Comics Alliance: An AOL Comic Book Community

From the vivid mind of Jenna Jameson and Witchblade co-creator Christina Z comes Shadow Hunter, the sexiest and deadliest demon slayer ... ever!! A young, orphaned woman, living a humdrum life in the big city, has her world turned upside down when she realizes her family is from hell ... literally. Ignited visions of a demonic past, dark passions, and a strangely dangerous power all surface along with revelations of her true lineage. As she struggles to come to terms with her new role, she must find her place in this world, and ends up saving humanity one demon at a time as the sexy, sultry and badass Shadow Hunter. Read the preview now for free.

Volume 8 of D.Gray-Man continues the story of Allen Walker with minimal Allen Walker in this volume. You can gain a deeper understanding of how I feel about the series as a whole in my old blog as I spoke about D.Gray-Man vol. 6. I still find the story, at times, confusing as it moves very fast and there seems to be so much back-story left to learn about, but I'm very pleased to say volume 8 really kicks up and continues the battle from volume 7 and starts to give hope for future volumes. Check out the entire impression for D.Gray-man now.

This cool Iron Man cartoon over at the new site Marvelkids.com looks to be the first of three CGI cartoons by ULTIMATE ALLIANCE animators Blur Studios. According to Marvel, this "Marvel Adventures Iron Man advervideo" is "a thrilling, cutting-edge adventure!"


Why is there an ad before my advervideo?
"Hey! Little kids! You know you love Iron Man, but did you know that Iron Man loves the University of Phoenix?!"

Typically, I don't go to comics-related gallery openings, but if I lived on the Left Coast, I probably couldn't resist attending the premiere of Under the Influence: A Tribute to Stan Lee, cosponsored by Golden Apple and Gallery 1988, Tuesday, Jan. 8 from 7-11 p.m.

First off, Golden Apple and Gallery 1988 will sponsor a Be a Superhero fund raiser, in which real, live and professional comics artists will doing sketches to benefit the Hero Initiative (formerly ACTOR) of donors as their favorite superhero, so expect to see more sketches of Batman and Wolverine's less athletic brothers floating around Hollyweird than you'd ever care to see. And, Stan Lee of Who Wants to Be a Superhero? will be in attendance too.

I suspect, however, the real attraction for most of you will be the bizarre (who knew Magneto loved ducks?) and cool paintings by folks like Disney designer Eric Tan and Brandon Bird. If you love Eric's take on the X-Men below as much as I do, 100 signed and numbered posters will be available at the opening. Check the Gallery 1988 Web site the day after the show if there are any extras, should you want one...

I wouldn't be surprised if most of you weren't familiar with the work of painter/colorist/computer graphic artist Jose Villarrubia, with the possible exception of his gorgeous work adapting Alan Moore's Voice of the Fire and The Mirror of Love, both published by Top Shelf Productions. Nevertheless, working along the margins of comicdom is just the way Jose likes it, which is why I'm filling this week's space "outing" the wonderful work of my versatile and modest friend.


Behind the scenes, however, Jose is one of the comics industry's go-to professionals when it comes computer coloring, photography and digital illustration. In fact, the list of collaborators this ex-pat from Spain has worked with over the years -- excluding his work with Moore -- reads like a "who's who" list of industry luminaries, including Jae Lee on Fantastic Four1234, Paul Pope on Batman Year 100, J.H. Williams III on Desolation Jones and Richard Corben on Cage.

I feel a strong kinship to Jose (certainly not on the talent side), because his journey as a creative professional has taken him places he never expected, like his second career paralleling his comics work as a full-time professor of art at the Maryland Institute College of Art (one of my fond memories of Jose is his "Pied Piper of Hamlin-like" influence on his students following him around comic book conventions soaking up the creativity in the room).

Besides the links I've embedded along the way to provoke your interest in Jose's career, I suspect you'll feel some of the same warmth, kindness and creative intensity my talented friend projects effortlessly after viewing this video tour of Baltimore, his adopted town.

Once in a while, it's nice and kinda humbling to read/hear catch phrases you thought you came up with all on your own emitting from the oral orifices of others. Case in point is Thursday's piece in the Washington Post about children's author Jon Scieszka, author of The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales and the Time Warp Trio series, being named the first Ambassador of Reading by the Library of Congress.

