Posts tagged with comics
Misfit City, Issues 1 & 2, by Kiwi Smith and Kurt Lustgarten
New comic series Misfit City sets out to recapture the oddball charms of 80s kids' adventure movies (specifically, The Goonies), but my favorite thing about this story is the way it depicts living in a real town that's best known as a nostalgia-driven tourist trap...
Weekly Book Giveaway: Misfit City, Issues 1 & 2, by Kiwi Smith and Kurt Lustgarten
Our latest Book Giveaway is the first two issues of Misfit City, a new comic series written by Kirsten "Kiwi" Smith and Kurt Lustgarten. The story features a lot of tributes to classic 80s kids' movies (particularly The Goonies), so if you're a fan of the kind of film that, looking back, you cannot believe was ever marketed to children, congratulations: you're in luck...
Haunted Love, Vol. 1: Tales of Gothic Romance, by assorted authors
When I ran across a copy of Haunted Love #1 (first published in 1973) at a local antique store, I was hoping for something enjoyably terrible. In my head, I was picturing an illustrated vintage Harlequin novel, but with, like, vampires or whatever. Sadly, the contents were neither as trashy nor as entertaining as I expected, and never came close to living up to the cheeseball promise of that cover...
Weekly Book Giveaway: Haunted Love Vol. 1
In honor of Halloween, our first Book Giveaway in October is Haunted Love Vol.1: Tales of Gothic Romance, first published in 1973. You can't judge this book by its cover, guys: sadly, it falls short on both the gothic and romantic fronts. A full review will follow shortly...
I don't know about some of these...
NPR recently assembled a list of 10 game-changing comics: titles that "changed how the entire medium of comics was perceived". Some of their picks are easy (Action Comics #1, for example), but I would have been curious to see one or two less highbrow picks, too, that may have had a game-changing impact on comics publishing...
The Case of the Forked Road, by John Allison
The Case of the Forked Road, the seventh installment in John Allison's excellent Bad Machinery series, is—as always—a whacked-out delight. There's time travel, puberty jokes, and a PG-rated adaptation of Glengarry Glen Ross. The boys play a reduced role in this volume (although their stories are expanded from the online version), but...
Weekly Book Giveaway: The Case of the Forked Road, by John Allison
This week's Book Giveaway is John Allison's The Case of the Forked Road, the seventh book in the Bad Machinery series. I am, as always, pretty stoked to see a new Bad Machinery book, but there are certain very obvious changes about this installment that do not thrill me. A full review will follow shortly...
Image Comics [hearts] Planned Parenthood
This is cool: Image Comics will be releasing 11 "variant covers" in celebration of Women's History Month. The covers will acknowledge "the careers of women in comics, the strides made throughout comics history made by the women’s movement...
Holiday Gift Pick #8
Gift Idea #8: Girls Next Door mugs
Okay, this one is both a little hard to explain and aimed squarely at the most hardcore nerds among us (me included; I already requested one of these for Christmas). French artist Rebecca Morse's webcomic Girls Next Door started life...
Sci-fi conspiracy theory
I keep seeing the teaser trailer for the upcoming movie Valerian and the Thousand Planets, which I'm told is based on a long-running French comic. I have waded through the title's Wikipedia entry, and I am now both excited about the...
Ouch
Wow, this Killing Joke animated film sounds like it was really poorly thought out. (And not just because I suspect a lot of parents are going to mistakenly think: "Hey, a Batman movie I can finally take my kids to!") I'm not...
A bold move
There was a recent post on LaineyGossip about the upcoming AMC show Preacher, which premieres on May 22nd (we originally wrote about it here). According to Lainey, the premiere episode features "a specific joke...
It looks like it would chafe, too.
Hark! A Vagrant author Kate Beaton recently produced an absolutely glorious flurry of tweets about the upcoming TV adaptation of Marvel's Cloak and Dagger, a comic book series about a crime-fighting duo consisting of a man in an enveloping cloak and a woman in a skin-tight bodysuit with a deeply impractical dagger-shaped cutout...
Hilo: The Boy Who Crashed To Earth, by Judd Winick
According to the press materials for Hilo: The Boy Who Crashed to Earth, series creator Judd Winick set out to create a genuinely kid-friendly superhero comic. School librarians rejoice: the end result is perfect for your 9-year-old reluctant readers (even the ones with super-conservative parents)...
The bell tolls for Vertigo?
io9 just posted a rather grim essay about the future of Vertigo Comics, DC's imprint for adults. I started reading Vertigo comics when I was in high school, and I've been an issue-or-two-per-month reader ever since...
