The Batman: The Dark Knight Returns trailer is out:
I'm certain there's some thoughtful comment I should be making about what this movie has to say about the current state of politics and the economy, but all I was really thinking about was why Christopher Nolan hasn't cast any blonde women in these movies. Does he think blonde hair is too cheery for his unrelentingly grim world, or is he trying to avoid any comparisons between his leading actresses and Tim Burton's versions with Kim Basinger and Michelle Pfeiffer? Because, trust me, Mr. Nolan: no one is going to confuse your work with Burton's. One of you has a sense of humor.
There appears to be a lively feud brewing between comics-world superstars Frank Miller and Alan Moore, sparked by their very different views on the Occupy Wall Street movement. Both authors are throwing around some pretty inflammatory statements, but I think Miller sounds notably crazier... so go Team Moore!
Starting at the end of the month, Australian comic book fans will be able to adorn their cars with a range of classic DC superhero images. The plates are not cheap (starting at $195 AUD), and decorating your vehicle with a famous symbol of excessive speed like The Flash seems like a bad idea... but I notice they're promoting a plate with an image of the Looney Tunes Road Runner, too, so maybe I just don't understand the Australian bureaucratic mind.
According to a Belgian judge, Tintin in the Congoisn't a racist book, just a "reflection of [author Hergé's] time", and therefore cannot be banned on racial grounds.
Of course, it was a racist time, but apparently the book can't be both.
Hopefully this isn't a major financial blow to the actual comic book creators
According to the LA Times, Barnes and Noble announced last week that it will no longer offer copies of 100 backlist graphic novels from DC Comics in its bookstores, including well-known titles like Alan Moore’s Watchmen and Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns. B&N is upset that DC signed a digital distribution deal with Amazon for the books, making them exclusively available on either Amazon Kindles or other devices (like iPads) with an Amazon Kindle app.
Just what the comics 'verse needs: more sex kittens
David Willis, author of the web comic Shortpacked! did a beautiful job of summarizing the many, many problems with DC Comics' reboot of the Teen Titans character Starfire in this strip.
A gelled mop of hair = movie shorthand for deep emotional scars
I've finally seen the trailer for The Amazing Spiderman movie, and while I cannot get behind Andrew Garfield's Robert-Pattinson-style tousled hair, I must say it looks fairly entertaining:
I would have preferred to see more actual human interaction and less swinging through the city (although I accept that naked pandering to 3-D aficionados is par for the course with current action movies), but I found the mysterious briefcase and the fate of Peter's parents sufficiently tantalizing to leave me looking forward to July 3rd, 2012.
Why so many geek-culture shoutouts, Williams-Sonoma?
These Spiderman Comic Book Cookie Cutters are the kind of thing I stare at longingly for five full minutes in the store, trying to convince myself that of course I'd actually use them. But sanity eventually wins out, and I hang on to my $19.95 to waste another day.
If I was Mark Zuckerberg, I'd keep a copy of this upcoming biographical comic under my pillow, and whenever I started feeling too big for my britches I'd take it out and stare at it. I bet two minutes of looking at a portrait like that would be enough to deflate anyone's ego.
Yesterday, Publishers Weekly posted a helpful round-up of the kids' comics announcements released at this year's Comic-Con, including info on upcoming titles from Smile's Raina Telgemeier, the Amulet series' Kazu Kibuishi, and Walking Dead author Robert Kirkman. (Note: The article's second-to-last paragraph is all about graphic novel tie-ins for various products, so if you don't care about a book series based on Lego’s Ninjago toy figures, feel free to skip it.)
If you've got a strong stomach and 4+ minutes to spare, the trailer's out for the second season of The Walking Dead, AMC's television adaptation of Robert Kirkman's comic book series:
The seventh volume of Flight is another solid installment in Villard Books' series of lavishly illustrated graphic novel anthologies. These sixteen short stories—edited by contributor and art director Kazu Kibuishi—feature a variety of genres and artistic styles, but one thing remains consistent: the authors' commitment to creating the most sumptuous, richly imagined visual worlds possible.
