Other Comics News Parade-O-Links 02282021

(Convergence: Superman #2. May 6, 2015. Cover by Lee Weeks.)

Here are some things I found interesting in the world of minicomics, comic books, graphic novels, small press, self publishing, zines, webcomics, cartoons, digital comics, other, etc. during the week ending 02282021.

• Hello sisters, brothers and others and welcome to another episode of your Other Comics News Parade-O-Links.  My name is Shano and I'll be your host.  I'm still getting back in the groove of "blogging".  I'm not 100% decided on when I should post these things.  Friday is probably the most logical day if I want people to actually read them but Sunday feels better.  I like the idea of you, dear reader, sitting in your favorite chair wearing your bath robe and slippers with your feet propped up on your dog "Honeycomb Salad" reading this on a Sunday morning.  I can see the waves of steam coming from your "#1 Step-Parent" coffee mug.  You still have bed head but it's working for you.  You look happy.  You look at peace.  You smell terrific.  Have you been working out? 
• We may as well get WandaVision out of the way since it's the only thing on Earth that matters. This week's episode was great but maybe a little too great?  I can't think of any other TV show that has presented an episode that so neatly gift wraps everything the audience has asked for  and hands it to them prior to the finale.  I still kind of wish the show had never broke kayfabe and was still recreating a different chapter of TV history each week.  I still hate every second  S.W.O.R.D. is on screen and I knew the boss, Whiteguy McSuburbs, was a no good dirty liar.  See, even the parts we don't like conform exactly to our expectations.  Maybe the other shoe drops next episode?  There are certainly a few more questions to answer and a few more twists left.  SPOILERS Did y'all notice which of the recurring cast were not wandering around Westview during the flashback where Wanda came to town?  

• Since comic books don't even exist and only super hero TV shows matter, let's talk about TV's other floaty character with glowing read eyes.  A new Superman TV show pilot, Superman & Lois,  premiered this week.  This is our fifth live action Superman TV show in the past eighty-three years.  I think that's more than C.S.I. (Unless you count Without a Trace and Cold Case.  Then Supes has some catching up to do.)  I don't watch much broadcast TV so normally I'd be checking this show out two or three years from now on streaming but I actually watched this thing in real time with the rest of the CW watching world.  I enjoyed it.  I like the tone of the show and I think Tyler Hoechlin and Elizabeth Tulloch make a great Clark and Lois.  I think the kid playing Frodo has potential too. I really appreciate that Hoechlin and Tulloch are adults.  Ever since Superman Returns cast a nine year old as Lois Lane I've been warry of these things. I think the show kneecapped itself by [SPOILERS] starting with a funeral though.  The overall tone of the show is upbeat and hopeful but the funeral kind of forces the cast to mope around before we get a chance to see their default settings.  Lois really only gets one comical scene with a vending machine where she gets to act like Lois before putting on the funeral time sad face.  Maybe the cast will get a chance to outshine the script as this thing proceeds.  And that script?  Hoo boy.  Look.  This is a CW show so you just have to accept that it's going to be soap opera.  It's not for everyone.  If you're not into teen dance parties/bonfired/charity balls and each scene ending with a contemplative stare followed by a hard cut to commercial then stick with WandaVision. This show still exists in the shadow of the Snyderverse Superman.  There is a sepia tone filter over the whole thing and the Super spandex under armor still has that grim dark tone to it.  We're still missing the trunks so Superman looks like a dog standing on his hind legs. But, for a few minutes at the beginning of the show, we get a full color flashback scene with a real Superman costume.  A moving picture homage to the cover of Action Comics #1.  That was pretty great. 
• As I said earlier, comics don't even exist.  To prove this, CW/DC/Warner followed up the premier of Superman & Lois with a behind-the-scenes featurette where the producers of the show along with Geoff Johns and Jim Lee talk about how they are all geniuses who thought up every thing on the show all by themselves without the help of 83 years of comic book creators.  Over and over again they brag about how the concept of this show, Superman and Lois married with children, has never been done before.  Comics don't even exist and that's why the producers and Johns and Lee make the big bucks.  Except comic books do exist.  Superman and Lois Lane have been getting married for decades. In maybe the best Superman comics of all time, "Whatever Happened to the Man of Tommorrow?",  (Superman #423 and Action Comics #583) Alan Moore's Lois and Cark are married and have a son named Jonathan. (Clark is going by Jordan in that one so that's where Jordan comes from for those keeping score.)  Superman and Lois have been in-canon married since 1996.  And they've had an in-canon son since "Convergence: Superman" #2 from 2015 where Dan Jurgens made superpowered son Jonathan a part of the current ongoing DC Universe.  Oh, but Shano, the genius producers put a new twist on it!  In the new TV show they have two kids! Not so fast imaginary person that isn't really arguing with me, John Byrne gave Supes and Lois two kids in "Superman & Batman: Generattions" in 1999.  And my point isn't that TV shouldn't steal from comics.  No TV, please, please steal from comics.  Comics are better than you.  But don't put together a TV feature about your brilliant game changing new idea when you know damn well that comics has already done this and that you should be giving the comics creators the credit they deserve.  Especially you Geoff Johns and Jim Lee.  You have no excuse.  One of you jerks better buy Dan Jergens a new house. 
• In other moving pictures of Superman news, it appears that a Ta-Nehisi Coates written Superman movie is in the works and that it might be the black Superman a lot of us have been wanting to see at least since Grant Morrison's Multiversity.  I'm optimistic but I hope they don't rush it.  We've had four Superman movies since 2006 with the Zack Snyder Justice League about to drop in a few days.  I'm worried that there won't be much appetite for a new big screen Superman.  It's like the Andrew Garfield Spider-Man movies.  They weren't terrible, Everyone was just full up on Spider-Man in that moment. Maybe if we get through this plague and back to the communal non-butter-liquid-popcorn topping trough we'll be ready for a fresh Superman. 
• I hate to linger in the world of moving images when comics are always vastly superior but I do have to link to this Zack Snyder redemption piece if for no other reason than for you guys to see that Warner continues to be wrong in almost every situation.  The two hour blockbuster died when you fools gave one of those Tolkien movies the Oscar.  
• In our final, I promise, DC Comics related link of the week, they're playing thrash metal during musical chairs now so I can't even keep up well enough to know what any of this means. 

