Comics Alliance: An AOL Comic Book Community

For most American comics fans, it's pretty safe to say Bryan Talbot isn't a household name in the American comics industry. But he ought to be...

Many of you Neil Gaiman-heads certainly recall Bryan's work throughout the Sandman series, and during that time he produced Mask, one of the more compelling and early Legends of the Dark Knight mini-arcs (continuity and safe movie marketing killed this once-entertaining Batman anthology series). And, earlier this year, Dark Horse published Bryan's dream project, the Quill Award nominee Alice in Sunderland, a hit in the UK, according to the fine folks at Blog@Newsarama.

Published a dozen years ago by Dark Horse, A Tale of One Bad Rat -- the story of a homeless young woman's quest to heal her soul with the help of Beatrix Potter -- remains one of my favorite graphic novels of all time and evidence beyond dispute that comics can entertain and inform in ways prose and movies cannot. Almost forgot, when people try to argue with you that SF and comics don't mix, show 'em a copy of Heart of Empire: The Legacy of Luther Arkwright, a sprawling and wonderful fantasy adventure story.

Before investing your time and money, however, find a copy of The Art of Bryan Talbot, an amazing 96-page art book covering much of the work I've already described, released just this week by NBM.

I was more than surprised and pleased by the hits and response to my Thanksgiving weekend post about the literary worth of comics and graphic novels or, in the opinion of some thoughtful posters, the lack of it. My take: Whatever it takes to instill a love of reading and learning in children -- a daily newspaper, a Star Wars-themed cereal box, or comics -- is all to the good.

Whilst looking for interesting stuff out of the norm to feed this space, I stumbled across the site for Howtoons, based on a series of two-page stories developed by Joost Bonsen and Saul Griffith with comics artist Nick Dragotta for Make and Craft magazines that show kids how to create cool tools on the cheap and learn about science by experimenting on the world around them. If this sounds like more work and not much fun, you'll be surprised, amused and entertained as I was by this sample story about making a raincoat with a pair of scissors, duct tape and a trash bag, brilliantly told by Dragotta in the film noir style of Frank Miller's Sin City.

An interesting snippet from a recent interview with Griffith in Fortune Small Business explains the origins of Howtoons: When I was in grad school I came across these compelling books published near the turn of the last century with titles like The Boy Mechanic that taught children how to make gliders, and bows and arrows, and all sorts of cool things. But these books are not really transferable to the modern age because their instructions are like, 'Find two eight-foot lengths of straight-grain spruce and four 12-inch strips of leather thong.' Hard to find at Home Depot. So there seemed to be an opportunity for me to find analogous modern materials like soda bottles and bicycle inner tubes and chop sticks and show step-by-step how to build things like the Infamous Marshmallow Gun. The underlying philosophy is that it's critically important in this technological age to teach kids to see the world for what it can be, not for what it is, to have them question why they can't make the world better by experimenting, and to teach them not have a fear of the physical world. That failure is fun, and that the physical world is a really cool computer game if you want it to be.

The popularity of the how-to series inspired the first of what may become a series of Howtoons books, published by HarperCollins this fall. Kids of all ages will find 15 projects that describe "how to set up a workshop, create a marshmallow shooting gun, make ice cream without a freezer, play songs on a turkey baster flute, explore a homemade terrarium, launch a pressure–powered rocket, and more."

As you explore the Howtoons site throughly, you'll smile as I did when you reach the Legends page, featuring cloud like links to Wikipedia listings of geniuses the likes of Tesla, Jack Kirby, Newton, Alex Toth, Edison, Chuck Jones and Jane Goodall.

Oops! I'm a total slacker and I forgot to do my new releases post this morning. Don't fret, though! If you're reading this it means that I've now remembered. On to the comic books that have released today and are new!

SWORD #3
This makes the top of my list because I was reading it when I remembered to write this. I was like "What an awesome New Release and/or Recommendation!" and then I was like "Oh crap!". SWORD #3 is the best of the series so far, with even more crazy violence than the first issue. (Which is quite a feat if you read the first issue.)

NORTHLANDERS #1
Brian Wood writes a comic book about Vikings. I've been saying for a while now that Vikings are the new ninjas and/or pirates. So jump on the Viking train! You can then laugh at the kids with their Pirate-y and/or Ninja-y t-shirts that they got at Target!

