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Manga Friday: Lawless, Winged, and Unconfined

  • News
  • August 22, 2008

Poking through the stack of manga to be reviewed, earlier this week, I noticed several books featuring characters with wings of one kind or another. Quick to sense a theme, I dragged them together, and here they are:

Koi Cupid, Vol. 1
By Mia Ikumi
Broccoli, April 2008, $9.99

Koi Cupid is an all-ages series about cherubs-in-training – yes, cute little girls in white outfits, running around making people fall in love. It’s not quite as kawaii (cute, often cloyingly so) as it could be, though, so I came to think of Koi Cupid as actually fairly restrained.

(Of course, that’s by manga standards – recalibrate your cuteness detectors from American settings, or you’ll be instantly deafened by the alarm.)

Anyway, the story focuses on three cupids-in-training: Ai, the cheerful one; Koi, the shy one; and Ren, the way-ahead-of-the-others one. They’re taught by a full cupid named Rin, who is deferring her own promotion to Guardian Angel to continue to mentor them. Kou actually is a guardian angel who pops in for added firepower now and then; Sister Yuuri is a winged, talking cat who supervises the cupid training program, and Lizette is a sneaky demon who tries to foil their work, but whom Ai wants to be friends with. (more…)

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“Mortal Kombat vs. DCU” Adds Wonder Woman and Deathstroke

  • News
  • August 22, 2008

normal-greenlantern-render-00-7075831JK Parkin over at Blog@ reports that Midway Games has released the identities of two more characters in the upcoming Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe videogame: Wonder Woman and Deathstroke the Terminator. A preliminary rendering of Wonder Woman is available on the site, as well as a rendering of Green Lantern (seen here) and a series of screencaps from the game featuring Green Lantern in battle, as well as other DC characters (including Joker, Superman and Catwoman).

The announcement was made at the Leipzig Games Convention, and along with the DC characters, Midway also announced the return of Mortal Kombat characters Raiden and Kano in the new iteration. The game is scheduled for release this fall. 

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Skrull-icide in “Secret Invasion”

  • News
  • August 22, 2008

secret-invasion-5-00-8968406Over at Metabunker, Matthis Wivel has posted an interesting analysis of the "only good skrull is a dead skrull" theme in Marvel Comics’ Secret Invasion event. When presented with the rampant slaughter currently going on in Marvel’s latest big event, Wivel wonders what ever happened to the whole "heroes don’t kill" standard of yesterday’s comics.

I’m not going to be all holier-than-thou about this — I know that the audience for these comics is largely adult geeks such as myself, and that a little killing won’t hurt our sensibilities much. But still, it’s gotta be some kind of landmark that the biggest superhero event this year so callously ignores what was once a central principle of the genre. And kind of auspicious too, that a series that at least superficially carries pretensions of political allegory most likely unintentionally lends to its heroes a borderline fascist groupthink outlook on their enemies.

And beyond all that, what is the big problem with the skrulls, anyways? I mean, Embrace Change sounds like a pretty nice guy… er, skrull.

(via Tom Spurgeon)

If You’re Not There, You Just Won’t Get It, Part 3, by Michael Davis

  • News
  • August 22, 2008

 

This is part three of my Milestone Media story I began two weeks ago. If you are reading this segment first, please read the other two installments, not so much for background but so I don’t look like a complete moron.

On a faithful day I walked into a Milestone meeting and was met with a pointed finger and this statement directed at me.  “I cannot work with this man.”

Now there are those in the industry who see me as overrated, lucky or a con artist.  That’s partly because my public persona is over the top. I tend not to explain a lot about how I do stuff, I just do it. I have never been one to share information about details on certain aspects of my business. Let me try and clarify what that means: if you invite me to a party and I say no, that’s all you are getting. You are not getting a detailed description why I’m not going or what else I may be doing or instead of going to your party. To me no just means no. It does not mean that you are a bad person, it does not mean I am. It just means no. Look; I just don’t pay attention or care about what or why anyone does anything.

I never ask personal questions when I get a no. I don’t care why you make a decision; it’s your decision. I have no right to expect an explanation from you unless it affects me in some way that matters to me. I was that way in 1991. I’m still that way in 2008 but I’m less hardcore about it.

So when a Milestone member pointed his finger at me and said “I cannot work with this man.” My first reaction was anger. I knew what I was doing to build Milestone and resented the fact that I was being put on the spot with this bullshit. I thought at the time it was all motivated by my personality, and some of it was. In retrospect I realize another part of the issue with me at the time was my methods and how I did things.  The meeting went on for a while and became heated.

