Weekend Reading: Frazz, Doc Savage and Spike Milligan

Posted by Tom Mason Categories: Conventions, Editorials, Reviews,

To everyone suffering through the summer heat wave, wind and electrical storms and power outages in the U.S., my heart goes out to you. If you’ve still got the internets, here are some things to help ease the pain.

Daniel Best reports on trouble at Oz Comic-Con in Australia this weekend.

With convention season in full swing, the critic Bill Sherman reviews Rob Salkowitz’ Comic-Con And The Business Of Pop Culture, an account of the 2011 Comic Con International in San Diego. “Salkowitz approaches his topic as both a business analyst and a longtime fanboy -- and he shows a commendable breadth of knowledge about both the medium and the somewhat clannish fan culture.

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Weekend Reading: Avengers, Starlin, Finger and Bagge

Posted by Tom Mason Categories: Editorials, Movies, Reviews, Independent, Marvel Comics,

Next week, we'll all be talking about Men In Black III, but this week was still a lot of chatter about Joss Whedon's The Avengers. Let's hit that:

Avengers creators assemble! Here’s a short but excellent interview with Jim Starlin, courtesy of Hero Complex and Geoff Boucher. It’s super-spoilery so if you haven’t seen the movie yet, don’t click!

And speaking of Avengers, here’s writer Lance Mannion’s review, titled “The Romance Of Tony Stark.”

Tim at Balloon Juice views The Avengers: “It’s a Whedon movie, and quite a good one. Every other line of dialogue could end up on a t-shirt, characters come across as layered and real, conflicts involve profound philosophical differences where it is only sometimes clear who has the ‘right’ side of it, and one or more title character will have a very near-death experience.”

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Weekend Reading: Bob Bolling, Doc Savage and Wonder Woman

Posted by Tom Mason Categories: Editorials, Reviews, Image Comics, Independent,

There’s less than 2 weeks to go before fan-filled flights start landing in San Diego. There may not be enough time to pack, but there’s plenty of time to surf the internet.

Bob Bolling: I love Bolling almost as much as Jaime Weinman at Something Old, Nothing New. Weinman posts a Wanda Wunderbuss tale from a 1984 issue of Pep. Added bonus, a link to Jack Kirby’s Archie work.

Rafael De Soto: You know who drew great manly-man covers for magazines like Male, Action for Men, Sportsmen, True Action, Men’s Life, and For Men Only? This guy, and Magic Monkey Boy has a nice display.

Webcomics: Do you know who has some interesting news about Jhonen Vasquez (Invader Zim)? Fleen, that’s who!

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Weekend Reading: Steve Ditko, Larry Doyle, Wonder Woman and Doc Savage

Posted by Tom Mason Categories: Editorials,

Hey America, happy birthday to you this weekend. If you find yourself too full of Pabst Blue Ribbon, overcooked hamburgers, runny macaroni salad and apple pie with too much HFCS in it, and it’s too early to start shooting off those fireworks you smuggled over from North Carolina, do what I do: surf the internet.

Oh, Brother: Bob Weber, Jr. (creator of Slylock Fox) and Jay Stephens (Tutenstein, Land of Nod), have joined forces and launched a brand new comic strip. Alan Gardner at The Daily Cartoonist has the announcement and some samples, and it all looks really, really good.

Wonder Woman: When Nikki Finke calls recent changes to one of your iconic characters “dumbass stuff,” shouldn’t it be rethought?

Twin Spica: Looking for some good manga to spend your hard-earned money on? Rod Lott at Bookgasm has a recommendation for you, Twin Spica Volume O2 by Kou Yaginuma.

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Weekend Reading: James Bama, Alex De Campi, Kids and Guns!

Posted by Tom Mason Categories: Editorials,

Before going any further, let’s just pause for a minute (which is like a week in internet-time) and send some good thoughts out to Eduardo Barreto, the great comic artist who currently draws the Judge Parker comic strip. He’s ailing with Meningitis and has had to push himself away from the drawing board while he recovers. Aside from being a good guy, he’s a terrific artist and Parker is one of the best-drawn comics currently on the page. We at Comix 411 wish him a speedy recovery. Eduardo’s pal and frequent collaborator, Beau Smith, has an excellent appreciaton as well as an update over at Busted Knuckles.

Kids And Guns: One thing I’ve learned is that kids from the 1950s and 1960s loved their guns, and companies were only too happy to fill their hands with iron, okay, well, plastic and metal parts, but still. Over at Cyclops Central they’ve got an excellent post to prove that point with ads from comics books and television.

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Doc Savage, Lester Dent and Hard Case Crime

Posted by Tom Mason Categories: Editorials, Reviews, Independent,

You might already know Lester Dent. He’s the creator of Doc Savage (which he wrote under the pseudonym of Kenneth Robeson). Doc was a very successful pulp hero (and later star of a line of equally successful paperback reprints of his pulp adventures). Sadly, the magical success of Doc in the pulps has never transitioned well to neither comics nor the movies.

What you may not know is that Dent also wrote a hard-boiled crime novel called Honey In His Mouth. It doesn’t star Doc Savage.

One of my favorite publishers, Hard Case Crime, publishes hard-boiled crime paperbacks. Some of them are new, but some are reissues of old classics that are worth rediscovering again. Their backlist of stuff is incredible and includes works by Lawrence Block, Richard S. Prather, David Drake, Max Allan Collins, Roger Zelazny and Donald E. Westlake. All their books feature great cover paintings that recall the classic hardboiled style of paperbacks from a couple of generations past.

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