Comics Alliance: An AOL Comic Book Community

If you enjoyed his award-winning work on 1000 Steps to World Domination and Sunset City: For Active Senior Living, you'll want to be among the first to read my pal and fellow Austin transplant Rob Osborne's newest project, The Nearly Infamous Zango, shipping next spring.

The twisted wit of Osborne has come up with one doozy of a concept this time. Seems the once-feared supervillian, Lord Alfred Zango, Jr., has developed a strong case of laziness (or is it agoraphobia?) in his old age, forcing him to rely on his acidic wit and not-so-brilliant minions to handle the heavy lifting that comes with terrorizing the fine citizens of Metroville.

Only time and steady orders from Diamond will guarantee Lord Zango's bi-monthly appearances in your LCS. Till March, enjoy this five-page preview and video previewing the further misadventures of the infamous Z man.

In a previous comics blogging life not so long ago, you may have read my first look piece about Rich Koslowski's newest project, B.B. Wolf & The L.P.s, in collaboration with writer Johnnie Arnold.

Rich has been a very busy guy lately, completing B.B. Wolf in his gorgeous ink wash style (very similar to his work on the award-winning Three Fingers and The List), starting a new Three Geeks GN (a movie based on the trio is in the works) and staying ahead of schedule on his first assignment for the House of Ideas, scripting a 12-part story arc about the new Guardian for Marvel Comics Presents. And, that list doesn't include his freelance endeavors for other publishers including Archie Comics and Devil's Due (Family Guy).

Watching from the sidelines since the debut of Three Fingers five years ago, I'm glad to see Rich's "star" is finally ascending in the comics industry, and it's about time...

BTW, Rich pens one of the more politically incorrect and funnier creator blogs around, no doubt a product of his awesome storytelling, a gregarious nature (that belies a heart of gold) and a frighteningly acidic sense of humor (especially when I'm within earshot).

A few months ago, I kicked off my almost-weekly Comics Page feature with a look at the treasure trove of art and music that is Doot Doot Garden, the blog home of my pal Craig Thompson, nee of the classic and award-winning Blankets and, in my opinion, his even awesomer memoir, Carnet de Voyage. Seems my pal may have to make room for another award, however, not one of the comics variety, according to a recent news piece in The Oregonian.

Craig was nominated for a Grammy Award in the Best Recording Package category for his groovy design work on the Portland indy band Menomena's latest album, Friend & Foe. (Listen to Wet and Rusting from the new album.)



By the way, Craig accompanied Menomena on their European tour, creating some truly amazing impromptu sketches during their sets, as you can see in the YouTube video below.


For those of you who haven't been lucky enough to have your copy of Blankets, Goodbye Chunky Rice, Carnet de Voyage or anything else signed and sketched by Craig, you may wince after watching this very short YouTube video about what he does with the art he makes during Menomena's shows.

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.

Welcome to the land where comic books roam like wild buffalo. Where Green Lanterns fight Yellow Lanterns and Cable is somehow almost cool again. And Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

GREEN LANTERN #25
This issue of GREEN LANTERN, the SINESTRO CORPS WAR finale, is easily filled with more "holy crap" moments than any other comic this week. Saying anything about anything that happens in this issue would just ruin it for you so just read it as soon as possible. It is absolutely epic and is probably the best non-Grant-Morrison-penned superhero comic of the year. Even the two-page preview of the next big GL event was more incredible than most whole comics!


X-FACTOR #26
How is it that there are, like, three good big crossovers going on right now? Of course there's the aforementioned SINESTRO CORPS WAR...kick-ass, obviously. You've got the Ra's al-Ghul thing going on in BATMAN. Pretty good, if you ask me. (It doesn't hurt to have Morrison, Dini and Milligan writing the thing!) But lastly, and to me, most surprisingly, there's the MESSIAH COMPLEX storyline running through the X-books. This13-part (!) crossover about the first mutant birth since the end of HOUSE OF M is more readable and consistent than any X-story in a long time and so far, the X-FACTOR have been the best of the lot.

TALES OF THE TMNT ORIGINAL SERIES VOL 1 TP
Featuring the first appearance of the Rat King! This is a collection of the old TALES OF THE TMNT series. I couldn't find a picture of the cover, so here's a picture of the super-rad looking new Leonardo figure that I found on Mirage Comics' homepage. It's awesomeness knows no bounds.

Clink on the link to see more awesomeness, some of it may also know no bounds.

If you enjoyed Fantagraphics' great art anthology Beasts!, you'll be very pleased to learn FBI art director Jacob Covey is working on a second volume and promises "many names that readers won't recognize, bringing a whole new audience to some artists who deserve more exposure." The first artist to turn in his "beast," however, was the legendary Jaime Hernandez of Love and Rockets fame.

Check out Jacob's Beasts! site often for updates and sneak peeks of monsters, both past and present...

You know how much I admire Frank Espinosa, the talented cartoonist behind the wonderful adventure series Rocketo -- unfortunately on hiatus until next year -- and his recent work on the awesome Image mini-series Killing Girl. From time to time, I drop in on Espinosa's Image forum to see if he's posted any juicy art tidbits for the next Rocketo mini, Journey to the New World, but have found precious little worth posting lately, except for this link to some cool images posted in mid-September.

