Go, Look, Read, Be Amazed: Michael Cho’s Darkseid

Michael Cho discusses the process behind creating this pretty amazing portrait of Jack Kirby’s Darkseid.

THE RACK: Staff Picks for the Week of January 13, 2010

Here’s the usual thing where a bunch of fake comic shop people tell you what they think you should buy.

LYDIA: Shores of Tripoli

She has a plan. Of course she does

THE RACK: Year One (Mostly)

No strip, but there is a special announcement.

DESIGN FETISH: “The Gaming Revolution”

The Rack: Staff Picks for the Week of April 8, 2009

Oh hey, if you wanted to know what to buy, here’s some people that will help you out with that very thing when you go visit the weekly picks at TheRackComic.com.

J Jonah Jameson, by Dan Cleri.

Dan Cleri’s Website • My JJJ collection.

“Show Me Your Genitals 2: E=MC Vagina” by Jon LaJoie

The Rack | Staff Picks For The Week Of September 10, 2008

Oh hey, there’s only a few so far but…

…there’s photos from San Diego Comic-Con here; it will grow quite a bit,
possibly upon my return instead of while I’m here.

The Rack | Staff Picks For The Week Of July 22, 2008

Besides the American Flagg hardcover, there’s a plethora of comics to look at this week.

Monday, Monday (Da, Da, Da Da Daaaa)

1.
No, there is no Rack today. It’s another week of Tuesday-Friday goodness and we’ve freed up fifteen to forty seconds of your day for better tasks. We’ll be back on schedule next week, I’d like to think. Historically, Mondays are our best days because most of the readers are looking for a way to escape the ennui of work as early as possible, and we value that relationship.

2.
On Sunday, I read the copy of Jason Shiga’s Bookhunter I’d picked up at MoCCA and Dirk Deppey and Pal Renee were correct in their assessments. It’s a deadly earnest (and thus hilarious) Michael Bay-meets-Serpico tale of stolen books, deadly enemies, and one library special agent who’s willing to go the distance, projected through a Megaman-style lens. Order it from Sparkplug; you won’t regret it.

3.
The Bug’s new album London Zoo has a preview mixed by Kode 9 that makes it sound like it may be my album of the year.

4.
Yes, I am at San Diego this year and will generally be around the BOOM! Studios booth. No, I will not be announcing anything. Yes, I will be at Thursday Night’s Drink-Up. No, I will not being giving Ian Brill much crap, because he’s a very nice young man.

Gillen talks to other Marvel Writers about X-Box Live

It’s over at Escapist Magazine.

Pondering the idea of a group of Marvel creators facing off, a gamer and comic fan has to wonder: How best to deal with them? How do you take down Ed Brubaker if you found yourself in a horrific online conflict? “Ed is really disorientated spatially,” says Fraction. “He has a degree of motion sensitivity. Before my time, he was driven to vomit by a particularly brutal game of Call of Duty 2. If you’re looking for an advantage on Ed, turn around a lot, make him constantly re-orientate to find you. That’s the way to do it.”

"Show Me Your Genitals" by Jon Lajoie is my new summer jam.

The Rack | We Are The Night

ATTENTION JAPAN: You Win.

Kevin Reviews His Weekly Singles #12

100 Bullets #92
At this point, I should be well and truly immune to Brian Azzarello’s dialogue-from-one-scene-paralleling-another trick, but this issue has him making a virtuoso performance of that very thing. At this point, I’m enjoying this more for the on-page techniques being employed than any of the story elements. It’s almost like pulling out a four-or-five minute section of a really good jazz improv and going “Yeah, that’s the stuff.”

Doktor Sleepless #7
There’s a fairly clever riff on the film adaptation of V For Vendetta that serves as a metaphor for the series as a whole very nicely: yes, we’ve done this all before, but sometimes things are worth doing again, differently. The old ways don’t work like they should; the new ways may not work, but we’re trying. Sleepless may owe a lot to its predecessor Transmetropolitan, but it’s poking at different concerns that are more relevant to the moment. I don’t know if it’s just because I’m getting used to it or Ivan Rodriguez’s art is improving, but I’m starting to enjoy his slightly-stiff, documentarian way to laying out and telling Ellis’s script.

Jack Staff #17
With The Butler, Paul Grist may have finally gotten his stab at the Eisner award for Most British Character Ever. I love how deceptively slight single issues of Jack Staff can be with; little perfectly-formed slices of pop entertainment that are at first glance a bit of candyfloss until you get a look at the larger picture being formed. Grist is creating a complete British comics universe from whole cloth and while he certainly owes a bit to Jack Kirby and Frank Hampson, there’s a lot to be said for the man’s ability to synthesize and recombine the past into something that’s very individual.

