Mary Jane. Aunt May. Uncle Ben. I couldn’t save any of you. Never had the power. Never could handle the responsibility. When I’m buried beside you, will you tell me . . . why you lied to me?
Spider-Man: Reign, from writer and artist Kaare Andrews, is a powerful and emotional journey through the tortured mind of Peter Parker as he enters the last years of his life and begins to confront everything that he has ever cared for and lost.
The Eisners are the comic book equivalent of the Oscars. The winners have been posted. The full list of nominated entries can be found here. The full results are found below, with commentary by me for the categories of particular interesting:
Best Short Story
“A Frog’s Eye View,” by Bill Willingham and James Jean, in Fables: 1001 Nights of Snowfall (Vertigo/DC)
This is a pretty cool story but I dunno if it’s worthy of the best short story. The artwork is brilliant but it was over before it started. Maybe I’m being hypercritical about this but as I’ve not really read the other stories in this category.
Best Single Issue (or One-Shot)
Batman/The Spirit #1: “Crime Convention,” by Jeph Loeb and Darwyn Cooke (DC)
I actually read and heard a lot of great things about this here little story. Definitely going to pick it up when it’s in a nice little collection, which hopefully should be pretty soon. Once again I’ve not actually read any of the other entries in this category. A couple of Adhouse stories in there, which makes me wonder why I’ve not been buying much from them.
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Loads of news coming out of San Diego this weekend, where the biggest Anglophone comic book convention is currently underway. Sunday is the last day of the convention. Here’s a collection of thoughts on the news that I’ve found interesting:
Dark Horse Presents Returns
Seems that the little anthology that could is coming back, but not in the way that we thought. They’re putting it up on MySpace, which means I’m going to actually have to go over to MySpace, something I thought I’d never do, as I hate MySpace. The most interesting part of this is Joss Whedon is creating something called Sugarshock, so that will be worth having a look at.
Terry Moore and Humberto Ramos – Runaways
See I’m a HUGE fan of Brian K Vaughan. For those in the dark, he writes Ex Machina, Y:The Last Man, he wrote Pride of Baghdad and is currently a staff righter for Lost. However I’ve never picked up his Runaways series. I keep eyeing up the hardcovers whenever I’m in the store but that’s about it. It’s not that the artwork doesn’t appeal, it’s just that the concept hasn’t grabbed me. The thing is, obviously it’s something that has grabbed a lot of people over at Marvel. So much so that they’ll get Joss Whedon to write an arc and now it was announced that Terry Moore will continue to write it and they’ve put Humberto Ramos on art duties. The great thing is that Humberto is finally drawing a book that suits his artistic sensibilities. The thing I’ve found with regards to Ramos, is that his art is really suited to one kind of story. Sure he’s tried to do other more serious things, but I find that that’s not his strength. His exaggerated feet, eyes and body frames doesn’t really translate well to that kind of story. However when it comes to teen-centric stories however, he’s a complete shoe-in. This is what I call, good editorial art-casting.
Bill Sienkiewicz – 30 Days of Night
I’m a huge David Mack fan, but before David there was Bill. This is the first thing I’ve seen that Bill has painted all of his own. He was involved in the excellent Black Widow miniseries a few years ago which was great, but this stuff is pure Bill Sienkiewicz. So I’ll definitely be picking up this book when it’s released. Yeah I know this isn’t really new, but I just loved that image.
I’ll be back later on to talk about more random news.
I’ve been living in a bit of a bubble these past few years with respect to my comic book reading habits. I tend to read books that I hear about on websites and what I see on the shelf in front of me at the store. The problem is that this is limiting somewhat and I know that there is an absolute PLETHORA of books out there that I would really enjoy if only I knew about them. I guess as a reviewer of graphic novels it’s part of my mission to hunt these things out myself and really try new things. Sadly my reading of reviews is kind of limited as the number of review sites that I visit has diminished since the Fourth Rail went offline last year sometime. Fair enough the guys behind those particular sites are now doing other things in the form of ComicPants and Eyeoncomics however the consistency is just not there really, which is a shame, but I’m living in a glass box really and I shouldn’t be throwing stones myself to be honest.
The thing is I’ve been listening to more comic podcasts (in addition to producing my own) and that has seriously reinvigorated me in the reading and reviewing comics. One book that was mentioned and I thought was intriguing was a book that I mentioned from published First Second called, American born Chinese. And what an amazing find this book actually is.
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Week 2 of the Splash Panel podcast. This week I discuss Brian Michael Bendis and Ed Brubaker and their past and recent projects. What works for me what doesn’t. Also I give an angry little rant at the leeches over at Titan Comics.
Not a review but the first ever Splash Panel podcast. I expect to do this once a week on a Sunday evening. It’s a long time coming and something I’ve been meaning to do for a good long while, however I’ve not had the drive and the motivation until now, but enough of this writing malarkey get the audio fix.
I’ve started doing a new thing on my Flickr account (as of this month). Basically I’ll be going through all the online solicitations from the Previews to come down the line and highlight all the covers and potentially books that I like. So here’s those images for June 2007.
We generally don’t review anything but graphic novels on the ‘Panel, however every once in a while a book comes along that I actually pick up and I generally can’t let it go, The Dark Tower that was released by Marvel a couple of weeks ago is one of those books. There are at least three really good reasons that I can think of as to why I should have avoided this book. I’ll start off by saying that I’ve never read a Stephen King book. In fact the closest I’ve ever come to the man’s work is watching ‘The Green Mile’, which in my book seriously doesn’t count unless the movie was as close to the book in the same way that ‘Sin City’ was, otherwise they’re two completely different things. Therefore I have no affinity to these characters as I would have, if say ‘His Dark Materials’ gets made into a comic book.
The other point is the underhanded way in which Marvel decided to promote this book. To all those thinking that Stephen King actually wrote this, think again. We’ve been buffered by not just Peter David doing the writing but another guy above him as well, before we get to the man himself at the top. King I guess acts as more of an advisor over a lunch as they hash things out. Don’t spend too much time on this, you’ve got more important things to do.
In addition to that I’m not a Peter David fan. Never have been and somehow I never think I will be. Not to get personal or anything but he’s one of the very few creators that I’ve allowed his personal politics take judgement for me over his work, which is why I tend to avoid it completely. Plenty of fish in the sea, plenty of other books to read and all that. He can continue to do his thing and I’ll do my thing.
So you’re probably wondering why I even bothered looking at this book. The honest truth is because after all the crap that Marvel pulled above, they did one thing incredibly well and that was choosing one of my favourite artists, pairing him with one of my favourite colourists, and fortunately, together they’ve made magic on a page. Continue reading