THE ESCAPISTS HC
Ah, Brain K. Vaughan. You write things and they are good. That's what we love about you. Although it seems that BKV gets no love from Dark Horse, because the only thing it says on the front of this book is "Introduction by Michael Chabon". Well, that and "THE ESCAPISTS". Oh well, it's still a great book about a kid who buys the writes to the Escapist and publishes a new Escapist comic. Very meta!

If my three comic list is not a big enough list for you, there is another, more complete list if you click on the link below to get the list.

Here we are again with another look at Star Wars comics from Dark Horse. This edition is a little bulkier with more books being looked at. Check out what we've got below, it's time for Dark Side of the Horse III.

Star Wars: 30th Anniversary Collection Volume 8--Splinter of the Mind's Eye
Based on the novel by Alan Dean Foster as a sequel to Star Wars, Splinter of the Mind's Eye tells the tale of Luke and Leia as they crash land on planet Mimban. Turns out there is an Imperial mining facility on the planet, one that our duo must infiltrate in order to get either a ship to leave or radio for help. While sitting in a dive eating food that matches the setting Luke meets another force user, an old lady who knows he has use of the force and gives him a force enhancing crystal. Things take a turn for the worse as Luke and Leia get captured and guess who is on the way to visit them, dear old daddy himself Darth Vader. Doing what heroes do they escape and go in search of the crystal, the entire crystal. Traveling with an old lady, couple of Wookie-ish allies. Long story short, they travel underground, encounter from cave dwellers, fight, encounter Vader and Storm Troopers, fight, then make their way to the crystal for a showdown with the Dark Lord. This fight makes the entire volume worth the purchase as Vader and Luke face-off. One loses an arm, the other his life. The crystal is destroyed after granting new life and onto Empire Strikes Back we go.

The art is passable and the story is not bad considering it was really the first side-story in the Star Wars universe. It's interesting to see how Vader and Luke first battle one-on-one. I was happy to see they don't have Luke winning per-say, but rather just surviving. It's fitting given the power of the Sith. When it comes to the novel or the comic adaptation I'd go with the comic, it is Star Wars after all.

Had nice conversations with Tony Millionaire, nee of Maakies, Sock Monkey and Billy Hazelnuts fame, and Dave Herman, voice actor extraordinaire whose animation credits include Futurama, American Dad, Bee Movie and the upcoming Drinky Crow Show on Cartoon Network's Adult Swim next spring at a signing hosted last Saturday at nationally reknowned Austin Books and Comics.

If Dave's name doesn't ring a bell with you, no doubt you'll remember his unforgettable collaborations with the wicked funny Mike Judge on the Texas comedy of record, King of the Hill, and his film roles as the Secretary of State in Idiocracy and the non-musically inclined Michael Bolton in the classic Office Space. Catch up on Dave's post-Office Space career in this great interview with Lumino, just one of 11 done with all of the principal actors in this seminal office comedy for the ages.

And, Millionaire is just as warm and funny and normal in person (a doting dad to two little girls) as his Maakies strips are wonderful and depraved and hilarious.

Must 've been sleeping when the news broke that the fine folks at Cartoon Network's Adult Swim had aired a pilot based on Tony Millionaire's brilliant Maakies weekly strip, appearing in a fine alt-weekly newspaper near you (including the Austin Chronicle), earlier this year. Evidently, the Adult Swim folks liked the ratings of The Drinky Crow Show well enough -- Millionaire says they wanted the funniest but also the most depraved sort of stuff -- to take it to a series, debuting next February!

That's just one of the choice nuggets Millionaire shares in this short interview in this week's Austin Chronicle with Wayne Alan Brenner, a pre-game report in anticipation of today's signing and original art sale at Austin Books and Comics.

With the holidays fast approaching what do you get for the comic, anime, manga, gaming fan on your wish list that they may not be expecting ... a book. Below is a quick list of some book buys non-fans may not know about or really think about getting but are sure to be enjoyed when opened under the tree this holiday season. Remember there are tons of great comic collections out there, like the Dark Horse Hard Cover Star Wars 30th Anniversary books, but what I'm looking at below are those lesser know, off the wall books not falling into the graphic novel section. Agree, disagree, that's what we're here for so chime in.

