Review: ‘The Country Nurse’ by Jeff Lemire

Uncategorized
July 29, 2008

countrynursecover500_lg-6666279 Essex County Vol. 3: The Country Nurse
By Jeff Lemire
Top Shelf, October 2008, $9.95

The finale of the “[[[Essex County]]]” trilogy – which will be available in October, so start saving your pennies now – draws together the first two graphic novels in the series, but at the expense of not being as coherent as a story itself. It has two main plot threads – one set in the modern day, following the nurse of the title, and one in 1917.

The modern plot is similar to the frame story of the second volume, Ghost Stories – Anne Quenneville travels around this fictionalized corner of Ontario, Canada on her rounds one day, looking in on her usual patients and giving us some callbacks to those first two stories. (The kid Lester has given up his cape and mask; ex-hockey player Lou is toast.) It does pull together all of the strands of “Essex County” neatly and well, but that’s pretty much all it’s doing; there isn’t much in the way of events, just Anne meeting people we already know or will soon come to recognize.

The other plot starts off about young Lawrence Lebeuf, a twelve-year-old orphan at an isolated orphanage deep in the woods. (Was it really common to have orphanages out in the middle of nowhere, staffed only by a nun and a caretaker? I guess it exemplifies “out of sight, out of mind.”) The orphanage is run by Sister Margaret, and the caretaker is a scruffy man named Charles Gerrard. Lawrence is something of a protégé of Charles’s; he’s the oldest of the orphans and Charles talks to him quite a bit about what he should do when he soon leaves the orphanage.

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SDCC Interview: Robert Englund on Horror Films and ‘V’

News
July 29, 2008

Unless you’ve lived a very sheltered life for the last twenty years or so, you know all about Robert Englund and his most famous character: the knife-fingered Freddy Krueger of Nightmare on Elm Street fame. The films featuring the iconic villan were some of the most successful of all time and spawned several sequels including a cross-over film featuring not only Freddy Krueger, but another well-known and popular character and star of a hugely successful franchise: Jason Voorhees of Friday the 13th fame.

More recently, Englund has taken turns both in front of and behind the camera with roles and directing gigs on films such as 2001 Maniacs, Jack Brooks: Monster Slayer and Zombie Strippers, which also features the acting talents of former adult film actress Jenna Jameson. ComicMix‘s Matt Raub and I caught up with Englund during San Diego Comic-Con and talked with him about, among other things, how hard it was to get to the convention, his latest projects, his involvement in the new V television series. and what he thinks about the future of horror films.

COMICMIX: So have you had a chance to check out the Con?

ROBERT ENGLUND: Not yet. We got messed up with the traffic. So many accidents, closures, people throwing themselves in front of trains, it took us forever to get here.

I think Comic-Con is jinxed. [Laughs]

CMix: So what brings you to the Con this year?

RE: I’m here with the company Anchor Bay which really responds to the kind of horror-comedy kind of stuff that people like Sam Raimi with the Evil Dead films used to do. I don’t know if it’s a response to the number of big-budget horror failures of late or that there’s so much homemade stuff on YouTube now, but fans really seem able to watch something like a Hellboy 2 or a Dark Knight, which I love, but they also have room for movies like the ones I’ve been involved with lately such as Zombie Strippers, Jack Brooks: Monster Slayer or Hatchet.

It seems they can tune into a big $200 million blockbuster film one day and then also enjoy a little $2 million film we made mostly for fun. They’re what I like to call "cheap thrills." I think there always has to be room for cheap thrills. I don’t know if its political or if there’s too much CGI or something but maybe that’s what movies like Saw or Hostel are tapping into — people’s need for something more simple and fun. (more…)

Hammer of the Gods: Dad’s Back

News
July 29, 2008

In today’s brand-new episode of Hammer of the Gods: Back from the Dead by Michael Oeming and Mark Wheatley, the mission becomes clear. Modi’s dad comes back from death to tell Modi what his mission should be, and Modi asks the Valkyrie, Skogul, to join the crew. With a cast like this, the crew joins, too.

Credits: Mike Oeming (Artist), Mike Oeming (Writer), Mark Wheatley (Colorist), Mark Wheatley (Letterer), Mark Wheatley (Writer), John Staton (Colorist)

SDCC: Mortal Kombat Versus DC Universe Explained

News
July 29, 2008

The biggest North American comic convention wraps up another show. The hall is closed and the lights are off. But the videos from the show floor live on.

Way back when Mortal Kombat Versus DC Universe was first announced fans worried that Superman would be a horribly unbalanced character. A veteran reader of many Silver Banshee attacks Superman storylines, I speculated that since the Mortal Kombat universe was steeped in magic, this would explain how Sub-Zero could freeze Superman or Scorpion could set him on fire. Turns out I was right.

Midway has released the video shown (seen below) at San Diego Comic-Con where creator Ed Boon explained to fans how his guys can beat up their guys. And it looks amazing! The video also explains new in-fight mechanics: close combat and free fall combat. Also in the video were fights featuring Batman, Flash, and Catwoman.

No word yet if the villain from the Superman Returns movie shows up: A rock. A really big rock.

