The Long and Shortbox Of It!

A Jason Mural in Oslo

noreply@blogger.com (Josh Kopin) — Tue, 14 May 2013 03:32:00 +0000

Process: Dash Shaw

noreply@blogger.com (Josh Kopin) — Sat, 11 May 2013 15:49:00 +0000

Dash Shaw shares some process from his upcoming book New School:

A bar scene. I shuffled things around and eventually tilted the angle to make the space feel more dynamic and crowded. The first four photos are 18 X 24” sheets of paper, then the last (final) ink pages in the book are two 8.5 X 11” sheets — but the color layer is still done 18 X 24”. I draw things in stages, try to get fresh eyes on it somehow, sometimes one stage drawn a year after the stage before.

The Great American Comics Shop: Carmine Street Comics

noreply@blogger.com (Josh Kopin) — Thu, 02 May 2013 03:43:00 +0000

My pal Jon Gorga at the register of Carmine Street Comics, his newly opened shop in NYC's West Village.

Process: Jeff Stokley

noreply@blogger.com (Josh Kopin) — Sun, 21 Apr 2013 19:00:00 +0000

Jeff Stokley shares some pencils from the upcoming Six Gun Gorilla

Exclusive: Carmine Street Comics, The West Village's New Great American Comics Shop

noreply@blogger.com (Josh Kopin) — Sat, 20 Apr 2013 04:59:00 +0000

The summer of 2009 was the worst season of my whole life. I suspect that this is true for many college students spending some time at home between freshman and sophomore year and, for reasons that I don't care to get into here, I had it particularly bad. That August, as I was beginning to come out the other side, I felt that I had to take all that ennui, which built up and then was melted by Chicago's summer sun, and evacuate it.

I called my friend Jon. I said "let's write about comics." And, nearly four years and more than 500 posts later, you're reading the result of that conversation. We're very proud of it. And we have plans to be around for a long, long time. You may have noticed, though, that Jon's presence the last few months has been a little minimal. He's been busy, you see, on a much different comics related project: At the beginning of May, with his partner Mike Novo, Jonathan Gorga is opening up a comic book shop.

Carmine Street Comics' Front Window, All Lit Up

The store will share space with the downsizing Unoppressive Non-Imperialist Bargain Books in Manhattan and will be called Carmine Street Comics, after its location in the West Village. He and Mike settled on the name in part because his father's name is Carmine, but also, he says, because "we're proud to transplant ourselves to a new place with such a rich history of 20th century culture: this is Bob Dylan's old neighborhood and where the beat poetry movement started. This street has class and pop culture history in spades." Beyond that, it turns out that Carmine Street has a long history with comics retail; in the front of the new shop is a light up sign that simply reads "Comics." That sign came from Village Comics, once New York's largest comics shop. At some point, it moved into a space it shared with Bleeker Bob's on nearby Bleeker Street and then gave the sign, and their remaining customers, to Unoppressive Non-Imperialist Bargain Books. By opening on Carmine Street, once also the location of a store called All Comics, Jon and Mike are going to bring back something that the West Village has been missing for a long time. In this spirit, they're committed to integrating themselves into the neighborhood; by partnering with the book store, a Carmine St. mainstay, Jon says that he hopes to "provide both their customers and ours something new in our shared space." They're also hoping to add to the West Village's reputation as a good place to just wander around by using the sidewalk space and the abundance of nearby parks for signings and other events.

The Carmine Street Comics team knows that New York's comics retail market is already crowded, but Jon believes that there are a few things that set them apart from nearby shops. Most important, Jon says that he wants the store to be "locally AND globally-focused, superhero AND indie-friendly, because that's what the comics world needs right now, a new place to bridge those gaps. It's my aim to help those connections grow." One of the ways that they're hoping to do that is through what they're calling the In-Store Artist Program, which will allow NYC-based-comicsmiths to use the space as a small studio and as a ready made venue in which to sell and promote their work. There's a whole roster of artists already involved, including Ellen Stedfeld, the store's first official artist in residence, as well as friend of the blog Danny Lewis, Chris Pirate, Dre Grigoropol, Patrick Tsao, and Jason Quinones. Jon says that these people, and people who make comics in general, are the "real heroes of the comics industry."

