Frank Springer, whose work appeared in Terry and the Pirates, Rex Morgan M.D., Batman, Captain America, Dazzler, Nick Fury: Agent of SHIELD, and the Avengers passed away at his home in Maine Thursday after battling prostate cancer. He was 79.

Springer was a beloved member of the artistic community, Mark Evanier notes in his obituary, and was given the Best Comic Artist trophy three times by the National Cartooning Society. His proudest work was his adult-themed series The Adventures of Phoebe Zeit-Geist.

“There were some raggedy times, but I always had work, raised five kids, bought some houses, bought some cars,” he told Evanier at the 2004 San Diego Comic Con. “I’ve been lucky.”

He is survived by his wife of 52 years, Barbara, four children, and seven grandchildren.

I wrote this originally on my blog back in 2007, but since we’re heading into the convention season it seemed a really good time to dust this off and post it somewhere more public. I hope you all find it useful.

———-

I don’t know where I first heard someone say “everyone at cons not already in the industry is trying to break in”, but it definitely feels that way. Attend any of the How-To panels at a con and they’re always packed full. Go to any panel and invariably the question gets asked:

“How do you break in to the industry?”

What they really mean is:
“How do you break in with a major publisher like Marvel, DC, Dark Horse or Image?”

Editors and creators should just have their answer to that question on a photocopied hand-out so they can save themselves endless repetition and add 10 minutes of better questions to the panel. I know that sounds callous and cocky, but hear me out. (more…)

I figured when David blogged about it that the “girly products” from Marvel were targeted at preteen girls, not actual adults, and wrote it off.

But Karen at Girls Read Comics has a less charitable take on the subject, and I must say that after reading the copy she’s posted, I agree with her. “Females”?

The consumer products team at Marvel is thinking big when it comes to females.

That’s the first line. Who writes this stuff? (That is a question rhetorical: the WWD byline says someone called Julee Kaplan, who I will charitably pretend is really sad about the damage done to her perfectly articulate article by some confused intern.)

Seriously? Um, we’re really not an alien species, and I know that despite annoying perennial stereotypes of men into comics, all men don’t think that we are. So how does something this tone-deaf make it to the light of day?

She quotes Marvel’s president of consumer products: (more…)

Snikt.

It seems one person has already fallen against Wolverine’s berserker rage: FOXNEWS.com’s Roger Friedman. The movie columnist set the blogosphere aflame last Thursday for his review of the leaked workprint of the upcoming film X-Men Origins: Wolverine. Some highlights from the now-erased review:

“Right now, my ‘cousins’ at 20th Century Fox are probably having apoplexy. I doubt anyone else has seen this film. But everyone can relax. I am, in fact, amazed about how great ‘Wolverine’ turned out. It exceeds expectations at every turn. I was completely riveted to my desk chair in front of my computer.”

Yet the part that I think probably got him in trouble was when he explained that he will soon become the best there is at what he does — and what he does is pirating creative works, with the wide-eyed wonder of a child discovering the bigger world around them.

“I did find the whole top 10 [movies in theaters], plus TV shows, commercials, videos, everything, all streaming away. It took really less than seconds to start playing it all right onto my computer. I could have downloaded all of it but really, who has the time or the room? Later tonight I may finally catch up with Paul Rudd in I Love You, Man. It’s so much easier than going out in the rain!”

Yet despite his praise of the film, it has been reported that Friedman has gotten the adamantium axe. 20th Century Fox, which is tied into Fox News via one Rupert Murdoch, and they were not thrilled about the review: (more…)

Since the release of Green Lantern: Rebirth by Geoff Johns and Ethan Van Sciver, which brought Hal Jordan back to prominence as the “main” Green Lantern of earth and resurrected him from his death as Parallax, Green Lantern has been the title to watch at DC Comics. With years of plans coming to a head with May’s Blackest Night event, what did Johns have left to do?

How about Flash: Rebirth, with Ethan Van Sciver, which is going to bring Barry Allen back to prominence as the “main” Flash of the DC Universe and resurrect him from his death at the hands of the Anti-Monitor?

Okay, so technically Barry was already back, in Final Crisis, but the fact remains he didn’t look nearly as good there as he does in the capable hands of superstar–and former Impulse artist–Ethan Van Sciver. Blog@Newsarama sat down for a chat with Ethan, one that will kick off a monthly discussion on the impact, the art and the inevitable success of Flash: Rebirth.

