Born in Brookline, Massachusetts in 1958, Shawn McManus got his comic book start in the early 1980s, working for Heavy Metal. He illustrated two issues of the Alan Moore run on Swamp Thing, then went on to draw most of the “A Game of You” storyline in Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman. McManus also drew issues…
Born in 1957, Hilary Barta began his comic book career in 1982 when he was hired at Marvel to help ink The Defenders #108. In 1984 he moved to First Comics to ink Warp, and slowly graduated to penciling as well. In 1988, after work for Eclipse, Marvel, and First, Barta launched both Marvel’s What…
Previously on ComicMix, I spoke with Dark Horse Comics’ Editor Scott Allie about a variety of subjects including Buffy: Season Eight, Joss Whedon, the Dark Horse/MySpace Comics project and the rise of digital media. This time around, we revisit a few old topics (because there’s always something new going on with Dark Horse projects in the…
Born in Lynchburg, Virginia in 1951, Charles Dana Vess fell in love with comic books and art while still a child—he drew his first full-length comic when he was ten years old. He attended Virginia Commonwealth University and graduated with a BFA in 1974, then went to work as a commercial animator for Candy Apple…
This summer is a big one for Hellboy fans, and not just because Hellboy II: The Golden Army hits theaters on July 11. Dark Horse is releasing several comics from Mike Mignola’s Hellboy world. The co-author on several Hellboy and B.P.R.D. books, John Arcudi recently chatted with me and gave some sneak peaks at B.P.R.D.:…
Previously on ComicMix, I spoke with Dark Horse Comics’ Editor Scott Allie about a variety of subjects including Buffy: Season Eight, current and future Serenity spin-offs, how he deals with reactions from fans and other tidbits about the Joss Whedon universe. Recently, I got the chance to speak with Allie again. For this interview, we…
In the last few weeks, both of Mike Mignola’s related series for Dark Horse have hit their eighth collected volumes. So, while the second movie – prominently advertised on both covers – is still forthcoming, let’s see what’s going on with the Hellboy of the printed world. Hellboy, Vol. 8: Darkness Calls Written by Mike…
Every now and then, a product announcement comes across the wire that catches my eye. Sometimes the product is connected to a property I’m a big fan of, and other times it piques my interest for no other reason than it seems like a creative, original idea for a tie-in. Not being a big Buffy…
Batman Grendel By Matt Wagner DC Comics/Dark Horse, February 2008, $19.95 [[[Batman Grendel]]] collects two short series – each one was just two 50-page issues long – originally titled [[[Batman/Grendel]]] and [[[Batman/Grendel II]]]. The slash has disappeared for the collected edition – perhaps because now the names of two male characters separated by a slash…
Neil Gaiman has been too busy lately to write much for comics unless it’s an event — like 1602 or his curiously pointless Eternals miniseries — but there’s still an audience for his stories in the direct market. So what’s a poor comics publisher to do? Well, if it’s Dark Horse, what you do is…
With great power comes… bloggers. One of the first lessons I learned writing an Internet column – both here and on my soon-to-be-revived political rant Weird Scenes Inside The Gold Mind – is also the first lesson I learned when I started on radio shortly after Marconi found the electricity outlet: if you say it,…
What is cool? As comic book fans we are pretty much in the forefront of what cool is. The history of comics is an encyclopedia of coolness. If it were not for rock’n’roll, comics would be the absolute standard of coolness. Take a look all the stuff that comics are responsible for in popular…