Wait a sec.

  (more…)

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Behind the Scenes With “Stan’s Soapbox”

  • News
  • August 21, 2008

stansoapbox-00-6645624Just about a week ago, it was announced that the ol’ "Stan’s Soapbox" columns that ran in Marvel Comics from 1967 to 1980 will be collected in an upcoming paperback published by (and benefiting) The Hero Initiative, the very worthwhile organization that is also the "first-ever federally chartered not-for- profit corporation dedicated strictly to helping comic book creators in need."

In true form, Stan "The Man" had this to say about the collection:

"Wow! What a kick it is for me to see all my old Soapbox columns printed in one great volume!," said Stan Lee. "Reading them now is like taking a trip back through the history of Marvel in those great ol’ days when the fans and I would rap about how our batty Bullpen was exploding with new heroes, new villains and more far-out, fun-filled, fantastic new ideas than you could shake a radioactive spider at! And, best of all, every Stan’s Soapbox book sold means more money for the great Hero Initiative cause. No wonder I’m so proud of this book and the cause that it serves! Heck, I might even buy two copies!"

While the 144-page collection is scheduled for a November 2008 release and sporting a $14.99 price tag, as well as commentary from Marvel luminaries like Joe Quesada, Kevin Feige and Roy Thomas, there’s one thing the collection won’t include: the original typed copy straight from the desk of Marvel’s Main Man himself. Lucky for us, former Marvel Comics Assistant Editor Scott Edelman recently posted a scan of one of those aforementioned drafts — as well as some thoughts on how he ended up with them.

One of my duties as an Assistant Editor at Marvel Comics in the mid-’70s was to write all of the text for each Bullpen Bulletins page except for Stan’s Soapbox. (Thanks for the opportunity to channel my childhood idol, Len!)

Which meant that Stan would hand me a yellow sheet of paper each month on which he had typed out his musings, complete with edits in the form of crossed-out clauses and handwritten additions. I’d hand both his text and mine (for the rest of the page) to a different Stan, Stanley Aaron, the typesetter who would make it all look pretty so it could then be pasted up for print.

Even without the drafts, the Stan’s Soapbox collection looks like a great opportunity to get all sorts of nostalgic about comics days gone by. I’ve posted the full press release after the jump, with more information about the project. (Oh, and we’re told that’s not the final cover art.)

(via The Beat)

(more…)

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Bryan Lee O’Malley and Hope Larson on “Bear Creek Apartments”

  • News
  • August 21, 2008

bearcreek-00-2002423Celebrated comics couple Bryan Lee O’Malley (Scott Pilgrim) and Hope Larson (Chiggers) returned the focus of their considerable talents to the webcomics pool this week with Bear Creek Apartments, a new, original collaboration between the two creators. They announced the project this week on their website, radiomaru.com, and the comic was subsequently flooded with traffic — forcing O’Malley to break it down from a single page to a series of linked pages.

For the art geeks, the pair also provided the following details about their tools of the trade for Bear Creek:

The art is done with pen, watercolor, crayon, and some CG elements (mostly lighting effects). The lettering was done with ComiCraft’s "Monologous" font.

You can see the full comic now at the link I’ve provided above, but be sure to read it through to the end. There’s a twist there that caught me by surprise… so you’ll want to beat the spoilers, too.

ComicMix Radio: Doctor Who Hits The Tables

  • News
  • August 21, 2008

Between now and this year’s Christmas Special, you might be blessed with a Doctor Who RPG, the first in over 15 years. We’ve got the details, plus:

  • Voltron shuffles toward the screen
  • A big month in the comic stores for Secret Invasion and Batman
  • John McCain said what about D&D?

And we turn you on to a free web comic that probably sounds like the things you and your friends always talk about. Find out when you Press the Button!

 

And remember, you can always subscribe to ComicMix Radio podcasts via badgeitunes61x15dark-7379053 or RSS!

 

 

Review: “Air” by G. Willow Wilson and M.K. Perker

  • Uncategorized
  • August 21, 2008

air1-1599894There’s something so unabashedly original about writer G. Willow Wilson that it’s nearly impossible to not enjoy her comics projects, like last year’s graphic novel [[[Cairo]]] and this week’s new series [[[Air]]].

Wilson brings an entirely new voice and outlook to comics, keeping relevant to contemporary culture while digging into issues like terrorism, nationalism and identity. In Air, the focus is on Blythe, a stewardess who has the unfortunate disposition of being afraid of heights.

