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‘GrimJack: The Manx Cat’ #1 available from IDW Publishing this August

  • Uncategorized
  • June 16, 2009

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We might as well make it official:

IDW Publishing is pleased to announce the
upcoming launch of the first series of ComicMix.com properties,
GrimJack: The Manx Cat. For the first time in print, fans can now enjoy
the adventures of GrimJack in 26 full color pages published straight
from the online comic. Writer John Ostrander and artist Timothy
Truman skillfully return to the grim and gritty interdimensional land of
Cynosure, in which gun-for-hire GrimJack holds court in the fabled
Munden’s Bar.

“We’re excited to be bring some of the best ComicMix properties to
real-world books, and GrimJack is a great way to start,” said Greg
Goldstein, chief operating officer of IDW. “The new books are a great
new way to enjoy ComicMix fans to enjoy their favorite comics, and
expose the properties to new fans.”

GrimJack debuted in the mid-80s and rapidly became one of First
Comics’ best-selling titles. Created by Ostrander and Truman, the
series was revived in 2005 for the graphic novel Killer Instinct,
published by IDW, which is also home to the trade paperback reprints of the First Comics’ material.

“It’s sort of a homecoming for us,” GrimJack and ComicMix
editor-in-chief Mike Gold notes. “We’ve had a long and productive
relationship with IDW – absolutely the best I’ve had in my career.
There’s no better choice to restart at the place we took off initially,
with a brand-new GrimJack mini-series.”

GrimJack: The Manx Cat #1 will be available in stores in August. Diamond order code JUN09 0951

About IDW
IDW is an award-winning publisher of comic books,
graphic novels and trade paperbacks, based in San Diego, California. As
a leader in the horror, action, and sci-fi genres, IDW publishes some
of the most successful and popular titles in the industry including:
television’s #1 prime time series CBS’ CSI:
Crime Scene Investigation; Paramount’s Star Trek; Fox’s Angel; Hasbro’s
The Transformers, and the BBC’s Doctor Who. IDW’s original horror
series, 30 Days of Night, was launched as a major motion picture in
October 2007 by Sony Pictures and was the #1 film
in its first week of release. In April 2008, IDW released Michael
Recycle, the first title from its new children’s book imprint,
Worthwhile Books. More information about the company can be found at http://www.idwpublishing.com.

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Review: Love Is a Peculiar Type of Thing by Box Brown

  • Uncategorized
  • June 16, 2009

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Love Is a Peculiar Type of Thing
By Box Brown
Self-published, no company name; February 2009, $10.00
 

It’s not often you find a book about someone named Ben created by someone named Box – the standard in comics is the other way around – but this is that book. In case you’re confused by the name, Box Brown is a new cartoonist – he has a series of strips, Bellen!, available online, though he denies that they’re a webcomic – and not the 19th century slave who escaped from Virginia via parcel post.

[[[Love Is a Peculiar Type of Thing]]] collects about ninety pages of comics in a semi-autobiographical vein about a character named Ben. Ben is usually separate from his creator, but the two aren’t always distinct – and Brown draws himself very similarly to Ben in the first place. (But, to be fair, he knows this and points it out in one of the earlier strips in the book.) Ben and Box are both young and somewhat directionless, having gone through a few years in an unspecified corporate rat race before dropping out – Brown to create this book, and Ben to do something that’s unspecified or not clearly separated enough from Brown.

(more…)

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Review: A Mess of Everything by Miss Lasko-Gross

  • Uncategorized
  • June 15, 2009

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A Mess of Everything
By Miss Lasko-Gross
Fantagraphics Books, April 2009, $19.99

According to page 119, the heroine of this story writes comics as “Miss Lasko-Gross,” but her legal name (at least at this point, when she’s in high school) is “Melissa Anne Lasko Gross,” and the two last names are from both her mother and father. However, the back cover notes that Mess is semi-autobiographical, which could either mean “a few names and events were changed for various artistic and protecting-the-innocent reasons” or “it makes a better story this way, and good stories are worth it.” Since I don’t know which one is true, I’ll tread lightly on the “autobiographical” and assume it’s all “semi” – that’s safer, anyway.

[[[A Mess of Everything]]] is the story of the high school years of Melissa, whose younger years were previously covered in Lasko-Gross’s debut graphic novel, Escape from “Special.” Lasko-Gross runs through those years in a series of short stories, from single-pagers up to a dozen or so.

(more…)

‘Pearls Before Swine’ endorsement video

  • News
  • June 15, 2009

Normally, we wouldn’t promote in such blatant promotion efforts. Heck, we haven’t even gotten around to publishing our own GrimJack press release. But this touching effort by Stephan Pastis for his latest Pearls Before Swine collection was so earnest, we just had to show you.

Pearls Sells Out: A Pearls Before Swine Treasury, the 12th book in the series, comes out August 18. Order now.