Warcraft The Sunwell Trilogy Ultimate Edition – Tokyopop
What is It? All three volumes of Tokyopop's Warcraft manga collected and enlarged with a slew of extras. With art by Jae-Hwan Kim (King of Hell) and story by Richard A. Knaak (Dragonlance, Diablo) this is one nice collection. The story is in manga format and tells the tale of the Sunwell taking place in the World of Warcraft setting with familiar locations and characters making appearances.
What's So Special? Besides getting the hard cover and enlargement treatment readers are treated to an afterwards by Chris Metzen, VP Creative Development at Blizzard, a full color new intro to the manga, 8 pages of WoW history, Bios for Knaak and Kim along with unseen sketchers, nice little poster and for WoW trading card fans a special, limited edition card.
Who Will Like It? Video Gamers who like Warcraft or Fantasy games and Manga fans also into fantasy.

A-ha! There are comics out today. I have solved the mystery of the "what comes out today".

ACTION COMICS #859
The first issue of Geoff Johns and Gary Frank's ACTION COMICS was awesome, so here's hoping they can keep it up. Word is John's run continues to kick the ass. Witness the Legion of Superheroes! They are only in 17 comics this month.











GOON CHINATOWN HC
Eric Powell, creator of THE GOON, has been working on this graphic novel since 1882. THE GOON is always a violent good time and Powell's first original graphic novel looks great. Learn about the Goon's past. If you don't he may punch your head off.





HALO UPRISING #2
Weren't the four issues of the HALO comic supposed to come out before HALO 3? Now HALO's been out for almost two months and we're on the second issue of this in-betweener series that's meant to connect HALO 2 and HALO 3. Blurg. Oh well. At least it's good. I assume it's good. I got the information from the only reviewer I trust.



Many more comics will also arrive today. Click through for the list, yo.

Considering Gerard Way, frontman for My Chemical Romance, is doing quite well in the world of comics as writer of the successful Dark Horse comic, The Umbrella Academy, it was merely a matter of time before others decided to jump in the pool. But this news is a bit more interesting, because it involves a tantalizing fusion of music, comics, alternative reality video game and fantasy film series in the planning stages from Melissa Auf Der Maur, former bassist for Smashing Pumpkins and Hole.

According to NME, Auf Der Maur decided on the multimedia approach "After I wrote over two and a half albums' worth of material and had more than an album recorded, I thought 'I'm gonna have to start telling the story in another way. It then became a half-hour fantasy time travel film involving vikings and witches, but also modern day car crashes and this whole scary freaky thing that then translated into a comic book, and then I met this amazing comic book team."

As far as the comic book thing, called Out of Our Minds, goes, Auf Der Maur told NME, "It's a long unfolding of a bigger story. Each element can be 'to be continued'. There is potentially a 12-part comic book and there is potentially a six-part mini-series film."

If Auf Der Maur has her way, some of the music she produces for this multimedia project will be given away too.

This one sounds interesting... Stay tuned for more details as they become available.

Finally! The one day of the year where I can dress up as Batroc the Leaper and no one will make fun of me! What could be better on Halloween than an awesome week of comics? How about an extra-awesome week of comics?!



JUSTICE SOCIETY OF AMERICA #10
I'm not quite sure where they're going with this "Thy Kingdom Come" storyline, but the integration of Kingdom Come Superman into the regular DC Universe is pretty interesting to me. I'm sure I'm not the only one. I predict big things for this Alex Ross kid.








PERRY BIBLE FELLOWSHIP TRIAL OF COLONEL SWEETO HC
The best comic in the entire world while I'm reading it, PERRY BIBLE FELLOWSHIP, finally gets a collection in the form of THE TRIAL OF COLONEL SWEETO. If you don't know PBF, I suggest you check out creator/gorilla-translator Nick Gurewitch's internets website. Usually it only takes a couple of strips and you're hooked. The collection is 96 pages of mostly reprints from the web page, but has some new and unreleased material in it as well. Unicorn Power!

X-MEN MESSIAH COMPLEX ONE SHOT
What happens when the first mutant since House of M is born in the Marvel Universe? Crossover! X-MEN MESSIAH COMPLEX #1 is the first part of said crossover. I've been out of the non-Astonishing X-Men loop for a while, but I'm gonna give this "event" a try.