Blog@Newsarama: So first off, is there any plan, with all the Flashes involved in this series, to differentiate the power usage like you did on Green Lantern: Rebirth?

Ethan Van Sciver: Maybe slightly, just because certain parts of different costumes “draw lightning” in varied ways, but the speed force doesn’t respond to personality the way Lantern rings do. (more…)

Amanda Vähämäki’s The Bun Field begins with a three-page sequence of a little girl dreaming in bed, and suddenly starting awake. From there, she wanders out of her bed and into the kitchen, where she finds two other children—a little girl with crutches, and a little boy cracking nuts with little faces—and a guest, a giant, deformed, bald and corpulent humanoid creature.

By the time a little bear growls “MGHRNMRGHH” into the intercom system, and the girl goes down to get in the bear’s car, it’s quite clear that the dream hasn’t quite ended, or that our protagonist has woken up into another one. Or at least she’s woken up into a story being told like a dream.

This is the debut graphic novel—or novella, really—by young Finnish talent Vähämäki, translated and republished for English audiences by Drawn and Quarterly. Already she shows enormous talent and even more enormous potential. Dreams are a notoriously dicey source of inspiration, and stories that operate on dream logic can come off as pretentious and off-putting, but Vähämäki certainly makes such a story seem effortless to tell.

(more…)

Ever since the Vertigo panel at NYCC, I’ve been waiting impatiently for The Unwritten, Mike Carey and Peter Gross’s new Vertigo series.

Carey, in his Newsarama interview, said:

Emotionally, it’s the appeal of going back to the wellspring – the source of the Nile. We all have stories that colonise and inhabit bits of our minds, and there’s a kind of magic in turning our vision inwards to look at them directly. Conceptually, it’s like making a story that’s a moebius strip, angling away from the fictional reality and then feeding back into it from an unexpected angle. A very post-modern thing, to use that loaded phrase, but if it’s done right it can be both fun and revelatory.

This month’s Bang! Tango came with a preview of The Unwritten in the back, and ratcheted my excitement up another notch–I haven’t been this stoked for a new series since I first read about DMZ.

The Unwritten promises to be metafiction in the best way–a story about a story. The tagline on the cover of the preview is “Stories are the only things worth dying for,” and it gave me chills.

The story starts off in a fan convention much like the comic-cons we all love, with Peter Gross’s beautiful art rendering Tom Taylor an attractive, uncomfortable-looking man easily thrown off his game by his own inner discomfort. Taylor isn’t a writer or an artist–he’s a character. More specifically, he’s the real person upon whom his father based a series of books oddly similar to the Harry Potter books.

The meta starts with a reference to Harry Potter and similarities to The Books of Magic–on which Peter Gross worked. It quickly twists back in another direction, though, with a question from the crowd implying that Taylor is actually a fictional character. With just a few words, we’re out of the familiar world of cons and questioning the rules of the world Carey and Gross have pulled us into, wondering where we’re going next.

The preview doesn’t offer much more than that, but what it does give is more than enough of a teaser for me to be salivating for next month’s #1. I’ve called Mike Carey the heir apparent to Neil Gaiman several times, and like Sandman and many other works, this will be a story about stories, about the nature of fiction and characters. You hear writers talk time and again about their characters having their own ideas, and this takes that conceit another step. What if enough investment into a character actually brings them to life?

We’ve seen these ideas before, but the layers present just in these few pages had me wondering which new directions Carey and Gross might find. The literature geek in me thrills to the promise of a trip through various works of fiction, and the comics nerd loves the insider references as well as the potential for great art.

Smart-ass comics blogger makes fun of Ian Rankin: Popular prose writer Ian Rankin will soon be making his comics writing debut with Dark Entries, one of the new Vertigo crime line’s first books, and over at the main site Zack Smith interviewed Rankin. Some smart-ass comics blogger pulled some quotes out of the interview and used them as an opportunity to make fun of Rankin, just because Rankin said he enjoyed the League of Extraordinary Gentleman movie, as well as From Hell, which he said he preferred to the graphic novel, and because of the kind of clueless way he talks about writing comics. Jeez, who does this blogger think he is, this—what was his name again?—this Eddie Campbell character. What does Mr. Eddie Campbell know about graphic novels that–Oh. Oh right, that Eddie Campbell. Carry on.