‘Mortal Kombat vs. DCU’ Trailer

Podcasts
July 29, 2008

The flood of video game/comic book crossover news continues as the trailer to Mortal Kombat vs. DCU debuts. Check it out below:

Speaking Up, by Dennis O’Neil

News
July 29, 2008

The comic book veteran was smiling as he leaned forward to read the lettering on the button fastened to my lapel: Let’s Legalize Pot. His mood changed instantly, to one of anger. He snatched the pin off my jacket, flung it into a wastebasket, and stalked from the room.

That was in 1965 and before I relate another incident from the same era, let me offer a quick clarification. I don’t like marijuana. Never have. The circumstances of my rather bumpy life have, at times, put me close to it and of course, like William Jefferson Clinton and maybe just one or two other pols, I sampled it and found it usually did little for me. Which is not to say I didn’t have addiction problems. No siree. My love of alcohol cost me a marriage and a job and a lot of dignity and some trips to the hospital. But pot? Usually just made me cough. That button? Well, although the evil reefer was not my drug of choice, I thought that if booze and nicotine were legal, evil reefer should be, too.

This was not conventional wisdom in 1965 (and still isn’t) and, although, as we discussed last week, comics guys like the man I outraged were outsiders, they were not rebels. No, they were outsiders by birth and circumstance, not choice, and their values were pretty much those of mainstream America. They wore suits and ties to work, they paid taxes and owned homes, went to church or temple, voted, behaved themselves. Many had served honorably in the war. They were patriots, they were good citizens. They knew, because they had not learned otherwise, that our nation was menaced by godless Communism, that elected officials were as honorable as they themselves were, that what was good for General Motors was, in fact, good for America, that the atomic bomb was an invaluable part of Liberty’s Arsenal and, oh yeah, that the Devil’s Weed would likely corrupt any youth who got a whiff of it. They were my parents, my relatives, and the folks in my old neighborhood.

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SDCC: ‘Scott Pilgrim’ Fights the Universe

Uncategorized
July 29, 2008

scottpilgrim-1-1329150 The big news out of the Oni Press panel at San Diego all revolved around Bryan Lee O’Malley’s Scott Pilgrim, with an announced title and release date for the fifth book.

It’ll be Scott Pilgrim vs. the Universe and it’ll come out at next year’s New York Comic Con. Other than that, all the news was of other books from the publisher.

Newsarama has some coverage.

James Lucas Jones moderated Oni’s panel, which featured a packed room of fans and at least a dozen Oni creators who Jones invited to the podium to talk about their titles as he announced them.

The panel kicked off with artwork for Billy Smoke by B. Clay Moore and Eric Kim. The book is about an elite hit man who’s nearly killed during a botched assignment. He decides his only path to redemption is to kill his former hit man associates.

Jones called it an “adrenaline-fueled thrill ride about an assassin on the path to redemption.” It debuts in early 2009. Matthew Fox has signed on to star in the film adaptation and was at the Oni booth some of the weekend signing autographs.

SDCC: All the Manga News

News
July 29, 2008

comic_con_logo-5784788 We at ComicMix didn’t get to too much manga news coming out of San Diego, if only because of the explosion of happenings and announcements coming out of the convention center.

The folks at ComiPress come through in spades, compiling a thorough listing of manga news.

Read up to your heart’s content right here.

SDCC: ‘Spider-Man: Web of Shadows’ Trailer

News
July 28, 2008

The rush of Comic-Con slows to a trickle, with some of the late news including a trailer for the upcoming video game Spider-Man: Web of Shadows, which features an invasion of symbiotes and the apparent Venom-ification of Wolverine.

Watch below.

Comics at Harry N. Abrams

News
July 28, 2008

whatever-5070572 It went a bit overshadowed amid the madness of Comic-Con, but there was some big news out of New York last week as publisher Harry N. Abrams announced the creation of a new comics imprint, headed by Charles Kochman.

Kochman was recently promoted to be executive editor of the publishing company, and he told Publishers Weekly it was a natural fit to take on more comics.

Kochman will direct the new imprint, which will launch with four new titles: The Art of Harvey Kurtzman: The Mad Genius of Comics by Denis Kitchen and Paul Buhle; The Art of Jaime Hernandez: The Secrets of Life and Death by Todd Hignite, designed by Jordan Crane with an introduction by acclaimed cartoonist Alison Bechdel; Secret Identity: The Fetish Art of Superman’s Co-creator Joe Shuster by Craig Yoe; and Whatever Happened to the World of Tomorrow? by Brian Fies, the creator of the award-winning Web comic/book Mom’s Cancer.

Abrams publisher Steve Tager said launching a new imprint “made sense. We’ve published comics and pop culture titles in the past—we’ve sold half a million copies of the Art of Walt Disney—so Charles is building on a history that Abrams already has. But he brings a passion and experience in the category. He’s brought in more graphic novels and launching an imprint just makes sense in this marketplace.” Tager said the imprint will be able to cross-promote with Abrams’s children’s book line, special markets department and internationally—he noted that Kirby: King of Comics, Mark Evanier’s biography of comics artist Jack Kirby, is a bestseller for Abrams U.K. “We’ve been coming to Comic-con for several years now and our education in the category continues,” said Tager. “And our designers and sales reps all love Charlie’s books; he focuses on the little things and that’s what makes his books special.”

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