Although Jon isn't leaving The Long and Shortbox of It!, I have a feeling that he's going to be distracted by Carmine Street Comics for a long time. The shop will be open at 34 Carmine Street in New York City with a grand opening date scheduled for May 1st, in time for Free Comic Book Day on May 4th. I hope you'll be able to come down to Carmine Street and celebrate; I will certainly be there to wish my friend well. In the meantime, if you would like to contact Jon and Mike, you can do so by emailing business concerns to info@carminestreetcomics.com or thecomicsguys@gmail.com for general questions. The website is www.CarmineStreetComics.com.

Frank Santoro, Comic Book Judge

noreply@blogger.com (Josh Kopin) — Thu, 18 Apr 2013 02:53:00 +0000

In the wake of this year's just announced nominations, Rich Johnston asked Frank Santoro whether or not the feelings related in a recent blog post suggesting that we blacklist all of the creators involved in Before Watchmen had affected his decisions as an Eisner award judge. Santoro responded this way:

I’m glad this subject has come up. I definitely had strong feelings about Before Watchmen when it was announced. However, once I became an Eisner judge, I took my responsibility seriously, set my feelings aside, and considered the books that were submitted—as did all the other judges. (And I don’t believe any of the other judges had actually seen that particular blog post.) These titles and creators were up against strong competition in all the categories for which they qualified, and ultimately none of them made the final nominations list. I actually went to bat for Steve Rude and Darwyn Cooke specifically. Some of the creators I listed in the posting, like Cooke, are indeed nominated for Eisners for other work they did. So no, it did not affect the judging decisions.

All of which seems perfectly reasonable to me. I don't really have anything to add, I just wanted to recognize that Santoro's opinion on the issue had evolved.

Talk Over Balloons: Jason Lutes, Donna Almendrala, and Bingo Baby

noreply@blogger.com (Josh Kopin) — Mon, 15 Apr 2013 14:00:00 +0000

Last year, cartoonist and teacher Jason Lutes recruited a few of his recent students from the Center for Cartoon Studies for a session of the game Fiasco, which they would then turn into a comic. Bingo Baby, the book that came out of that session, is the first project for Lutes's collaboration focused publisher Penny Lantern Press, and is now being funded through Kickstarter (go help them out if you can!). I recently spoke to Lutes and Donna Almendrala about the project.

Josh Kopin: First, how did the two of you and the four other creators of Bingo Baby [Bill Bedard, Joseph Lambert, Amelia Onorato, Dennis St. John] decide to produce a comic using a role playing game?

Jason Lutes: In the spring of 2011, I flew down to North Carolina, to speak at the first annual Comics Fest at the Durham Country Library. While I was there, my friends at the library passed along a copy of Fiasco, which had been left for me by Jason Morningstar (who couldn’t make it to the Comics Fest itself). Jason and I had corresponded briefly about my ongoing comics series Berlin and his work in independent tabletop games, but we had never met face to face. I was excited to receive a copy of Fiasco, since I love tabletop and roleplaying games, but had only a passing knowledge of the indie game scene in which Jason is a big player.

I host a weekly boardgame night at the Center for Cartoon Studies, which is a great opportunity for me to socialize and introduce a younger generation to the sorts of games I love. At one of these game nights, soon after returning to Vermont from North Carolina, I pulled out Fiasco and gave it a spin. CCS students are cartoonists, and cartoonists are storytellers, so they took quickly to the way Fiasco creates a compelling, structured, yet improvisational narrative. The game was a huge success, and we played it a number of times over the following weeks.

I had been looking for some kind of hook for a project I had been mulling over, and Fiasco provided that hook. It's fun, fast, spontaneous, and structured so that it allows a group of players to contribute equally to the central narrative. By its nature, the game is also a set of constraints, and constraints give you clear boundaries and focus, reducing the scope of creative decision-making so that you can concentrate on whatever aspects you decide are essential. In the case of this project, I wanted spontaneity, interaction, and a story with multiple voices, so Fiasco was perfect.

Thumbnails for a page of Bingo Baby, done by Joseph Lambert and Jason Lutes

JK: Jason, how did you bring the rest of the collaborators together?

