Robin: Year One – Chuck Dixon and Scott Beatty

 batman, Chuck Dixon, Comics, Graphic Novels, Robin  Comments Off
May 092013
 


Chuck Dixon is one of my favorite comics writers. His run on AIRBOY back in the Nineties was great, and he's done plenty of other things I've enjoyed, including a lot of Batman stories. In this mini-series from about ten years ago, he's collaborated with co-writer Scott Beatty and artists Javier Pulido and Marcos Martin to produce a very entertaining tale about the early days of the Batman and Robin partnership.

As a rule, I'm a little leery of "Year One" stories, because they're often just an excuse for the dreaded retconning. Not so much here. The plot works well and doesn't violate established continuity. (Although, does "established continuity" mean anything in the DCU anymore? I think not, he said snarkily.) Two-Face is the main villain here, although the plot twists enough to include run-ins with the Mad Hatter, Mr. Freeze, and the League of Assassins. The going proves to be unexpectedly rough for Robin, but he winds up being able to hold his own against some major league bad guys.

The script by Dixon and Beatty is excellent, with its hardboiled narration interspersed with journal entries by devoted butler Alfred Pennyworth. I'm less fond of the art by Pulido and Martin, which has that modern look that manages to seem hyper-stylized and unfinished at the same time. Their storytelling is decent most of the time, though, and the art doesn't detract any from the script. (Boy, you can really tell that I'm a word guy instead of an art guy, can't you?)

Overall I enjoyed ROBIN: YEAR ONE quite a bit. It feels like it fits in with the classic era of Batman, and that makes it good stuff as far as I'm concerned.

Coast City Comic Con

 Appearances, Comics, My Projects  Comments Off
May 072013
 
Well, it's a bit over four months into the year and I only have one convention appearance scheduled for 2013. Actually, that's one more than I usually have, so that's not too bad.

I’m currently planning to attend the Coast City Comic Con, in South Portland, Maine, the weekend of November 9th and 10th. I’ll have a table in the artists alley; I don’t know if they’ll be advertising me as a guest or not (I’m guessing not). I’ll have copies of my comics, graphic novels and prose anthologies on hand for purchase. I’ll probably have some Gravedigger and Perils On Planet X stuff there, too.

If there’s a BangPop show in Bangor this year (it’s been cancelled two years in a  row, so I’m not optimistic), I’ll probably be there, too.

Kickstarting the Ineffable Aether

 Comics, Online Comics, Pop Culture News  Comments Off
May 062013
 
As you all probably know, my Gravedigger collaborator/co-creator/artist extraordinaire Rick Burchett is also one of the creative forces behind another prominent webcomic, Lady Sabre And The Pirates Of the Ineffable Aether, which is written by best-selling novelist and famed comic scribe, Greg Rucka.

Well, they’ve been producing their bi-weekly, swashbuckling steampunk aerial adventures for a year and a half or so, and are now planning the first hardcover trade collection. In order to put together the best possible print edition, they’ve just launched a Kickstarter campaign. If you click on that link, you’ll see exactly what they have planned, and what they’re asking, along with the rewards they’re offering to contributors.

If you love action-adventure comics, you owe it to yourself to check out Lady Sabre. You already know what an accomplished artist and storyteller Rick is, and in Lady Sabre he’s really cutting loose with some of the finest work of his career. I’ll be kicking in to the campaign, and suggest you consider doing so, as well.

It’s a great comic… and you can never have too many of those.

Batman: Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader? – Neil Gaiman

 batman, Comics, Neil Gaiman  Comments Off
May 022013
 

As I've mentioned before, I'm a long-time Batman fan. In fact, the first superhero comic I ever read, back in the late Fifties, would have been either a Batman or Superman book, I don't remember which. And the character is still going strong. BATMAN: WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE CAPED CRUSADER? reprints all the Batman stories written by Neil Gaiman. The two-part title story, which appeared in the final issues of BATMAN and DETECTIVE COMICS to carry the original numbering, finds Batman attending his own funeral and listening to a variety of stories about himself told by various family members, friends, and enemies. These are all alternate histories; as Batman notes in the course of the story, "It didn't happen that way." Everything winds up in the sort of ambiguous manner that I'm generally not too fond of, but Gaiman makes it work fairly well. And the art by Andy Kubert is excellent, as you'd expect.

There are also origin stories of a sort for a couple of villains, Poison Ivy and The Riddler, and a bizarre story with great black-and-white artwork by Simon Bisley that finds Batman and The Joker waiting in the green room to go on-stage in a comic book story. It works better than you might think.

