DC put out a preview this morning of Knight & Squire #1, an upcoming series about the British Batman and Robin analogues. Paul Cornell works on the script, who I've come to appreciate as one of Britain's more accessible writers for detached, tourist-y consumers, so I couldn't think of someone better suited for such a UK-centric book. In the short preview, we get a glimpse at a bar full of fresh new rogues, including the silver-age inspired "Milkman" and the "First Eleven", a multinational corps who hail from Britain's former colonies, though no American was keen on taking part. What really caught my eye, after noting a sign for "Tights and Capes Disco every Thursday", was the new figure Faceoff, who adamantly introduced himself with a statement about his sexuality and made sure no one went around slingin' slurs about it.
Various low-class rogues meet up at a bar where rowdiness eventually ensues? That's the single most effective comics pitch ever to appeal to me. I'll be buying the series once it kicks off in October.
Question: who else is going to Dragon*Con in Atlanta on Labor Day weekend? I lost the scarlet V of con attendance in June by going to Heroes Con and that inspired a friend to suggest we attend Dragon*Con for the first time. We've both thought about attending it before but we're both also a little intimidated by the complexity and sheer size of Dragon*Con. Peter David is on the guest list, though, and the potential of getting him to sign an X-Factor or my copies of the Legions of Fire books is way too exciting for me to let a little thing like shyness get in my way.
I bring this up here in hopes that there are members of the PK community with strategies for finding the good stuff. Right now, looking at their website and the fan tracks, it all seems a little overwhelming in terms of figuring out what to do and where to go. At Heroes Con, pretty much everything was in one big room. Dragon*Con is clearly a wholly different kind of animal.
I'm also mentioning it now in case there are PK readers who want to get together for a social hour over beverages on the Saturday of the convention. Surely somewhere at the convention, or nearby, there is someplace that won't be packed with tens of thousands of our fellow fanfolk... right? No? A bit of naïveté showing there? Probably so, but it's worth a shot.
Leave a comment or send me an email if you want to share a tip for navigating the cosplay sea. If you want in on a social hour, shoot me an email off the blog at klarion at pink kryptonite dot net.
Blackest Night #8. of 8. The Grand Finale. The first day of the rest of everyone's lives. Purportedly bright ones. Blackest Night's over, and the future of comics is indeed bright.
Spoilers and sometimes my opinions, after the jump
I've already commented on how pleased I am with the publication of the third volume of Cthulhu Tales in March, but now there's something that might arguably be even better: an original-text adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft's Call of Cthulhu. In the same manner as Dracula's use of nothing but the original text, and that of the current adaptation of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, Transfuzion's Call of Cthulhu uses no words other than those of H.P. Lovecraft and narrates the tale from the multiple perspectives of that story. Transfuzion has put up several preview pages, and I've put an order in to my local shop. What makes this edition even more special is that it's introduced by surrealist H.R. Giger, probably best known for his Academy Award-winning design of things and environments in Alien, including the alien itself.
I'm obviously a huge Mythos fan, and I'm always happy to give a boost to someone who seeks to expand the Mythos in a way that I feel stays true to that narrative style and world, but this is the real deal, the source, the story that originates or incorporates a number of ideas that wormed their way into other pop culture standouts over and over again. No matter how your tastes run, if you read this site you've probably encountered the Lovecraft Mythos and particularly the story Call of Cthulhu in countless properties across many media, from Army of Darkness to The Simpsons and even the adorably creative DS game Scribblenauts. Like any good nerd obsession, Lovecraft makes a big dent in Wikipedia, including a page listing just the Mythos' representations and allusions in other works (and I'm sure it's nowhere near complete).
That said, there are things to dislike about Lovecraft's work and Call of Cthulhu in particular. The story itself is, by modern horror standards, less than shocking. It's also got some real problems when it comes to racial and ethnic depictions, religious intolerance and sexism. It's not an example of the more inclusive fiction of this day and age and it in no way presents good examples. It's a period piece, and I enjoy Lovecraft's work as such, but it does take a conscious effort sometimes. Since this version preserves the original prose, all that will be directly on display in this edition. I'm going to love it anyway, especially since the preview suggests that the art is able to straddle the line between the slightly smug self-assurance of most of Lovecraft's protagonists and the alien chaos they encounter, but it's worth keeping that in mind: this is a story of another time, and a portion of its value may be in reminding us of how far we've come since.