BIFF BAM POW #1
After approximately 183 years, Evan Dorkin has finally released BIFF BAM POW, what he calls a "most-ages" comics. Full of fun tales of intergalactic boxing, intergalactic crime fighting and lots of intergalactic other-stuff. It's like a gateway comic between BUZZBOY and MILK & CHEESE.

Make sure to read some comics before you get cracked out on all your leftover candy!

Call it one more case of serendipity among the mainstream media, as last Friday's USA Today and the latest issue of Wired on newsstands (15.11) prominently feature stories about the sagging market for manga in Japan.

Sounds odd doesn't it, considering most Borders or Barnes & Noble locations in America carry exponentially more manga exports than graphic novels (and about 60-80 percent of those GNs are reprints of pamphlet American superhero comics).

Fact is, Daniel Pink's Wired piece reports "manga has become a bit like television in the U.S. It reaches a wide but inexorably shrinking audience." Moreover, weekly circulation figures for Japan's comic magazines have dropped by some 50 percent, falling from a peak of 1.34 BILLION books in 1995 to 745 million in 2006.

The strange vibe in the USA Today piece (the only one available online for now) comes from Tufts University professor Susan Napier, who believes Japanese readers are running away from manga due to an obsession with cooler technology -- the Internet, video games and cellular phones -- some of the very same reasons Americans cite in explaining shrinking domestic comic sales.

(Check out this interesting and longer interview with Dr. Napier, certainly not a manga culture newbie, here.)

Pink's feature (one of two in the latest Wired) also posits a "cure" to the malaise affecting manga: Bolstering the independent market for fan fiction of existing characters at comics markets (called comikets) like Super Comic City, held twice yearly in Tokyo. Nearly a half-million fans sample the efforts of some 33,000 artists who attend these comikets.

And, the majority of manga publishers aren't all that worried about copyright issues either. "The publishers understand that this does not diminish the sales of original product but may increase them. So they don't come down here and shut [artists] down," says Kouichi Ichikawa, an organizer of these independent markets specializing in dojinshi (non-professional, self-published manga) from Pink's Wired piece.

Super Comic City sounds a quite bit like SPX, doesn't it, just without all the capes? And, isn't the argument Ichikawa makes pretty similar to those you've heard from folks who advocate pirated music sites like the former Napster?

What do you think about the current state and quality of manga and its future?

Welcome to the second edition of Dark Side of the Horse. Here we take a look at some of the Star Wars comics Dark Horse puts out each month expanding on the Star Wars mythos, revealing characters past and present that shaped the Far, Far Away Galaxy, Long, Long Ago. Sit back, grab a latte and enjoy a recap of some sweet Star Wars action even a gambler like Solo could not pass up.

Star Wars: Legacy #16--Claws of the Dragon pt. 3
One of the best things about a story taking place in the far off future are the flashbacks explaining how things got all mucked up. Claws of the Dragon part 3 is just such a tale as reader learn more about Darth Krayt, his past, encounters with Obi-Wan Kenobi and how we came to be a dark lord of the Sith. What was just another afternoon of facing off with some Tusken Raiders butterflies in the future to a new dark lord. Good times to be had by all, good job Obi-Wan. First you don't finish off Vader then you help to create a future Sith.

There's more to this issue of Legacy. While the story of Obi-Wan is most-def the highlight we also see Cade's friends getting ready to mount a rescue, learn who his mother is and well ... we see yet another Skywalker set to embrace the Dark Side. This is a really good issue, just for Old Ben's story alone, but seeing the teaser for issue 17, Cade as a Sith, just gets you all goose-bumpy.

Nicely sandwiched between Iron Man and The Dark Knight for the summer of 2008 is the return of Mike Mignola's signature horror hero to the silver screen in Hellboy 2: The Golden Army.

The expectations will be higher for HB2, considering all the critical acclaim director Guillermo del Toro received, particularly from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, for last year's award-winning dark fantasy, Pan's Labyrinth.

You can whet your appetite for all things Hellboy with this wonderful Web site chock full of cool production art. By the way, there's talk of a B.R.P.D. spinoff too, according to Dark Horizons.