• I think I mentioned the new Stan Lee biography last week.  This week, Marvel great Roy Thomas provides a rebuttal.  I don't know Roy. Sure, old dudes' memories are suspect but the pages don't lie and a whole lot of the pages seem to have been written by a name that rhymes with Snack Derby. 
• Speaking of the guy that created everything of value in US history, there is a new podcast that digs into Jack "The King" Kirby. 
• Here's a neat article on another great American author, no, not Hemingway, it's our man J. M. DeMatteis and his great American masterpiece "Kraven's Last Hunt". 
• As soon as either this plague ends or the government gives me that money they owe me I"mma hit a comic store and dig through the long boxes for some weird junk like this. 
• Our man Benjamin Marra had an informative inside baseball chat with filmmaker Craig Zahler. 

THE BEST NEW COMIC I READ THIS WEEK

Once again I am apologizing to you for not having read any new comics this week.  I still have not made it to the comics shop.  I hope our good man Brian at Cavalier Comics hasn't thrown my pull list in the trash but there's still a plague going on, it's been raining and the goddamned government still hasn't given me that money they owe me. 

Nicholas Burman over at TCJ still reads the comics and writes about them though.  The most interesting comic I saw reviewed this week was probably the Savage Pencil collection he wrote about. 

As for me, I read a lot of Spider-Man comics this week. I'm getting caught up on the Nick Spender run.  I can't say that I care for it.  The jokes are pandering way to hard to an audience that isn't going to look away from Tik Tok long enough to read these comics and the art is nothing special.  They can't all be winners.  

I'm still on my orange, yellow, brown and green costume bullshit with my ongoing read throughs of Suicide Squad, Doom Patrol and the Vision and Scarlet Witch mini-series and related Avengers comics. One of the Vision and Scarlet Witch issues features guest star Power Man (Luke Cage to the youngs) celebrating what appears to have been the first Martin Luther King Jr. Day.  Always classy Quicksilver celebrates MLK Jr. Day by calling black humans and black Inhumans "dusky skins" so, I'm gonna call this one a swing and miss. 

