Other Comics News Parade-O-Links 03072021

 

(Amazing Spider-Man Annual #14. August 31, 1982. Cover by John Romita Jr. with John Romita Sr.)

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 03072021.

• 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.  How are you doing?  How was your week?  I'm okay.  I have a headache but it's not raining so I won't complain. I'm in a state of spring fever anticipation.  The sun is out.  The sky is blue.  The mud is starting to dry.  I'm anxious for it to be spring but it is still cold AF and we all know that it's not safe to do things when it is cold. Your limbs could snap off.  But it should get warm and maybe we'll get a vaccine and maybe we'll get that stimulus and then, who knows, comics con season is right around the corner right?  Everything will get back to normal right?
• Wrong.  Better luck next year Comic-Con. 
• WandaVision ended the way all MCU movies end, with digital cartoon versions of the characters flying around shooting energy beams at each other.  It was fine.  Eh, better than fine. It was emotional.  I think that's the strength of TV.  Your talented actors get several weeks to engage the audience and make the audience care about them so when you finally get to the digital cartoon battle at the end the stakes are higher.  This is certainly the most emotionally invested I've been invested in live action Marvel since Howard the Duck and Tim Robbins got on that ultralight aircraft. I thought the series was great with fantastic performances by Olsen, Bettany, Hahn and Pariss. Unlike movies, TV shows work, often in spite of their writing, on the strength of their cast and this show worked.  I'm sad it's over.  Also, I'm a little surprised it's over.  I was surprised to see it promoted as the series finale and not just the end of Season 1.  I guess these MCU Disney+ shows are all just miniseries? That's a bit disappointing.  I'd honestly prefer if they stayed with this format even if they never made another movie. Some folks were even more disappointed with the finale. While the series as a whole exceeded expectations the finale could not live up to promises real and imagined.  Marvel will get a pass on those imagined expectations.  Going in, I expected that maybe this series would be the backdoor to the X-Men, the Fantastic Four, the multiverse or any number of possibilities.  Marvel didn't owe us any of that specifically. But there were promises the show made that it either didn't stick the landing on or just totally forgot to make the attempt.  You can't bring in an actor from a film franchise you purchased and not understand that your audience will expect a payoff.  You can't tease a Luke Skywalker level cameo and it just be one of your lead actors in different makeup.  Well, you can.  And they did.  But don't be coy when your audience is upset about it.  You've got 82 years of Marvel comics history to pull from so don't let lack of ideas be your downfall.  Teasing us has been a profitable business model for 13 years but the audience is eventually going to call your bluff. 
• I think the one thing we can all agree on is that it was a catastrophic misstep not to end the series with the white "Vision Quest" Vision strutting down a city street to the sound of Queen's "One Vision". 

• I also watched this week's episodes of the DC shows, Superman & Lois and The Flash.  I thought Supes and Lois was slow and boring.  The Flash was more interesting but tedious.  The simple truth of television is that the show works or doesn't work depending on if the audience connects with the cast.  That's really it.  The Flash's cast has proven it can return viewers despite comically bad writing.  Can Supes & Lois overcome it's writing?  Probably not for me.  I've got episodes of The Savage Dragon to watch on Peacock. 
• A lot of this week's "comics discourse" was centered around NFT and CryptoArt.  I'll post a link explaining it clearly as soon as a find one.  As it relates to comics, the question is, how bad is this going to exploit and screw the comics artist and which comics artists can be the first in line to be exploited and screwed.  Same as always. Rinse repeat. I don't understand it but it reminds me of one Saturday afternoon at a comic book convention in the late 90s.  I was a dealer at the time. I remember standing up and looking at where all the business in the room was happening.  I looked at where cash was changing hands. At that moment it was trading cards.  There was a moment where comics trading cards were very hot.  And it in that moment it hit me right between then eyes.  Comics were over.  At least as they had existing.  We had people in a room full of comics, ignoring the comics and handing over cash for a piece of cardboard that delivered a tiny glimpse of the comic.  We had put the delivery mechanism over the art.  The 90s comics boom ended.  We've never gotten back what we lost.  Will NFT destroy.... the internet?  Capitalism?  We can only hope!  Will it help destroy the environment?  Yeah, probably. 
• Some cartoonists dream of getting rich, others just want the literal torture to stop. 