JL: The idea for the project germinated in early 2011, when James Sturm (co-founder of CCS) and I were at a dinner party. We were talking about how successful a particular class project -- called "the Golden Age Project" had gone that year, and how we should expand upon the basic idea and move it outside of the classroom. For the Golden Age Project, we break the class up into teams of 5-6 students and give them two weeks to produce a complete 32-page, full-color comic book based on a genre from the Golden Age (superhero, western, etc.). It's a great experience, and one of the best parts is that each book's story is hammered out in the first 2-4 hours of the first day, with every member of the team contributing. tehre's a real feeling of seat-of-your-pants storytelling, that gets pushed through the classic production line before emerging in short order as a complete, polished package.

So we had a basic model for what would become the "penny lantern method," but I needed a team to pull of the first book. It was really important to me to have everyone in the same room as much as possible, much like a classic comics bullpen. Instead of a two week time frame and 32 pages, I settled on 3 months and 72 pages, with those 3 months being June, July, and August. For a while I was calling it the "Secret Summer Project." So an immediate limiting factor on whom I could recruit was that they would have to be sticking around White River Junction (the Vermont town where CCS is based) for the summer. I also needed to draw only from the alumni pool, since I didn't want this project to interfere with classwork, and/or create any tension around the idea that favoritism was at work.

Donna had been my T.A., and a general all-around superstar in the classroom, so she was an easy pick. She had been planning to head back to California after graduation, but I proposed this idea and, thankfully, she decided to stick around for the summer. I don't know how we would have gotten it done without her. Bill and Mia (Amelia) both graduated with Donna in 2012, and I had worked with them as their editor on the Golden Age project, so I knew they had the chops for the job. Joe and Denis both graduated back in 2008, but they have made White River their home, so I knew they weren't going anywhere. In the end, I couldn't have been happier with the team and everything they ended up bringing to the project. Which was pretty much everything.

Denis St. John's background pencils for that page.

JK: Did knowing that you were recording the gaming session, which you were then going to transcribe and turn into a comic, change the way that you played the game?

Donna Almendrala: We all knew that this game would set the foundation for the narrative of our upcoming comic venture. However, Jason was sneaky and actually told the group that we would be playing a round of Fiasco just as a warm-up exercise or a practice round, not the actual thing. This was partially to deal with potential nervousness that could have disrupted the game flow, and also to provide us with a way out in case our "practice" was an actual fiasco (not the good kind). Luckily, I think everyone played the game as normally as one can play the game, and any nerves seemed to disappear because we were actually having a fun time playing.

JK: Can you give me a sense of how the game is played?

DA: I'll field this one since it's pretty straightforward. The objective of Fiasco is for a group of players (3-5) to create a Coen brothers-like story on the fly and in the span of 2-3 hours. It sounds pretty intensive and it is due to all the active listening and thinking one has to participate in, but it is also really fun and hopefully generates lots of laughter. There is usually a winner at the end of the game, but you don't necessarily try to win, your goal is more to fulfill your character arc, good or bad, usually to the bitter end. Everyone sits around a table with a playset of random character relationships, wants and needs, objects, locations, etc. and by rolling dice each player assigns these random characteristics to other players until every person has a defined relationship to the person next to them and often some time of goal or object in common. This random assignment is not unlike rolling your character in any other tabletop RPG. Each player then creates their character based on this assignment of relationships and needs. The rulebook advises all players that the best way to play Fiasco is to think about their own character's needs, and to pursue them relentlessly. This in turn creates the foundation upon which the ensuing narrative is built. The rules of the game follow similarly to improv, when one player sets up a situation each other player must respond with an attitude of "Yes, and..." which essentially means that you must accept ideas that a player comes up with and then contribute something more to the story to further it along. There is a pool of dice in the middle of the table, half are black and half are white. One color indicates a positive outcome and the other color indicates a negative outcome. A person's turn consists of either setting up a scene involving his character and once it is set up, another player will hand him a colored die indicating whether this scene will end well for this character or poorly. Conversely, a player can request to be given a scene involving his character to resolve and then choose the colored die himself and whether the outcome will be good or bad. Each turn goes around the group clockwise with each person trying to further the goals of their character; there aren't really any rules besides "Yes, and..." and throughout the game, players can jump in to other people's scenes, act out supporting characters that sometimes appear, etc. Halfway through the game, there is a "Tilt" that gets thrown into the mix which throws characters out of their comfort zones and introduces another element of chaos. The game ends after everyone has gotten a "turn" four times, and there is usually an elaborate and disastrous story that has emerged from it which is perfect for translating to the comics page!