Weekly Book Giveaway: Timmy Failure: Mistakes Were Made, by Stephan Pastis
This week's Book Giveaway is Stephan Pastis's Timmy Failure: Mistakes Were Made. I chose it both because I'm fond of Pastis's Pearls Before Swine comic strip, and because I'm hoping it will be a less excruciating but thematically-similar version of Jeff Kinney's Diary of a Wimpy Kid series. A full review will follow later today...
Another fine candidate for the $10 bill
If you were impressed by the recent Google Doodle featuring Ida B. Wells, I encourage you to check out Kate Beaton's Hark! A Vagrant strip about her, too...
Tales Too Ticklish To Tell, by Berkeley Breathed
When it comes to 1980s comics, Berkeley Breathed's Bloom County was the odd one out. Doonesbury was political, The Far Side surreal, and Calvin and Hobbes genuinely moving—Bloom County veered wildly between all three, and the end result was 70% amazing, 25% mediocre, and (it must be said) 5% terrible...
Weekly Book Giveaway: Tales Too Ticklish to Tell, by Berke Breathed
In honor of the unexpected but super exciting rebirth of Berkeley "Berke" Breathed's Bloom County, this week's Book Giveaway is my copy of Breathed's 1988 collection Tales Too Ticklish To Tell, the only one of my Bloom County collections that still has enough glue left in its spine to hold together...
Bad Machinery: The Case of the Simple Soul, by John Allison
First up: I know this cover was decided on long before I complained about the overly cutesy packaging featured on the previous two volumes in this series, but I'm taking credit for this eye-popping image anyway. Thanks, Oni Press! And don't worry: that little arsonist is adorable. I'm sure the kids will still want to read alllll about her...
Scary Go Round, by John Allison
If you're looking for a Halloween read this week and you haven't got any money (or a library card, or friends who own books), you're in luck: John Allison's pre-Bad Machinery comic Scary Go Round is available for free online...
Bad Machinery: The Case of the Team Spirit and The Case of the Good Boy, by John Allison
I picked up the first volume of John Allison's Bad Machinery because I kept seeing it described as a spectacular title for children, and I figured: what the hell, I'm pretty childish. But now that I've read every Bad Machinery strip to date, I've decided Allison's publisher is making a mistake by pushing Bad Machinery exclusively at kids—this is a story about children, but that doesn't mean it's best appreciated by children...
Weekly Book Giveaway: MetaMaus, by Art Spiegelman
Due to a crippling case of... well, laziness, mostly, I didn't get as much done last week as I planned to, which means our Comics Week is now two weeks long. (Sorry, non-comics readers.) However, that does mean we have another comic-related Book Giveaway: Art Spiegelman's MetaMaus, the ultra-fancy 2011 reprint of his Pulitzer prize–winning Maus, complete with loads of bonus materials and a DVD...
Little Lulu: Vol. 1, by John Stanley and Irving Tripp
The character of Little Lulu was created in 1935 by Marjorie Henderson Buell, beginning life as the subject of a series of gag panels in The Saturday Evening Post and eventually becoming the star of an ongoing comic strip. In 1945, she graduated to her own comic book series, written by John Stanley and illustrated by Irving Tripp. In 2004, Dark Horse Books picked up the rights to reprint the Little Lulu stories, making Lulu's adventures available to a new generation of readers...
Weekly Book Giveaway: Little Lulu: Vol. 1, by John Stanley and Irving Tripp
It's Spring Break, and we're celebrating by focusing on comic books—including several titles that we are seriously behind on reviewing (like the past year of Buffy). We're kicking things off by giving away a classic: the first "Giant Size" volume of John Stanley and Irving Tripp's long-running Little Lulu strip. Our review will follow later today...
This will terrify small children.
Northlake Public Library near Chicago is hoping to spruce up its interior with this charming (and nine feet tall) objet d'art: a massive Incredible Hulk statue. They're using crowd-sourcing to fund the project, as well as raising money for additional graphic novels and a "creation station"...
Historical mash-up
The most recent Hark! A Vagrant strip blends the life of Anne of Cleves (well, at least the part of her life that involved Henry the VIII) with Anne of Green Gables. Thomas Cromwell fills in for Matthew; Henry himself is Marilla...
Cinderella, vastly improved
The always-delightful webcomic Hark! A Vagrant recently re-interpreted Cinderella, and the results are glorious. I hope this is the beginning of an entire series of reworked fairytales...
Wonder Woman at last?
Well, NBC's attempt at a Wonder Woman TV series didn't work out, but that hasn't daunted the CW. According to Vulture, the CW (along with Warner Bros. and DC Comics) is working on a Wonder Woman origin story, currently called Amazon...
Superheroes in cross-stitch
I'm always impressed by people with handicraft skills, as I was not blessed with A) hand-eye coordination, or B) patience. However, those of you who WERE blessed with the above should totally check out this free cross-stitch pattern from Kitschy Digitals inspired by The Avengers...