"TJ Glenn" sounds like a gay porn alias, doesn’t it?
Comments Off | Posted: October 23rd, 2007 | Filed under: Uncategorized

The Cover Girl trade can be had for 45% off through Discount Comic Book Service. In case you’ve somehow forgotten about this despite my endless prattling on about it, here’s the solicitation:
He’s Alex Martin, the down-on-his-luck actor whose star is rising thanks to a roadside rescue caught on tape. She’s Rachel Dodd, the bodyguard assigned to keep him alive after several mysterious attempts on his life. Will Rachel be able to keep Alex alive long enough to get to the bottom of the attacks on the actor? Will Alex be able to keep his hair perfect the entire time? Andrew Cosby (Sci-Fi’s Eureka) and Kevin Church (Cthulhu Tales) team up with artists Mateus Santolouco, R.M. Yankovicz and others to tell the story of two people that are trying to stay alive now, if only to kill each other later!

If you’re on Facebook, RJ White interviewed me about the piece.


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The Sunday Special is on order for you people to pick up at the counter.


Cast: KEVIN: A regular customer and general hanger-on of the local comic shop.AARON: The soon-to-be-departing full-time employee at the local comic shop.
Setting A small but busy local comics shop on a Sunday afternoon.AARON is behind the counter with a COMPUTER in front of him while KEVIN is standing to the side.
KEVIN: -but what about Night Man?AARON: Aw, what? Goggles that help him see at night? Fuck that.KEVIN: He was also a bitching saxophone player.AARON: No, no, that was Shadowman.KEVIN: I’m very sure that Night Man played the saxophone as well.AARON: No fucking way. No way would there be two saxophone-playing superheroes that operated at night in two separate comics universes. That’s just stupid.KEVIN: It was the 90s.AARON: Point!(BEAT) OK, fine, we’ll look on the Wikipedia.AARON types for a moment. AARON: OK, Shadowman.(BEAT) (READING ALOUD) “Shadowman was created by industry legends Jim Shooter and David Lapham. The Valiant comic book starred Jack Boniface as a jazz-playing voodoo-themed superhero from New Orleans.”(BEAT) Says here the first issue was written by Shooter and Englehart.(BEAT) See, I’m right.KEVIN: I didn’t say you weren’t right. Now look up Night Man.AARON: Fine, fine.AARON types for a moment. AARON: (READING ALOUD) “Johnny Domino is a well-known San Franciscan jazz musician who is accidentally struck by lightning in a freak cable-car accident.”KEVIN leans over and points at the screen. KEVIN: What’s that say there, at the top?AARON: (READING ALOUD) “NightMan is an American television program running from September 1997 to May 1999, loosely based on a comic book published by Malibu Comics and created by…Steve Englehart.”(PAUSE) KEVIN: Holy.AARON: We’re like fuckin’ Woodward and Bernstein over here.KEVIN: We’ve cracked a genuine comics conspiracy.AARON: That conspiracy being that Steve Englehart loves him some jazz musicians with superpowers.KEVIN: Or he was just lazy.AARON: That could also be the case, but I prefer the idea that Steve Englehart is obsessed with jazz-playing superheroes. Like it’s all he can think about – how he can work some jazz into the background of any character he works on. I bet he’d do it to Hank Pym in a heartbeat, given the chance.KEVIN: And I thought Geoff Johns had problems with his love of ultraviolence.AARON: Tip of the comics iceberg, my friend.~~FIN~~


Warning: urine joke inside.
“HD video is beautiful for sports, but it doesn’t help comedy, and it doesn’t help humans. I hate being shot on HD video, because I look like two Frankensteins raped a Dracula.” – Tina Fey in Wired.


Cast: DALE: A new employee in the design department at DC Comics.ANGELA: Director of Trade Paperback design at DC Comics and Dale’s supervisor.
Setting
Angela’s paper-strewn office. Pinups and design ideas line the walls.Scene One
ANGELA, seated at her desk, looks up as an obviously-nervous Dale enters her office.
ANGELA: Well?DALE: Alex Ross wants a fatted calf this time.ANGELA: Instead of the sack of large non-sequential bills or…?DALE: In addition to.ANGELA: Son of a bitch.DALE: He…he also said Joe Quesada bought him a boat. For the Captain America redesign.ANGELA: Wait. A what?DALE: A boat.ANGELA: What kind? Are we talking about a schooner or a paddleboat or…? (TRAILS OFF)DALE: He said he was planning on taking it to the Caribbean this spring and that the helipad would make it easier for him to get the girls in Jana costumes–ANGELA: (INTERRUPTING ANGRILY) Please don’t continue that.(BEAT) Fine, I’ve got an idea. Get the DC Direct guys on the phone. We’re going to need that Bottle City of Kandor prop they made a couple of years ago. We should have a couple hundred in the Jersey warehouse.DALE: Okay. What else?ANGELA: Do you know Photoshop? Lens flares and all that?DALE: That’s one of the reasons you hired me.ANGELA: Right, right, right. Do you see where I’m going here?DALE: I do. I think.ANGELA: Good. Now go get those guys on the–(BEAT) Wait a minute.(BEAT) Oh, Angela, you are a genius.DALE: What is it?ANGELA: How do you feel about wearing a Superman costume?~~FIN~~


Staff picks for this week are up over at The Rack, along with a recommendation from the creators.
OK, one creator.
OK, just me. But it’s a really good comic.
This preview for The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: The Black Dossier is so welcome, I’m actually forgiving the use of Comic Sans on the instructional graphic to the right and the horrible interface.
Very few things put me in as good a mood as a new Alan Moore book.

Of course, with the good, there’s the bad:

So yeah, it’s $20 or less now thanks to the obsolescence of the PS2 console and the rapid reduction in games costs once they’re past the “hot” phase now. Order it and find out what happens when Thor and Fin Fang Foom have a chat at the end of the first mission.
The most disappointing and frustrating thing about Aron Nels Steinke’s minicomic is how little the final product matched up to my expectations. When I came across this mini, I was enthused: the art is instantly likeable and it looked a bit reminiscent of K. Thor Jensen’s lively, self-aware Red Eye, Black Eye. Instead, what I got was one story featuring Steinke hating 90′s comics, going to a bad comic shop, then creating an environmental disaster by burning a stack of the chromium-enhanced books of his youth and another that showed off how scared his girlfriend was of brown people on an airplane. While these would make fodder for interesting, funny comics (especially with Steinke’s graphic sensibility,) the writing simply isn’t up to the task, instead offering a well-illustrated checklist of events. The latter story suffers a bit less from this than the former, but it’s still pretty grating for me.
Big Plans #2 comes out tomorrow, and I’m going to give it a look, at the very least. If Steinke moves more towards memoir and away from simply retelling events he’s experienced, he could easily develop into a talent worth watching. As it stands, I’m cautiously optimistic for his future.
If you’d like to read this comic for free, you can go to Aron Nels Steinke’s website.