Weekend Reading: Star Wars, James Bond, Nick Fury & Walking Dead

Posted by Tom Mason Categories: Editorials, DC Comics, Marvel Comics,

Big weekend: there's a new James Bond out in theaters and no matter if it's good or bad, the arguments over how it stacks up against all the other Bonds has already begun.

So in honor of the new Bond movie, Skyfall, Life shows off pix of the very first Bond girl you don’t remember: Linda Christian, from 1954’s Casino Royale with Barry Nelson.

One of the artists who worked on Wreck-It Ralph, Joe Pitt, has put some of his fantastic conceptual art up on his Tumblr.

Click to continue reading Weekend Reading: Star Wars, James Bond, Nick Fury & Walking Dead

Weekend Reading: Avengers, Alan Moore, Before Watchmen, and Don McGregor

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

I once met Alan Moore, had dinner with him in fact. A dinner that included Stephen Bissette and John Totleben.

I must stress that they did not have dinner with me at my invitation - I was at the table as a guest of Gary Groth and Kim Thompson from Fantagraphics. Also in attendance was Dave Olbrich. The creative trio - currently on DC’s Swamp Thing - was on their way to NY and had stopped in at the Fantagraphics offices to meet with Gary and Kim and head for Chinese food. And I got to tag along.

I spent a couple of hours listening to Moore and his companions regale the group with story after story. At no point did I ever think of Alan Moore as crazy. In fact, I thought he was one of the smartest guys I’d ever met. He was also not like anyone I’d met either before or since. He was different, alright. But crazy? No. Weird? Hardly.

Which brings me to this:

Click to continue reading Weekend Reading: Avengers, Alan Moore, Before Watchmen, and Don McGregor

Helping Japan

Posted by Tom Mason Categories: Editorials,

The images and news reports coming out of Japan are absolutely heartbreaking.

If you’re an artist and would like to do something to help out, Wednesday’s Heroes has a way to contribute.

Craig at the site has started an art auction and he’s looking for donations from folks who want to participate. Details at the link. The Fraim Brothers, Mitch Byrd, Gene Colan, and Robert Pope already have stuff up with more to come.

Tom Spurgeon at The Comics Reporter has a number of related links to other ways you can help, along with announcements related to those affected by the crisis.

Robot 6 also has a nice round-up of helpful links.

Japan was a big help to the US following Hurricane Katrina and the US comics industry is very closely aligned with the Japanese manga industry, so if you can please lend a hand.

[Artwork: News photo of Sendai]

Don McGregor: Locked Up In Paris

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

"They jeered and shook on the bars, and they reached through the bars, trying to grab Marsha, like Zombies in George Romero’s Night Of The Living Dead."

That's Don McGregor, who wrote acclaimed comics for Marvel and spearheaded the creator-owned comics movement, writing about a European trip of his in the late 1970s.

I haven't seen or talked to Don in quite a while, and I doubt he would remember me. He was a friend of several different friends of mine and when I lived on the East Coast, we bumped into each other a lot over a two or three-year period.

He was a ball of energy – and one of the first guys to explain to me how the business of comics actually worked and why owning and controlling the rights to your own creations was essential.

Go ahead and write the Batman fill-in if you want, it is what it is. But if you're going to create Sabre or Detectives, Inc., you're going to want - and deserve - a better deal. I'm paraphrasing, but that's the gist of several conversations.

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Weekend Reading: Joe Sinnott, Sinister House and Jonah Hex

Posted by Tom Mason Categories: Editorials, Reviews,

My favorite Jack Kirby inker was Joltin’ Joe Sinnott. The work they did together is still stunning 40+ years later. Joe’s heading into hip replacement surgery today, and if you’d like to send him a get well note, Mark Evanier has all the details.

Sinister House: Bookgasm‘s Rod Lott sat down with the 500-page Showcase Presents: Secrets of the Sinister House. His verdict: “You’ll be hard-pressed to find a story that isn’t a blast to read.”

Twelve-Way With Cheese: Rod Lott (him again) cracks open a copy of Twelve-Way With Cheese #1, an independent 112-page anthology trade paperback out of Cincinnati. Says Rod, “The end result is something akin to MAD or National Lampoon in their respective heyday.” I would love to see more cartoonists from various regions get-together and self-publish.