Important announcement: Joey Weiser remains awesome. If you need proof, please visit the Partyka website and click on Weiser’s cute kaiju in unkaiju-like situations images. I especially like the Mothra on Snoopy’s dog house one.  (Link stolen from The Comics Reporter)

You’ve probably already seen this, but if not…: The Beguiling’s Christopher Butcher liveblogs his own last-minute rush to place an order through the Previews catalog the same day the order is due. Hilarity ensues. (Click here for hilarity part one, and here for part two). For more retailer-on-Previews action, please see Mr. Mike Sterling’s regular End of Civilization feature, now with 75% more Star Trek merchandise.

I hope it’s Will Shortz: Michael Caine says the next villain in the next Batman movie will be so-and-so, like, every other week doesn’t he? Well, according to this, it will indeed be The Riddler, but no word on who will play him.

“If comics were so valuable…why didn’t someone on Wall Street buy every issue of the X-Men and corner the market?”: A financial columnist discusses how his comic book collecting taught him about illiquid markets

Joe Quesada, on MySpace My Cup O’ Joe, not only released this sweet Alex Ross Captain America cover, but gave out some great advice for prospective comic book artistes. (Know how I know? Because he’s in charge of what goes out when. So listen to the man, for Pete’s sake.)

Here’s some info that’ll go along great with this week’s one-two punch from C.B. Cebulski:

One of the biggest mistakes I see artists make, no matter how talented they are, is coming in with too much material in their portfolio. That’s a huge mistake, because if editors are honest with you—and I’ll be honest and tell you this right off the bat—they’ll tell you that we know in the first 3-4 pages if you’ve got the chops or not.

The Mighty Marvel Poobah then discussed what he calls the 3x3x3 method –  it’s apparently the method that Joe Q got hired on himself.

Three stories, involving three different scenarios. With three covers. Now also keep in mind, this isn’t brain surgery, and you don’t have to create your Watchmen here, keep your stories simple.
But I think you do need some create vignettes, with a complete beginning-middle-end, without having to rely on words. A sequential pantomime for lack of a better way to describe it.

And the thing that’s really important, Quesada said — don’t just focus on one of the Big Two. Do one story Marvel, another DC, another one as a “quiet slice of life story, just to show [you] could do it,” Quesada added. Also — make one story a single-hero story, another one a team story. And finally…

If you’re trying to get a penciling job, don’t get your work inked. Certainly don’t color it. And never letter it! You run the risk of hurting your chances.
What I see way too often is someone guys who might be a great penciler, but they’re certainly a lousy inker like I am. They end up destroying their samples, and an editor has to try and decipher if maybe there was good pencil work under there.

Some more choice bits from the Marvel EiC:

Regarding Spider-Man revealing his identity to the New Avengers: I talked to [New Avengers writer] Brian Bendis about this before the fact, and it’s part of a larger storyarc for Peter Parker/Spider-Man. And the outcome of it…well, I don’t want to give away Brian’s story, but it will go on and weave through New Avengers and Amazing Spider-Man with a specific outcome in mind. Maybe “outcome” is the wrong word, but for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction, so you’ll see how that plays out in the books. But in all, it was not a decision we entered into lightly.

What is up next for the mighty Hercules?: A massive throwdown with the Dark Avengers rocks next month’s #128, to be followed by a harrowing three-issue jaunt into the Land of the Dead, where Herc and Cho learn the terrifying secret why death is so…impermanent in the Marvel Universe. That storyline causes a major change in Herc and Cho’s friendship—and major change in status for the Incredible Hercules title!

If you didn’t know what Wacker meant by “Hardy, boys!“: You should see the Black Cat back in the pages of Amazing Spider-Man within the next year, though we’re not ready to spill on precisely where or when just yet.

The real secret to the Captain America workout plan: “Assuming that the shield has a diameter of 3 feet and an average thickness of 1 cm, and making some reasonable assumptions about the density of steel/vibranium alloys, the star-spangled disc would have a mass of 65 kilograms, weighing 143 pounds. Presumably Cap can throw his shield as fast as a major league ballplayer can pitch a fastball, which is more impressive than it sounds, as the shield weighs nearly 450 times more than a baseball.
At 100 miles per hour, if the shield ricochets off the noggin of Hydra henchmen or Batroc (ze Leapair!) with a collision time of a hundredth of a second, the force it exerts is roughly 65000 pounds! No wonder all those who deal with the mighty shield must yield!