• Jason Horn has launched a new Patreon for his space comic "Settle" and it look super rad.  I'm in.
• Jason has also been posting some neat DC comics house ads on the twudder so give him a follow if you know what's good. 
• File under Wrestling:  This is not comics or zines but it stuff you can read with your eyeballs.  I probably read more wrestling than I watch. Remember in The Lost Boys when Grandpa Barnard Hughes explained that he didn't need to watch TV because he had the TV guide.  I'm kind of the same way with television wrestling.  I'll skip the shows then read about them the following day to see if anything interesting happened and then I'll check out those specific matches or segments on YouTube or the streamings.  Colette Arrand has been responsible for most of the best wrestling writing online in recent years and now Arrand is the editor over at fanbyte so "business is picking up".
• I'm sure you guys are smart and follow Patrick Dean right?  He's getting better and better at drawing with his eyeballs. It's only a matter of time before he can shoot art directly from his mind into our minds. 
• In other comics/zines/Fluke organizers dudes from Georgia news, Robert Newsome broke his arm. Look how happy it made him.  Maybe we should all break our arms.  I'm sure he'll be fine but that's no reason not to go buy some of his quality zines. 
• Let's check in on our Carolina Man abroad and see how well Germany is adapting to Ashley Holt. 
• More Dorkin is more good. 
• I too am a sucker for a wacky cover and a Dave Letterman cameo. 

NEW COMICS I READ THIS WEEK

I still haven't made it to the comic shop but I'm working my way through a two foot high stack of books, comics and zines I've bought online during the plague. This week I read "The Burning Hotels" a memoir by Thomas Lampton from Birdcage Bottom Books. This auto-bio comic shows the cartoonist dealing with a lot of stuff.  On the surface it's about returning home and taking a closer look at your roots but it's also about divorce, autism, North Carolina, Appalachia, being a cartoonist, making the book itself and dealing with all of that during this very real and current pandemic.  It feels very of the moment and reads as if Lampton first considered each word as it was put on the page.  There is some neat drawing but I would say that Lampton's strength is in iconography.  This characters work as symbols more than drawings.  The art is working as a part of the writing though and that's the goal.  Or at least it should be the goal.  The result is more design heavy than drawing heavy.  There are art comics that are expression heavy and there are art comics that are design and function heavy.  This book is that latter.  My only complaint with the book is that Lampton changes font sizes from panel to panel. I'm sure it was a matter of presenting each panel at its best ratio to work with the rest of the page but I'm loosing my eyesight so I had to work at some of the panels.  

OLD COMICS I READ THIS WEEK

I think I'm through with my Vision and Scarlett Witch run for now.  I finished the original two miniseries and the related West Coast Avengers stuff.  Not great comics but weird enough to finish.  I might go back to the "Vision Quest" story next (John Byrne's white Vision) but I'm going to take a break from the Wandaverse and finish up some other things.  I'm still on my orange, brown and green hero books Doom Patrol and Suicide Squad.  I've also been re-visiting Jim "the most successful creative mind in Hollywood history" Starlin's Dreadstar. I was a big fan of the ongoing Epic comic when I was a kid but I've started at the beginning before the beginning and the beginning before that, "The Metamorphosis Odyssey" and Marvel Graphic Novel #3.  Those comics look very different than the ongoing Epic series.  For one thing, they are mostly painted.  Even when they are black and white.  It's simply the difference between late 70s early 80s adult comics magazines and 80s monthly direct market baxter paper comics.  Great stuff if you are into hardcore sci-fi fantasy. This stuff has been collected a few times.  If you want to star with the earliest stuff then the Dynamite collection "The Beginning" has that covered. 

• And finally, Francis is sick of carrying your ass. 

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 02212021

  (Vision and Scarlet Witch #12 1986. Cover by Richard Howell and Joe Sinnott.)

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 weeks ending 02212021. 

• Hello sisters and 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 still want this to be an every week thing but things are things and times are times and I mean, half the country is frozen and the other half is waiting in line for the cure or the sedative or their $2,000.  Sometimes I start these things and just abandon them.  One minute I'm in the zone giving you "THE CONTENT" you need to feel alive and the next I'm just... what do I even do?*
• (*I have a job, a family, a bunch of pets and several guitars.  That's what I do.)  
• Looking at that Vision and Scarlet Witch cover up above.  Man, the 80s were wild AF right?  "At last! The moment you've been waiting for! BIRTH!"  And inside the issue is titled, "Double sized climax!"  Don't we all want to see Vison have a double sized climax? 
• Speaking of Vision and Scarlet Witch because, let's be honest, that's all that matters now in comics/tv/Earth/Milky Way, this week's episode of WandaVision gave us what it was obviously going to give us but it still felt like a surprise.  Years of giving us Easter eggs with a wink and a nudge and then forgetting about that stuff forever has given Marvel the ability to show us what they are doing with a very hard, literally visible on screen, wink and a shove and we're still like, "I don't know guys, it might still be Mephisto and not the lady with a similar name to one of the primary characters from Wanda's comics history."  And part of it is that the first two waves of the MCU were very much THESE ARE MOVIES AND THEY ARE THEIR OWN THING AND NO WE DON'T ACTUALLY READ THOSE COMICS SO SUCK IT NERDS but now it seems that we are firmly in the Bongwater Age of Marvel Comics. They used a Jim Starlin idea and it became the most successful movie of all time so anything goes I guess.  Still, they're going the full Steve Englehart now and I never thought they'd go that far.  This is deep cut Bill Mantlo territory we're getting into now and I'm more excited about how weird it might get than anything we've seen in the movies.  
• Also, it still might be Mephisto. 
• And Dottie's gotta be somebody too right?
• And which one of these people is Agatha's cat? 
• And Franklin Richards is in that basement somewhere too right?
• Guys!?

