Weekend Reading: Jack Kirby, Two-Gun Kid, Jack Davis and Monty Python

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

Here are my picks for Oscar night: Nobody named Oscar will actually win anything.

So let’s see what the internets are yapping about:

You can tell that something’s brewing when creators start to go a bit public with payment problems at publishers. Bleeding Cool reported on two this week.

Cartoonist Lew Stringer finds there’s a lot to like about the new one-shot The Clock Strikes, a noirish adventure set in the 1930s that revives an old comic book character.

Longbox Graveyard tackles the news. Sure, it’s news from blogger Paul O’Connor, but it’s all good news.

Novelist and comic book writer Victor Gischler (The Deputy) hopes you’ll pick up his latest: the X-Men: FF hardcover.

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Weekend Reading: The Damned, Apes, Simpsons and Tex Avery

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

Hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes, floods, power outages. It's been a wild couple of climate change-enhanced weeks. Let's play catch-up across the internets:

Cullen Bunn is having a career year and let’s hope it’s the first of many. The creator of The Sixth Gun got his Oni Press series, The Damned, picked up by Showtime for a series. He’s already gotten The Sixth Gun optioned to SyFy for a series. If they both make it to air, Bunn will have two more shows on the air than DC Comics.

Apes: Rich Handley reviews the fourth issue of Darryl Gregory and Carlos Magno’s Planet Of The Apes, from Boom! “BOOM!’s Apes run stands on a pinnacle, one sure to end badly for humanity.” But all good for readers and fans.

Republicans: My pal Doug Molitor from Funny Or Die looks at 12 Republican super-heroes. My favorite? The Human Torturer!

Jack: Man, that’s a lot of nice Jack Davis work that Michael Sporn posted. I really love those western covers, too.

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Ed Dodd and Mark Trail

Posted by Tom Mason Categories: Editorials,

Mark Trail is probably the longest-surviving strip of its kind, and maybe the only one of its kind. Part adventure strip, part mystery, part Animal Planet and with plots so simple they make the Hardy Boys seem like James Ellroy. Here’s an easy way to solve any current Mark Trail mystery: The guys with the weird facial hair that travel by small plane are guilty, especially if they’re brothers or cousins.

Still, I’m fascinated that it’s survived long enough to be a legacy strip, carried on by another generation of cartoonists, Jack Elrod. One of my favorite websites, the Comics Curmudgeon regularly pokes Mark Trail and snuffs out his campfire of adventure.

Continuing my series on cartooning and cartoonists, Ed Dodd (or someone credited as such) wrote about himself and his work back in 1964. This is pulled from an oversized saddle-stitched magazine from Allied Publications with the creatively-challenged title These Top Cartoonists Tell How They Create America’s Favorite Comics. It featured an introduction by Beetle Bailey’s Mort Walker and was compiled by Allen Willette.

Here’s Dodd on Dodd:

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