Scieszka who runs Guys Read, a web-based nonprofit whose mission is to increase literacy among boys by motivating them to read "by connecting with texts they will want to read." Texts, for example, like comics... Scieszka ought to know what he's talking about: In a former life, he waged war on the front lines of literacy battlefield as an elementary school teacher.

What caught my attention was the latest in a growing number of writers and experts who promote comics as a means to encourage boys and girls to read more. Sciezka believes teachers and parents need to expand their preconceived notions of what constitutes good reading material to include science-fiction, non-fiction, graphic novels and whatever it takes...

No doubt, reading the monthly adventures of Thor, the God of Thunder in Journey Into Mystery at the tender age of 8 spurred my interest in mythology (no doubt Ray Harryhausen's Jason and the Argonauts helped too), as much as watching George Pal's War of the Worlds encouraged me to read the infinitely better H.G. Wells novel.

Hey! It's Friday. This week that means new comics. Is that a surprise? I'm mildly surprised. Also, this week, Greg McElhatton returns with some new manga for the kids! The kids love the manga! Here he goes!

Probably, the worst kept "secret" in the comics world as of late has been the outcome of Amazing Spider-Man #545 in which Peter Parker's pact with Mephisto supposedly erases his love affair/marriage with Mary Jane once and for all to save his beloved Aunt May.

We can debate all the reasons why Marvel did it coming and going -- rebooting the character or making the comic better resemble the movie franchise come to mind immediately. Frankly, I'm not crazy about the move -- Aunt May has more lives than the average black cat! -- and Marvel probably expects this kind of reaction from oldtimers like me, but not kids and young adults who may be discovering Spidey for the first time.

My question is a simple one: Is the Spider-Man comic "franchise" better off with or without Mary Jane? Why?

Give me reasons to hope this isn't another desperate move by the "former" House of Ideas merely to grab attention...

Perfect storm.

Organic.

Surge.

Back in the day.

Under the bus.

It is what it is.

Graphic novel?

Couldn't help but think about my friend Eddie Campbell -- seems he's taking a sabbatical from his must-read Fate of the Artist blog -- whilst reviewing Lake Superior State College's 33rd annual list of the List of Words Banished from the Queen's English for Mis-Use, Over-Use and General Uselessness, harkening back to his tirades, albeit polite ones, regarding the use of the term graphic novel. What follows is the Maestro's very own definition/opinion of the graphic novel ("in some vague hope that those who write nonsense will start to think more clearly").

Graphic Novel: Variously and confusingly used to indicate 1)all comic books, 2)a specific format of comic books, 3)indeed the physical object itself (as opposed to the work it contains), 4) what would in prose be a novel but illustrated as a comic, 5) a new form of pictorial literature. Since it is not much use for the purposes of communication, my feeling is that it's better to ditch the term altogether though of course it's much too late for that. However as an overview, I feel that posterity will come to see it as representative of a certain ambition to make something grand out of the elements of the strip cartoon. Its failure will be due to its inability to escape out of comic book culture.

However, Eddie claims the term comic book is useful, "because everybody knows what it means. American style comic books. They know what it looks like and can point to industry sales statistics. Comic books are clearly objects that exist in time and space. Since the things that happen in comic books follow a set of rules and involve activities that don't happen elsewhere, one can use the term to indicate a genre of popular fiction. Comic books can be formatted in different ways, thus a 200 page comic book is still a comic book."

I can agree with both definitions up to a point. From Hell is a graphic novel, and a transcendent one at that, while a story arc of the average X-Men serial (a pamphlet?) remains a comic book. Still, you could make a good argument the work by Joss Whedon and John Cassaday on Astonishing X-Men or Neil Gaiman on Sandman are powerful works that happened to be published first in a serial format.

Here's my grand challenge: If you can come up with a term that better describes what most of us in comicdom call the graphic novel, take the plunge and submit it to the folks at Lake Superior State College for banning next year. If you want to erase funnybook or fanboy (the latter not exclusive to the comics industry) from the lexicon, however, I won't try to discourage you one little bit...

I was very much looking forward to reading my pal Tom Beland's latest one-shot classic for Marvel -- Fantastic Four: Isla de la Muerta -- and getting a first-hand look at the work of his artistic collaborator, Juan Doe. Evidently, so were a lot of other media folks, from the New York Times to Washington Post, only for different reasons than my own.

