The News Blog of Comics Culture
Ethan Rilly’s POPE HATS is a throwback to the golden era of indie comic books—a time undreamed of when LOVE AND ROCKETS and EIGHTBALL and HATE and YUMMY FUR came out every two months or so, and the comics periodical was an actual discrete unit of entertainment. It’s also a reference to the finely observed, beautifully drawn comics…and yeah, it only comes out once a year or so, but it’s worth waiting for.
Amid a flurry of controversy over the Kickstarter for this Garo tribute, Angie was kind enough to pass over her contribution, titled “The Teacup Tree,” a whimsical tale of the coming of age and the tragic loss of imaginary friends.
Stately Beat Manor approves of David Aja art. Click for larger images.
HAWKEYE #2, written by Matt Fraction with art and cover by Aja, goes on sale September 5.
We got a chance to look at Cryptozoic’s latest project, the DC Comics Deck Building Game on Thursday morning. Cryptozoic has been a strong presence building geek culture games, adopting Penny Arcade, The Walking Dead, and The Big Bang Theory. Now their aim is to adopt DC’s comic universe into the next big game.
There’s an absurd number of great comics out today but here’s one that hasn’t had too much advance buzz—maybe because author Gilbert Hernandez is SO DARNED PROLIFIC. Anyway, FATIMA: THE BLOOD SPINNERS #1 is his take on zombies, with an eyeball-squeezing mix of a deadly femme zombie hunter and mindless violence. It’s a four-issue miniseries and it also features alternate covers by Peter Bagge.
The late Harvey Pekar left behind several projects in various stages of composition, but none was as close to him as CLEVELAND, a love letter and social history of the city that was his muse—an everyman town of ordinary people and the mundane swirl of life that is nonetheless extraordinary. For Cleveland, Pekar’s script found an artist among the greatest of his collaborators: Joseph Remnant, whose dense cross hatched naturalism recalls Crumb (who we meet in these pages) but finds its own voice with expansive staging and research.
Howard Cruse is one of the groundbreaking cartoonists of the last 30 years, with his iconic BAREFOOTZ and WENDEL—the latter a pioneering gay-themed comic that ran in the Advocate—and his founding GAY COMIX, an underground anthology. His STUCK RUBBER BABY was one of the early post-MAUS examples of the graphic novel coming of age as a literary medium. And that’s just the highlights of a long award winning career.
Now Boom! Town is bringing out THE OTHER SIDES OF HOWARD CRUSE, a thick hardcover which includes his work from the light-hearted Barefootz strips, his take on Nancy and Little Lulu, and the iconoclastic sheep Shearwell going on a “trip” or two, and other underground comics. The book is available in May. Boom has provided us with an exclusive preview — and yes, this story is VERY NSFW.
Today Derf Backderf’s memoir MY FRIEND DAHMER
Here’s the complete March 2012 solicitations from DC Comics. Enjoy!
Although you’d think he was busy enough drawing THE WALKING DEAD every month, artist Charlie Adlard occasionally has time to toss off something like CURSE OF THE WENDIGO (reviewed here) a horror comic written by French screenwriter Mathieu Missoffe and released in France in 2009. The story is set in World War I and finds French and GErman soldier teaming up to fight a greater horror.
An American edition is out today from Dynamite, and here’s a preview:
Multi-talented Kyle Baker has been a little under the radar for a while. He’s working on some comics and animation proects, including, it seems something called HOTWIRE written by Kevin McCarthy (EPOCH). Or as Baker put it: I think this is the cover. Looks like a comic about a flying girl with pink hair…we’re in.
Dynamite has provided us with the cover to the third part of their Charlaine Harris adaptation, by Benoit Springer.
Slate has a preview of the autobio material in the upcoming Lynda Barry collection Everything Vol. 1. More in link.
This December, MEMORIAL by Chris Roberson and Rich Ellis comes out from IDW. The six issue mini-series is the story of Em, a young woman who arrives at a hospital in Portland, Oregon, with no memory of her past. A year later, her newly-rebuilt life is thrown into turmoil after she inherits a magical shop, the kind that appears in an alley one instant and disappears the next. Em is drawn into a supernatural conflict between beings that not only represent, but are, fundamental elements of the universe itself. All of existence is at stake, so there’s only a little pressure on Em, the magical shop, and a talking cat.
An all-star Madman anniversary collection and a Super Dinosaur coloring book highlight the month, plus a Jingle Belle collections, the first Witch Doctor trade, a comic about ancient Rome by Tito Faraci and Dan Brereton, and the second issue of Paul Grist’s MUDMEN.
Dark Horse has just released its January solicitations — a new reprint of a classic European comics by Hermann tops the list for us, along with a series of Mike Mignola variant covers in his monster year, and the Compleat Terminal City.
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