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Panel Of The Week – 11/10/10

November 16, 2010 in art, artists, comics, x-men | Permalink

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…

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She Has No Head! – My 20 Favorite Fictional Comics Females!

November 15, 2010 in comics, comics should be good, CSBG, she has no head!, superheroes | 9 comments

I did a really fun (though super time consuming) post over on She Has No Head! today for my one year anniversary writing for the site.

Check it out.

Click to enlarge!

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Woo! Batwoman #1 Solicit!

November 12, 2010 in art, artists, awesomeness, batwoman, comics, comics news | 13 comments

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.

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Why Comics? Why?

November 12, 2010 in art, artists, comics, vertigo | 36 comments

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?

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Cover Of The Week – 11/10/10

November 11, 2010 in art, artists, comics | 1 comment

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.

 

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Panel Of The Week – 11/3/10

November 9, 2010 in art, artists, comics, DC Comics, dv8, marvel comics, wildstorm | 3 comments

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.

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She Has No Head! DV8: Character Rehabilitation Done Right, Now What?

November 8, 2010 in brian wood, comic reviews, comics, comics should be good, CSBG, fiona staples, rebekah isaacs, wildstorm | Permalink

A new She Has No Head! about Brian Wood and Rebekah Isaacs DV8 Gods & Monster’s mini-series is up, check it out!

 

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Okay, I’m Done With Batgirl…

November 6, 2010 in batgirl, comics, comics news, DC Comics | 8 comments

I tried people, I really did.

I’ve never liked Steph much and I’ve made no secret of it, and I dislike her in the Batgirl uniform for a variety of reasons (up to and including the fact that her actual costume is ugly as sin with its thigh pouch and hideous purple) but I have bought every single damn issue of that series and I have tried my best to have an open mind and I have supported it with my dollars and even talked positively about it on this blog – about how even though I don’t like Steph much, that I think Bryan Q. Miller has done a great job with her voice on the series and that overall it’s a really positive book for young women and girls – the kind of book we need more of.  That it’s an important book because of the niche it fills and the audience it respectfully reaches out to.  I was even excited because Dustin Nguyen was coming on board.

And this bullshit is the thanks I get?!  It may be adorable, but it’s horseshit.  Check it out…a “tiny adorable history which Cass has been COMPLETELY EDITED OUT OF!”  And worst of all, the bit seems to imply that this is STEPHANIE’S VERSION OF EVENTS…which makes her seem like a bitch that edits out her best friend when convenient.  Oh screw it, I’ll just post it – from The Source.

Honestly DC…just because you know how fucked up your handling of Cass has been for um…YEARS…does not mean you can have Nguyen draw an adorable little revision and we’ll just swallow it up.  And I really don’t know what your goal is here, because you’re DEFINITELY going to piss off the Cass fans (like me) but most of the Steph fans are ALSO fans of Cass because the two characters were best friends…so just who are you thinking is going to love this…?  Why do it?  Do you really think the book is such a crazy irreplaceable success that people will just read this and be all “oh, yeah, that’s totally how it was.  Cass who?”  Unlikely.  And I notice Steph has conveniently left out her time as Robin as well…which she would never do…so this all just smacks of you guys trying to gloss over everything you’re not so proud of regarding your female characters in four cute cartoon-y pages.  Epic fail.

Regardless, you just lost a reader and a reviewer.  I HAD been working on a post for CBR’s Comics Should Be Good about how despite my Steph dislike, the book had become quite good, and more importantly, IMPORTANT.  Guess where that article is now?  That’s right – the fucking round file – where it belongs.

Congrats DC.  You pretty successfully rehabbed a character, so that even people like me that dislike Steph were buying your book…but now, with that little “Cass apparently never existed stunt” you lost a reader.  And we’re at it, the realization of Batgirl/Oracle is pretty tasteless as well.

So, Batgirl can come off my pull list…what other DC books on my list are TOTALLY UNNECESSARY.

Time to do some culling.

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Cover of The Week – 11/4/10

November 5, 2010 in art, artists, comics | 13 comments

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.

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Panel Of The Week – 10/27/10

November 2, 2010 in art, artists, comics, dark horse comics, DC Comics | 3 comments

How can it not be this fantastic hilarious panel by Jill Thompson in the Hellboy/Beasts Of Burden one shot.  Pug isn’t my favorite Beasts of Burden character usually, but between Dorkin and Thompson for this one-shot he’s moved WAY up the chain.  Adorable.

But I do want to give an honorable mention to this excellent, surprisingly complex Matt Camp panel from Supergirl Annual #2. But I think this panel is more powerful in context, so I’m going to tell you that what Supergirl is looking at/reacting to is being in a museum in the 30th century that is showing how she died.  It was surprisingly impactful, thanks both to Gates simple words and Camp’s wonderful art – the emotion in her face, even the positioning of her hands, I think he just nailed it.

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