable to take a book that has good sales - like Deadpool - and throw eight watered down books on the market thus totally destroying the franchise.

And since wer´re on the subject of comicshops here´s an article on James Sime, owner of Isotope comics who has a shop that´s more a comic lounge where customers read comics in comfortable chairs instead of a shop where people just get their comics and rush out.

Johanna Draper Carlson has an interesting article that analyzes just how low sales are that make a book successful.

Nils Bohr said : " It´s always difficult to male predictions. Especially about the future. " Nevertheless Shaenon K. Garrity wrote a manifesto about 10 things to know about the future of comics . This has lead to comments on THE BEAT on Scott McCloud´s blog and an article by Dresden Codak with 10 things to know about the future of webcomics. There is also an episode of ComicGeekSpeak on the subject.

And if you still want to work for Marvel after all my Marvelbashing here´s your guide for an internship at Marvel

To wrap things up, here´s a clip I wanted to post months ago but since I had no audio I couldn´t listen to it. It´s the video to Gary Mitchell´s original song IN BRIGHTEST DAY written as the anthem for the new GREEN LANTERN movie. With a bit of luck and enough fans on the internet Warner Brothers may pick it up for the soundtrack. I think it has a lot of potential so please, if you like it spread it around and post it on your blogs. If you click on the YouTube page there are links to all the usual communities like facebook and myspace.



As usual my time for today is up and I only got to address a third of the things I wanted to mention.


So sorry for so much stuff about the comic industry but I think all of it was important and interesting. In the next part we will get to things that are more fun like creator interviews and the ever popular top 10 lists.

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A good All Hallow´s Eve to you all !

Welcome, my fellow ghosts and ghouls, vampires, zombies and other creatures of the night. As you can see the blog has changed it´s appearance due to the upcoming frightful festivities like Devil´s Night, All Hallow´s Eve and El Dia de los Muertos.


I also changed the usual header for the black one I did last year ( or the year before ) especially for the Halloween post. I had thought about using it for BLACKEST NIGHT but then I would have had to change the pictures for dead DC guys and that was a bit too work intensive than I had planned.

I just hope I can get the old look back because the template I used is not on blogger anymore. Well, if I can´t get the old look back that´s also okay since I have had this look for almost five years now. It´s about time for a facelift.


Since I have already done posts on hot horror hotties , HORRORSCHOCKER , Krabat , the DARKNESS and DYLAN DOG , Richard Corben´s HAUNT OF FEAR : EDGAR ALLEN POE , Richard Corben´s HELLBOY IN MEXICO and part 1 , part 2 and part 3 of my ELVIRA posts this time I want to spotlight 2 comics that are guaranteed to give you goosebumps. My version of a grindhoouse horror movie double feature.

We got superheroes meeting classic movie monsters, modern movie monsters and witches and even the old crooked man himself. So if you are not going to spend Halloween watching the horror trash movie GUARDIAN OF THE ABYSS, presented by Elvira ( link in part 3 of the ELVIRA posts ) herself, like yours truly you might want to pull up a comfortable chair, put some horror movie soundtrack on your mp3 player and immerse yourself in one of the following comics.

BATMAN THE UNSEEN - writen by Doug Moench and illustrated by Kelley Jones


Back when horror movies began there was no distinction between horror and science fiction movies because many horror movies could be labeled as " science gone wrong ". Some of the all time classic horror movies like DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE, FRANKENSTEIN or X : THE MAN WITH THE X RAY EYES are science based so it´s not surprising that my first tipp deals with another science based horror classic : THE INVISIBLE MAN. It´s one of works of fiction in pop culture with the most movie adaptions from straight horror to comedies. I mean, who hasn´t at one point in his life dreamt of being invisible ?

In this particular horror / superhero crossover it´s BATMAN VS THE INVISIBLE MAN courtesy of Kelley Jones, artist of the wildly successful GOTHAM AFTER MIDNIGHT and writer Doug Moench who penned more than one Bat - tale in his days.


Batman has always been a superhero who could function in almost any other genre, especially in the horror genre, keeping in mind that he walks around in one big fright mask and his usual modus operandi is to scare the living s - word out of the criminals. And a lot of his rogues could star in their own horror movie like KILLER CROC, SCARECROW, the MAD HATTER, MR. FREEZE or MAN - BAT.

Like Norm Breyfogle Kelley Jones is one of the best Batman artists because he can emphasize the horror elements of the character. In BATMAN THE UNSEEN, a five part miniseries, we find a " lost tale of Bruce Wayne as Batman ". Like I said when I first mentioned the series we will be reading more of theses now that they have wasted the O.B. - original Batman. Or better yet, now that they have wasted the O.B., and made him come back through the centuries. I tell you, just writing about it gives me a headache so I´m glad that none of this is mentioned in BATMAN THE UNSEEN.