• In our continuing coverage of WandaVision and only WandaVision, last week's episode was the one we've all been waiting for where we get to see the characters dressed up as the comic book characters they are based on for Halloween.  They went with homemade costumes which reminds me to remind you that, like most things, Patrick Dean did it first and did it better. 
• We lost S. Clay Wilson. His work isn't for everyone but I loved the way he drew. 
• And Si Spencer.  Death is the worst. 
• Imagine getting to work with the sum total of the creative output of thousands of people over 83 years and you decide to shoot the thing in sepia tone. 
• My pal Robert Venditti has made a lot of great comics over the past decade.  If I had done a better job of posting here at file under other I would have told you about how great his Hawkman run was. He has a new comic out soon called Tankers and they made a promotional video that you guys just have to see.  It's the probably the best comics promotional video I've ever seen.  I'd just post it here but I couldn't figure out how so just pull the link of their twitter post. 
• When not riding around in a tank, Robert Venditti is also writing some new Superman comics that should hit a very specific sweet spot for a lot of us.  Another thing I would have told you about if I was better at "blogging" is that Rob has knocked out a lot of great Superman comics over the past few years through the DC digital stuff, the Walmart giant books and a really great short run on Justice League.  This should be good stuff. 
• In other "my pals make good comics" news that I would have mentioned if I were better at this, our man Rob Ullman continues to make great sports comics over at DK Sports. 
• How every classic super hero looks to me if they don't have their trunks. 

• "Lightning Whisperer". 
• Which one of you was asking for more Spawn?
• There's another Stan Lee book. This one recounts the hilarious tale of how he wrote The Wizard of Oz while fighting Orcs in Middle Earth. 
• If you're a colorist and you don't know well now you know about Rico Renzi's Color Jams twitter handle where color peeps from 'round the globe take their shot at re-coloring classic comics art. It's a fun follow even for a guy like me that isn't even sure he likes colors that aren't fiesta red.
• Also from my twitter feed, Aaron Meyers reminded us about the guy that created Venom for $200.

THE BEST NEW COMIC I READ THIS WEEK

Normally this is the part of the episode where I talk about the best new comic I read lately but I haven't really read any new comics since the last time we hung out.  There is a plague going on and it is winter and everything is cold and gross and I have not driven to the comic book store in a while now.  Tom McHenry still reads the comics so maybe check that out to fill the void in your soul.  Don't worry, I'm still reading old comics though.  I'm still on my orange and brown costumes kick reading 80s and 90s Doom Patrol and Suicide Squad collections.  I've also been reading Scarlet Witch and Vision centric Avengers comics from the 80s because all that matters is Wanda, Wanda, Wanda.  Guys, we need to have a good long talk about Steven Englehart.  Those comics are bonkers.  There is one issue where the West Coast Avengers beat the Grim Reaper because ol' Reapy calls his black villain partners "Spades" and they get pissed at him for being racist and leave.  The 80s y'all.  It's all worth it though because Vision talks about "making love" to his hot wife even before they get the notion of having kids.  The most important thing to know about Vision is that Vison gets it on.  Also Captain America gives his witch friend, Scarlet WITCH, an old book of Druid spells as a honeymoon present.  What could go wrong?  The fuck were you thinking Steve? 

• And finally, are you afraid to leave your house? Don't worry, our boy Francis is here to tell you how to get rich as a real gamer.

• 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 02052021

 (The Overwhelming Motörhead Rock Commando July 1980.)

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 weeks ending 02052021. 

