Jerry Robinson is best known as the comic book artist who helped to put Batman on the map along with Bob Kane — and credit for creating the Joker belongs to him. However sadly his other work is overlooked and that’s why I’m glad that Dark Horse is doing a proper reprint of Jet Scott. This wonderful science fiction themed newspaper strip debuted on September 28, 1953 in The New York Herald-Tribune. Read more…
Thanks to the CB Radio craze of the 70s I have to admit that I had a cultural snottiness when it comes to any form of entertainment featuring truckers: So I have to admit that I was blown away by the sheer charm of the comic book Mesmo Delivery by Rafael Grampá and Marcus Penna. What I like about the look of this book is that the inking style has quite a bit of grit and texture, yet the character designs and poses almost have a charming if not slightly cute feeling to them. The result is that each page has the sort of warmth that you would see in folk art except that the draftsmanship is both exquisite and exhilarating to look at: Read more…
Being a manga fanboy the release of Devil #1 immediately caught my eye: “Manga artist Torajiro Kishi (Maka-Maka) and blockbuster anime studio Madhouse (Trigun, Paprika, Ninja Scroll) love comics. So much so that they’ve decided to publish an original, Western-style comic exclusively with Dark Horse! Enter Devil, a thrilling, sci-fi take on the vampire genre.” Read more…
Up until this point I’ve been mostly looking at the licensed comic books that Boom! Studios has been producing and while for the most part they’re good, they’re always in the shadow of the television show or book that they’re based on. So I’ve been quite impressed looking at Kill Audio which is an original book that they’ve put out: Issue #5 comes out this week and the artwork of Sheldon Vella is quite entertaining! What I love about his book is that it has its own style and the limited pallet of red and black is quite charming: Read more…
The Jim Henson Company is starting to push Fraggle Rock a great deal — the first thing I spotted a while ago was an amazing remix of the music from the series and next they were releasing the entire original series on DVD. And now it seems that they’re also planning a limited edition comic book series which will come out in April (and available for pre-orders in February).
Shōjo manga fans may feel jilted but here’s a sad preview of Marvel Heartbreakers. The lack of quality in this book kills me because once upon a time there was an American tradition of romantic comic books which could appeal to the ladies which lasted until about the 60s, but as the industry retreated to the boys treehouse of comic book shops in the 80s the genre had all but faded. While I’ve been impressed with Marvel’s ability to do great work in the kids market, this book shows that Marvel doesn’t see the potential of the audience. And while the ladies are reading comics these days they’re more likely to be Japanese manga than anything that Marvel might put out as seen below: Read more…
I’m always intrigued when I see commercials for light novels from Japan — because you can be looking at the next big thing, or a title that will never go anywhere. However this spot for Sunday is Not a God caught my eye due to the production value, it almost looks like pitch for an anime series. Apparently this light novel won the top prize at Fantasia 21 and was praised by Shoji Gatoh, the author behind Full Metal Panic!. Here is some interesting promotional artwork I found from the publishers which combines a shared theme of moe and ammo: Read more…
If you’re a manga fan looking for an American comic book to check out I’d highly recommend Kick Ass #8 which will be available this Wednesday. At first glance one might confuse the moe character designs in this book as a Marvel title aimed at kids — but there’s too much splatter going on which is one of the fun things that anime fans would instantly love: Read more…
For me the joy of science fiction is that it’s somewhat believable — and once upon a time before the comic book code there were some amazing comics that had science fiction themes. However with the code and the dawn of the silver age of comics superheroes dominated the medium. Superhero comics may have some elements of science fiction, but they’re always used as window dressing using dull plot devices like superpowers being caused by genetic mutations. However from time to time you’ll see a book that tries to reintroduce the genre, and Guardians of the Galaxy tries hard but doesn’t quite succeed at this task: Read more…
I was reviewing all of the Marvel titles that are set to be released next week and as usual the the one cover artist who always seems to be standing out is Skottie Young. Usually marvel takes itself so seriously so it’s nice to see Skottie injecting his humor and cartoony style into the stiff world of superheroes. At first I would say that Marvel is limiting him to comic books aimed at kids, but frankly these are turning into the best publications that Marvel is producing. Shown above is the cover for X-Babies #4, and below are the covers for The Marvelous Land of Oz #3 and Marvel Adventures Spider-Man #59: Read more…
I love how this cover for King City #9 by Brandon Graham harkens back to the great tradition of paper cut out dolls: Frankly it’s highly refreshing to see a cover take chances like this for a change. Sadly I’ve overlooked this series in the past, but having unearthed these other covers from the series I have to say that I’m impressed with Graham’s style: Read more…
Posted by Michael Pinto on Jan 20, 2010 in Comix, Tech
The latest issue of Player vs. Player features the epic quest for the Apple iPhone. Being an Apple fanboy I love it when geeky tech things find their way into comic books, and Scott Kurtz has scored a hit in my nerd zone: Read more…
