When legendary artist Jack Kirby left Marvel Comics in 1970 and went to DC, he was lured there in part by the promise of doing work in new genres and new formats. He always envisioned comics going further than the pamphlet; he wanted to see glossy magazines and long-form books with enough variety to appeal to everyone. Most of his proposals fizzled out before he had the chance to put pen to ...

In discussions about the great living cartoonists, the name Milo Manara is rarely bandied about, a state of affairs that is both impossible to believe and very easy to explain. Manara is a comics artist of uncommon ability, a master of linework and layout, whose storytelling chops deserve to be mentioned in the same breath as those of Kirby, Crumb, Toth, Moebius, or anyone else you'd put in ...

The mega-crossover Flashpoint has been shrouded in secrecy for months, but DC Comics has been dropping Flash Facts like hotcakes all through March, giving eager fans tantalizing teasers and blazing preview images. Now, just when you thought the big summer event couldn't get any hotter, comes the biggest reveal yet: Comics Alliance has eight exclusive variant cover images from Flashpoint ...

Sean Michael Robinson and Joy Delyria, in their contribution to "The Wire" roundtable over at Noah Berlatsky's Hooded Utilitarian, have performed a pop culture criticism triple gainer by thoroughly re-imagining David Simon's The Wire as a Victorian-era serialized novel. Often compared to Dickens by critics, The Wire is a critically-lauded, five season television series that focuses on the ...

As we've all known for years now, the true purpose of the internet isn't the connecting of disparate communities, or making the vast wealth of human knowledge accessible to anyone with a Netbook and a Starbucks. No, the internet is for taking the incredibly weird stuff that once might have sat in a shoebox or on a bookshelf, and spreading the lunacy as far and wide as possible. And in that ...

Diamond Digital was announced last week -- a digital comics delivery system based around going to your brick-and-mortar store, purchasing a download code printed on a piece of paper, and then taking that code and punching it into your phone, tablet or home computer via iVerse. It's the kind of odd left turn you expect from the comics industry at this point -- "Oh yes, you'd like to read our ...

Last night, idly clicking on a cryptic link at The Comics Reporter led me to a story that may be my favorite thing to happen in comics so far this year. Zach Weiner, creator of the webcomic Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal, had one of his cartoons misappropriated by NOM (National Organization for Marriage), an organization opposed to same-sex marriage. NOM didn't actually repost the cartoon, ...

"Manga are emotional comics. They want nothing more than for you to breathe together with them. To conspire with lives." - Warren Ellis The other day, I finally caught up on Freakangels, Warren Ellis and Paul Duffield's fine sci-fi adventure comic published online for free by Avatar Press. Avatar still has an unfortunate and somewhat deserved reputation as a purveyor of endless variant ...

Prev #1. Superman: Grounded Initially intended to be a twelve-issue story following Superman as he walked (adamantly not flying) across America and reconnected with the country and its people, "Grounded" became more a publishing irregularity than anything. It's the Superman story that J. Michael Straczynski abandoned to write a different Superman story, one that's more lucrative ...

In his latest column at Comic Book Resources, bearded word-warrior Jason Aaron (Scalped, Wolverine) discusses the latest price moves at Marvel and DC with uncommon candor (as covered by ComicsAlliance way back here). The piece is a good read for anyone interested in getting a glimpse behind the scenes of this kind of industry shift, and should be required homework for all those fans who, without ...