Amelia Onorato's penciled figures

The greatest lesson I learned while playing this game is realizing how compelling and unique a story can be if you bring many different personalities together and pursue character driven plots. Sometimes, as a creator, I can get bogged down in figuring out all the little details of world-building and making the twists and turns of the plot. But the best and organic stories usually arise from developing strong and interesting characters just experiencing their world in the same way we experience ours.

JK: Once you had completed the game, how did you go about turning it into a comic? Did all those personalities begin to clash a little bit?

JL: We recorded the session digitally, and transcribed the recording. Then, we had another meeting where we read it over and talked about things we needed to cut, change, or expand upon. Once we had hammered out the kinks in the plot and established an overall scene-by-scene progression (which mostly followed what had developed during that initial play session), I assigned each contributor scenes to "thumbnail," or turn into a comics draft with page and panel composition roughed out. Each contributor was given leeway to edit the transcript and shape the dialogue of their assigned scenes. Then, Donna and I took everyone's thumbnails, collated them, and revised them over two more drafts, until the characters felt consistent, the pacing was right, and the story felt solid.

At that point, we were ready to kick into assembly-line art production, which meant handing the pages to pencilers first -- Amelia handled all the figures, while Denis, Bill, and Donna handled props and backgrounds. Once the pencil pass was complete, Donna took on the monumental task of inking all 72 pages. And how long did that take you, Donna? I forget.

The compiled pencils

DA: Haha, yeah that was fun. I think I was trying to do maybe 4 pages a day. We finished around Sept-Oct.

JK: Donna, was it difficult to collaborate with so many other pencilers? And was there a particular reason that you did all of the inking yourself?

DA: Penciling was a tricky process because we tried to save time by having Amelia pencil the characters on every page separately from whoever did the backgrounds (not sure if this really saved time in retrospect). Sometimes the background penciler would have to draw the backgrounds before the characters were filled in. When I got to ink, I would composite the characters over the background, using Photoshop to transform the objects to make the perspective look right. Jason is king when it comes to drawing backgrounds, and he taught us one of his learned techniques called freehand perspective (this is just one of the secrets he shares with us in his classes at school) which really speeds up the process and gives you key things to look for when making things look correct. I think we wanted to have one main inker to smooth out the overall art style and have some kind of consistency at the inked level. I think it was also mostly out of necessity since everyone already had packed schedules and we barely were able to squeeze this thing out in time. It was really tough learning to ink someone else's pencil lines, but about 20 pages in, I got the hang of it and now the book is done I feel like I got a lot better for it.

JK: Do you think you approach penciling differently now that you have this experience inking
someone else's work?

DA: Well, I've always approached drawing pretty methodically. I really liked inking Amelia's pencils because I got to feel the way she draws figures and was great for practice because I'm not really good at that. Inking Jason's pencils was pretty thrilling since he's one of my favorite cartoonists.

Donna Almendrala's inks.

I think I did a lot of absorbing through the whole drawing process. I drew another comic recently since Bingo Baby, and it ended up looking like partly Amelia's figures and similarly Jason-esque backgrounds.

JK: Given that, would you describe this sort of collaboration as a kind of learning experience?

DA: Definitely, individually as a cartoonist and on the whole. This was was the first of many experiments in collaboration. I think most of us rarely work on comic projects of this ambitious and aggressive of a schedule in a group setting. I was sort of curious to if this was going to end up a success or you know, a fiasco.

JK: How important was CCS's environment to the incubation of a project like this one? Do you think it would have been possible to put something like this together out there in the world?