[Via MySpace]

Regular readers will know that a loose, Q&A-style version of my Comic Related columns The Gold Exchange and The Truth, With Liars–they follow Booster Gold and Young Liars on a monthly basis–go up here a day before they go live at CR. Last month, we had some fun following up with Dan Jurgens, using a number of fan questions generated here on Blog@Newsarama. As such, I’ve decided that this week–before next week’s releases of Booster Gold and Young Liars–I’m going to solicit some questions from fans for Dan Jurgens and David Lapham. The interviews this week will go live here first, then at Comic Related, and finally be available over at CR as part of the weekly Related Recap podcast. So your questions and attributions will go wide and maybe I can get some prizes for people whose questions really impress me, or the creators.

One of the best aspects of DC’s recent push to reissue old material has been Keith Giffen and J.M. DeMatteis’ Justice League International, which has now seen four hardcover collections (with the first recently released in paperback, and more of both formats to come). With the recent release of the Volume Four hardcover, I sat down with co-writer J.M. DeMatteis to do a quick interview about the experience of writing what many fans still think of as the best period in Justice League comics.

Blog@Newsarama: So the “recruitment story” has long been a Justice League standby. What motivated the “too many guys in a room to be effective” variation?

J. M. DeMatteis: It worked for the Marx Brothers, why wouldn’t it work for us?  But, really, the idea was Keitho’s.

BLOG@: Is it just me, by the way, or do the badguys trying to avenge their ridiculous defeat kind of remind you of the subsection of Skrulls who, during Marvel’s Secret Invasion event, were griping about having been turned into cows?

JMD: I haven’t read Secret Invasion, but I’d gripe about being turned into a cow, too.  Keith actually was turned into a cow once—by Andy Helfer—and he still hasn’t gotten over it. 

BLOG@: It’s interesting that the Beetle & Booster solo story (the vampire one) in this collection is the most action-packed of the book. Obviously among the critics of your run, there are those who complained that it was too much talking, not enough punching–and meanwhile Beetle and Booster are the most representational of your book.

JMD: Action?  There was action in one of our stories?  How did that happen?  I hope there were a lot of word balloons covering up most of the art.  If there weren’t, we failed.  Miserably.

(more…)

With Finale Fever running rampant on TV, whether in be in the send-offs to beloved BSG or warhorse ER just last night, not to mention the drumbeats for regular season finales, it puts us in mind of the following question: what are your favorite final issues ever?

I suppose that we could include mini-series in here, but I tend to think toward the notion of particularly satisfying last issues of long-form series. It’s a hard call for me to make personally, but I’m leaning toward the last issue of Y: The Last Man for this one.

How about you, readers?

If you ever wanted to learn the context of the famous Spider-Man theme, now’s your chance!

Marvel.com has announced it will be releasing episodes from the 1967 ABC cartoon on its web site. The first episode features “The Power of Dr. Octopus” and “Sub-Zero for Spidey.”

You can check it here:

For our jet-setting readers, as well as those across the pond:

The Bristol International Comic Expo has announced their guest list, as well as a special one-day event: Small Press Expo 2009. The main expo will take place in the Ramada Plaza Hotel on May 9-10, while the Small Press Expo will take place at the Mercure Holland House Hotel. You learn more (and order tickets) by clicking here.

And now — THE GUEST LIST!

Kevin O’Neill (in association with Top Shelf and Knockabout)
Alan Davis (with exclusive new DR & Quinch print only available at the Expo)
Dave Gibbons
Mark Buckingham
John Charles
Mike Collins
Rob Williams & John Higgins (in association with Com.X)
Gary Frank
Ian Gibson
David Hine
Lee Garbett
John M Burns
Lee Bradley
John Watson
Ian Culbard
Phil Winslade
Hunt Emerson & Gilbert Shelton (in association with Knockabout)
Simon Bisley & Mike Ploog (in association with Reed Comics)
Charlie Adlard
Sean Phillips
James A. Hodgkins
Duncan Fegredo
Neil Edwards
Gary Spencer Millidge
Dylan Teague
Tim Pilcher
Joel Meadows
Shaky Kane
Boo Cook
Al Davison
Laurence Campbell
John McCrea
Dave Shelton
Martin Hayes
Jock
Asia Alfasi
Ian Sharman
Tony Lee
Ferg Handley
Peter Hogan
Steve Cook
Robert Deas
Kris Justice
Kat Nicholson
Liam Sharp
Dan Boultwood
Andie Tong
Emma Vieceli
Ian Edginton
Paul Grist
Graham Bleathman
Henry Flint
Lew Stringer
Lee Townsend
Andy Diggle
Siku
Roger Langridge
Jim Boswell
Gary Erskine
Bambos!
Jon Davis-Hunt
Cy Dethan
David Baillie
Kirsty Swan
Paul Gravett
Ilya
Stephen Baskerville
Jason Cardy
Emily Hare
Mike Carey

