2007 March archive at Comic Art

Archive for March, 2007

Mar

Alan

By seekerwh 0 Comments

Categories: DC Comics Tags: Alan Moore, DC Comics.

Man, if you don’t know Alan Moore, you’re reading the wrong stuff here. One of the greatest ever in the business Moore created some of the best comics ever published, V for Vendetta, The Watchmen, Batman – The Killing Joke, Swamp Thing, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, From Hell and so, so many more, most of his stories made it to the big screen with usually catastrophic results. This one and the next blog will be dedicated to him and two of his upcoming pieces of work, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: The Black Dossier and Wild Worlds.

The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen was a landmark in the comics community, a story so retro yet so close, borrowing elements from most of our favorite works of literature in a way so complex and elaborating and crafty you needed hours to find every hint and clue in every page. The League is a group of special people (in ways a lot different than the X-Men I assure you) recruited by the British secret service, responsible for the most peculiar matters. It includes Miss Wilhelmina Murray (from Bram Stoker’s Dracula), Captain Nemo (from Jule Verne’s 20.000 Leagues Under the Sea), Allan Quatermain, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, the Invisible Man and many more characters appearing in the story, all of them previously created by other authors in famous books, all settled in a Victorian set (although there are rumors that there will be more Leagues in the future in other time settings).

In this new 208 page hard-cover book the story moves to the 1950’s, Mina Murray and the rejuvenated Allan Quatermain along with the new members of the League search for the , a file containing all the secrets of the League’s history, in an attempt to save it from utter destruction. New era, new characters, some of the old favorite ones, a worthy Alan Moore title, I’m thrilled! Oh yeah, there’s also a bummer in this, it won’t be available till October, patience my friends, patience…

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Mar

The

By seekerwh 0 Comments

Categories: Hard Cover Book Tags: Comic Movie, Hard Cover Book.

Most of you reading this article will have already watched the new film by Darren Aronofsky (Pi, Requiem for a Dream), The Fountain, starring Hugh Jackman (X-Men, The Prestige, Van Helsing) and Rachel Weisz (The Mummy, Enemy at the Gates, Constantine). Aronofsky’s controversial creation is something to love or to hate, and although I belong to the first category I must admit that there are much more in the Fountain than the movie offered, to live the entire experience there’s only one way, reading the graphic novel by Vertigo!

This is not a new idea by Aronofsky, the idea was one of his first but when he presented it to the studios it was cancelled in no time, no studio would make a film so different and uncategorized as this. After the tremendous success of Requiem and Pi though he could use his influence and soon the film came to life, still with many changes, budget cuts and scenario interferences, Darren seems to have said then:

“I knew it was a hard film to make and I said at least if Hollywood f**** me over I’ll make a comic book out of it.” He presented the original story to Vertigo and Kent Williams (Flinch, Havok and Wolverine – Meltdown) undertook the mission to put it on paper, Aronofsky saw the art and loved it and that was it, the Fountain was on its way to our bookshelves!

The scenario is quite complicated, 3 different stories told together I a frenzy montage speaking about love, death and immortality. A Spanish conquistador sent by his queen in 1535 to find the tree of eternal life in the middle of the Mayan civilization, a doctor looking for the cure of cancer to save his wife in 2005, a man and a tree travelling through space in 2645 inside a bubble looking for a dying star, different stories trying to tell the same thing which is different for each viewer, and that’s the beauty of the movie and even more the comic. Watch it, explore it, love it!

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Mar

The

By seekerwh 0 Comments

Categories: The Boys Tags: DC Comics, The Boys.

I am currently subscribed for around 25 ongoing comic series, some of them proved to be good, many disappointing and rarely they come out better than expected, The Boys by Garth Ennis and Richard Robertson (Transmetropolitan, Space Beaver, The Punisher, Spiderman) turned out to be the brightest example of the last category. Sure I knew it was Ennis, the man who wrote some of the best Hellblazer stories, created the Preacher, turned The Authority into a great book, made even the Punisher an almost likeable character and left his personal touch in so many other books (Pride and Joy, Legends of the Dark Knight, 303, Judge Dredd), but there is a skeptic part in me after so many disappointments, mistrustful even to the safest bets. Luckily The Boys were a great creation, cynic, funny, breathtaking, but the disappointment didn’t take long to arrive, after 6 issues Wildstorm seems to have canceled it!

