significarta

May 1, 2012 4:59 pm Don't know if I am that eager in my anticipation for the Batman event. I mean I tolerate and allow for the suspension of disbelief in seeing multiple iterations of Bruce Wayne engaged in different life altering predicament in all the different Bat Family books simultaneously, even showing up in I, Vampire while trapped in the Maze of Death in Snyder's title. Now crossing all these titles will bring into sharp relief the oxymoroness and implausibility of multiple parallel existences of Bruce Wayne in the purportedly localized event.

April 26, 2012 11:56 am Guedes used to be amazing, check out his OMAC series for DC, it was like Darrow with crazier camera angles. http://renatoguedes.deviantart.com/gallery/#/d2f4rxw I was so looking forward to and then supremely disappointed by his Wolverine run, looked like a totally different artist for the worse.

March 28, 2012 1:37 pm can anybody see a strategy at work here?...bringing out Nowlans Man-Thing, while the biggest Nowlan inspired/clone Yanick Paquette is doing a successful run on the Swamp Thing, which the Man-Thing is a sort of clone of.. whew... saying that out loud made my head hurt just a bit....a bit of torus mobius strip thing going on there...

February 1, 2012 2:18 pm None of it might be able to match the complexity and delicate interweaving of the original series but there are a few valid points being made here. Even the original roster of Watchmen was not entirely original but rather analogues of Charlton Comics characters, which in turn were composites of previous iterations of pulp and comics characters. Moore's comment about there being no prequels and sequels in legitimate literature is a bit laughable. Not only has there been numerous prequels and sequels in the history of literature, writers going back and revisiting their characters and worlds, but Moore himself has made a career out of mining the literary past. Most recently with his Neonomicon series he turned the Cuthulu Mythos into a sex orgy (yes another one of those). I am very interested in the fact that this whole venture has attracted artists such as Bermejo, J.G.Jones, Adam Hughes and Jae Lee who have increasingly become illustrators and cover artists, back into the storytelling mode. And yes it all does smack of the next DC stunt after the New 52, but then again the New 52 worked on me too, I am reading more DC than I ever have in the past.

January 9, 2012 12:31 pm Just visited his blog and looked at the big sampling of his critiques. IMHO with his track record of flat one note two dimensional covers and almost criminally inept grasp of human anatomy Mr. Johnson should probably be the last person in the industry to situate himself as arbiter of taste.

January 4, 2012 3:51 pm 2 pages missing is actually 10 percent of the story gone. The new length feels awkward and disbalanced any which way. It is 2 pages of character development missing or dispensed with in an plot driven title, or two pages of action missing in a character driven one. And plus I feel cheated. Paying more than twice the cover price for each title down here.

January 4, 2012 3:19 pm On and slightly off the topic of Fear Itself and Matt Fraction and Mark Waid. Did anyone read the Mark Waid arc on Captain America in the 1990's called American Nightmare? as collected here http://www.amazon.com/Captain-America-Nightmare-Mark-Waid/dp/0785150846 At the onset and during the marketing campaign Fear Itself seemed vaguely reminiscent of this storyline. At the end of it all I found that fear had practically zilch to do with Fraction's Fear Itself. American Nightmare on the other hand creeped the hell out of me at the time. Very effective.

December 17, 2011 8:23 am I shall cut and paste Josh's original words thusly "If you’re a woman, interested in comics, or writing about comics, or making comics, you’ve felt at one time or another that fan reaction to you is based, sometimes solely, on your appearance and your relative attractiveness. Without fail, every time we post a picture of a female creator or one of our writers, someone will comment on their looks almost immediately. When we interview a female creator (we admit they are rare and exotic), comments always follow, not about the content, but about whether they pass the attractiveness test." All I was merely pointing out was that relative attractiveness indeed seems to be an essential part of the PR arsenal. Whether it was expressly for that article or from a back cover of a novel, this is how this writer has at one time consented to be portrayed, While the onus is indeed on the leering fan boys to alter their leery behaviour, what about the creators that feel the need to appear to be attractive?

December 16, 2011 4:25 pm While I agree with everything that has been said, I came to this coloumn after reading this.. http://www.badhaven.com/comics/comic-interviews/exclusive-marjorie-liu-interview/ The posed portrait that graces the interview with one of the last few women writing in mainstream comics..provides a somewhat sad counter weight to the argument made here.

December 1, 2011 3:41 pm I think it is precisely a matter of personal tastes...personally speaking Heavy Liquid is a far superior work to One Trick Rip Off...the art is gorgeous... the color pallete is unique...and story has the right mix of drama, action and wild invention...granted it is far from perfect but for me it is drawing upon a far more eclectic set of inspirations than OTRO... I mean I enjoy One Trick Rip Off's Tarantinoisms as much or probably more than the next guy...but Heavy Liquid's resonant echoes of William S Burroughs (the drugs) and William Gibson (the sprawl) makes it my personal favorite...PS a somewhat obscure reference but the method of the drug's delivery (pouring it down the ear) comes directly from Jodorowsky's amazing Holy Mountain...