While a lesser writer might use that gimmick as a crutch, Wilson allows it to simply exist as one aspect of a fully realized world. The focus from the first stunning page (M.K. Perker deserves a lot of credit here) is on the shadowy forces hijacking Blythe’s airplane, and a world of intrigue opens up chaotically.

For such a structured writer (Wilson’s end note on writing is worth a read), she lets the reins go slack a little too much in this issue, with its convoluted narrative and repetitive settings.

With nearly every scene being set in an airport or airplane, it’s difficult to follow the issue’s chronology, though that has the likely intended effect of establishing how confused Blythe is.

Vertigo allowed me to read the first arc of the story, and it takes about that long to gain a sturdy footing in this new world Wilson has created. But it’s an endlessly fun and inventive ride, and by the sixth issue Air appears on the verge of becoming the next great Vertigo book.

If nothing else, it’s deeply ambitious and delightfully new. Of course, I might be biased, as Wilson is a fellow journalist turned comics person.

Van Jensen is a former crime reporter turned comic book journalist. Every Wednesday, he braves Atlanta traffic to visit Oxford Comics, where he reads a whole mess of books for his weekly reviews. Van’s blog can be found at graphicfiction.wordpress.com.

Publishers who would like their books to be reviewed at ComicMix should contact ComicMix through the usual channels or email Van Jensen directly at van (dot) jensen (at) comicmix (dot) com.

Watching the Train Wreck of “Final Crisis”

  • News
  • August 21, 2008

9672_400x600-4073908I may as well just get this out of the way up front: in my opinion, Final Crisis #3 is one of the worst comic books I’ve ever read.

Coming into this event season, I had high hopes for DC to regain some of the Infinite Crisis magic, but after three issues (sorry for the delay, but I was away from comic shops and the Internet) the latest and likely not last Crisis has clearly entered the realm of train wreck.

And yet many comics critics posted some largely favorable reviews. "I can’t wait to see what happens next!" said one not atypical reviewer.

Throughout many reviews, the critics looked at writer Grant Morrison’s approach of stringing together flashes of disparate stories into making a larger narrative and praised how new and challenging it is. There didn’t seem to be a single bizarre element he used that couldn’t elicit a glowing remark.

When reading those comments, I immediately recalled this quite-good essay by B.R. Myers on The Atlantic Monthly Web site. Writing about contemporary literary fiction, Myers complains that today’s writers have become obsessed with style at the expense of substance.

We are supposed to have entered a golden age for fiction, he writes, and yet readers don’t pick up literary fiction en masse, or much at all. Myers offers a simple explanation: the books are all self-absorbed fluff, and the nuts and bolts of telling a story have been left by the wayside.

Which brings us back to Final Crisis.

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Interview: “Gears of War” Writer Josh Ortega

  • News
  • August 21, 2008

Gears of War is one of the bona fide hits of this generation of high-end videogames. When you want to show your friends (or justify the cost to your significant other) the difference between your Xbox 360 and your last game system, this is the disc you pop in.

Taking place on the planet Sera, Gears of War tells the story of how the Coalition of Ordered Governments (COGs) had just ended a world war when subterranean monsters emerged from the ground. Called the Locusts, the monsters have guns and weapons that rival the COG’s arsenal. The plot centers on the experiences of Marcus Fenix, a military prisoner released to join a war that is not going well.

Veteran comic writer Josh Ortega (Necromancer, Frequencies) was brought onboard by developer Epic Games to work on the story and deepen the Gears universe. He’s become an integral part of the Gears of War 2 team and DC Comics has announced that he’ll be writing the Gears of War comic for their WildStorm imprint. He took a few moments to let us know how the war effort was going.

COMICMIX: For our readers who are not up on all things COG and Locust, can you tell us in your own words whom you are and your involvement in building up the Gears of War universe?

JOSH ORTEGA: I’m the lead writer for Gears of War 2, I write the comic book for DC/WildStorm, and I also consult on the Gears of War franchise. I work closely with Mike Capps (Epic President), Cliff Bleszinski (Design Director), Rod Fergusson (Senior Producer), and the crew at Epic Games to make sure everything that I write fits in with what’s going on in the rest of the Gears universe, and vice-versa.

CMix: Why is the story set on the planet Sera? Why not Earth? Is this some sort of past, future, or just an unrelated world with humans on it?

JO: Setting it on a different planet allows for a lot of storytelling freedom. If it was set on Earth, many people would draw parallels where there weren’t any, and by the same token, certain parallels that we do want to draw might feel a bit forced or obvious if we set the story on our own planet.

It also allows us to have freaky creatures like the Locust, which, to the best of my knowledge, do not actually exist on Earth.

 

  (more…)

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