Author: Andrew Wheeler

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All This Stuff Happened…

  • News
  • August 2, 2007

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Greg Rucka has some post-Comic-Con thoughts, mostly about how crowded it was. How about this: next year, just rope off the whole city of San Diego, and use the streets for aisles. Brilliant, right!

Publishers Weekly has a whole load of Comic-Con wrap-up today: photos, general news, manga news, movie news, and even more.

The amazing, never-before seen reunion of the seven Image founders at Comic-Con is, like everything else in the world, now up on YouTube.

The Beat reports on the Scribe awards – for the downtrodden refuseniks of literature, the media tie-in writers – which were awarded for the first time at Comic-Con this year.

Chris’s Invincible Super-Blog has found the greatest movie title ever: Yo-Yo Girl Cop. Not only is it about a female cop who wields a battle yo-yo, it’s actually the sequel to something.

Greg Burgas of Comics Should Be Good finally files his San Diego report.

Jog of The Savage Critics brings the love for one of my favorite comics of all time, the first series of Pat Mills and Kevin O’Neill’s Marshal Law.

If you ever wondered where Stepford Wives come from…Alma Alexander discovered the website of a photo retoucher who fixes up kids’ pageant photos – such as this example of turning a perfectly cute baby into a creepy doll-like object.

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News of the World

  • News
  • August 1, 2007

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SF Diplomat deconstructs Iron Man. I don’t see what all the hubbub is about. So he’s an alcoholic, workaholic, control-freak millionaire military contractor who is his own superpowered bodyguard and often runs his own foreign policy — what’s the big deal? I don’t see anything odd there…

Neil Gaiman was kissed during the Eisner Awards by U.K. TV star (and major comics fan) Jonathan Ross, and has posted the snogging on his blog for all to see.

Forbidden Planet International examines the website for the Watchmen movie. I imagine, if you ask them, they’d also read tea-leaves to see how good the movie is going to be.

Industry News has some documents from Jerry Siegel and Joe Schuster’s 1947 lawsuit against National Periodical Publications, part of a larger collection of material from the lawsuit that is now for sale.

I thought Comics Reporter had already done his big Comic-Con wrap-up, but here’s another one.

Again with the Comics goes there to wonder how Ben Grim makes sweet, sweet love. [via Journalista!]

USA Today profiles Neil Gaiman.

DC is getting some impressive press coverage for their new Minx line – why, they even cracked the powerful York Journal today.

Paul Kincaid at Bookslut admits that he likes Philip K. Dick’s mainstream novels as he reviews the last previously-unpublished Dick book, Voices from the Street. Ah – he’s the one!

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Hot Comics Linkage

  • News
  • July 31, 2007

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Last thoughts on the San Diego Comic-Con:

Adventures in SciFi Publishing has some Comic-Con pictures.

Fantasy Book Critic has a wrap-up of Comic-Con, with some pictures and thoughts, and yet more links.

The Bat Segundo show flutters back for a second podcast about this year’s Alternative Press Expo.

Ned Beauman is now blogging about comics for the Guardian, but he thinks it’s hard out there for a non-misogynist.

Sequential Tart reviews a couple of Minxes.

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GRAPHIC NOVEL REVIEW: Spent

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Joe Matt is a lazy, pornography-obsessed cartoonist whose main (or possibly only) subject is his own miserable life. If you’ve heard of Matt’s work before, you’re probably wondering why I’m restating the obvious. If you’ve never heard of Matt before, you’re probably wondering how much of a career one can get out of that – well, it’s not a deep well, but he’s been at it for nearly twenty years.

Spent collects four issues of Matt’s comic Peepshow; it’s essentially a sequel to his first full-length graphic novel, The Poor Bastard. Poor Bastard was mostly about his rocky relationship with his girlfriend Trish in the early ‘90s, and Spent’s four issues take place in 1994, 1996, 1998, and 2002, respectively. (And the really sad and pathetic thing is that Matt’s depicted life didn’t change in the slightest between ’94 and ’02; these issues read almost as if they’re four successive days.) Matt is seen either in company with his two cartoonist friends, Seth and Chester Brown, or (generally alone) in his room, obsessing about himself and talking to the reader.

Now, what I say from here on applies to the “Joe Matt” who is the main character of Spent; it may or may not precisely describe the real-world Joe Matt, though, to all appearances, he does document his life quite honestly. (And a tip of the hat to my fellow comics reviewer Jeff VanderMeer, with whom I spent several enjoyable months last year debating such things as how much of the “Bret Easton Ellis” in Lunar Park can be mapped onto the man of the same name who wrote that novel.) (more…)

Comics News & Links: San Diego Sunset Edition

  • Uncategorized
  • July 30, 2007

costumes-7478920Brave souls still reporting from Comic-Con:

The New York Times gazes down its nose at Comic-Con, and says tsk-tsk quietly under its breath.

Comic Book Bin lists nine new projects announced by Minx at Comic-Con, including a sequel to Clubbing and work from Brian Wood, Alisa Kwitney, and Steve Rolston.

Comic Book Resources, similarly, has a story about Oni Press’s upcoming projects.

The Beat liveblogged the Eisner Awards ceremony…the first three or four hours of it, anyway.