• Hello sisters and brothers and undecided others and welcome to another episode of your Other Comics News Parade-O-Links.  My name is Shano and I'll be your host.  Remember over a month ago when fired up the file under other machine and I was going to start posting these things again?  Me either. 
• No one close to me died since our last episode so, progress. 
• Marvel and DC superheroes trend on the social meeds every day but it's rare when the comics trend and even rarer when a specific comic book trends so when it does you know it's either going to be misogyny or racism.  Immortal Hulk #43 decided to go with the racism this go round.  Everyone makes mistakes but racism is almost never a mistake and there are some mistakes you don't get to make if Disney is paying you. 
• In dumb comics movie click bait news: Nah, that's just stupid. 
• Speaking of things that are not comics, that HBO Max deal has finally added the greatest DC Comics based TV show of all time, Batman: The Brave and the Bold.  Check it out heathens. 
• I just got a phone call from my close personal friend Doctor Fauci and he gave me some great news.  America's most wholesome cartoonist, Josh Latta, has a new book out.  Suck on that 2019-nCoV acute respiratory disease.
• Well, it's finally happened.  Ashley Holt has finally gotten so sick of your bullshit he's left the country.  This country has two Carolinas and neither one of them were good enough for our man Ashley.  Good luck Germany! 
• Do you guys read the comics?  I read the comics.  What comics do you guys read?  Maybe respond in the comments.  LOL HAH HAH HAH no one is ever going to respond in the comments.  Maybe twitter though.  I've been reading a lot of oddball late 80s stuff lately like post-Crisis Suicide Squad and the pre-Grant Morrison* Doom Patrol.  (With the intention of going through the Morrison stuff again afterwards because I'm obsessed with that Doom Patrol TV show.)  Been reading lots of comics with characters in brown and orange costumes in stories where they go into cold war era made up jungle islands. That was a weird period in comics, before DC thought these things had value, before the movies, when they were just like, "well, all these non-primary color characters are never going to catch on so we may as well dump them in a team and kill one of them off every issue".  Fun stuff. I recommend you go to Ollie's and buy the first few trade paperbacks of both series for about $3 each.
• Speaking Doom Patrol, you guys have watched the first two seasons of the TV show now right?  It's the best right?  What do you want to see in the 3rd season?  I want Doom Force.  

• And speaking of other things that are not comic books, sure, yeah, I like WandaVision just fine.  I like it better when they don't explain things for the normies.  I don't want the normies to have anything else.  They have sports.  That's enough. I think showing us the MCU "real world" outside of Westview as a catastrophic mistake for the show.  Those scenes are poorly written and poorly acted and just look like low budget television.  The stuff of Wanda's creation inside Westview, which is supposed to be low budget television looks fantastic.  Just, spare us the MCU please.  
• My MCU ranking goes as follows 1) The ones where Iron Man plays AC/DC. 2) The ones where Captain America takes his shirt off. 3) WandaVision.
• That Vision "content" you really wanted. 

• If I hadn't been trapped in the Trump version of Westview for the past year I might have given you guys a list of my favorite comics from 2020 and I probably would have mentioned Jeremy Massie's Holler.  You can get on board with the 3rd issue now. 
• Current reigning defending best at drawing on Earth, Brad McGinty, recently did the cover of We Do What We Want 2. It's great and the magazine is a lot of fun.  The magazine has an article where Gerard Way talks about his The Real Ghostbusters toys.  I didn't make that up.  For real, if you like the things that are the good things then you will enjoy this magazine.  Also, if you like the things that are rad you will like this High on Fire t-shirt Brad did for the Holy Mountain Printing folks. 
• The great Annie Koyama is leaving escaping  changing her relationship with comics.  Our man Rob Clough weighed in on her impressive legacy. 
• Related, Ed Kanerva and RJ Case are also fleeing pursuing their future endeavors. 
• 24 Hour Comics Day went down again and I read a lot of the comics but when I think about it, most of what I saw were from the folks I follow on twitter and Instagram that are already posting comics weekly or more frequently in that format so, really, the day just felt like any other day in my social media feed.  A lot of folks have really mastered Instagram's 10 photo limit for posting comics in a reader friendly cell pad pod phone environment.  I'm thinking about folks like the world's most dangerous man Henry Eudy, your dad Mike Dawson, that lady at the petting zoo Lisa Hanawalt , your favorite teacher Mayday Trippe, that dude you used to work with Gabby Schulz, that dude on the bus Josh Bayer, that dude you know who has transcended flesh and draws with his mind now Patrick Dean and so many more just killing it every day.  I salute you doers of things. 

THE BEST NEW COMIC I READ THIS WEEK

Malarkey #5 by November Garcia available at Birdcage Bottom Books

This is a great looking minicomics sized collection of comics with bigfancycomics production.  These are mostly diary style comics with a few more ambitious art comics pages to mix it up.  Garcia's color stuff is really interesting.  Like that fantastic cover where it looks like it's raining what could be bubble gum or guts depending on how dark your day was. Thematically this issue is dealing with, well, kind of 2020 in a nutshell.  Death and the plague and how you just have to deal with it.  I think we call can relate.  Also, there are jokes. 

• Before we go we'd better check on our boy Francis and make sure he's okay.

• 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.  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.