JL: Everyone involved had to commit a lot of time and energy to get the majority of the work done within a three-month time frame, with the understanding going in that we had no idea what we would end up with on the other side. There had to be a of trust. I think you could pull that off in another context, but it would take a lot more effort and energy. Group chemistry is also a big part of the equation. The two CSS-related factors that really helped out were the sense of community that surrounds the school, and the fact that I had all of these guys in class for two years, so we had a shared language and understanding of how comics works.

Bill Bedard's and Joseph Lambert's colored page

JK: How are institutions like CCS important to the community of comics makers and readers?

JL: I think this is impossible to really quantify, but I can try to answer the question in a general sense.

CCS students sometimes encounter a negative reaction from other cartoonists in regards to the fact that they are studying cartooning at the graduate level. The criticism is usually framed along the lines of "you don't need to go to school to learn how to make comics," or "real art can't be taught." And both of those things are true to a degree. But in my role as a teacher, I have witnessed three inarguable facts about CCS students: they form a community that becomes the foundation for their professional network; they become adept at giving and receiving constructive criticism; and during their two years in White River Junction, their cartooning improves at a phenomenal rate.

So CCS is important to comics makers in that we are helping to turn more of them out into the world, equipped with skills that well help them make the most of their lives as authors and artists. And we are important to readers in that our focus is on helping each individual cartoonist find a personal voice, and then find the best and clearest way to communicate to whatever audience may be ready to listen to that voice.

That all may sound pretty high-falutin', but I genuinely believe it to be true.

DA: I think CCS is a hotspot for attracting people who love comics and are passionate about creating their own ones. It's a really unique place that gives cartoonists a refuge to study and hone their craft. I personally found CCS's classes to be invaluable to my growth. At our graduation ceremony, commencement speaker Tom Devlin gave us parting advice saying that now as we re-enter the real world, we have a duty to share and teach others who might also want to learn the craft. It's one of the best ways to honor what we do and also to give back in something that has changed our lives for the better. CCS does pretty much that.

Thanks to Jason Lutes and Donna Almendrala for taking the time to talk to me. Go kickstart Bingo Baby!

Process: Jason

noreply@blogger.com (Josh Kopin) — Fri, 05 Apr 2013 01:09:00 +0000

Over at his blog, Norwegian cartoonist Jason shares some thumbnails from his upcoming detective book Lost Cat. His comics have always seemed to me extraordinarily, almost mystically, simple; his plots don't depend on major turns, he does much with just a few thin lines, and closing the space between them is often only a matter of making a few minor changes, the wholesale movement of a character, a change in expression executed by altering just a single stroke. What's most obviously distinctive about his work, though, is that most of it, in fact, all of the stuff I've seen with outside some strips in the collection of his early work Pocket Full of Rain, is done with bipedal cats, dogs, rabbits, and birds. What's interesting about the Lost Cat thumbnails is just how human some of the figures look, while the ones that don't look human, the ones that belie their final form as anthropomorphic animals, only do so because Jason has added, say, ears, to them. Strikingly, this makes his characters both human and not, and gives the cartoonist the freedom to place them wherever he pleases on the spectrum in between, meaning that great follows from small, that little additions mean great leaps in possibility and, ultimately, meaning.

Process: Bryan Lee O'Malley

noreply@blogger.com (Josh Kopin) — Tue, 02 Apr 2013 20:31:00 +0000

Via Bryan Lee O'Malley's tumblr:

rough panel from Seconds.

getting there… hoping to finish the roughs next month and then start inking!!!!!!

It's always nice to see an artist's process as they're in process, which is something that happens much more rarely than one would expect, I think. Seconds is O'Malley's long awaited follow up to Scott Pilgrim and its very exciting to see something like this from him, and to hear that he's close to a new phase in its production.

Terry Dodson's Muses, and a Way Into Eurocomics

noreply@blogger.com (Josh Kopin) — Sun, 31 Mar 2013 14:00:00 +0000

The second book in Terry Dodson and D-P Filippi's series Songes is now available in English, published by Humanoids under the title Muses. Books like this strike me as really important, particularly for a young American trying to find his way into Eurocomics, say, me. It's not like Herge or Jason are dead ends, but a release like Muses can be the beginning of a daisy chain in a way that books by one cartoonist can't; I'll pick it up because I know I like Dodson, and, if I like the writing, maybe I'll seek out some other stuff by Filippi and, hopefully, he may have collaborated with some other artist I'll end up liking and on and on. In theory, those variant covers that Milo Manara recently did for Marvel could function the same way-- I would be interested to know if they had. Anyway, if you're interested, Dodson recently shared some of his process for one of the 9.5 X 12.5 Muses pages, a piece of which is posted below.