Comic Books: John Anderson interviews Top Shelf’s Brett Warnock at John Scalzi’s Whatever.

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Russ Heath and Ralph Reese: Help ‘Em Out

Posted by Tom Mason Categories: DC Comics,

To a generation or so of comic book fans, Russ Heath is a name most-associated with DC Comics’ war titles, specifically Sgt. Rock, but he’s had a long and varied career that didn’t always include drawing tank battles and G.I.‘s blasting Nazis. Ralph Reese started out working with Wally Wood, worked with Neal Adams’ Continuity Associates, and later at Valiant, all in an impressive freelance career. Now they both could use a little help.

Tom Spurgeon has talked about this on more than one occasion (here’s a link to one of the latest) and so has Valerie D’Orazio.

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Weekend Reading: Comic Con International, Gene Colan and The Inferior Five

Posted by Tom Mason Categories: Conventions, Editorials, Movies, Television, DC Comics,

Apparently, there’s some kind of comic book thing going on in San Diego. I hope enough people show up and it catches on. I never get tired of hearing jokes like that!

The talk of the convention – or I should say one of the talks of the convention – is that DC is getting ready to make the move to the West Coast where its big daddy Warner Bros. is located. It makes a lot of sense, from a dollars-and-cents pov. You can get a lot done faster if your comic book resources are right next door to your movie resources and you don’t have to fly everyone out for meetings or Skype 10 times a day. More importantly, if DC’s on the Warner lot or in a building that Warner is already paying for, they could eliminate the overhead on their NY offices (which could be a huge annual chunk of bucks). And since corporations routinely operate this way, it’d be a sneaky way to have mass layoffs of the people who can’t or won’t go and get rid of any entrenched deadwood that’d be too hard to dismiss without cause.

Click to continue reading Weekend Reading: Comic Con International, Gene Colan and The Inferior Five

Weekend Reading: Iron Man, Modesty Blaise and Honey West

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

So did you see Iron Man 2 yet? Did you, huh, did you? Two things amaze me about the Iron Man franchise. One is that Robert Downey, Jr. was born to play Tony Stark. There’s none of the brooding self-importance that comes with other super-hero movies - Iron Man is serious but it’s also fun. The other is that in the right hands - and there are hundreds of right hands on any movie - even a second or third tier super-hero property can be turned into a good movie. If Downey, Jr. was playing Hank Pym in the Ant-Man movie, I’d be there in a minute.

Now while you’re saving your money for the Iron Man 2 DVD, here are a few fun things to occupy your eyes and mouse.

Brian Hibbs: I know why people, myself included, like to talk to artists and writers because it’s all so cool, but I think more interviews could be conducted with retailers since they are the comic book business. Retailer Brian Hibbs is a very smart guy - I may not always agree with him but he carries a good argument with him and he knows his business. Tom Spurgeon at Comics Reporter gets to the heart of the matter with a lengthy but hugely worthwhile interview.

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Marvel Comics Review: Captain America #601

Posted by David Torres Categories: Reviews, Marvel Comics,

Rating: ***

With the release of Captain America: Reborn the main ongoing storyline of the death, and now rebirth of Cap will be told there.  With issue #601 of the regular monthly title we get a stand alone story by Cap writer Ed Brubaker and veteran comic artist Gene Colan.  I’m going to put my neck out and say I didn’t like Mr. Colan’s artwork here.  I did a Google search and was checking out some of his previous work on Daredevil, Howard the Duck and Tomb of Dracula and thought his work then was very good, but I just wasn’t digging his work here.  The cover of this issue is a good example of what I didn’t like.  Cap almost doesn’t seem to have a neck in this illustration and the wings on his mask protrude out too much for my taste. 

As for the story, Brubaker tells a nice little stand alone story about Cap and Bucky fighting vampires during World War II.  The story is presented as a flashback where we see Bucky as the Winter Soldier talking to Nick Fury relating a story about soldiers turning on their own.  The story takes place in Bastogne, Belgium in February of 1945.  Bucky and Cap find an American soldier dying in an old house.  The soldier tells Cap how much he admires him as Cap tries to comfort him as he dies.  But the soldier is not truly dead, he was bitten by a vampire and the “dead” body is resurrected into a vampire.  Cap and Bucky battle the vampire soldier and end up killing him.

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