Flight is expensive, it includes a disproportionate number of male contributors, and some of its stories work better than others. The artwork in Kostas Kiriakakis's Premium Cargo is exquisite, but the story is schmaltzy rather than genuinely affecting, and Bannister and Grimaldi's Career Day is too much of a one-note joke to merit 12 pages. Still, the joys of this series far outweigh its disappointments. Katie and Steven Shanahan's goofy Fairy Market, Kean Soo's sweet-natured Jellaby: Guardian Angel, and Cory Godbey's mythology-inspired Onere and Piccola are all outstanding, boasting memorable storytelling and dazzling imagery. In fact, I would have preferred it if Villard Books had actually charged a little more for Flight* and released the series in hardcover. Imagine what an awesome coffee table book it would make: delightful to flip through, but sufficiently entertaining to actually read.
Whoa: somebody from the site Branded in the 80s dug up a copy of DC Comics' Super Heroes Super Healthy Cookbook, a mini cookbook that appeared in the July 1981 issue of Woman's Day. Doesn't the mere sight of those Vegetable Robots make you want to have a party and serve 'em to all your friends?
After The Last Stand, there's nowhere to go but up, right?
I don't know why the full-length trailer for this summer's X-Men: First Class looks so low-budget (although it probably has something to do with January Jones's "diamond form" look), or when James McAvoy got so jowly, but I totally don't care: I'm gonna be there June 3rd with bells on.
While poking around my local Target store over the weekend, I ran across the newly-released "motion comic" Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Season Eight DVD. I had never heard of the motion comic format, but now I'm better informed: motion comics are cartoon/comic hybrids, and (judging by this one, at least) they are incredibly cheap-looking—i.e., stuff moves, but barely. Check it out:
Seriously, the combination of unrecognizable voice actors, C-grade animation, and terrible artwork (which we've been complaining about since the comic's debut issue) makes us even sadder that the legit Buffy cartoon never made it on-air.
The Knight Life: Chivalry Ain't Dead, by Keith Knight
Contest Book #18
Keith Knight's The Knight Life: Chivalry Ain't Dead is a low-key but consistently entertaining comic strip centered around Knight, an African-American cartoonist and musician living in L.A. Knight's family and friends (including a former rapper whose label has faked his death in order to boost record sales) are heavily featured in the autobiographical strip, which dabbles in everything from public transportation to his German wife's maladroit attempts at embracing American slang.
Sadly, the advance-reader copy we received was a stapled-together collection of 4 pages of introduction and 12 pages' worth of strips, so we were just guessing on the contents of the book's remaining 195 pages... until Wikipedia informed us that one can read the past Knight Life strips here. Flipping through the strips online is a testament to Knight's flexible sense of humor, which seems equally comfortable taking jabs at Dick Cheney's reserved seat in Hell and poking gentle fun at his wife's fear of spiders. Individual strips were rarely laugh-out-loud hilarious, but this is one of those strips that is best read as a collection—like early Bloom County, The Knight Life combines the personal and political in a way that manages to be as endearing as it is amusing.
According to the Infinite Monkey Theorem, an immortal monkey hitting a keyboard at random for an infinite amount of time will eventually replicate the complete works of Shakespeare. Flipping through Jonathan Rosenberg's Goats: Showcase Showdown is like reading that keyboarding monkey's literary output at the halfway point—recognizable words have been formed, but it's still total gibberish.
The plot (such as it is) centers around a human dude named Jon and his companions, a constantly shifting group of demons, aliens, and talking animals. The characters drift through an alternate universe created by some of the aforementioned immortal monkeys, squabbling and hitting on each other and hanging out in a bar staffed by a Swiss bartender named Alfred. There are frequent outbreaks of gore and occasional references to Reese Witherspoon. Oh, and an anthropomorphic stalk of broccoli wearing Converse.
Even if I understood Goats, I don't think I'd love it. Rosenberg takes too many cheap shots at Britney Spears and Paula Abdul and doesn't include enough girl characters, although I was intrigued by his cigar-smoking, gun-toting take on Rainbow Brite. I laughed at the odd line (“I look like I had a knife fight with Violet Beauregarde.”), but found the larger story too self-indulgently kooky to be worth puzzling out.
Eight months later, 14-year-old Erik Martin (a.k.a. "Electron Boy") is starring in his own 10-page-long comic created by a group of independent comic creators who wrote, drew and inked the panels in their spare time. According to the Seattle Times, the plot features "dark matter, a series of microscopic wormholes, the Space Needle, Experience Music Project, the potential destruction of planet Earth and Jimi Hendrix".
The official trailer for Marvel's Thor movie is out, and it left me with two burning questions. Is that dark-haired dude all in black meant to be Loki, and, if so, is he supposed to look just like Johnny Weir?