Bluewater Comics, creators of a number of biographical titles - such as the Female Force comics that profile well-known women like Ellen, Diana, Justice Sotomayor and, er, Stephanie Meyer? - have announced a new title in their ongoing FAME series: Beckham.
The book is purportedly fairly no-holds-barred, covering his celebrity marriage as well as the gossip of his alleged infidelities. It also supposedly gets itself a chuckle out of David Beckham's "squeaky" voice. I can't help but point out that the Bleedingcool.com post refers to Beckham and his bride as "the marriage of Thick and Thin" which scores points for sheer cattiness. Rowr!
Great as this cover image is - including the way this depiction subtly suggests Beckham's pleased with himself for having gotten away with something - Bluewater has come under a lot of fire in the last few months for reports that it treats its creators unfairly, either not honoring contracts or only agreeing to ones considered substandard to the industry. I don't know enough about them, their contracts or the competition to have much of an informed opinion but there may be readers who want to take that into account. I do think it would be nice to know explicitly what compensation and consent is involved on the part of the subjects of these works, if any. I'd like to know what makes Beckham's personal life more interesting now than it was when, you know, these events were happening. I'd like to know if the creators are going to be fairly compensated for their work compared to elsewhere.
I'd also like to know if this comic is going to feature a centerfold.
The two other things I'm most anticipating this year? The return of Casanova and the fourth volume of Cthulhu Tales.
Much as I love Matt Fraction as a writer, I've unsubscribed from Uncanny X-Men. I just don't care enough and Marvel's big metaplot isn't interesting enough to me at the moment to try to keep up. I also got more than slightly pissed when the main storyline of Uncanny X-Men was diverted into some tie-in book so that one issue ended with a cliffhanger and the next started with that story having been entirely resolved with zero help for the reader. Throw in that the trailer for Iron Man 2 makes it look like a neocon wet dream and I'm running out of works to like. Casanova is very much on that list of things still left to me, though.
The first two volumes were smart, sexy, funny, touching, creative and had great action sequences. Plus, it's about a swinging super-spy who spends at least a couple of issues quite comfortably living as a woman. How does it get better than this? My old laptop had one of the stickers for W.A.S.T.E. on it just so people would ask me what that villainous organization's name stood for ("We're All So Terribly Excited"). I loved Casanova and had assumed Fraction's move to the big-time had killed it. Happily, quite the contrary.
Lastly, I've already read the individual comics contained therein but I have such a love for Cthulhu Tales that I am eagerly awaiting the fourth volume's collected form, due out on March 2 of this year. For real, if you enjoy horror comics or Lovecraft and his derivatives, check this out. Of all the books on the market that claim to share some portion of the stage with the Mythos, this one comes closest by far. It knocks all the others I've read into a cocked hat at fifty paces.
Another year stretches ahead of us and I am taking a couple of days to note the things that excite me most in 2010. First on my list is The Return of Bruce Wayne, scheduled as a six-issue series written by Grant Morrison and starting in April of this year. Morrison's already said in interviews that it does have some "subtle connections" with Batman and Robin and that they complement one another but this is not DC's big universe-shaper for 2010 and I couldn't be happier. (That's looking to be the War of the Supermen thing they're doing for Free Comic Book Day, which honestly doesn't interest me in the least.)
Watching Bruce Wayne slog back to life across different times and different technology levels is going to be some tasty stuff. Morrison has spoken repeatedly about his efforts to strip Bruce Wayne down to his most primitive state and I can see this as Morrison unwinding the spiral of that work.
Of course, what does this mean for Detective Comics, which is so vastly more interesting now that it's about Batwoman? Greg Rucka has recently said in interviews that he and J.H. Williams III will be doing a new Batwoman series set to launch sometime this year. Rucka has already said they're planning a 12-issue arc. A year of Batwoman is a good year indeed and this is easily tied with Bruce Wayne's return as my most anticipated book of the year.
