Weekend Reading: Kirby, Dick Tracy, Godzilla & Jimmy Olsen

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

Everyone but me is at WonderCon this weekend. And I know this because of all the Facebook updates and Tweets that keep showing up in my inbox.

For those of us not walking the con floor and buying comics and debating the future of comics, let’s see if there’s something we can read:

Superman: Nikki Finke prints the letter that the late Joanne Siegel sent to Warner Bros. regarding the Siegel estate’s ongoing legal battle over Superman.

For those in need of some history about the current incarnation of the Warner empire, it begins with Kinney Parking Company which “was a New Jersey parking lot company owned by Manny Kimmel, Sigmund Dornbusch and mob figure Abner Zwillman. Prior to its public listing in 1960, it merged with a funeral home company, Riverside, and then expanded into car-rentals, office cleaning firms and construction companies."

Kinney National Services, Inc. “which was formed in 1966 when the Kinney Parking Company and the National Cleaning Company merged. The new company was headed by Steve Ross."

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Free Comic Book Day: John Stanley, Jim Shooter And The Last Airbender

Posted by Tom Mason Categories: Editorials,

It’s here! Saturday, May 1 is Free Comic Book Day! My favorite day of the year! Okay, not really my favorite day of the year, but any day you can get some free comics has to feel like an extra birthday, right? A lot of publishers are producing some great stuff to pick up, but here are the six that I’m most looking forward to:

Library of American Comics #0 (IDW)
Eisner Award-winning Editor Dean Mullaney is an old friend who does great archival work over at IDW. If he published Milton Caniff’s old shopping lists I wouldn’t be able to hit Amazon’s “add to shopping cart” button fast enough. This special preview comic has 32 pages of excerpts from upcoming collections of Archie by Bob Montana, Secret Agent Corrigan by Al Williamson, Blondie by Chic Young, The Complete Bloom County Library by Berkeley Breathed, Rip Kirby by Alex Raymond, Polly and Her Pals by Cliff Sterrett, Dick Tracy by Chester Gould, and Little Orphan Annie by Harold Gray. This looks like a great introduction into some good old stuff.

Toy Story (Boom! Kids)
I’m biased here because I have kids and they love Sheriff Woody and Buzz Lightyear. With Toy Story 3 popping up this summer, BOOM Kids! is ready to hand out some all-new adventures by Jesse Blaze Snider and Nathan Watson. I’m in because I already get the regular comics and their other Pixar stuff, so I’m a little OCD about this.

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FREE COMIC BOOK DAY: Disney, Pixar, Atomic Robo and John Stanley

Posted by Tom Mason Categories: Editorials,

Free Comics! Hooray! I know it takes a great deal of time, effort and money to pull this thing off, and I’m grateful to all involved, especially Joe Field (Flying Colors Comics) who first pitched the idea. I have no insight into whether or not it actually grows the industry, brings in new readers or whatever, but it sure is fun and it gets me to my LCS on a not-Wednesday and I usually grab a couple of extra things at cover price.

The 8th Annual Free Comic Book Day event is coming up this Saturday, May 2 and looking over the list of what’s going to be available (remembering that my mileage may vary as much as your own), here are my top 5 wants:

ATOMIC ROBO AND FRIENDS (Red 5 Comics) by Brian Clevinger and Scott Wegener.
I’ll let the boys’ own website explain why Atomic Robo is just a six-pack of awesome. Here they are talking about the first AR collection: Atomic Robo and The Fightin’ Scientists of Tesladyne is “a collection of his exploits from a secret mission for the U.S. Army in 1938 to unearthing a long-forgotten underground complex in modern Italy. In between he battles a 5,000 year old steampowered pyramid, Stephen Hawking, and the rigors of Mars.” And they’re giving away a free sample of the newest series? Include me in. Besides, they’re already Eisner-nominated, the first step towards getting Eisner-nominated again! Plus, the start of a new run, Atomic Robo and the Shadow From Beyond Time #1, hits the stores on Wednesday April 29th, so it’s twice the Robo action this week.

NANCY AND MELVIN THE MONSTER (Drawn & Quarterly) by John Stanley.
John Stanley is a comic book genius and rightly so. His name deserves to be as well-known as Stan, Jack, Steve, and Will. This promises to be a great sample of his work on both Nancy and his own creation, Melvin The Monster (and serves as a sneak preview to D&Q’s forthcoming Melvin collection). The want list was invented just for this book.

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