Look friends, I know a lot of you might be interested in the first two Vision and Scarlet Witch serieses because of WandaVision so let me warn you, they are not good.  I'm not saying don't read them,  They are interesting and there is a surprising amount of stuff in the WandaVision show from those comics, I'm just saying don't expect quality.  Personally, I tend to be anti-quality in most things. I'll take weird over quality 99 out of 100 times and these comics are weird AF.  The full Steven Englehart. Just don't go into these things thinking that you are going to come out the other end a better person. 

• Before we leave, it looks like our man Francis was too busy to make a video this week so instead we'll check in on his distant cousin (by marriage) Boogie and see what's up on the Yoo Tubs and the Tick Clocks. 

• Remember pals, life is hard.  Never stop running unless it's to pick up a friend.  Read comics and chew Glorp gum every day and you'll keep on livin' until you're dead. 

Your best pal ever,

Shannon Smith

p.s. I write comics.  Do you make comics?  Maybe you should hire me to write comics. 
p.p.s Say you want a leader but you can't seem to make up your mind. I think you'd better close it and let me guide you to my twitter feed.
p.p.p.s.  Yeah, I do Instagram too.  Maybe if 100,000 of you follow me there I'll be as famous as the average Cambodian teenager with a milk ring collection. 

Other Comics News Parade-O-Links 04282017

(The Savage Dragon #34 1996.  Cover by Erik Larsen.  Stolen from Cover Browser.)

Here are some things I found interesting in the world of minicomics, comic books, graphic novels, small press, self publishing, zines, webcomics, cartoons, digital comics, other, etc. during the week ending 04282017.

"The takeaway here, as I see it, as that there is no lack of customers for periodical comics, and there’s no lack of passion and energy for the format, and that there is no indication that “casual” readers won’t be interested in purchasing periodical comics (A big chunk of those “Saga” readers, like the “Sandman” wave that happened two decades before, are not normal and traditional “Wednesday Warriors”, yet there are still stoked to buy periodical comics!) – but that Marvel (and DC, largely) have harmed their own sales and chased their own customers away. There’s a problem when I sell 160 “Saga” and 16 copies of “ASM”… but this is problem of Marvel’s making over the accumulation of time." -Brian Hibbs.

• Guys guys guys guys guys guys guys guys guys!!!  The world is spinning at 1000 miles per hour and we are all going to die!  The future's so bright I gotta wear a radiation suit!  Doomed!  Doomed!  What can save us?  Comics?  Don't be ridiculous.  Of course not.  Nothing will save us.  There is nothing left to do but, ya know, whatever you feel like doing I guess. Me?  I'm going to go to the Fluke Mini-Comics and Zine Festival in Athens GA this Saturday, April 29th.  It's going to be great.  Robert Newsome, Patrick Dean and other people will be there.  Other people!  Come find my table.  I probably won't be at said table.  I'll be walking around blabbing my mouth off about professional wresting or guitars or some other nonsense but that's okay.  Just leave a huge stack of cash on my table and take whatever you want.  It's gonna be great I tells ya.  I can't wait to hear about how great you think I am.  Thanks in advance! 

