This panel from the very first page of Batman Inc. #1, by Yanick Paquette is pretty damn hard to beat…you can see why…
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New She Has No Head! is up – a review of Sarah Glidden’s How To Understand Israel In 60 Days Or Less. Check it out!
Tags: comics!, recommended!, she has no head!
Man I wish comics were more like this more regularly. Let me just go on record as saying that I would buy Marvel’s Strange Tales II monthly…forever…I’d even buy it weekly forever. It’s true that anthologies are always a bit of a mixed bag, because every story is not equal, at the same time while my favorite piece may be a Kate Beaton piece, someone else may prefer something completely different, so there’s also room in an anthology for everyone to find something to fall really in love with. The price tag on these is high ($4.99) but it’s 48 pages and the first two issues this year were some of the most enjoyable comics reading I’ve done all year…and that’s worth quite a bit to me.
Check out a few preview pages here, if you doubt me. And you can see more pages, and a longer write up here.
By Michael DeForge
Written by Nick Gurewitch and illustrated by Kate Beaton
By Eduardo Medeiros
And of course the great Ivan Brunetti Cover, so you know what to look out for. Strange Tales II #3 releases on December 8th, 2010. Don’t forget to ask for it at your shop.
By Ivan Brunetti
Gotta go with J.H. Williams III’s completely iconic, awe-inspiring, and flat out gorgeous cover to Batman Inc. #1.
It’s also nice that the cover really resonates what is actually inside unlike so many comics today. The cover heralds not only the return of Bruce Wayne and the ushering in of a new era, but the flags from a variety of nations as his backdrop, really helps clarify what that era will be. As usual J.H. Williams III is one of the absolute best artists around. If you love him, go vote for him in Comics Should Be Good’s Top 100 Artists and Writers (but don’t forget about all the awesome lady writers and artists!).
Tags: comic covers, comics!, Cover Of The Week, the goddamn batman
This was a really weak week for my comics. Nothing seemed especially interesting or beautiful.
The final arc to The Return of Bruce Wayne had a couple great opportunities and some that really should have been perfect opportunities for Panel of the Week, (some of them even involving awesome “old school” Wonder Woman) but none of them really rose to the occasion, instead just feeling ho-hum to me and not really worthy visually of what was going on story-wise.
Normally Cass Cain appearing in a few pages of Red Robin would easily be enough to pick up a Panel of the Week from me, but while the art was not bad it wasn’t anything to write home about and I didn’t like or appreciate the story…so there were no truly great moments there to pick up on.
If I wasn’t so against Batgirl #15 perhaps one of those opening adorable Nguyen panels could have won, but I can’t bear to support that little bit of revisionist history.
Stuart Immonen did some beautiful work on The New Avengers #6, as per usual, but without the surrounding story…it’s hard to just pull a panel and have it work out of context This one does though and is pretty awesome, so it’s our winner:
The book I enjoyed the most this week, and which had TONS of panels worthy of Panel Of The Week, but is not technically eligible as it came out last week (I had a delay in getting it) is Marvel’s Strange Tales II issue #2. But just for fun, here’s what I would have picked had Strange Tales II been eligible…and in some nice symmetry it’s more Wolvie!
For what it’s worth I would read the FUCK out of Jeffrey Brown’s X-Men regularly. Hilarious in all the right ways. I laughed out loud repeatedly in his short from Strange Tales II.
“More Indie Creators on Mainstream Properties!” I say.
Man, I’ve got to come up with a battle cry that has a better ring to it…
Remember two seconds ago when I was saying comics give and then they take. This would be the give part of that equation:
WOO!
Mark your calendars! February 23rd!
Not wild about how prevalent Bette Kane aka Flamebird seems in the solicit because that was the least interesting part of Kate’s Detective Comics arc to me, but I knew it was coming and I trust Williams III to do it well. Don’t let me down man! So excited.
So, quite frankly, I love this Chrissie Zullo illustration, and I love the character of Cindy from Fables…but why on earth does she need to be wearing only underwear and a hat, scarf, and gloves in this promo/cover image for the series? When will I start seeing dudes equally dressed to promote their mini-series? It will never happen. You know why? Cause it looks fucking ridiculous.
It’s so frustrating to see this stuff…because Chrissie Zullo does gorgeous work, Cindy’s a great character, and while Chris Roberson is not my favorite writer thus far, there’s literally NO sexism in his work (at least in what I’ve read)…so this is a book I want to like…should like…and should be the audience for…but then she’s in her underwear…? How I am supposed to support this? Not only support it with my dollars…but this is the kind of book that should be obvious review fodder for She Has No Head!…but if the covers (and more?) are going to be like this…it makes it really hard for my to throw any support behind it.
Ah comics…you give and then you take, you give and then you take. Would it kill you just to give one in a while?
Tags: comic covers, comics!
Winner for this week…? Eh, not a strong week, but this is the best cover of the Batgirl series thus far…by a mile. The uniform almost looks good here. Almost. Nguyen can make almost any cover good.
Additionally, this should have made last week’s Cover Of The Week a three way tie…but I didn’t get it until this week. So I still have to give it credit. It’s hard to compete with Jamie Hernandez.
Tags: comic covers, comics!, Cover Of The Week
Sometimes comics are just badass awesome. Case in point:
Batman & Robin #16, Fraser Irving.
Also:
Hawkeye & Mockingbird #6, David Lopez.
It’s a bit bittersweet however as it appears Hawkeye & Mockingbird has been canceled. Which is a shame because it was a solid little book. Well-written and well-illustrated and better than a large percentage of the monthly books I read, but I guess it just didn’t have enough HEYLOOKATME!HEYLOOKATME! to make it in this cutthroat comics world (it doesn’t help that a bunch of other books debuted at exactly the same time – Avengers Academy and Young Allies – only one of which – Avengers Academy – has survived the ax). But it does seem you need a lot of the pretty/shining/shock&awe these days in order to survive more than your first arc. I feel bad for not talking this book up…I didn’t because I wasn’t “blown away” but I’m sorry I didn’t because in reality what we need are more solid well-written, well-illustrated books that tell good stories consistently. And that’s what Hawkeye & Mockingbird was doing.
And while we’re talking about comics being badass awesome, take a look at this page by Rebekah Isaacs from the last issue of the DV8 miniseries Gods & Monsters.
I mean, WHOA. Right? And if you like the looks of that, check out this post I did on She Has No Head! about Brian Wood and Rebekah Isaacs’ full DV8 Gods & Monsters mini-series, which just finished last week.
Tags: comics!, Panel Of The Week, she has no head!, things made of awesome
Any other week, either of these covers could have handily beat everyone else I think…but since they’re up on the same week, they’re just going to have to share.
First up, Rafael Albuqurque’s incredibly iconic and interesting Superboy #1. Let me be clear…I have absolutely ZERO interest in Superboy. ZERO. I still bought this comics. The color choices here, combined with composition and straight up beautiful figure work sell this SO HARD. Nice job boys.
Also brilliant is Mike Allred’s awesome I, Zombie #7. These covers have been a bit hit and miss for me, but when they are hits, they are home-freaking-runs. This is AMAZING.
Tags: comic covers, comics!, Cover Of The Week, things made of awesome