Seems Marvel's simultaneous publication of Isla de la Muerta in English and Spanish, in which the 4 battle the legendary blood-sucking Chupacabras (the Spanish word means goat sucker), is only the first from a comics publisher to date. Considering EIC Joe Quesada told the NYT, "Hispanics don't only mark the fastest-growing segment of the population but also one of our fastest-rising readership segments," you'd think publishers would've jumped on this market segment a long time ago.

I'm very well familiar with American GNs translated for foreign editions, but this pamphlet publication is a different animal indeed, and, evidently, one whose time is long overdue. My LCS of record sold out of the Spanish language edition on the very first day Isla de la Muerta was released, testimony to me this struck a nerve.

Check out both Spanish and English sample pages of Tom's latest Marvel book -- chock full of the playful banter among characters that's makes his auto-bio True Story Swear to God so special (one of the few pamphlet comics I buy, in addition to the trades) -- and be impressed...

In June of 2006, Alan Moore and the folks at Top Shelf were informed by the Great Ormond Street Hospital that publication of LOST GIRLS in the UK would infringe upon GOSH's copyright on Peter Pan. Top Shelf denied any copyright-wrong-doing but eventually agreed that the book would not be published until after the hospital's rights ran out in 2008.

Huzzah! That's tomorrow!

After more than a year and a half of waiting, Alan Moore's epic three-volume LOST GIRLS is finally going to see the light of day in the UK and the rest of the European Union on January 1, 2008. So if you guys get the internet in England, heed my words. Get yourself a copy of this book. It's amazing.

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.

How many of you went to the comic book store on Wednesday to buy new comics? Oh!! The humanity! The humiliation! It is an unfortunate situation, but thankfully, it's all over now, because new comics came out yesterday! Behold the power of the aforementioned comics!!

ACME NOVELTY LIBRARY #18
Chris Ware returns with another issue of ACME NOVELTY LIBRARY, this time collecting his previously published (in fancy-pants magazines) "Building Stories". If you ever like your comics without capes, you are probably already going to buy this, but guess what! I'm going to write about it anyway! Umm.....it's good.

PAX ROMANA #1
Did you read NIGHTLY NEWS? If you did, you're pretty excited about PAX ROMANA. It's by that guy Jonathan Hickman who wrote and drew NIGHTLY NEWS, but it's about time traveling modern soldiers in Ancient Rome!
Now for some grammar fun! Should I have capitalized the word "ancient"? Discuss!

HULK VS FIN FANG FOOM
You know how sometimes you get a comic and it's, like, This Guy vs That Guy but it ends up being, like "Oh! This Guy and That Guy thought they wanted to fight, but now they're friends!". This is not that comic. Hulk punches Fin Fang Foom through a roof! I generally like comics where people get punched through roofs and I think you will, too! Plus, the whole issue is drawn kinda like Jack Kirby! (Especially the reprint, which is drawn BY Jack Kirby.)

AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #545
So, this guy Nick just asked me if I was writing about AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #545. I told him no, but it was a lie. This last part of the "One More Day" storyline is likely to make you very angry. Like, Norman Osborn makes babies with Gwen Stacy angry. If you don't believe me, just look at the picture of Nick reading it!

If you want to find out what other comics came out this week that will make Nick make dumb faces, click the link below.

In conversations with comic geeks lately about the various funnybooks-to-movies adaptations in 2008, to my surprise, it's Iron Man -- not The Dark Knight -- that has many stoked, making that a decision (by Paramount or IM director Jon Favreau) to screen a trailer at Comic-Con a smart one.

Add one more fan to the list of "True Believers": The Wall Street Journal. Not only did the film receive primo front page real estate in Thursday's WSJ next to the B-52s first album in 16 years, the popular image of Robert Downey, Jr. sporting "Iron Man" hands also graces the online piece. Speaking of images, Marvel.com released a new digital of ol' Shellhead for you to drool over until May 2, but not much different than the one we saw this past fall...

Enjoy this sneak peek straight from Neil Gaiman.com of the animated adaptation of the Sandman muse's non-quite-a-children's-book Coraline by Laika Entertainment and director Henry Selick who directed Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas.

Great thanks to Neatorama for the link to this Fast Company story about the Portland, Ore., production company that's making Coraline and its direct connection to Nike.