That said, there actually are books set in places other than Goth City that I read and enjoy. Tomorrow, two books that have nothing to do with Batwoman or Batman and yet give me warm fuzzies when I think about what the year has in store for them.
That's just me, though. What turns your crank in 2010?
Comics have a strange standing on the gift-giving spectrum; The field touches upon every imaginable genre, yet your lucky gift recipient will likely fail to appreciate the gesture if they approach the book with the biases that most people hold about illustrated books. Your best bet here is to play it safe and try to appeal to their interests, easing them into a story that you know they'll like.
One book that's a fair mashup of everything good in comics and sure to please somebody on your list is SLG's Pinocchio: Vampire Slayer. Got a sister who's bitten by the vampire bandwagon? High-concept literary type who'll appreciate an original spin on traditional storytelling? Or is your little nephew a sadistic elementary school nightmare, and you're afraid that he's too "impressionable" for Klarion's suggestion of Incognito? (Buy him both to really get back at his parents for last year's Mangroomer gift!) Bottom line, Pinocchio VS holds a niche that's appropriate for everybody.
I read Incognito this year as individual issues and loved every single one of them. It's Ed Brubaker writing supervillains so one can safely assume that it will be awash in blood and dark psychology. In truth, while it's a violent comic it's never bloody. It's not a gore comic and the cover image of the trade paperback is both perfect and misleading: there aren't very many times we see someone beaten to a pulp but that impish smile on someone wearing a blood-stained shirt and tie is an excellent representation of the balanced and opposing themes of Incognito: the glory of freedom and empowerment as opposed to, and in concert with, the sadistic pleasure the main character takes from beating the crap out of people.
Incognito takes the usual closet-case metaphor found in the dual lives of supers and applies it to a former supervillain who has been deprived of his powers and left to rot in a soul-crushing desk job. When he goes out in search of trouble he finds himself inadvertently a hero and though he gets nothing out of helping people he loves the thrill of being back in action. Brubaker takes the standard loser-by-day-fighter-by-night concept and turns it into a fun, disturbing story that reveals false identities, origins and allegiances that have been nested inside one another three or four deep. He doesn't leave out the impact on civilians these characters have, either, giving us a delightfully bothersome cross-section of ways it can really screw with someone to run into a super who's feeling their oats.
The trade paperback comes out soon, though different sites list different dates for it. Reserve it now, it's worth making sure you get a copy ASAP. If you want to give it to someone as a gift, go for it, but be greedy: read it first.
Who's the newest person to jump on the internet webisode bandwagon? None other then scary-clown creator Stephen King. In a collaboration with Marvel Entertainment and CBS Mobile, one of King's short stories, simply titled "N" is finally seeing the light of day in animated-comic form. The website doesn't really say anything about the story, but that doesn't really matter since there's already a trailer up. In fact, if you sign up for e-mail updates, you can go watch the first episode now!
I interrupt your regularly scheduled spandex filled Comic-Con coverage to bring you a little bit of manga news. And this news is a bit overdue, in my opinion. Lucky Star is finally getting translated into English! That's right, the four-panel slice of life comedy is coming stateside. Recently announced on Bandai's website, the manga-wait...Bandai publishes manga now? Since when?
Anyway, if you're a fan of books like Azumanga Daioh or Strawberry Marshmallow, Lucky Star will be right up your alley. I prefer the anime a little myself, but that may just be because there's no Lucky Channel in the manga. We'll see if the book can work as well without Kogami and Shiraishi ending each chapter.
Review: Wonder Woman #1 - #5
OK, so a couple of unkind reviews from me of late. Does that mean I hate the whole New 52? No, not at all. Does it mean that I only enjoy the new characters? Definitely not. Case in point: Wonder Woman is one of my favorite books of the relaunch. I think it's very good, with strong writing, an excellent ambience and fantastic art. Read on for why this reboot is the first time I've ever subscribed to Wonder Woman!...
