Just in time for Halloween:
Thursday, October 27, 2011
Wednesday, September 07, 2011
Tuesday, February 01, 2011
Captain America: Hail Hydra Store Appearance
I’ll be at Phantom of the Attic Comics (Oakland) in Pittsburgh at 4:30 on Wednesday Feb. 2 for the release of Captain America: Hail Hydra #2.
Wednesday, January 05, 2011
American Barbarian's Back!
After a month of drawing "Captain America: Hail Hydra" I've returned to American Barbarian. Chapter Four of Ambarb begins here.
Sunday, October 24, 2010
Kirby Drawing Video
I didn't know such a thing existed, actual extended video footage of Kirby drawing. Check it out at The Kirby Museum.
Friday, October 15, 2010
PIX
This weekend is PIX, the first-ever Pittsburgh Indie comics eXpo:
http://homepage.mac.com/bem/PIX/index.html
http://homepage.mac.com/bem/PIX/index.html
Thursday, October 14, 2010
This Week's Comics:10/13/10
Strange Tales 2 #1: Picked this up for Frank Santoro's Silver Surfer story. He talks a lot about the grid, but this is where you see the proof of its power. When you get to page 2 and 3 of his Surfer story, the grid just washes over you, pulling you into his orange and purple world. Only Frank could combine Jack Kirby, Moebius, John Buscema, Marc Rothko, and vintage surfboard airbrush art into a whole new think never before seen in superhero comics. His story wasn't quite located in the book's center, but it sure as hell felt like the center of the comic. I hope Marvel's going to get him to do some kind of miniseries, like Brendan McCarthy's recent Spiderman:Fever, where they let him cut loose with one of their characters.
Rafael Grampa's Wolverine story and Dash Shaw's Spiderman story were the other two standouts. Grampa even threw in a cool nod to Barry Smith's Weapon X coloring technique in one of the panels. Like Frank's Surfer story, Dash's Spiderman yarn took great advantage of the power of variation within repeated images. He compressed Ditko's Mysterio, Ditko's patron saint of movie trickery, the Spider-Clone saga, the movie kiss, and a dumpster full of decades worth of shitty Spiderman comics into four pages. Definitely worth re-reading and dissecting. Much better than his Dr. Strange story. It was a trifle, an enjoyable trifle, but still pretty disposable like much of what is in this series.
Thor #615 and 616: I'm guessing these are the first two issues of Matt Fraction and Pascal Ferry's Thor run. I was pulled in. I like Fraction's writing, and Ferry's brand of sci-fantasy is the perfect fit for Thor. It's a lot of setup. I was hoping for Thor to get into a cosmic brawl in the second issue, but I'm willing to stick around for at least a couple more issues.
Superior #1: I didn't really connect with this one, but I'll stick around to see what happens. It's the companion piece to Nemesis, which I enjoyed for the pure simplicity of the costume and the concept. It's odd that Millar is doing these DC Elseworlds series at Marvel. When I first saw the promo art for Nemesis, I thought it was exactly that, an Elseworlds story where Batman is the Joker.
Superior seems to hew more closely to Captain (Shazam) Marvel than to Superman. It'll probably unfold in an interesting way, but the simplicity of Nemesis won me over. Maybe Superior will win me over with narrative and visual clutter.
Batman: The Return of Bruce Wayne: I've been enjoying this one. I'm a fan of Morrison's Batman run from start to finish. A sci-fi Batman is something I've always wanted to see. I suffered from narrative disappointment with the way the Fourth World content was slowly leeched out of Final Crisis issue by issue. What I'm enjoying most in Return of Bruce Wayne, is the way the Fourth World is creeping into Batman's narrative from the edges. (I was disappointed to hear that after this wraps up Morrison is taking Batman in a decidedly un-sci-fi direction). In this issue Satanists pray to the dark angel's of Darkseid's inferno pits. They're summoning Barbatos the Hunter, which I'm assuming is another aspect of Orion, using an art-deco motherbox. There's an escape via boom-tube. That's three pages in the context of an old-timey detective yarn.
When Morrsion first started talking about Final Crisis, one of the things was that Batman was going to die and ascend as a New God. Same with Martian Manhunter (who being named after Mars, the Greek god of war would be a likely replacement for Orion The New God of War). It got nixed. I feel like we're seeing tiny glimpses of the echoes of the storyline that didn't happen.
I also picked up Neal Adam's Batman:Odyssey #4 (I've been buying more Batman comics lately than I have since I was a teenager) and Dick Briefer's Frankenstein, but I haven't read them yet.
Rafael Grampa's Wolverine story and Dash Shaw's Spiderman story were the other two standouts. Grampa even threw in a cool nod to Barry Smith's Weapon X coloring technique in one of the panels. Like Frank's Surfer story, Dash's Spiderman yarn took great advantage of the power of variation within repeated images. He compressed Ditko's Mysterio, Ditko's patron saint of movie trickery, the Spider-Clone saga, the movie kiss, and a dumpster full of decades worth of shitty Spiderman comics into four pages. Definitely worth re-reading and dissecting. Much better than his Dr. Strange story. It was a trifle, an enjoyable trifle, but still pretty disposable like much of what is in this series.
Thor #615 and 616: I'm guessing these are the first two issues of Matt Fraction and Pascal Ferry's Thor run. I was pulled in. I like Fraction's writing, and Ferry's brand of sci-fantasy is the perfect fit for Thor. It's a lot of setup. I was hoping for Thor to get into a cosmic brawl in the second issue, but I'm willing to stick around for at least a couple more issues.
Superior #1: I didn't really connect with this one, but I'll stick around to see what happens. It's the companion piece to Nemesis, which I enjoyed for the pure simplicity of the costume and the concept. It's odd that Millar is doing these DC Elseworlds series at Marvel. When I first saw the promo art for Nemesis, I thought it was exactly that, an Elseworlds story where Batman is the Joker.
Superior seems to hew more closely to Captain (Shazam) Marvel than to Superman. It'll probably unfold in an interesting way, but the simplicity of Nemesis won me over. Maybe Superior will win me over with narrative and visual clutter.
Batman: The Return of Bruce Wayne: I've been enjoying this one. I'm a fan of Morrison's Batman run from start to finish. A sci-fi Batman is something I've always wanted to see. I suffered from narrative disappointment with the way the Fourth World content was slowly leeched out of Final Crisis issue by issue. What I'm enjoying most in Return of Bruce Wayne, is the way the Fourth World is creeping into Batman's narrative from the edges. (I was disappointed to hear that after this wraps up Morrison is taking Batman in a decidedly un-sci-fi direction). In this issue Satanists pray to the dark angel's of Darkseid's inferno pits. They're summoning Barbatos the Hunter, which I'm assuming is another aspect of Orion, using an art-deco motherbox. There's an escape via boom-tube. That's three pages in the context of an old-timey detective yarn.
When Morrsion first started talking about Final Crisis, one of the things was that Batman was going to die and ascend as a New God. Same with Martian Manhunter (who being named after Mars, the Greek god of war would be a likely replacement for Orion The New God of War). It got nixed. I feel like we're seeing tiny glimpses of the echoes of the storyline that didn't happen.
I also picked up Neal Adam's Batman:Odyssey #4 (I've been buying more Batman comics lately than I have since I was a teenager) and Dick Briefer's Frankenstein, but I haven't read them yet.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
