(Wonder Woman #46 April, 1951. Cover by Irv Novick. Stolen from Bully, The Little Sutffed Bull. You guys know Bully was/is kinda the best a comics blogging and tweeting right?)
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 03142021 03152021 03162021.
"I mean, let’s face it. Hollywood swarms with just the sort of people who gave us shit for reading comics as kids. These mountebanks now make bank off this stuff. Who says irony is dead, right?" - Howard Chaykin
- 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. This one is late. I accidentally daylight-savings-time set my clock back two days. Happy Sunday on Tuesday! Treat yourself to some pie!
- There are comics that artists that excite us, there are artists that inspire us and there are artists that trigger puberty. The great Frank Thorne has left us. Known for Red Sonja and being generally great at boobies, Thorn was also a known wizard. Please mourn him accordingly.
- What else can I say, Captain America is gay. What else should I write, get ready for bro fights.
- You guys keep up with the comics over at The Nib right? Mike Dawson has really been killing it throughout this pandemic.
- Speaking of online comics, Box Brown has been doing the Lord's work with Legalization Nation.
- Young Adult Heavy Metal? I hope they shelve it right beside Young Adult Beaver Hunt.
- The Comics Journal has a new co-managing editor. Good luck!
- File Under Mullets.
- If you had "Luke Cage is a Cop" on your End Times BINGO card then congrats on your new Huffy 10-speed bike.
NEW* COMICS I READ THIS WEEK
I guess Generations was originally going to be a longer and bigger event basically ending the New 52/Rebirth versions of the DC Universe before launching 5G or G5 or whatever it was going to be before Dan DiDio was fired. Before DC was de-DiDio'd? G5 got hosed and Death Metal took off so instead of the big finale, Generations seems to be the transition between Death Metal and Future State until DC finally begins again again again with Infinite Frontier. That's a lot. Forget you read all of that and just pretend that this Generations thing is one self-contained time hoping team-up story because it kind of is. And that's probably a good thing. These two 80 page comics together and by themselves make a really nice read. They read more like a couple old school summer Annuals than a mega event crossover and that's very much a positive.
Jurgens, Venditti and Andy Schmidt did a good job with the writing. These things can be a mess when you have a huge cast of characters on multiple planets during multiple eras but it reads smooth and was easy to follow despite that fact that I haven't read a single panel of Death Metal and I'm a solid year or more behind on most of the DC line. The art is stellar too. There are too many artists for me to type without having to break our my wrists braces but it's most of DC's heavy hitters; Hitch, Chang, Doran, Romita Jr. Reis, Morales etc. etc. I usually give DC a lot of crap for not being able to get one penciler to finish a comic but on a multi planet multi timeline deal like this I think the jam format is a lot of fun. It's neat to read through these and play guess the artist from page to page then go back to the index to see if you were right. Again, there is really no justification that a single penciler can't knock out a single issue of The Flash or whatever but in these 80 page giant style deals it's neat to see them mix it up. And I would say everyone delivers. These are good looking books. They'll make a great collection eventually.
What makes this different from Crisis, Infinite Crisis, Final Crisis, No This Time For Real Last Crisis etc. is that instead of treating each era of DC comics as its own planet this one looks at DC comics history as one linear universe, or "Linearverse", where some of the major characters age and deal with time differently. So instead of 1939 Batman being a different character from 1986 Batman, they're the same dude again but just stretched out over decades....? Maybe. So, everything is canon again. Kind of like the Hyperverse Grant Morrison and Mark Waid talked about but instead of the universe map looking like a map it looks like a electrocardiograph now? Look, I'm not saying it makes sense. What I'm saying is that it has Kamandi in it and Kamandi is awesome. I recommend.
OLD COMICS I READ THIS WEEK
Normally when I talk about old comics I'm talking about stuff from the 70s or 80s but I'm catching up on the Nick Spencer era Amazing-Spider-Man comics and it's hard for me to call these new when they are going on four years old. The Dan Slot run was so long it took me a while before I was ready to get back into Amazing Spider-Man so the issues piled up on me. I've been catching up over the past few weeks and, friends, these comic books are not good. I kinda hate them. And I'm sad I let the pile up this ling before reading them because I probably would have stopped buying them a couple of years ago. This stuff is for babies. This is like those early 2000 Spider-Man comics where Marvel was trying desperately to be all-ages and get some Schoolastic book fair sales or something. These are worse than the Howard Mackie and John Byrne Spider-Man comics. The writing is on the level of a mid 80s DIC cartoon. The art is in that all-ages desperate style where every expression seems to be aping the the Disney Aladdin cartoon. Not the first one. The 2nd one that was made for TV and Homer was the Genie. Friends, these comics are not for me. Anyone want a big stack of Spider-Man comics?
- And finally, our man Francis is a.w.o.l. this week so let's fire up the way back machine to the summer of 2019 when our man Boogie 2998 visited his hometown. It's also my hometown. Should I break Kayfabe and explain my Boogie/Francis connection? Nah, I'll just let you make up your own version. I'll tell ya what, if anyone actually asks me on the twudders, I'll explain it to them in DM.
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.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.