‘The Maxx’ animated series online

  • News
  • June 15, 2009

MTV is bringing back a lot of stuff from the 90’s– The State, Denis Leary commercials, Aeon Flux and other Liquid Television spots, and the like on MTV2 Legit, a new series on MTV2. One of the recent additions to their web site is Sam Kieth’s The Maxx, from MTV Oddities– and the serie, from the co-creator of Sandman, is even weirder than I remembered. Take a look:

Scott McCloud lecture on Understanding Comics at TED

  • News
  • June 14, 2009

As it turns out, the man who wrote Understanding Comics
 and Making Comics
 is pretty good at understanding and making the multimedia presentation too. (This isn’t a real surprise– in the mid 90’s, at the initial boom of the World-Wide Web, a lot of web designers and artists had copies of Understanding Comics
 on their desk, because it helped them get a handle on this new medium and how to communicate in it.)

Here’s Scott McCloud at the TED Conference. Enjoy the lazy Sunday afternoon and enjoy Scott’s speech:

Review: ‘The Complete Steve Canyon on TV’ Vol. 2

The second volume of [[[The Complete Steve Canyon on TV]]] is just out and there are 12 more episodes from the one season series based on Milton Caniff’s wonderful comic strip.  As with volume one, no one other than Canyon appears from the strip and there’s precious little in recurring characters on the show.

This is a perfect example of 1950s television when the star was role model perfect and merely there to propel stories along. We learn nothing about Canyon, who has a wide network of friends and acquaintances from coast to coast. While based at Big Thunder, his adventures take him far and wide as he helps those in need or is caught up in problems that just happen to occur.

Clearly, the highlight of the two-disc set is the Christmas episode written by Ray Bradbury. On the one hand, it’s a typical holiday television story and on the other, it has a spiritual and emotional depth missing from so many seasonal tales. Not only that, unlike so many Canyon episodes it tugs at your emotions as Canyon ferries a group of Hungarian refugee children to a German base where local families will host them for the holiday. Canyon has to figure out why one girl finds no joy in the holiday and his solution is a nice, universal one.

On the other hand, some of the histrionics in other episodes stagger those of us raised on more nuanced acting. “[[[The Search]]]” has a hammy Jeanette Nolan as a panicked wife begging Canyon and the Air Force to locate her missing, well-connected husband. She chews the scenery, wailing beyond human reason for most of the 30 minutes.

The remaining stories range from illness overseas to a damaged landing wheel. The final episode, “[[[Strike Force]]]” starts off well with a tension missing from most of the other stories but then becomes tedious as Canyon commands a three-part strike team on a Cold War exercise over the Atlantic. We’re told how difficult the coordination will be and how tough it is on the pilots for flying 10-12 hours each to be precisely in position on time but everything goes perfectly with no twists, surprises or reason to worry. The episode did make great use of archival footage.

Another pleasure in watching these shows is to see guest stars we know from their later works. Leonard Nimoy has a fairly thankless role in one while Gavin McLeod and Jack Weston get the have some fun with more substantive roles in a different story. The final episode, “Strike Force” has a blink-and-you-miss appearance by [[[Mary Tyler Moore]]].

The episodes are crisply restored, most complete with commercials from the era with audio commentary from some o the guest performers and historians. This is definitely worth a look for those who love the character or old-time television.

Manga Friday: Reading It Forwards

  • News
  • June 12, 2009

Just when you think you’ve gotten the hang of Asian comics – you can read right-to-left without blinking, speak of shojo and shonen with ease and have even been known to bring up seinen in casual conversation – you get caught up short with the realization that Japan is not the entirety of Asia. There are other countries with their own comics traditions, and you (well, me) suddenly realize that you (no, it’s still me) don’t know all that much about them. But there will always be more books you haven’t read than those you have, so the only thing to do is dive right in….

Mijeong
By Byun Byung-Jun
NBM ComicsLit, July 2009, $19.99

If Bret Easton Ellis was a Korean cartoonist – and about twenty years younger – he might have produced a short-story collection like Mijeong; Byung-Jun’s characters are mostly urban young people, disaffected more often than not. There are seven stories here, in a wide variety of art styles – some painted, some drawn, and all absolutely stunning in their virtuosity – but they’re all quite bleak.

Byung-Jun’s stories traffic in rape and abduction, murder and suicide, but his viewpoint is distanced and quiet, as if to say that this is just life, and none of it can be helped. Some of the stories end on a relatively upbeat note and some the other way, but it doesn’t really matter – they all have that quiet, detached tone.

Byung-Jun’s art is amazing in its textures and environment, though his people, deliberately, have mask-like faces that show little emotion most of the time. It’s harder to judge his writing – there are passages like “For weary lovers, love seems distant. But they’ll endure it all. Overwhelmed, they endure. But, in the end, they’ll manage.” that clunk around like a tire with a bald spot, but it’s impossible to say if that was clunky in the original Korean, or if the translation (by Joe Johnson) is responsible. In either case, the writing aims towards sublimity but doesn’t always make it.

Mijeong is an Asian comic for people who usually like European comics – it’s nuanced and subtle, quiet and vaguely depressive, with gorgeous art and a deeply jaundiced view of the world. Perhaps the fact that it reads left-to-right – since it’s Korean, and that’s the way their books run – will help it find that audience. (more…)

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