Rumors are that DC was deeply concerned about the extreme content of the book, the violent scenes were too messy and the part with the mouse crawling out of someone’s pants was more than they could endure in a Wildstorm title, so they canceled the whole thing and announced that it will probably continue with Dynamite in June, when there will be also a trade paperback with the first 6 issues originally published by them. If you have pre-ordered #07-#09 (they were available until recently in the official Wildstorm site) you might want to check it, DC announced also that all orders concerning The Boys have been canceled also. On the other side Ennis and Robertson seem quite comfortable with the developments, they thanked their former employers for the easy transaction and now have a working environment where any kind of censorship will be unlike, I suppose Dynamite is thrilled to have a sure winner in their roster.

If this is the first time you meet The Boys, it’s a typical Ennis story, it mind remind you a little the Authority. This is a world where super-powered humans run the show, but if you’re looking for heroes you’ll be frustrated. They’re mean, they’re stupid, they’re ambitious and greedy, most of them are even perverts! A special group of people with even greater powers is assembled to keep them in line but if you expect them to do it in the conventional way, well, that’ll be your second frustration in the series. Hugh, their latest member is a relatively normal guy (who looks suspiciously like the man from Shawn of the Dead) who saw his girlfriend die in a horrific way when a super team happened to pass through, he joins The Boys for revenge, justice, change, a chance to the American dream! I should warn you, if you don’t have a good stomach you should consider leaving this one for the rest of us though…

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Mar

Nightwing

By seekerwh 0 Comments

Categories: DC Comics Tags: Annual Issue, DC Comics.

It is a common policy in the comics industry to treat the best-selling characters in a way, let’s say discriminating. It’s not just that they have series (limited and ongoing) based on them or that they appear in almost all the others through those (usually annoying) crossovers, they also get their own annual issues! There have been comic books in the past with unbelievably good annuals (like Hellblazer, almost every one was a tremendously well written and pretty large issue) and others quite indifferent, in which category you will include the second annual of Batman’s former sidekick, that’s up to you!

When Dick Grayson left Batman and his role as Robin, he did not become a lawyer as he first considered but another masked crime fighting hero, a much darker and more mysterious one, Nightwing. His name has its origin in a story Superman told him to inspire him when he felt lost, an urban legend (or not?) of Krypton about a man who dreamt of a better world and tried to help forging it. Nightwing worked on his own for a period, he was the protector of Blüdhaven (the economically degraded neighbour city of Gotham), then joined the Teen Titans as their leader and even later he led the Outsiders, a group of heroes created both by Teen Titans and Young Justice. Youngest son of an acrobat family, Dick saw his parents getting killed by a mafia boss extorting money from the circus (the incident that was credited to Two-Face in Batman Forever, the movie by Joel Schumacher) and dedicated his life in fighting crime and protecting the innocent.

In this annual issue we follow Nightwing after the incidents of Infinite Crisis that almost got him killed (during the Battle of Metropolis Alexander Luthor almost assassinated him while he was trying to save Batman’s life, DC admitted that their original plan was to kill Dick Grayson and they abandoned it in the last moment) and learn more about his relationship with Oracle (Barbara Gordon), the woman he offered his heart to one year ago. I must confess that the storyline confuses me, especially after Infinite Crisis and One Year Later, and the characters are not my favourite but many people that I know swear it’s really interesting; I might give it a try!

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Mar

30

By seekerwh 0 Comments

Categories: New series Tags: 30 Days of Night, New series.

There are places dark and moist, invisible to the unsuspected eye, places quiet and away from the city lights, in those places terrible things are living. And then there are really dark places, like that village in Alaska where once every year the night lasts for 30 whole days, you know which, the one those vampires invaded for a field trip, Barrow, that’s the one! After the first limited series by Steve Niles (Criminal Macabre, Hellspawn, The Nail, The Creeper) and Ben Templesmith (Singularity 7, Silent Hill, Wormwood, Fell) and its great success there were many more spin offs, even the worst of them at least a decent reading. This is the latest one, coming up on May, 30 Days of Night – Eben and Stella!

In the finale of 30 Days of Night – Dark Days Stella brought her husband back from the dead but not quite as she expected, he returned a little more hungry than she thought he would. This series will fill in the gaps between Dark Days and Return to Barrow, a twisted tale of love, depravity, and hunger (from the official site) by Steve Niles and Kelly Sue DeConnick in the story and Justin Randall in the art.

It might not be the original masterpiece my Templesmith and Niles but personally I find it rather difficult to stay away from such a title, it’s horror comics at their best and you don’t meet that every day. The vampires remind me of the way Brian Lumley described them in his Necroscope, the art follows the general outlines of Templesmith’s work and the story is really carefully written, not only the main scenario but also the secondary tales and characters. So run to your closest comics store, NO NOT YET, IN MAY, damn he’s gone…

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Mar

HACK/Slash

By seekerwh 0 Comments

Categories: HACK/Slash Tags: Comic Movie, HACK/Slash.