Process: Paul Hornshemeier

noreply@blogger.com (Josh Kopin) — Fri, 22 Mar 2013 11:54:00 +0000

Paul Hornschemeier shares the pencils for a couple of really great, and ultimately rejected, Iron Man covers.

Not Quite The Avenging Angel I Was Hoping For

noreply@blogger.com (Josh Kopin) — Fri, 22 Mar 2013 03:31:00 +0000

Today, for about three minutes, I was convinced that something amazing was going to happen. For that 180 seconds, I was so convinced of this thing that I've spent the rest of the day since I found out it wasn't going to happen trying to recover from the disappointment.

In order to explain fully, I have to back up a few days, to the release of Marvel's solicitations for June, which included this:

AGE OF ULTRON #10 (OF 10)BRIAN MICHAEL BENDIS (W)BRANDON PETERSON, CARLOS PACHECO& JOE QUESADA (A/C)Cover by BRANDON PETERSONVariant cover by MARK BROOKSUltron Variant by ROCK-HE KIMSpoiler Variant also availableSpoiler Sketch Variant Also AvailableTHE FINALE!The biggest secret in comics will be revealed to you! An ending so confidential...even the artists of this book don’t know what lies on the final pages...! A surprise so big that comic book legend Joe Quesada himself returns to the pages of Marvel Comics to draw a sequence that people will be talking about for years.40 PGS./Rated T+ ...$3.99*All covers of Age Of Ultron #10 will be polybagged

Which, you know, alright. Caleb Mozzocco has covered the more absurd aspects of this particular solicitation, and all I have to add is that I'm not particularly interested in Age of Ultron, whether its a universe changing event or not; I'm not enamored of Bryan Hitch's recent work and I'm suffering from a little bit of, and this is a clinical term, event burnout after having spent six months and way too much money on Avengers vs. X-Men.

Then, on Monday, Rich posted the following missive:

Age Of Ultron‘s surprising ending is meant to be top secret, only eight people are meant to know about it and Joe Quesada is drawing the last few pages to preserve the mystery. Nice bit of PR, certainly but it’s not true.

Guarding the secret has been Marvel’s number one job, but it seems there more than one aspect to Age Of Ultron‘s ending that they are trying to keep confidential. Everyone seems to think I love to spoil stories but it’s just not true, when I discovered one aspect to the ending of Age Of Ultron after the Marvel Summit, they asked me not to run it, so I didn’t (even though it screams at me from this month’s solicitations- could only eight people really know this one?)

Later, however, I was told a different aspect to the ending, which caused Marvel to properly panic when I shared with Marvel that I knew it – or at least a part of it – and I was told there were all sorts of legal implications if this story got spoiled by me. And so, again, I’m not running it, but I will give you a hint because you deserve at least that, “an unexpected guest star joining the Marvel Universe…”

Again, well, ok. I didn't see the hint, but I also didn't care enough to look particularly hard. All of that was followed up by this announcement this morning:

This summer, acclaimed writer Neil Gaiman makes his return to Marvel—and he won’t be alone!

Those of you with eyes will notice that the press release continues after that, but as soon as I saw that sentence, I put together the following things: Neil Gaiman is returning to Marvel. Age of Ultron ends with the arrival of a special guest. The special guest is a huge, shocking, presumably long awaited surprise, the acquisition of which involved some legal wrangling, and they appear in a part of the comic drawn not by Hitch but instead by Joe Quesada.

Well, that could only mean one thing, right?

Marvelman! It had to be! Gaiman was the last Marvelman writer before the series stopped publication. Quesada had even drawn the announcement poster when Marvel told the comics world it had bought the rights. I was euphoric! Here he is, three years later! Finally! After all this time!