• Hey.  Are you super depressed about the world and clinging to comics as your chance for escape and/or inspiration?  Well good news, comics are super depressing too!  One of the things about comics currently giving me the sweet sweet butt hurt is Marvel's new "Digital Edition" policy.  To explain why this bothers me so much let's go back to my tender youth, way back to the year 2012 when the first The Avengers movie was on the big screen and the Avengers vs X-Men (AvsX) miniseries was on the comics stands.  At that point about the only mainstream comic I was reading was Savage Dragon but my daughter was just getting into comics.  She liked The Avengers movie ans she loved old X-Men comics so we bought AvsX.  It came with something that was new to me, the Digital Edition codes.  You could redeem these codes and read the comic you bought online or on your cell pad pod phone. You could also link your Marvel account up with a Comixology account and read them in the Comixology app.  It was around this time that the family first got cell pad pod phones so my daughter and I really dove into the Comixology app thanks to the digital codes.  The best thing was that I could buy the paper comic (because I'm an old man who loves paper) but my kid could read the same comic digitally without me buying two copies.  This.  THIS.  THIS MORE THAN ANYTHING IN THE PREVIOUS TEN YEARS got me back into going to the comic shop, starting back a "pull list" and buying ongoing Wednesday floppy comics again.  My daughter and I bought stacks of them.  And thanks to the digital codes we could read them anywhere any time.  And if the last comic we read made us curious about something we could pull up related issues on the Comixology app and buy those too!  (You can't do that anymore by the way.  Amazon killed the store feature in the Comixology app because they hate making money or something.  Again, always be super depressed.)  So yeah, it was good times.  It was a brilliant offering from Marvel and I spent years yelling at other publishers to follow suit.  Only Dark Horse tried.  DC offered a version where the comic with a digital code costed more.  That was stupid and awful and embarrassing for everyone.  But the Marvel deal was good and like all good things some stupid jerks would eventually decide to make it go away.  Recently Marvel has replaced their Digital Editions with a digital code where YOU DO NOT GET THE COMIC YOU PAID FOR.  Under the previous system, if you bought five Marvel comics in one week you got a code for each of those five comics you paid for. Now, you do not get the comic you paid for.  Instead each week's shipment of Marvel comics all have the same three promotional comics.  So, if you bought five Marvel comics, you just got three digital comics, none of which are the comic you paid for.  Let me say that part again; in the past, if you bought 100  Marvel comics you got 100 digital comics.  Today, if you buy 100 Marvel comics in one week you get three digital comics.  The digital comics in question are generally the first issue of something that has recently been collected in a trade paperback.  So these comics are not a promotional tool for you to buy more digital comics, or to return to your comics shop and add a comic to your "pull list".  These are comics promoting you to by a trade paperback. Or, to put it another way, if you are a regular Marvel customer, these are comics you already own. This my friends, is a situation I refer to as total bullshit. So, here's the thing;  Marvel, I love you.  I love your nutts.  You are a big part of my life.  For years and years.  Stop making it so hard to be your customer. 
• Sigh.
• And again with the Marvel... Let me just say this as open advice for all creators; Take risks.  Be bold.  Shake things up.  Challenge your audience.  But remember, if you have to explain it, you probably already failed.  And, more importantly, remember that you do not get to tell your customers how they should feel about it. 
• Again with the Marvel part 3;  Every time I read an article like this it occurs to me that we are just one Disney executive saying, "Wait, we still publish paper comic books?" on a conference call away from the whole freaking  business being tossed into the crapper or the top characters licensed out to the highest bidder.  A publisher that is not Marvel now publishes the Frozen comics.  If Marvel can't be trusted to make money off the Frozen phenomenon why would you trust them to be able to make any money off Ant-Man or Doctor Strange?  Because they did six decades ago?  Good luck with that answer on the next investors call. 
• Also, FDR Democrat Steve Rogers forever. 
• Can there still be good news in comics?  Can there still be something to get excited about?  Yes.  Yes there can.  I'm excited about Alterna Comics' new line of newsprint comics for several reasons.  For one thing, they're gonna be super cheap with a $1.50 cover price.  And one of the series, Amazing Age, is created by pals Jeremy Massie and Matthew David Smith.  I checked out that comic in its original webcomic form and liked it a lot.  Those bros are the solidest of bros so I'm excited for what I believe is going to be a breakout book appealing to a new audience that may have missed their other stuff.   And, arguably most importantly, Smith has confirmed that the newsprint in his comp copies smells great.  The books start rolling out next week.  I'm not familiar with many of the other creators but at $1.50 I'm sure to check them out. 
• Hey.  Do you like comics?  Do you like guitars?  Do you like comics that are guitars?  I recently built a Stratocaster using the Carmine Infantino drawn issues 14 and 15 of the original Star Wars comics.  It's probably the coolest guitar on Earth.  Maybe you wanna check it out. 
• When it's time to comics we will always comics hard.
• It was twenty five years ago several days ago Sergeant Malibu told his band to play.
• Tom Scioli's new Princess webcomic is pretty rad.  Also, that Transformers vs. G.I.Joe The Movie comic he made is bonknanners. 
• Ain't no party like a wizard battle party cause a wizard battle party don't stop until one of them dies and the other wizard creates a hyper sigil making people focus on the number of rapes in the other wizard's comics instead of their valuable contributions to the medium. 
• And finally... Francis gave up candy for your sins.

