Splash Panel

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.

Editor

Khaled Abou Alfa

Staff Writer

James Huff

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. Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve got to say that this book took me over 6 months to get around to reading. This wasn’t because I was excited about reading it, this wasn’t because I had better things to read (as you’ll understand from the review) but it was mainly because the story content hits far too close to home for my liking. I’m Lebanese and therefore have see the effects of war on my country. I know what it’s like to walk through the streets of your capital and see pure destruction all around. Scorched black buildings, bullet holes the smell of burn and the uneasy nature of the whole experience.

What I thought I wouldn’t have to live through twice in my life I did, during the summer of 2006 as my country got levelled once again. That was around the time that DMZ came about, it’s about the fictional second American Civil war and is set in New York City.
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When I started writing last year’s list I did actually struggle to find that top 10 definitive list of graphic novels that truly stood out this year; we’ve had some absolute stonking contributions that deserve your attention, however it definitely didn’t feel as vibrant as that of last year. I guess the proof is in the pudding, in so much that I’ve brought less books this year than I did in 2005, at least completely original work, and yet I didn’t get the feeling that I was being cheated out of anything.

The thing is I did actually stop reading several series that I generally do pick up. Ultimate Spider-man, Ultimate X-men, X-men, Amazing Spider-man. I also bought less manga this year. In previous years I would continue to by One Piece and Naruto, however this year I only bought Vagabond and a couple of spurious books like Eden and the excellent Path of the Assassin (3 volumes). Humanoids stopped publishing anything and I haven’t really filled that void with anything else to be honest.

What is evident however is that there are a number of ongoing series published in graphic novel format that show a true golden era of comics. It’s come to the stage where at one point if I was asked if there was one comic book series that I could get on a desert island I have no idea, because the plots and characters on several of these series has become so close to me because I’ve been reading their story for YEARS that I wouldn’t be able to answer that question. So 2006 while not a great year overall for excellence in NEW series coming up, it definitely was a triumph in continuing the stories of existing characters, where each book is a gem as a lot of these series will most probably be ending in the a year or two.

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