I never really figured out how some people like splatter films (and even more splatter comics), I don’t get how a slaughter can be fun or what’s the unpredictable element of a serial killer simply unable to die and killing everything walking on two gorgeous legs. All the answers I needed came to me in the form not of a movie but a comic book (recently inspiring a theater play and an upcoming film), HACK/Slash, the absolute massacre!

In every slasher movie, there’s one girl who makes it all the way to the end.

This time it’s Cassie Hack, former high school outcast and daughter of the infamous slasher called The Lunch Lady, the one she had to kill with her own hands after several murders in her school. The slashers are persons who died under violent circumstances, full of hate and anger, and came back to life for their revenge. They despise love, sex, anything that reminds them what they miss and kill innocent (or not) people in, if nothing else, innovative ways! Cassie is their nemesis, a slasher hunter who killed her own mother in her fight against evil, she scouts America with her best friend Vlad (a deformed man she mistakenly thought was a slasher) and kills those zombie-like enemies wherever she finds them!

HACK/Slash is not a horror comic book; if I had to place it somewhere I’d call it gore humour. Writer and various artists have created this parody of every American cliché known, cheerleaders are cut in pieces, massive murderers roam in the spring break, a pet cemetery comes to life and even Chucky meets Cassie and her ugly friend in a crossover issue. It’s funny, it’s disgusting, it’s ironic and sarcastic in a light way, what the heck, it’s much better than those Jason movies I never got to like! The HACK/Slash series includes the following issues:

HACK/Slash – vol.1 The First Cut
HACK/Slash – Euthanized
HACK/Slash – Girls Gone Dead
HACK/Slash – Comic Book Carnage
HACK/Slash – The Land of Lost Toys
HACK/Slash – Trailers
HACK/Slash – Slice Hard
HACK/Slash - HACK/Slash vs. Chucky
HACK/Slash – The Series #01
HACK/Slash – Final Revenge of Evil Ernie

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Mar

Fables

By seekerwh 0 Comments

Categories: New Story Arc Tags: Fables, New Story Arc.

New issue, new story arc for Fables, Bill Willingham’s most famous creation. I feel the urge to apologize from the beginning, I can’t be subjective with Fables as it is one of my favorite ongoing series still publishing but if you make the effort to read some issues you might share my enthusiasm.

The story is about all the heroes of fables, fairy tales, stories, myths and legends, all those characters created by folk or writers and established in the collective unconscious, and thus existing in a world called the Homelands, all that until a mysterious Adversary gathers a huge army and takes over their entire world. The Fables (those that survived the war) leave their lands and arrive to our world somewhere after the Middle Ages, refugees trying to hide their nature in their closed communities. The story catches up with their community in the present; those of them able to look like humans living in New York (and various other cities) while the rest are kept contained in the Farm, a safe establishment away from curious eyes. Their personal stories and the war that finally comes to their new homes offer the story a huge potential of narrating, and the creators take full advantage of it. That, combined with a distinctive, sarcastic sense of humor (quite adult usually), an extensive reconstruction of traditional fables like Bigby the Wolf, Snow White, Frau Totenkinder, the Beauty and the Beast and so many other and of course magic art by various artists, creates a comic book like no other.

In this new 3-issue story Flycatcher makes his way to the farm for an important conversation with his pal Boy Blue, after the revelations of the Christmas issue and the return of his memory Fly seems to earn his rightful position as a primary character in the series. Also Prince Charming finally encounters the notorious Hansel, Frau Totenkinder meets Kay and the flying monkey sees the Forsworn Knight (that one I have no idea about). One of the few comics that deserve the money spent for each issue!

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Mar

300

By seekerwh 1 Comment

Categories: Historical Issue Tags: 300, Historical Issue.

Frank Miller is one of the most influential comic creators ever, but who could expect that he would also change the way we conceive film making! After Robocop 2, 3 and 4, Elektra and the magnificent Sin City the latest adaptation of his work for the big screen is 300, a story based on the real facts of the battle of Thermopylae (Hot Gates) in the unique way only comics and cinema could present it. The book was published in 1998 as a limited 5-issue series (the issues were titled Honor, Duty, Glory, Combat and Victory) and later as a hardcover book and received many awards, including three Eisner. This may not be an exact replica of the original story like Sin City (there is a secondary story in Sparta that did not exist in the book) but if you are a fan of 300 as Frank Miller visualized it you won’t be disappointed.

