Hey guys, it’s been a while, and I’ve been completely remiss not posting about this here (even though I’ve posted about it every other place, I’ve yet to post it on the actual Superhero Girl website. Terrible!). Anyway, if you didn’t already know, there is going to be an actual physical Superhero Girl book in glorious colour! Yes! And it’s coming out this month! It’s a beautiful hardcover book, colours by the amazing Cris Peter (who previously coloured my contribution to Marvel’s Girl Comics anthology), and published by Dark Horse Comics. Go here for some photos I took of the book! There is info about the book’s publication here, and you will be able to buy it pretty much anywhere. Shop at your local book/comic book store if you can, but you’ll be able to find the book on Amazon as well.
(via The Adventures of Superhero Girl)
You should buy it. I will.
Things I’ve read and liked the last week or so.
- The Mire (Becky Cloonan)
- Scalped Vol. 1: Indian Country (Jason Aaron and R.M. Guera)
- Svavelvinter & Slaktare Små (Erik Granström)
- Unknown Soldier Vol. 1: Haunted House (Joshua Dysart and Alberto Ponticelli)
And then I’m rereading Grant Morrison’s Doom Patrol too. Lots of comics.
Fantastic news everyone! I’ve known this for a bit, but my webcomic The Adventures of Superhero Girl is being published in a FULL COLOUR hardback by Dark Horse comics. And an introduction by the legendary Kurt Busiek, creator of Astro City!
Go to Robot 6 for the full press release.
WOO I’M SO EXCITED!!!! I really hope everyone supports Superhero Girl (and me!) and picks up a copy of this book when it comes out. It’ll be coloured by the AMAZING Cris Peter, who previously coloured my contribution to Marvel’s Girl Comics anthology, so you know it’ll look super spiffy.
Hurrah!
Fuck! Yes!
Brian Wood: Star Wars
As announced earlier today, I’m writing an ongoing Star Wars book for Dark Horse. Not just any Star Wars book, this will be called “Star Wars”, and will be set in the original trilogy, using the classic characters, and will pretend like its 1977 and no other films were every made or books ever…
I’m now fanboyishly excited about something Star Wars related for the first time in fucking ages.
This started out as a silent movie era super-villain, but then it grew into a poster for a noir version of Black Cat. (Not finished yet.)
Food and Comics and Comics and Food
You may not have spied this post from Ryan Kelly, but in it he mentions a web comic he is starting called Cocotte. Which implies food. And I know for a long time now Ryan’s wanted to do a culinary comic series. Me too. But I am not writing Cocotte.
I wish him luck and good fortune. My own culinary series, called STARVE, is something of a casualty. Created for Vertigo almost two years ago, it hit too many of the same notes as that Anthony Bourdain book they got going on, and so it was ultimately not approved. Another publisher, an indie one, also passed for similar reasons. I guess there is a real glut of food comics coming. STARVE now sits in limbo. It may, probably, be heavily modified to be about water scarcity and the politics of food and serve as a sequel to THE MASSIVE. If THE MASSIVE is a success, that is.
I mourn STARVE. It was awesome. It was funny, and really OCD with detail of food prep. I did a lot of research, like Northlanders-level research. But that’s the way it goes sometimes and repurposing is all you can do.
Although these days I think about writing STARVE as it was intended, but as a tv pilot. My agent thinks its an insane concept for a story, though. Maybe she’s right.
Random end of the year thoughts. Go read Ryan’s post, its full of info.
I want to see Starve in what ever way possible. A comic would be great as I can sort of already visualise how the panels would work with the food but a tv-show? Damn, I’d watch it. Lots of ideas that sounds insane has worked in tv.
It’s no surprise that I like Ryan’s art — some days I see far too much influence from him in my own things even — so I can’t wait for Cocotte.
Best news! Cinebook in the UK is reprinting and — I hope — translate what those missing since before of Valerian and Laureline by Mézières and Christin. So far they’ve issued the first two and the third comes next year so it’ll be a while before I need to run and buy. (Got the first ones in Swedish already and I can’t understand a word of French so translated into English might be my only option nowadays.)
The lines and colours and the stories? I love. Don’t be scared, French comics are good for you.
(via Scary Go Round presents Murder She Writes - November 30, 2011)
Are you reading the Bad Machinery winter replacement Murder She Writes? Because you should. John Allison is one of the best storytellers in the graphical web format right now. If not the best since he plots in advance.
