Another popular artist, though this one coming from the web to print.

Mike Krahulik (aka ‘Gabe’) is the artist half of the massively popular Penny Arcade duo. Over the past 10 years Gabe’s artwork has gone through an incredible evolution, growing in appeal, confidence and ability.

Even if you’re already a regular Penny Arcade reader, you may not be aware that Gabe has a deviantArt page where he posts his more personal artwork – style experimentation, paint on canvas, even illustrations of characters from his D&D campaign. It’s always nice to see what artists draw for themselves above and beyond their professional work and Gabe’s gallery is an eye catcher.

In 1965, Bonanza Books published The Great Comic Book Heroes, an incredible and influential essay by Jules Feiffer, filled out with reprints of plenty of old comics stories. In it, Feiffer dealt with the early history of the comic book, the big-name heroes he grew up with, what they meant to him, what they meant to America and what they just plain meant. Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, The Human Torch, Namor, Plastic Man, Captains America and Marvel, Sheena The Jungle Queen and The Spirit all received some attention from Feiffer. (Fantagraphics has since reprinted Feiffer’s book, which I’d highly recommend to anyone who hasn’t read it yet).

Given the…less than enthusiastic reception Frank Miller’s film version of The Spirit has received, I revisited the portion where Feiffer discussed that particular masked man. He describes some of the Spirit’s weaknesses as a character, despite the overall strength of the strip. Here’s the money quote:

The Spirit could even suffer defeat in the end: be outfoxed by a woman foe—stand there, his tongue making a dent in his cheek—charming in his boyish, Dennis O’Keeffeway—a comment on the ultimate ineffectuality of even super-heroes. But, of course, once a hero turns that vulnerable he loses interest to both author and readers. The Spirit, through the years, became a figurehead, the chairman of the board, presiding over eight pages of other people’s stories. An inessential do-gooder, doing a walk-on on page eight, to tie up loose strings. A masked Mary Worth.

Which begs the question: When is Mary Worth going to get a big-screen film adaptation? Pretty much every other comics property has been snapped up by a major studio, so surely someone’s got the rights to Mary Worth by now.

And that begs another question: Will Frank Miller get to write and direct the Mary Worth movie. Can you imagine Frank Miller’s Mary Worth? That would be glorious.

As the brand New Year rolls in, it’s looking like the last vestige of the Spider-Marriage might finally be over.

While a number of fans were outraged at the events of Spider-Man: One More Day, in which Spider-Man chose to “undo” his marriage to Mary Jane Watson in a deal with the demon Mephisto, they still had a few outlets for that relationship fix.

But the last vestige of the marriage — the Spider-Man newspaper strip — may yet be seeing some major changes in 2009.

In yesterday’s Amazing Spider-Man newspaper comic strip, the year came to a close with an ominous announcement:

Attention, Spidey Fans!

Starting tomorrow, there will be a huge change in our hero’s life!

You’ll see the same Spidey surprise that Marvel Comics has given its countless readers.

It’s something we, too, must do because — with great power comes great responsibility!

Or, just think of it as our way of wishing you — a happy New Year!

And now, in today‘s strip, Peter Parker is staying with Aunt May, with MJ nowhere to be seen. The comic ends with a teaser about Peter Parker’s new status quo, urging readers to keep watching to see what happened to our friendly neighborhood web-slinger. If speculation is correct, this could be a strange new tone for the newspaper strip, which famously coincided with the full-length comics during the initial marriage of Spider-Man and Mary Jane. However, if OMD has indeed crossed over into the daily strip, it would certainly work as a strange transition, with little build-up to what would be a radical shift in the series’ tone.

UPDATE: For those of you still wondering — it has been confirmed in today’s strip: a single, college-going Peter Parker is now the strip’s status quo.

In my Internet trawling yesterday, I came across this Hathor Legacy post (background: The Hathor Legacy is a blog about female characters in media, including comics and the like) on the Neverwhere TV series.

The blogger, Jennifer Kesler, critiqued the female characters (Door and Hunter), noting that Gaiman as scriptwriter avoided all of the predictable pitfalls for writers of women, and many of the less predictable one. Her main complaint was that the female characters were othered–were portrayed as distant and unreadable. She made excellent points about the difference between the way male and female emotions are shown in literature, and noted that after all, men and women aren’t so different, and the best way to write the opposite gender is simply to write them as humans.

The comment thread, for once, is as good as the post. Neil Gaiman himself showed up to comment, and the author and several commenters discussed the pitfalls of extrapolating a critique of one of the author’s works to his entire oeuvre, especially when one hasn’t read every one of those works.

Go ahead and read it. All of it. I’ll wait.

(more…)

Happy New Year!

I figured we’d start off the Art Link column with a bang. Nothing inspires quite like the unmistakable imagery of James Jean. He’s the award-winning cover artist of Fables and his jaw dropping artwork took the comic world by storm with its distinctive look and feel.

If you’ve never delved in to his personal website or mined the depths of his fantastic Process Recess art blog, then you are missing out on one of the most hypnotic and inspirational galleries on the web, period. It’s a goldmine of step-by-step samples of his work, sketches and thoughts and is the perfect way to start your 2009.

Entertainment Weekly points to 12 Big Movies for 2009 and provides some inside info and photos, with some familiar genre titles and talent getting prominent play.  Both Dillinger saga Public Enemies and film/comics franchise entry Terminator Salvation feature Christian “Batman” Bale.  X-Men Origins: Wolverine speaks for itself.  Where the Wild Things Are will certainly have its fans in our crowd, especially if director Spike Jonez well-realizes Sendak’s art.  Watchmen, again, needs no explanation, nor does Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.  Pixar’s newest opus will be UP, featuring the voice of Ed Asner.  Likely to cause enormous conversation is The Year One, Harold Ramis’s satirical religious comedy that features two ”hunter-gatherers” (Jack Black and Michael Cera) who stumble into the Old Testament.  And speaking of the old world, the Land of the Lost update arrives as well.

Will January be “Webcomics Month” at Blog@Newsarama?

You know, I rather think it will be. More soon.

And Happy New Year, everyone. Be safe.