• Remember pals, life is hard.  Never stop running unless it's to pick up a friend.  Read comics and chew Glorp every day and you'll keep on livin' until you're dead. 

Your best pal ever,

Shannon Smith

p.s. I write comics.  Do you make comics?  Maybe you should hire me to write comics. 
p.p.s Say you want a leader but you can't seem to make up your mind. I think you'd better close it and let me guide you to my twitter feed.
p.p.p.s. Let's pretend we went to high school together on facebook.
p.p.p.p.s. Google + is another place you can read the same thing I posted here.
p.p.p.p.p.s. I'll tumblr for ya.
p.p.p.p.p.p.s.  Yeah, I do Instagram too.  I guess it's a law or something.

Other Comics News Parade-O-Links 09112016

(G.I.Joe issue 15 cover by Mike Zeck and John R. Beatty.  August 1986.  Image stolen from yojoe.com )

Here are some things I found interesting in the world of minicomics, comic books, graphic novels, small press, self publishing, zines, webcomics, cartoons, digital comics, other, etc. during the week ending 09112016.

"DJ Z, I suffer with you my friend."  -Jeff Hardy.

• Hello sisters and brothers of teh intronets and welcome to another episode of your Other Comics News Parade-O-Links.  My name is Shannon and I'll be your host.  I was driving east on Alternate 58 this morning behind the limousine of Nathan Stanley and under the golden rays of the warm September Appalachian sun when I remembered that, while file under other was on "hiatus", we lost one of the pillars of Bluegrass and American music, Doctor Ralph Stanley.  Growing up a few miles from where Ralph Stanley lived it was easy to take the man for granted.  He was just kind of always around.  You'd see him play at the fair.  You'd see him play at the UMWA rallies.  He literally performed at my summer camp one year.  When my employer was looking to set up shop in Southwest Virginia, it was Ralph Stanley that Senator Warner and the county called upon to welcome and entertain the suits and ties.  In some small way, I guess you could say I owe my paycheck to Ralph Stanley.  His legacy will be a part of this region and this country as long as the mighty Clinch River flows. 
• Alan Moore has announced that he has about 250 pages of comics left in him and then he will retire from comics.   Moore is probably the most influential English language genre comics writer of the past 40 years.  He could never write another word and that would not change.  He doesn't owe comics anything. If you want more Alan Moore comics, just go read the one's you've missed or re-read the ones you've loved. Despite the wizard beard, Moore is really not that old.  He was a very young man when he started knocking out masterpieces.  I hope he has a great many years ahead of him enjoying whatever it is he chooses to do.  And guys, 250 is a lot of pages. 
• A lot of us comics folks are thinking about pal of comics Tim O'Shea and his family this week.  The Comics Reporter has the details.  Tim has been a real champion of comics, minicomics and self-publishers throughout the years.  He's one of those "I probably would have stopped making comics without his kind words" kind of folks.  We need 100 more of him.  We wish all the best for Tim and his family. 
• Last weekend cosmic abomination DragonCon happened (again) in Atlanta, GA.  Adam and Shawn Daughhetee of the Dollar Bin went there for the first time and lived to tell the tale.   They compare DragonCon to HeroesCon a bit which, are two things totally worlds apart.  HeroesCon is a a comic book convention.  DragonCon is that time that Hunter S. Thompson and Zardoz drank an Atlantic Ocean sized vial of LSD and tiger adrenal gland then went to the Creature Cantina in Star Wars but only the Creature Cantina was the size of the Titanic.  Every year.  Repeat.  Totally different things. 
• Guys.  I just love Tarzan so much. (Link stolen from The Comics Reporter.)  Speaking of Tarzan, like I do, I read a lot of Tarzan comics this summer.  It's been a summer ritual since... I learned to read.  I read a lot of Joe Kubert Tarzan comics this summer and bought a lot of the Marvel "Lord of the Jungle" comics.  I almost have the full Marvel run now.  The 28th issue of the Marvel series was one of the first comic books I ever owned so Tarzan has and will always be a big part of what makes me me.  A big part of my brain is thinking about Tarzan junk most of my waking and sleeping hours.  It's weird.  I know.  So, of course I saw the new movie.  I really liked it. It was my favorite movie of the summer.  I really hope they make more movies with that Tarzan and Jane. 
• A lot of talk this week about the death of comics and whether or not it is dead and if it is just Professor X dead or is it Uncle Ben dead and who is to blame and is Soylent Green people or are people Soylent Green and if I use the F word more than you is my argument more valid than yours even though my argument is absolutely Donald Trump wrong on all of my historical references and should all of our best cartoonists just start making their comics with sidewalk chalk then post videos of them on YouTube but then get upset about that too because YouTube secretly won't let you make any money off videos anymore if you have dirty words in your side walk chalk comics and Kickstarter stopped being crowd funding the second it replaced the publisher's marketing department and Amazon really already killed publishing anyway and the music industry is deader than comics and it's just an illusion that it exists because, again, YouTube, and if it can happen to comics and music then it can happen to video games, and, in a way, it's already happening to movies, I mean, do you really think the movie theater chains are thrilled about you guys binge watching Stranger Things and eating microwave popcorn, and if you'll DVR and watch your favorite TV shows later it sure as hell won't take a TV exec long to figure out that you'd probably also pay for it in advance and most of what we really love will be pre-order anyway because comics isn't special, comics just is always the first in line for the firing squad, and about how we probably already lost this war and we need to just assimilate and get over ourselves because I'm literally wearing a t-shirt right now that I pre-ordered, while listening to digital music that was pre-ordered then downloaded, and I literally have a book beside my keyboard that was pre-ordered and as soon as I get through typing this I'm literally going to play some video games that I pre-ordered and maybe what you're calling death is just the new way of living and... You wanted everything for free so you stole it.  Now you have to pay in advance for it to even exist.  Money always wins folks.
• And now it's time for the return of...