Also, look at that cereal box.
Source: scarygoround.com
Did a Tintin and the Roar of Reptyliy poster. Which, sadly, does not exist.
Top superheores #1: Quantum and Woody because you can’t really separate them. Then they’ll die. I tried to do some fanart but it got all bad so instead here’s a page from the comic. (Fanart will happen later!) How much do I like them? Quite a lot. The art is a bit stuck in the 90s but hey, it was made then and it’s not that bad really once you get used to it.
Quantum and Woody, two childhood friends that when one moves away they pretty much grows apart. And then, at they’re fathers funeral they’re thrown together again and they get these metal wrists of power that unfortunately was designed to be on only one person — so in order not to die of weird energy suckage the power bands must touch once every twenty-four hours. Woody suggests they’d go and be superheroes, Eric — that’s Quantum — goes into it with uncanny seriousness complete with cape and everything.
Lots of humour and with a seriousness that slowly creeps up on you. And then there’s Vincent Van Goat. He’s a goat.
Top superheroes #2: Kitty Pryde. After all, I am a child of the Claremont/Byrne era and I adore Excalibur.
And I’m reblogging myself here. I was trying to find Cats Laughing somewhere in my archives — which turned out to be harder than I thought because it seems Tumblr only allows browsing 14 pages of any tag, which makes them pretty useless really — as they’re Kitty Pryde’s favourite band. (They’re damn good. I’ll post something later tonight.)
Fanart week: Kitty Pryde and Lockheed stopping by to say howdy.
“Why do you draw a lot of scarves on every character?” is not a question I get often but I think I should. The scarf is the ultimate in both comfort and what makes people look gosh darn cute. A good knitted sweater and a long warm scarf is the ultimate in wear — or outwear, it can get quite hot if you wear it all when inside.
I had to resist the impulse to do number one right now. That would have ruined the whole countdown and broken some of the rules which are there for… some reason. I’m toughening it out and do it as one should. Despite that rules can be broken — and I already know I’ll cheat a bit soon anyway.
Top superheroes #3: Starman.
James Robinson’s remake that is, where he took a character from the 40s and shifted the focus to his antiques-dealing son Jack — who’s forced to pick up the title when his brother is murdered and he barely escapes. It’s very much about trying to escape an inheritance that part of you want, just for the weirdness it brings. The first collected volume has the very fitting name Sins of the Fathers.
Top superheroes #4: Toybox.
Officer Toybox from Top 10. She’s smart, friendly, fearless and she examines crime-scenes with toys. Sadly no legos though, but that might be a licensing thing.
snickr replied to your post: Some of these are pretty hard since I’m more of a…
But you can love heroes conceptually, regardless of writer/artist, yes? Some people like the rich-angry-vengeful & others like the dreamy-nice-death-reaper & some like the ultra-violent-blue-collar. What characters do you like the idea of?
I tend to gravitate towards the human and broken and how that works with their idealism. Chamber, who blew off his torso and lower parts of his face when his power emerged and that put adamper on his social skills. Or when it’s blue-collar comics, it doesn’t get more blue-collar than Hellboy. He’s like a hero made from plumbers.
Or Captain America if we’re talking about high ideals — unlike superman he jumps in front of bullets not because it won’t hurt him but because it’s what a hero do.
And then we have when they quickly twisted Deadpool from an assassin into something more interesting by making him into a very mad man who can break the fourth wall. The meta of that gets to me as I love those things.
But to me, a high concept of powers and origin doesn’t speak to me alone. Sadly. Example. Iron Fist. Originally very boring actually, very much a creation sprung from watching karate movies of the seventies. Despite that the 2006-2009 series The Immortal Iron Fist was amazing. Good storytelling can make anything great, just as bad can sink it.
This is the problem: what I like don’t really come out of the base concept. It’s the details. And this means I probably skim over and ignore things that’s good due to them sounding stupid. (Thank God I never ignored Buffy because of the hideous movie.)
Some of these are pretty hard since I’m more of a writer/artist follower than specific characters. So many of these are based on specific runs, and I think this is based on longest of these. (Number two though covers more comics and creators as a whole though because that’s one that’s not tied as much to fixed points in time.)
Top superheroes #5: Daredevil.
Do not mention the films — they’re rubbish. However, get the hardcovers written by Bendis and Brubaker, they’re well worth the price.