Plus SP Expo comics from:
Steve Tanner (Time Bomb)
Howard Hardiman (Cute But Sad)
David Goodman (Zip Gun)
John Anderson (Soaring Penguin)
Paul Rainey (There’s No Time Like The Present)
Tom McNally (Semiotic Cohesion)
Willie Lengers (Itch Publishing)
Tom Meddings (Unedible)
Will Morris-julien (Butternut)
Michael Burness (Unico Comics)
Stephen Paul Coffey (Best of What’s Left)
Luke Paton (The Adventures Of Kez And Luke)
Andrew Cheverton (Angry Candy)
Dan Barritt (Ragadabah)
Nic Wilkinson (Insomnia Publications)
Isaac E C Lenkiewicz (Duh Brain Comics)
Amsel Von Speckelsen (Underfire Comics)
Chris Denton (Massacre For Boys)
Chin-Hsuen Lee (Tpcat Comic)
Steve Tillotson (Banal Pig)
Geoffrey Banyard (Fetishman)
Richard Scott Butler (Cherubs Comics)
Sally Jane Thompson (IndieManga)
Mathew J Pallett (Stir Fried)
Samantha Borras (Inspired)
Chris Lynch (Monkeys With Machineguns)

Now this is some interesting news — you’ve probably read in the past a lot of the debate that’s been going on regarding Diamond Comic Distribution, and the fact that you now have to have $2,500 in orders to use their service.

Well, this looks like the first larger-scale rebellion, straight from Asylum Press. Here’s what they had to say in a written statement:

“Although we received 1,200 orders for Fearless Dawn #1, we simply didn’t meet Diamond’s  purchase order benchmark, “ explained Frank Forte Asylum Press CEO. “1200 is a significant order for us especially considering the state of the market place.  Good customer service is the key to any successful business and we simply cannot deny demand for our products. Steve Mannion is a master at hilarious in your face fun and we expect this book to do quite well.”

Their terms are as follows:

Fearless Dawn #1 cover price $2.95,
60% discount: $1.18,
Asylum Press pays shipping
Net 30 days for payment(flexible)
No Minimums

To order directly, retailers should contact Frank Forte at asylumpress@aol.com.

You all remember the scene in The Empire Strikes Back where Luke Skywalker, desperate and lost in the freezing cold planet of Hoth, slices open his Tauntaun mount and huddles inside for warmth.

Well, now we’ve got the home game. Check it.

Topless Robot reports that ThinkGeek is moving on what was originally just an April Fool’s gag. If you click here, ThinkGeek will e-mail you if they manage to get George Lucas’ approval.

For me, the best part about this is not just the intestine-shaped embroidery on the inside of the sleeping bag, but the Lightsaber-shaped zipper. For that alone, I’m sold.

Let me start by saying that I was boycotting the new STAR TREK movie. The reasons are unimportant, because I have changed my mind. I read the STAR TREK: COUNTDOWN comic on my iPhone and was blown away by several aspects. The first thing that I noticed was the art and story are expert and engaging (pardon the Trekkie humor), but that’s evident with just a casual viewing.

What really blew me away was how sucked in I was to the comic itself. There were clearly many choice that were made in the adaptation of this comic to touch phones that took advantage of the devices: segmenting longer panels into multi-screen panels, cropping panels and letting the wordballoons outside the gutter allowing the art to breath, slight zoom in repeated panels to display all the captions from wordier panels.&n bsp; There was never a sense of claustrophobia with caption and balloons crushing the storytelling.