Greg Hatcher of Comics Should Be Good traveled cross country instead of going to Comic-Con — and found comics along the way.

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GRAPHIC NOVEL REVIEW: The Saga of the Bloody Benders

benders-9425765It’s been twenty years since Geary’s original A Treasury of Victorian Murder was published – and who would have thought, then, that a slim book of arch graphic short stories about little-known murders in Victorian England would be the beginning of the comics Geary would spend most of the decades to come creating? The first of the smaller-format, single-case volumes, Jack the Ripper, followed in 1995, with a new book every other year through 2005’s The Murder of Abraham Lincoln. Then 2006 saw The Case of Madeleine Smith, and this year yet another new Geary murder case.

Except for the first volume, each “Treasury of Victorian Murder” is a small book – about 5½ “ x 8¼” with roughly eighty pages of comics – about a particular, somewhat famous murder case from 19th century England or the USA. He’s covered the deaths of two Presidents – Lincoln and Garfield – and the cases "H.H. Holmes," Lizzie Borden, and Jack the Ripper. The remaining two books – about Mary Rogers and Madeleine Smith – are about famous sensational cases, crimes of passion.

The Bender “family” – there’s some doubt as to whether they were actually related, as they claimed to be – of Labette County, Kansas are not quite as famous as most of those cases (though I hadn’t heard of Madeleine Smith before, either). But they were certainly actively murderous and impressively mysterious, so their story gives Geary quite a bit to dig into. The Benders arrived in that raw, rural area of Kansas in 1870, very soon after the Civil War and not much longer after Kansas became a state in 1861. They set up a single-room (divided by a hanging canvas) inn and grocery on the major trail through the area, and settled into the community – considered eccentric, certainly, but basically accepted.

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People Reading Books

  • News
  • July 29, 2007

eyre-2938818The Seattle Times reviews Jasper Fforde’s “Thursday Next” series.

Slate looks at Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.

The Agony Column reviews Alan Campbell’s Lye Street, a novella-as-a-book prequel to Scar Night.

Pat’s Fantasy Hotlist reviews Jeff Somers’s The Electric Church.

Blogcritics has what I think is their sixth review for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Honestly, I can’t keep track any more.

Book Fetish reviews a three-author linked erotic romance anthology called Hell on Heels. (Oh my God, the Twayne Triplets are back…and this time they’re porn!)

Bookgasm reviews Warren Hammond’s KOP.

Bookgasm also reviews A Dog About Town, a murder mystery told from the POV of a thinking dog, which is fantasy enough for my book.

The Henry Herald of Georgia reviews Kull: Exile of Atlantis by Robert E. Howard.

American Chronicle reviews Harry Potter and the…Half-Blood Prince. (ha HA! Fooled you!)

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Interviews and Interrogations

  • Uncategorized
  • July 29, 2007

bagge-2994866The Washington Post profiles Hate! cartoonist Peter Bagge, focusing on his current work for the magazine Reason.

Comic Book Resources infiltrated a Comic-Con panel with Matt Wagner talking about 25 years of Grendel – and they report back what they learned.

Wizard interviews Mouse Guard creator David Petersen.

Heidi MacDonald video-interviews Scott McCloud, creator of Making Comics (and, of course, Zot!).

The Orange County Register talks to Kevin J. Anderson about Slan Hunter, the novel he completed from A.E. Van Vogt’s outline and incomplete draft.

Forbes quotes from a USA Today interview with J.K. Rowling, in which she mentions that she’s already working on two non-fantasy projects – one for children and one for adults.

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Link-o-Rama

  • News
  • July 28, 2007

fighting-1106608Times Online looks back at the British ‘80s craze for Fighting Fantasy.

The Millions has a looooong post (no, really, it’s long) about Harry Potter from a children’s librarian’s perspective.

Queen guitarist Brian May has gone back to school — to finish his doctorate in astrophysics. That’s a smart move – you always want to have a day-job to fall back on, if the music thing doesn’t work out.

John Scalzi has discovered a typewriter that sends e-mail.

Lou Anders explains patiently that SF is not dead. (Me, I’d have just pointed out that anyone who goes to a Nebula Awards Weekend in New York City – horribly expensive New York City, not to mention nightlife-dead Way the Hell Downtown NYC – and expects the demographic not to be “middle-aged to old” is deluding himself about the interests and finances of young SF-reading people.)

And you’ve heard about NASA’s drunk astronauts by now, yes?

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News from Comic-Con and Other Distant Shores

  • Uncategorized
  • July 28, 2007

comic-con-2121615People reporting from Comic-Con:

Everyone’s reporting on DC’s new license to publish comics based on the TV show Heroes; the longest piece I’ve seen so far is from The Beat. (What does it all mean? Don’t ask me…I’m just Link-Boy.)

New York Magazine has a sixteen-page excerpt from the beginning of Osamu Tezuka’s Apollo’s Song. (And let’s not forget the ComicMix review of Apollo’s Song.)

All the ‘60s Batman sound effects you could ever want. [via When Gravity Fails]

NPR has a story about this year’s Eisner judges and their decision process.

The Beat reports that Mark Waid has been named Editor-in-Chief of Boom! Studios.

The Beat also explains the whole Dark Horse-MySpace thing – which I think means that they’re totally BFFs.

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