You don´t have to dive into this particular snakepit to enjoy it. And it got all the ingredients to be enjoyed as it includes the usual murder misteries, a mad scientist who wants his revenge for always being overlooked ( the other meaning of being unseen ), Black Mask and his goons....in short a Batman story like it is supposed to be. The including of Doug Moench´s creation Black Mask also brings the whole topic of masks into the mix which fits the whole Halloween theme. Add to that Kelley Jones always stunning art that seems to lead you directly into the set of a classic crime fiction / horror movie and you have what I call an instant classic.


What I found a bit strange while reading various reviews was how often the words " old school " and " Silver Age " were used. What does it say about the current state of the Batfranchise that the only thing to compare a Batman story that´s well done are the tales of a time long ago ?

Being just a five issue miniseries it is sadly much shorter than GOTHAM AFTER MIDNIGHT but for more Kelley Jones on Batman check out his work on the Kevin Shinick penned JOKER´S ASYLUM II : CLAYFACE. It´s a tale of Basil Karlo, horror movie actor who became a real claymonster.


I hope DC keeps Kelley Jones on the creative roster for such special projects as they don´t seem too keen on offering him a regular book. Which doesn´t surprise me that much when I think about the negative reaction he got here in Germany when last he took over a Bat - title.

preview BATMAN THE UNSEEN 1 / issue 2 / issue 3



HELLBOY - THE CROOKED MAN and OTHERS - written by Mike Mignola and Josh Dysart illustrated by Richard Corben, Mike Mignola, Duncan Fegredo and Jason Shawn Alexander


In my post about HELLBOY IN MEXICO I initially also wanted to write about the 3 issue miniseries THE CROOKED MAN. But like always once I got started the post was more about 80s superhero comics and mexican luchadores than Hellboy. I knew back then that I had to revisit the subject and what better time than for Halloween.

Since I had missed the single issues I had to get the trade that also includes some other stories, and while they are all nice and okay the real reason I bought it is the part with Richard Corben. Let´s be realists. So I´ll keep my comments to that part of the trade. That said, the art by Richard Corben alone is worth the price of admission.


In the Eisner Award - winning miniseries THE CROOKED MAN we, once again, travel to another scenery - one of the staples of the HELLBOY series. But this time it´s the american countryside and Hellboy has to deal with opponents rooted in american folklore, a theme often neglected on the series in favor of more exotic locales. At least for american readers.

One of the inspirations for Tom Ferrell - Hellboy´s partner in this story about witches, devils and the dead rising - was Manly Wade Wellman´s character Silver John, a.k.a. John the Balladeer, the wandering backwoods minstrel with a silver-stringed guitar.


I have to say I thought to be well versed in famous horror novel writers but I wasn´t aware of this forgotten pioneer of horror who also wrote science fiction, fantasy, historical fiction, detective fiction, western fiction, juvenile fiction and non-fiction. And I have to say kudos to his Dad for having the cojones to name his son " Manly " as a first name.

What I liked about this comic is that it manages to cram more action, backstory and stuff about witches and deals made with the devil into three issues than you can find in your usual six issue superhero trade. And the last stand in an abandoned church surrounded by witches and dead corpses is just right up my alley - especially now on Halloween.


Hellboy´s future is also hinted at, one of the things that is also mentioned constantly in the series, and I guess the exciting part is finding out if Mike Mignola really is going to turn Hellboy into the demon that destroys earth.

While this may not be a story filled with shocking twists and turns, it's an engaging tale about temptation and sin, a captivating battle of wills between man, god, and the devil.

And what makes this battle work so well is that the struggle takes place on the grungy Earth, in the Appalachian mountains, circa 1958. This isn't Southern Gothic, it's Backwoods Hillbilly Gothic, and that's a whole lot more disturbing.


There are - of course - more stories in the trade like THE MOLE with art by Duncan Fegredo ( which was first printed in the FREE COMIC BOOK DAY issue ) and IN THE CHAPEL OF MOLOCH that features art by Mike Mignola himself. All in all a really well rounded trade and while I mainly bought it for the Richard Corben part the rest´s not half bad either.

Like with BATMAN THE UNSEEN, if these three issues don´t satisfy your appettite for Richard Corben doing Hellboy, there will be some upcoming issues down the road. And if you haven´t already go and get yourself a copy of THE BRIDE OF HELL, which will be the topic of another post on this very blog.

preview THE CROOKED MAN 1 / preview issue 2 / preview issue 3

Manly Wade Wellman website / Manly Wade Wellman wiki



And that´s all for Today. Initially I wanted to include two more comics but maybe I should give them a post of their own. Till then, happy trick or treating and a joyous Sammhain !

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