§ Faith Erin Hicks on comics that adapt books , and the technique thereof, with bonus link to her five-page Hunger Games adaptation (above):
It seems like a stupid thing to say, but comics are a visual medium. They tell the story through pictures as much as they do words. Often when I pick up a comic adaptation of a prose novel, I am confronted by a huge wall of text, plastered all over the pages of the comic. The text is usually lifted straight from the prose novel. It seems that’s what people think a comic of a prose novel should be: an illustration with text slapped all over it. I think it’s awful. I hate adaptations like that. Comics are visual. If you are a cartoonist translating a novel to comics, it is your job to take the words the author has written, and draw them. It is your challenge to make those drawings as evocative and moving as the prose.
§ “This isn’t fun. This isn’t a game. This is very serious. Authorities have been contacted. Perhaps it is too late to stop this event, only time will tell.”
Is this a concerned citizen attempting to stop a gathering of terrorists? No, just a disgruntled loudmouth trying to stop the evil event known as Strange Adventures’s Ladies Night. Strange Adventures is an excellent comics shop located in Halifax, NS, and by all accounts it’s the kind of place we need a lot more of.
§ Nerdcore legend Adam WarRock is interviewed and gives his secret origins:
On the name Adam WarRock and its inspiration: One of my favorite comic-book stories of all time is The Infinity Gauntlet, a Marvel limited series from 1991. What I like about it is that Thanos, the main character, kills billions of beings just to impress a girl, who was the embodiment of death. However, she gives him no love. One of my favorite characters from that series was Adam Warlock. I was doing this blog called War Rocket Ajax with Chris Sims of the ComicsAlliance website, and he suggested the name Adam WarRock because of the blog name and the fact that I was a fan of Adam Warlock. I can’t stand the name, but I had to stick with it because I had some initial success with it. I think a lot of MCs are unhappy with their names.
§ In the future, will millennials be known as The Sam and Max Generation?
A few months later, my English teacher pulled my Mom aside to talk about something I’d written. “He’s using these really large words for a kid his age” she said, like “‘Miasma’ and ‘Turgid’. What has he been reading?”. My Mom didn’t know, so she came home, asked me the same question. I told her that I’d seen them in a video game called Sam & Max Hit the Road. I told her that I’d written them down, looked them up and that I’d like to learn more words. So my Mom went to our local library, picked up a bunch of SAT vocabulary audio tapes and handed them off to me. I was in fourth grade.
§ The headline “Star Trek actor added to Falls Comic Con” referring to the regional Niagara Falls con made us thankful that there are enough Star Trek actors to go around to all these shows. In this case it’s Robert Picardo who was on…one of those shows at some point.
§ This year’s Toy Fair did not stir up the seething mass of disgruntlement that last year’s did, but it was severely lacking in shock and awe, says this veteran.
§ We all know what Alan Moore thinks about Before Watchmen, but what does the guy who played Ozymandias think????
§ When we saw this headline “Kotex Enlists Comics to Pitch Natural Balance Line” our pulse raced with anticipation that we’d hit the trifecta for awkward comic links that could be stored and shared whenever things were heating up. But, tragically, the “comics” refers to the stand-up kind. We’ll leave the feminine hygiene comics to Jen Vaughn.
§ Old-time Beat readers will like this headline: “What Happened? Clive Owen”
“No, just a disgruntled loudmouth trying to stop the evil event known as Strange Adventures’s Ladies Night.”
The sense of entitlement that some people display absolutely astounds me.
There are women-only gyms and women-only nights at bars, so why not a women-only comic book night? The goal is the same, after all; get the female business that is ordinarily absent because women know that they’ll be constantly leered at or hit on by creepy guys.
Picardo played “The Doctor” (no, not that eleven, the holodeck simulation from Voyager. I only know this because of the upcoming Star Trek/Doctor Who crossover.) Reading the entry over at Memory Alpha shows that he was a very interesting character, a bit like Data.
Kids used to learn higher vocabulary via comics. Now it’s video games. *SIGH* Do any video games use “bouillabaisse”?
Kotex… Did Disney ever produce a comic to supplement their educational film “The Story of Menustration”?
Strange Adventures IS an excellent shop. Or ‘shops’, as there is one in Halifax and one in Fredericton also.
HA!!! YES!!!! Clive Owen news. That’s what I’ve been missing :) Takin’ it back to The Pulse days. Heidi, I thought you’d forgotten about Clive…