Visit FrankEspinosa.com, however, and you'll find some remnants of beautiful promotional poster art from Rocketo's pre-Image days at Speakeasy, but even that's not the main attraction here. The real finds here, however, are a trio of concise and interesting Quick Time videos allowing Espinosa to show and explain the creative backbone behind Rocketo from the perspective of an artist -- specifically the relatively quick transition from rough pencils to a finished inked panel -- and a gifted storyteller weaving myth and history to great effect.

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.

While millions of Americans were flooding malls on Black Friday, one of my favorite cartoonists, the original American Elf James Kochalka, had more important things to do... James and his wife Amy welcomed their second son, Oliver Jonco, into the world on Nov. 23. Just a reminder, my friends at Top Shelf Productions will be publishing a third volume of American Elf strips in 2008, collecting James' online dailies from 2006-07.

Met up quite unexpectedly Thanksgiving eve with Alan J. Porter, the hardest working writer I know (one of the nicest too!) and an expert on all things comics, James Bond and The Beatles, at my town's local comic shop of record, Austin Books and Comics (before I forget, welcome Maakies creator Tony Millionaire there Dec. 1).

Alan is a multi-tasker extraordinaire with all the creative work he's already doing plus a new James Bond book (before Bond 22 hits the silver screen next year), a day job that keeps him hopping and keeping the women in his life (two teenage daughters and a beautiful, young wife) very happy. So, it takes something pretty extreme to derail this man's train...

Unfortunately, all it took was a request to his daughter's high school English teacher that she be allowed to supplement her prose reading with graphic novels and comics, and there were good reasons for doing so beyond the obvious ones. After writing a comics blog for almost two years, I wish I could say I was surprised by said teacher's typical and uninformed response, but I wasn't. Judge for yourselves.

Makes you wish you could pull Stan Lee from behind a blackboard for instances like this, a la a spot Marshall McLuhan siting in Annie Hall...

Puts a rather sour spin on my pal Eddie Campbell's ongoing argument in the comics industry at large about the nomenclature of graphic novels and literature, doesn't it?

Think a comic book aimed at "impressionable" teenagers can stem the dual homegrown threat of racism and terrorism in Europe? If you're somewhat skeptical at the mere thought of it, so are the editors of Foreign Policy's blog Passport who report the interior ministry of the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia developed a comic called Andi to fight, not only terrorism, but racial extremism.

Blaming his lack of an internship to xenophobia, a Muslim teen named Murat is tempted by "The Dark Side" of terrorism by a radical sheikh and his young apprentice in the latest issue (#2). The plan goes awry, however, when Murat's free-thinking sister, Ayshe, is threatened by said apprentice. Of course, Murat is helped along the way by his average white teen pal Andi.

In the first issue, Andi and his friends battle the influence of racial stereotypes with the help of true heroes like Martin Luther King Jr. whose August 28, 1963 speech, I Have a Dream, obviously still inspires people of all nations nearly a half-century later...

Will German teens, no doubt as tough to reach as their counterparts in America, take the bait? Download these free comics via PDF here.

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!

For those of you who are friends -- or enemies -- of Eddie Campbell, choose the caption that best explains -- for your amusement -- the bandage on the Maestro's noggin:

1. Thank you, Anne!

2. OK, it is a graphic novel...

3. Alan doesn't like you anymore.

4. Callum, I've decided to give you a raise after all...

5. The hats just don't fit like they used to...

6. Don't EVER stiff me for dinner again at San Diego, or else!

Or, better yet, make up one of your own!

Just as I was about to lose all hope Tom Beland, nee of the auto-bio romance True Story, Swear To God, had any interest in updating his bare-bones Web site, apparently, my forever fanatical 49ers friend has put some of his recent down time away from his wonderful book to good use. And it shows in his newly remodeled site, full of sketches.

Perhaps, it's all the new attention, considering True Story moved to Image last year... or maybe those awesome Spidey one-shots (Web of Romance) or the upcoming Isla De La Muerta, featuring the Fantastic Four in -- surprise, surprise -- Puerto Rico.

My only complaint about Tom's Marvel work: He's been the writer/scripter only on these one-shots, so we haven't seen him rendering Spidey or the FF under the Marvel logo. However, if you've been following True Story lately (find a copy of Tom's latest trade collecting the first six Image issues), Tom made the first of many trips to New York with his lady love, finally getting the chance to put his mark on the "universe."

If you grew up reading comics as a defense against the cruelties of the real world as I did in the mid 60s -- I owe my sanity to Jack Kirby, Doug Wildey, Steve Ditko, Joe Kubert, Neal Adams, Stan Lee, Carmine Infantino, Murphy Anderson, Joe Sinnott, Bob Haney, Gray Morrow, Gil Kane, John Broome, Pat Boyette, Gardner Fox, Dick Dillin, Mike Sekowsky, Ross Andru and Mike Esposito, Dick Ayers, Jim Aparo and Alex Toth (only a short list) -- New York was a strange and wonderful place where costumed men and women danced around skyscrapers to protect the public from evildoers. It was certainly a universe away from my flat, humid and often boring (except for the occasional rattlesnake or flood) southeastern Texas home.

With that in mind, you'll appreciate why I loved this sequence from True Story #5 so much, I offered to buy the page (actually pull out of Tom's cold, dead fingers)... After a few e-mails back and forth about it ,then meeting up in San Diego, Tom decided to let his baby go, because he knew I appreciated how much love he left on the page for New York, Spidey and his family. Been there, felt that too.

Enjoy...