And lastly, I wouldn’t have bought a STAR TREK floppy comic– ever. I’ve always been selective of franchise entertainment branching out in other media. I won’t read STAR TREK books; I won’t watch any series beside the original, Next Gen, and DS9; and I won’t read the comics. Buying pages and pages of corpse-ish likenesses of compelling actors blundering through static media story-telling just doesn’t work for me. However, because I wasn’t buying a physical copy and the price of three issues at the iTunes Store was still cheaper than a single copy at my local Downtown Comics, I took the plunge. Gotta say, I’m really happy I did. See, the system works, digital comics got a person who wouldn’t buy the comic normally to give it a shot (not stealing business).

Without anymore jibba-jabba from me, some Q&A with, iVerse Media representative Michael Murphey.

So, tell us how iVerse became involved with the STAR TREK: COUNTDOWN project. Did IDW come to you, or what?

I think originally I made contact with IDW back when we first started putting iVerse together. One of the first titles I asked about was Star Trek, because I’m a life-long Trekkie. I just watched “Measure of a Man” before sitting down to do this interview. I love Star Trek, and hoped that we’d get a ch ance to bring IDW’s fantastic work on the franchise to mobile platforms. Luckily, it all worked out, and we were able to do it.

Was the comic adapted to the touch screen format in-house or by IDW?

iVerse did all the adaptations for the screen. I actually did the first 3 issues of Countdown myself. I handed the fourth issue off to another team member due to time constraints, but I wanted to do that one too. I love working on these books in any capacity…but thankfully we have a great team that works with iVerse on our adaptations, so I knew it would be in good hands.

You mentioned on your twitter that you are releasing STAR TREK: COUNTDOWN day and date with it’s print edition. Is that the first comic to do this on touch devices?

Star Trek: Countdown #3 was the first comic that I’m aware of to be released day and date on a mobile platform and in print.

Where do you perceive the purchase of iVerse copies coming from? Is it just from comic fans, curious iTunes Store shoppers? What is the target demographic, would you say?

I think people of all walks of life will purchase comics on mobile devices. In the case of Star Trek or Farscape from BOOM! you have the fans of those franchises that might not venture to the comic book store. I think we have a good chance of grabbing casual and new readers too by giving them a chance to try something new. Proof and Atomic Robo are two titles that sell incredibly well — and quite consistently — because that first issue is out there for people to try. Books like Dynamo 5 and The Red Star — all of our free books are there to grab new readers, and it’s working.

I would say that the true demographic for a digital comics reader is just anyone who owns one of the devices, and is looking for a good story. There’s something for everyone.

How about the iVerse agenda? Are you crusading to change minds and finally turn comics digital, do you see iVerse as a supplementary market with a little overlap, or do you see different and new opportunities for story-telling for the future? Where does STAR TREK: COUNTDOWN fit into that?

The iVerse Agenda is to find new readers. If you’re a hardcore old school comics fan and you want your paper comics in your hand every Wed that’s fine with us. We don’t want paper comics to ever go away – and I don’t think they will. I think a lot more single issues will find their way to digital distribution, and at some point in the future trades will be the norm, at least for smaller titles when it comes to print. We’re already starting to see that movement.

The next generation of reader is going to come from reading on screens. They’re not going to have a problem with getting comics this way, and that’s why the Digital Age of Comics starts now. Digital is a great supplemental income stream for creators right now, and at some point in the near future it will be a viable primary income source. It will provide new and unique storytelling opportunities that you can’t get on paper, and it makes world wide exposure easier than ever. So there is some amazing opportunity here, but the main thing we’re trying to do here is find those new readers.

There has been talk for the last several years about where that next generation of reader is going to come from – and I firmly believe this is it.

Can you tease us with any other titles down the pipe?

Hmm….well, we’ve got a lot more Trek coming down the pipe, we’ll be releasing the Bluewater “Female Forces” books on as many platforms as we can soon, more from all our publishing partners, and some comics created specifically for the iPhone by several creators that I think people are really going to dig. Plus, with the iPhone 3.0 update looming we’ve got some fun and interesting enhancements to the iVerse reading experience we think people are going to be really excited about….so there’s a lot coming up in 2009.

Any other comments or plugs? Questions you wished I would have asked?

Just that we’d love it if people stopped by http://www.iversecomics.com and said hello. We’ve got tons of great comics coming out for all kinds of mobile devices…and I can’t wait to be able to show you some of the stuff that I can show you yet. It’s going to be an exciting year.

Thank you very much for typing at us. The work you fellahs are doing is really good stuff.