Speaking of the B.P.R.D., enjoy this video morsel from the set of Hellboy 2: The Golden Army with Silver Surfer avatar Doug Jones.

While reading the latest Usagi Yojimbo collection this week, I was reminded yet again how much I enjoy Stan Sakai's series, and thought to myself, "Maybe I should start reading the book monthly again? Now that the latest collected edition is out, surely it's not that far behind the single issues."

So then I did a little research. Usagi Yojimbo Vol. 21: The Mother of Mountains collects issues #83-89. The latest issue actually released? #106. That's more than just a few issues. And the problem is, for the past four years, Dark Horse has only released one Usagi Yojimbo collection a year (every summer), which collect seven issues. Meanwhile, each year has produced ten issues.

You can see where this is going, can't you? Not only are the collections running almost two years behind the serialized comic, but with each year they're getting further and further behind. (Meanwhile, the new Buffy the Vampire Slayer collection from Dark Horse has shown up only a few months past the storyline's conclusion in the comics.) So then the question becomes, at what speed do you collect your single issues into books?

If you collect comics too quickly, there are some immediate issues that will manifest themselves. First off, you're threatening to undercut the sales of single issues; why buy a book monthly if the very next month the collected edition will appear? Second, doing so will kill the shelf-life of your comic; savvy retailers order comics not only to sell in its first week of release, but for a longer, extended time period. A new reader who picks up the latest issue of a comic will come back for the previous four issues, for instance, but why do that if you can just snag the latest collection? A few years ago this was a problem that Marvel ran into when they raced collections out so quickly that retailers began to rightfully complain, and soon after the frequency slowed down a little bit.

On the other hand, collect them too slowly and you put the disconnect between the two forms of the comic so far apart that they'll never meet. Buying the first Crossing Midnight collection interested me enough that I started buying the book monthly, but it helped that only three or four more issues had been released since the first storyline wrapped. It was easy for me to go back and buy the other issues without feeling like I had to start searching eBay in the hope of finding those elusive missing chapters.

So where's the happy medium, a timeline that can make publisher, retailer, and consumer all happy? How quickly do you want to see your collected editions released? What's your vote?

(Don't mind me, I'll be wishing for more Usagi Yojimbo collections before I have to leave next-of-kin forwarding information with the comic book store.)

Hello, new comics! It's Wednesday and there is a lot of stuff to read, so no time for dilly-dallying! (Also, no lollygagging, dawdling or roustabouting. ) To the comics!

OMEGA THE UNKNOWN #1
I just picked up the full run of the original Steve Gerber OMEGA series at Baltimore Comic-Con. It's about an alien and a 12-year old kid and their enigmatic relationship...and the Hulk is in it sometimes. It sounds weird because it is weird. It's unlike any other comic I've read and I loved it. In this new OMEGA limited-series, best-selling author Jonathan Lethem and POP GUN WAR artist Farel Dalrymple seem like they're embracing the best elements of the original and bringing something new to the table as well. It's even got Paul Hornschemeier as a colorist!



BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER #7
I'm a big-time Buffy nerd, so I'm always happy to see new issues of "Season 8". I'm also a mid-level Brian K. Vaughan nerd, so this second part of his Faith storyline earns extra points in my book. I don't know how many points that is or what the points are for, but now there are more of them.

INFINITY INC. #2
The first issue of INFINITY INC. was good stuff. After 52, the young heroes of Lex Luthor's Everyman Project are dealing with the after-effects of having (and losing) powers. It's like a Vertigo books wrapped in a DCU cover! Writer Peter Milligan is a guy whose comics are always interesting, even when people hate them. INFINITY INC. is no exception. Not the hate part. The interesting part.

HOWARD THE DUCK #1
The second Steve Gerber resurrection of the week is HOWARD THE DUCK #1. It's totally ridiculous and mean-spirited and exactly what a HOWARD THE DUCK comic should be. If you only know HOWARD THE DUCK from the fiasco of a movie, do yourself a favor and check this out.





I'd definitely check out the Goon-y ACTION COMICS #856, the awesome horror manga KUROSAGI CORPSE DELIVERY SERVICE, Tony Millionaire's SOCK MONKEY INCHES INCIDENT trade and probably a bunch of other stuff, too. So remember what I said about dilly-dallying. No time! None!