THE BEST NEW NEWISH COMIC BOOK I READ THIS WEEK

She Wolf issue 3 by Rich Tommaso.  Published by Image Comics. 

I've been a big fan of Rich Tommaso for years and years but She Wolf might be his work for which I am the most excited.  Guys, I'm stupid for werewolves and wolfmans.  I've watched a lot of werewolf movies and read a lot of werewolf comics but Tommaso is on to something really fascinating here. He's using a waking nightmare form of narrative where he can tell this story from a both metaphysical and material world point of view at the same time while also fluctuating between the present and ancient folklore from panel to panel.  

Tommaso is letting the narrative take off in multiple directions within a single page and it is allowing him to really stretch his legs as an artists.  I've always loved Tommaso's drawing and character designs but with this comic he's being really ambitious with the motion and fluidity of his cartooning.  It's a major break from the conservatism and the obsession with the old fashioned that we've seen in indie comics over the past 20 years. Plus, he draws a balls out penis dangling Satan that can't be beat.  I can't wait for the next issue. 

This issue also features some great pinups by Chuck Forsman, Brandon Graham, Brian Level, Tom Neely, Eraklis Petmeza and my favorite one (below) by Patrick Dean.

• And finally... Playstation made some announcements this week.  Let's see how our ol' pal Francis feels about them. 

• Remember pals, life is hard.  Read comics every day, chew Glorp every day and you'll keep on livin' until your dead. 

Your best pal ever,

Shannon Smith

p.s. I write comics.  Do you make comics?  Maybe you should hire me to write comics. 
p.p.s Say you want a leader but you can't seem to make up your mind. I think you'd better close it and let me guide you to my twitter feed.

p.p.p.s. Let's pretend we went to high school together on facebook.

p.p.p.p.s. Google + is another place you can read the same thing I posted here.

p.p.p.p.p.s. I'll tumblr for ya.

p.p.p.p.p.p.s.  Yeah, I do Instagram too.  I guess it's a law or something.