Local #12
Brian Wood and Ryan Kelly’s series about one woman’s self-discovery shouldn’t be the sort of comic I like. It’s frequently self-indulgent and a bit too self-aware for my tastes; very little is resolved within an individual installment; and, let’s face it, off-schedule comics piss me off an awful lot, particularly when it’s a limited series. That said, Wood and Kelly manage to zero in with the final issue, creating a thematic and narrative finale that hits every point it needs to while giving things just enough room to breathe. This is going to be a satisfying read when it’s all collected and another example in my ever-expanding “Let’s just get rid of the Graphic Novel section and shelve these books in the appropriate prose section” argument.

Madman Atomic Comics #9
Hey, kids! Beautiful visuals marred by sophomoric psychobabble! Check it out! (Do not check it out. This was my last issue for a reason.)

Young Liars #4
Where 100 Bullets takes the dark, studious approach to telling a crime story, Lapham’s story is so over the top, so cartoonish, that it’s occasionally hard to believe he’s getting by with it, especially at Vertigo, home of DMZ and Very Serious Sandman-Related Crossovers. Then one remembers that Army of Love is out there, doing to the war what this title does to Tarantino and his ilk, and it all makes a bit more sense. Lapham’s dense, funny scripting and ability to cram eight panels onto a page effortlessly makes this one of the more rewarding monthly reads out there and serves as an example of serial comics storytelling that rewards on both an individual and collective basis.

My friends are geniuses.

Just three links, but they’re all amazing:

• Laura Hudson’s first comic reads better than Chuck Dixon’s five-hundredth, which, if he’s not reached it yet, certainly won’t be for DC.
• Birdie loves Top Chef as much as I do, but can draw a lot, lot, lot better. (You may need to refresh. His webhost is based on Hoth and they hired a Wampa as the sysadmin.)
• Mike Rosenszweig knows how horrible it can be to hang out with me and my camera. He also is a little mean to Birdie, but in a good way.

Kevin’s June 2008 Previews Readalong: Part 01

Grab your copy of the big book and follow along! Again, I’m skipping Marvel and DC as you all have seen, analyzed, and dismissed those quite thoroughly already, I’m sure. Sims hit on most of the highlights, anyway, especially that Morrison Final Crisis: Superman thing.

Dark Horse
The Art Of Tony Millionaire (Page 26)
This is a large-trim, 200 page look at one of those artists that I just can’t get over. John Hodgman compares Millionaire to Herriman in a pull-quote featured in the solicitation, but I honestly think I like Millionaire’s work more, as his art surprises me almost every time versus the gorgeous but repetitive art in Krazy Kat.

Empowered Volume 4 (Page 30)
I was talking to a Vegas pal of mine and he told me that the odds of the previous volumes being in stock at Diamond when this ships are 14:1. You really can bet on anything there. (More Adam Warren smarter-than-they-should-be sexual, superheroic shenanigans? Ys, pls.)

Mister X Archives (Page 37)
Yeah, I’m pretty much going to have to get Dean Motter’s saga of an architect who fights the effects of psycheture in the city he designed, especially if it corrects the print issues from those incomplete iComics reprints from a couple of years ago. Yes, it’s $80, but there’s ways around that, my friend. Ways.

Hellboy Stuff (Pages 41-43)
I’m a little sad how much I enjoyed the recent Lobster Johnson trade paperback versus the parent title’s contemporary materials. Maybe it’s just tired of watching a giant red guy with a stone hand punch his way out of situations. (I understand that if I’m tired of that, then I’m tired of live. C’est la vie.)

Image
Guerillas #1 (Pages 142-145)
Seriously, nine issues about commando chimps in Vietnam? Really? Damn.

The Pro (Page 150)
You know, I think I may have to pick this up as I seem to have lost my original copy from a few years ago. My Garth Ennis Hooker Superheroine Comics section is missing its centerpiece.

Hawaiian Dick: Screaming Black Thunder (Page 153)
They have to know exactly what they’re doing there, don’t they? Don’t they?

Ultra: Seven Days (Page 156)
Another book I may have to get just to replace one that appears to have gone missing. You know, the Luna Brothers could have walked away from comics after this and I would have been happy. How they went from a female-positive superheroine series that looked at the psychological and sociological impacts of a world where commoditization of the empowered is the norm to “Invasion Of The Naked Flesh-Eating Egg Girls” is one of those enigmas that will baffle me for a long, long time.

Top Cow
Wanted (Movie Edition Trade Paperback) (Page 177)
“Hey, check out this thing that’s completely unlike that Angelina Jolie thing with the same name!”

Watch the pilot for The Middleman before it hits TV.

Hey, if you have iTunes, you can download the first episode of The Middeman for free for a limited time. Make sure you look out for Les’s cameo early on! (No, he’s not the tentacle monster.)

My Verdict? Very faithful to the original Middleman series in all the right ways. The leads are razor-sharp, the story zips right along, and there’s only a very few moments of clumsiness that should be shaken down quickly enough. It certainly doesn’t hurt that original series creator Javier Grillo-Marxuach wrote the pilot and serves as an executive producer.