This is the story of King Leonidas of Sparta and his 300 best soldiers, in 480 BC they stood between the Persian king Xerxes and the rest of Greece in a narrow passage and made their last stand for more than 3 days against an army so vast the world had never before witnessed. It is the story of the Spartans, a civilization specialized in every aspect of the art of war, their harsh ways and difficult lives, their ethics and code of honor, and ultimately it is a story of love and duty and how every man decides to express those.

The film was made entirely in blue and green screen sets for the settings to appear as comic-like as possible, the actors (in most cases) were tremendous in their roles and although there were parts were the Spartans were not laconic at all and the features of an action film threat to spoil the atmosphere, the overall outcome was an epic movie capable of offering 2 hours of fun and even more of pure awe. If Sin City 2 is that good, heck maybe they should make an academy award for comic creators!

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Mar

Spiderman

By seekerwh 0 Comments

Categories: Spiderman Tags: Comic Movie, Spiderman.

Films inspired by comics, most of us, in our minds, connect this phrase with traumatic experiences including the shameless massacre of characters that evolved for many years through the pages of our favorite books. There are of course rare cases where this rule does not apply, remarkable creations which stayed in the spirit of the original or not, but anyway offered us the pleasure of a great movie (Sin City, 300, V for Vendetta and others). Spiderman may not be the best one among them but it could easily be selected between those with which you’ll have the most fun, and with the third part being released in May 4^th the expectations are huge.

Marvel treats every Spiderman movie with the seriousness befitting their most popular character, the first two parts though not masterpieces of the 7^th art were terrific action movies with the proper respect for the story as it was presented in comics so many times. This time nothing seems to have changed, the production indicates it’ll be one of the blockbusters of spring; the promotion has started months ago and the information about the story released are more than interesting. This time Peter finds himself enjoying the benefits of his increasing popularity while preparing to propose to Mary Jane when the police informs him that a new suspect for his Uncle Ben’s murder has been found, Flint Marko a.k.a. the Sandman! Spidey gets in the middle of the biggest fight of his life, he’s hunting Sandman at the same moment fighting Harry Osborn (who has become the New Goblin) and that’s nothing in front of the threat coming from outer space, the alien symbiote that will become his suite and try to corrupt him and later give birth to his nemesis, Venom!

The story is really exciting, combining some of the greatest adversaries of Spiderman in his entire history. I trust that the creators will choose to use some of the good Sandman stories, most of his old ones where lame with Spiderman imprisoning him in a vacuum cleaner and other similar cases, my only concern is the fact that the New Goblin story will be a mixture of the traditional Marvel Universe and the Ultimate Universe with Harry Osborn emerging as a different character, made especially for this movie. Anyway, the risk is not really that grave, best case we get a great movie about one of our favorite characters, worst we watch 90 minutes of something told before, don’t worry though mate, it won’t be as bad as Hulk!

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Mar

Johnen

By seekerwh 0 Comments

Categories: Great Creators Tags: Great Creators.

If one of your primary criteria when judging an artist is originality, you gotta love Johnen Vasquez. He began with cult comics for Slave Labor Graphics but his work is now extremely popular and well known, his unique style of black humor and macabre irony has established him as one of the most important young creators in the field.

Johny the Homicidal Maniac, his first and maybe most famous comic, started as a series of short strips for a Goth magazine, Carpe Noctem, until it was collected in seven issues and published by SLG, followed by the Director’s Cut trade paperback. The story was mostly about Nny, a serial killer with unusual thinking processes killing anyone he believes unworthy of living and hating the rest, haunted by Nailbunny (his consciousness, sort of) and two Styrofoam Pillsbury doughboys representing his mania and depression. The book also contained other short stories and characters like Anne Gwish (a parody for the Goth culture), Happy Noodle Boy and of course Squee, the kid living next door to Nny frightened of virtually anything (and with good reasons that is) who got his own spin off series after JTHM. His bibliography also includes The Bad Art Collection, Filer Bunny, Everything Can Be Beaten, I Feel Sick and others.

His début in television after Squee’s success was instant, Nickelodeon offered him the opportunity to create an animated series, and Invader Zim was born. Invader Zim was a short, cute looking alien fighting to prove to his race that he can be a fearsome invader. Totally evil, extremely stupid and with no self-knowledge at all Zim and his retarded robot consistently tried to take over, or at least destroy, Earth. The series was canceled after a year but it was released again in several DVD volumes and still has a pretty big fan group.

So at this point, waiting for Johnen Vasquez’s next creation there’s not much to be done other than reading again and again the rest of his work, enjoying his sick humor and agreeing with most of his thoughts. Enjoy!

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Comic Art

Archive for March, 2007

Alan

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Nightwing

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Fables

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Spiderman

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