A "Policy" Update, The City Desk, Random-ish Comics Thoughts.
I've done it as a general policy for the last couple of weeks, but I figured I'd tell you all: I'm just plain killing anonymous comments. They tend to be between 18% to 22% ruder than the norm and generally add nothing to the discussion. I like you guys and wanna keep things civil around here, you know?
I've offered up my first Friday Fact for The City Desk, a project I've been really enjoying for the last three or four months. The editor for The City Desk, RJ White, is a fantastic writer who's managing to cover that zone between Ben Katchor and Dan Clowes, but in prose.
The "You're A Good Man, John Stuart Mill" segment in the latest Action Philosophers left this fan of Charles Schulz in stitches. Both Van Lente and Dunlavey step up to the task admirably, using some of the original strip's tropes (and its melancholy-on-occasion tone) very well while educating the reader about Mill's movement into compassionate humanism. The rest of the comic is, as always, entertaining and full of the standard edification they manage to slide gently into the reader's brain, but Schulz was the first cartoonist I recognized and seeing him paid tribute in such a fashion was a treat.
Shame we've only got one more issue of this series, but I bet I'll enjoy the forthcoming Comic Book Comics just as much.
I'm thinking that Johns was behind the Sobek scene in 52. I can't imagine Morrison or Waid typing "violent and graphical disemboweling and dismemberment of a teenage boy" into the script for a mainline DCU title, and Rucka usually keeps that sort of thing to his late-night sojourns in the greater Portland area.
No, Greg Rucka is not a murderer. He's a perfectly nice guy.
OK, he did stab that hobo once, but we don't talk about that.
That Ashley Wood comic with the snazzy cover I posted yesterday? The interiors were just as sharp. With help from scripters Chris Ryall and T.P. Louise, Wood uses this first issue of his IDW anthology to launch three ongoing stories featuring his art: Les Mort, Black Magick, and Zombies Versus Robots. The first is about a death-defying magician seeking revenge, Black Magick seems to involve suburban supernatural horror, and Zombies Versus Robots has not had either titular subject appear yet outside of an splash hinting towards the promised clash, but I found myself immedately intrigued anyway.
The storytelling in D'Airain is really clear and I'm very impressed. I've read criticisms of Wood's work on Hellspawn and Automatic Kafka that I very much sympathize with. The latter, in particular, struck me as being experimental for the sake of experimentalism instead of being casually incomprehensible like the Bendis-written Spawn spin-off. While Wood's still using a lot of the same angles and "camera work" that makes his work pop nicely at a casual glance, his art is very focused here. Les Mort reminded me of Paul Pope in a hard-to-define way, and the black humor in Zombies Versus Robots came across nicely in the storytelling as well as the captions.
Finally, here's why I'm glad I bought Seven Brothers, explained in a single page:
No I did not tamper with this. I promise.
I've offered up my first Friday Fact for The City Desk, a project I've been really enjoying for the last three or four months. The editor for The City Desk, RJ White, is a fantastic writer who's managing to cover that zone between Ben Katchor and Dan Clowes, but in prose.
The "You're A Good Man, John Stuart Mill" segment in the latest Action Philosophers left this fan of Charles Schulz in stitches. Both Van Lente and Dunlavey step up to the task admirably, using some of the original strip's tropes (and its melancholy-on-occasion tone) very well while educating the reader about Mill's movement into compassionate humanism. The rest of the comic is, as always, entertaining and full of the standard edification they manage to slide gently into the reader's brain, but Schulz was the first cartoonist I recognized and seeing him paid tribute in such a fashion was a treat.
Shame we've only got one more issue of this series, but I bet I'll enjoy the forthcoming Comic Book Comics just as much.
I'm thinking that Johns was behind the Sobek scene in 52. I can't imagine Morrison or Waid typing "violent and graphical disemboweling and dismemberment of a teenage boy" into the script for a mainline DCU title, and Rucka usually keeps that sort of thing to his late-night sojourns in the greater Portland area.
No, Greg Rucka is not a murderer. He's a perfectly nice guy.
OK, he did stab that hobo once, but we don't talk about that.
That Ashley Wood comic with the snazzy cover I posted yesterday? The interiors were just as sharp. With help from scripters Chris Ryall and T.P. Louise, Wood uses this first issue of his IDW anthology to launch three ongoing stories featuring his art: Les Mort, Black Magick, and Zombies Versus Robots. The first is about a death-defying magician seeking revenge, Black Magick seems to involve suburban supernatural horror, and Zombies Versus Robots has not had either titular subject appear yet outside of an splash hinting towards the promised clash, but I found myself immedately intrigued anyway.
The storytelling in D'Airain is really clear and I'm very impressed. I've read criticisms of Wood's work on Hellspawn and Automatic Kafka that I very much sympathize with. The latter, in particular, struck me as being experimental for the sake of experimentalism instead of being casually incomprehensible like the Bendis-written Spawn spin-off. While Wood's still using a lot of the same angles and "camera work" that makes his work pop nicely at a casual glance, his art is very focused here. Les Mort reminded me of Paul Pope in a hard-to-define way, and the black humor in Zombies Versus Robots came across nicely in the storytelling as well as the captions.
Finally, here's why I'm glad I bought Seven Brothers, explained in a single page:
No I did not tamper with this. I promise.