–And of course we are open to your questions/comments/suggestions – you can email us at brainstormingcomics(at)gmail.com or contact us at http://www.brainstormingcomics.com

Chicken and Cat Clean Up (Scholastic)

By Sara Varon

This is the sequel to Sarah Varon‘s 2006 book, Chicken and Cat (which I reviewed here, if you’re interested). Like the work Varon’s probably best known for in comics circles, Robot Dreams, it dealt with the subject of relationships, but while somewhat bittersweet here and thre, it was much more optimistic than Robot Dreams (which was honestly one of the most heartbreaking comics I’ve ever read). An anthropomorphic cat journeys to the city to move in with an anthropomorphic chicken, and while Cat enjoys spending time there with Chicken, Cat has a lot of trouble adjusting to the new environment. When Chicken finally realizes what’s bothering his/her/its friend, he/she/it helps Cat make part of their new environment more homey.

It was a touching book, told completely wordlessly and in panels. Technically, it was probably a picture book—that’s how it was packaged and sold—but because several pages were divided into panel grids and the full-page illustrations all functioned as panels and there was no prose whatsoever, you could also say it was comics. I guess it just depends on your definition, and how you want to apply it.

The format remains the same for the sequel. It’s wordless, told only in Varon’s extremely simple by highly expressive artwork. Some pages are divided into multiple panels, some pages are like big giant splash panels, some two-page spreads are like bigger, gianter splash panels.

The story is a lot less emotionally deep than that of Chicken and Cat, which I think is probably just as much for adults as it is for children, but it is fun and, like Varon’s work always is, quite wonderfully drawn. Chicken and Cat are still living together in the city—Brooklyn, New York, actually—and Cat is now working for Chicken’s cleaning business.

(more…)

In 2009, it can be hard to understand, let alone appreciate, what superhero comic books were like at their inception.

Sure, DC and Marvel have their various reprint programs allow us to read the original adventures of the most popular and successful superheroes. You know, those that are still alive and selling. But it’s not easy to experience a Superman comic, or even a Captain Marvel or Sub-Mariner comic, without thinking of all that followed them. As tossed off as those stories may have been, they have the weight of a creation myth; to read the first Superman story without thinking of every one that followed, as if you had no idea what Superman was, requires an act of willful disassociation bordering on self-hypnosis.

Which is at least part of the fun of Supermen!: The First Wave of Comic Book Heroes 1936-1941 (Fantagraphics Books). Editor Greg Sadowski has collected about 20 stories from the time period, featuring a mess of characters you may have heard of, but certainly don’t know the way you know Wonder Woman or Batman.

These are stories from both the formative years of the superhero, and the gold rush years, when everyone making comics decided to make a Superman of some sort. The genre was still fluid, and hadn’t yet hardened and become solid (let alone calcified).

While the names of the supermen may not be familiar ones, the names of their creators certainly are, and Sadowski has assembled a who’s who of the founding fathers of comics, none of who are working on their signature creations. For example you’ll see Will Eisner, but not on The Spirit, Jack Cole, but not on Plastic Man.

Sadowski includes annotations on the stories, which function as an extremely readable mini-history of the comics industry in those years. I sat down to review this book a couple of times now, but I kept getting pulled in so many directions, wanting to mention every cool thing in it, which is quite difficult, given how many cool things are in it.

So instead, after the jump, I’ll try and say a few words about every single story in Supermen!, a book I honestly can’t recommend enough to any fans of the superhero genre.

(more…)

And now for a double-dose of speculation — Marvel just released the following teaser image today… of something they described as “the all-new, all-deadly Dark X-Men”:

This’ll be an interesting story, I think — I’m curious to see if this is tied in with Norman Osborn’s Dark Reign, or if this is an insurrection from the more “chaotic-good” members of the Cabal. While the Dark Avengers lend a certain cache to Norman, I can only wonder how co-opting the name of the X-Men — traditionally seen as mutant outlaws in the Marvel U — might help.

Based on the lineup there, it’s looking like: Dark Cabal members Namor and Emma Frost, Professor Charles Xavier, Daken (or Dark Wolverine, as we’ll now call him), Cloak & Dagger, joined by the high-flying Mimic (credit for solving that mystery goes to Rama readers Dave and JamesFerguson for their eagle eyes — thanks, guys!) and this guy in the back with the Omega symbol. (Starting guesses: the new Vindicator from Omega Flight, or a spin-off of Russian villain Omega Red.)

Either which way, talk amongst yourselves.