While I wasn't overly fond of it, this collection is okay. I loved Gaiman's story for Marvel, 1602, but feel like he sort of missed the mark here. It's still entertaining, especially for long-time Batman fans, a category in which I definitely belong. 

Superman: Secret Origin – Geoff Johns

 Comics, Geoff Johns, Graphic Novels, Superman  Comments Off
Apr 242013
 
Despite the title, there's not really much that's new in SUPERMAN: SECRET ORIGIN, a hardback reprinting of a mini-series from several years ago, before DC's latest reboot. For a curmudgeonly old purist like me, that's not a bad thing. Instead, this story is a retelling/slight expansion of the basic Superman mythos we've all known for many, many years (some of us for longer than we like to think about). Writer Geoff Johns has taken elements from several different incarnations of the Man of Steel, thrown them together with a little influence from the SMALLVILLE TV series, rearranged a few things, most notably the introductions of supervillains The Parasite and Metallo, and produced a comfortably familiar tale that has a lot of nostalgic appeal to it.

The script by Johns strikes the right notes for the most part, capturing the personalities of Clark Kent/Superman and the rest of the supporting cast and moving the action along at a nice pace. The artwork by Gary Frank (pencils) and Jon Sibal (inks) is excellent with its crisp look and old-style storytelling. It really fits this sort of yarn.

While I've been primarily a Marvel fan for the past fifty years, I've read and enjoyed many, many DC comics during that time, too, especially during the Sixties and Seventies. I still enjoy reading reprints of the best work from those eras, and from time to time I try out some of the newer stuff, too, and enjoy a lot of it. SUPERMAN: SECRET ORIGIN definitely falls into that category. I had a fine time reading it, and if you're a comics fan, you should check it out.

Commando: Hero From Hollywood – Eric Hebden

 Calum Laird, Comics, Michael Eriksson  Comments Off
Apr 032013
 


The British digest comic book COMMANDO is probably the longest-running war comic in history. It started in 1963 and is still going strong fifty years later, publishing four issues every two weeks featuring stories of warfare through the ages. Most stories take place during World War II, but certainly not all, and they often feature little-known historical events, as well.

I've read a few issues over the years, including this recent one, #4581, "Hero From Hollywood". It's actually a reprint from the series' first year, 1963, originally appearing in COMMANDO #84. Written by Eric Hebden, it's an excellent yarn about an American movie star of numerous Westerns and swashbucklers, Chet Marvin, who's on a tour entertaining British troops in Belgium in May 1940. Unfortunately that's when the German blitzkrieg starts, and Chet finds himself (and his horse) cut off behind enemy lines.

Fortunately, he pairs up with the story's real protagonist, British army truck driver Joe Brent, who happens to be a big fan of Chet's movies. As they try to avoid being captured by the Germans, however, Joe discovers that movie heroism and real-life heroism are two very different things.

This story covers quite a bit of time as it follows Joe and Chet's odyssey back to safety, and it's packed with action and features several surprising plot twists. I don't know anything about the author, Eric Hebden, but his script is top-notch. The artwork is credited only to "Jones", the cover art to "Alvaro", but I think their work is very effective.

I actually submitted a plot to COMMANDO years ago in another attempt to fulfill my lifelong dream of writing a comic book, but nothing came of it. Maybe I will again, one of these days. In the meantime, I plan to read more of them. I never subscribed because the shipping from England to the U.S. was more than I wanted to pay, but I see that now they have digital subscriptions, which you can check out here if you're interested. Definitely something I might do. (Thanks to Calum Laird and Michael Eriksson.)

Publishers Weekly Talks with Duane Swierczynski

 Charie Hardie, Comics, Duane Swierczynski, Lit, Point & Shoot, Publishers Weekly  Comments Off
Mar 212013
 
PW: Where did the Hardie character come from?
Swierczynski: I'm a huge fan of action movies—specifically, '80s action movies—with lone tough guys facing impossible odds. And if these tough guys have one “super power," it is this: they can't be killed, no matter what you throw at them. So I thought it would be fun to take one of these loners—in the case of Charlie Hardie, an alcoholic house sitter—and throw him into the worst situations possible. He has no specialized training to fall back on; he just has a knack for *not* getting killed.
PW: In what way has your writing of comic books improved your prose fiction?
Swierczynski: Comic scripts are basically letters to your artist, so you have to be able to clearly communicate what's playing on the movie screen inside your head. So I've found myself thinking more visually when writing my novels. Plus, some of my protagonists have started wearing spandex, for some weird reason.
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