And then I read the rest of that press release, which continues as follows:

June’s AGE OF ULTRON #10 will not only conclude the epic event, but include a special epilogue written by Brian Michael Bendis with art by the legendary Joe Quesada bringing Gaiman’s original creation Angela into the Marvel Universe. Sporting a new Quesada-designed look, Angela will have an immediate impact that carries over into GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY #5 in July, written by Bendis and Gaiman.

Wait, what?

There are a couple of reasons that I find this announcement confusing, and I will keep them separate by using bullet points. First though, some background that you should feel free to skip: Marvelman is a pre-Silver Age Captain Marvel rip-off created by Englishman Mick Anglo. In 1980s, Marvelman was revived by Alan Moore as the creator's most extreme consideration of what a real superhero would be like. At some point, Moore gave his percentage of the rights to the character to Neil Gaiman, who continued the series, which ended at issue #24, with the bankruptcy of its second publisher, Eclipse Comics, which had changed the character's name to Miracleman to prevent a lawsuit from Marvel Comics.

Angela is a character that Gaiman created for Todd McFarlane's Spawn in the early 90s. Gaiman and McFarlane had a very, very long running spat about the ownership of the character and the distribution of associated royalties. In 1996, McFarlane purchased the rights to the Marvelman character and initiated a plan to use him in Spawn. The next year, the two creators came to an agreement: McFarlane would receive the full rights to Angela and a couple of other characters that Gaiman had created for Spawn, and Gaiman would receive the Marvelman rights. At some point, McFarlane backed out of this deal. In 2001, Gaiman founded Marvels and Miracles, LLC in order to figure out how to figure out to whom the rights belonged and in 2002, he wrote 1602 for Marvel, the profits of which went to the LLC. The publication of that series was approximately concurrent with my first major period of interest in comic books.

Then a bunch of years pass and, at San Diego Comic Con 2009, Marvel Comics announced that they had purchased the rights to Marvelman from... Mick Anglo, the character's creator. At the time, it was hoped that this meant that Marvel was going to reprint the Moore and Gaiman written material from the 80s and 90s, and the company promptly reprinted... some Mick Anglo material that, frankly, no one was interested in. Somewhere in all of this, Gaiman and McFarlane come to a deal that lets Gaiman use Angela however he wants. At some other point it also became clear that McFarlane owns the rights to some images associated with Marvelman rather than any actual rights to the character.

In hindsight, the idea that Marvel was going to reprint the Marvelman stuff that people actually wanted to read was, well, insane. Read the "Ownership" section of the Wikipedia article to see just how insane-- nobody has any idea who actually owns the rights to any of it, and I think that it might be a distinct possibility that no one ever will. That's why I was so excited about Marvelman, and so disappointed by what's actually going on.

Ok, so here's those bullet points about why I'm confused:

Did you read all of that? No wonder I'm confused.
More importantly: Gaiman fought for a really long time to ensure that he owned a share of Angela. And then he wins! His agreement with McFarlane says that he can use the character however he pleases. And then he turns around and sells, gives, or trades the character to Marvel? I don't understand.
I also don't understand this: why would Marvel introduce Angela at all? Is there a group of fans who care enough about a peripheral Spawn character from two decades ago that it'll boost sales of Guardians of the Galaxy, a book almost guaranteed to sell well because, well, Bendis is writing it and they're making one of those movies everybody loves using those particular characters. Are they going to use Angela in the movie? Why not just create a character from scratch? It's not like Angela would sell more movie tickets than something that they came up with because, again, I don't really think that anybody cares.

With all that in mind, I think that there are three possibilities. The first is that Age of Ultron is just one, big, long, expensive jab at McFarlane. I have no idea why it would be, but the series does have covers that are foil embossed. That foil is as much a symbol of 90s comic excess as McFarlane is himself. This one seems unlikely.

The second is that Marvel wanted Gaiman for Guardians of the Galaxy, his presence will certainly increase the book's sales, even though they're likely to start and stay very high, and he told them he would do it if they would introduce Angela into the Marvel Universe. This one seems possible, although I'm still I'm not sure I see from Gaiman's point of view.

The third possibility is a lot more intriguing, and also more plausible. Keeping in mind that Marvel does completely crazy things at relatively regular intervals, it's a distinct possibility that someone from the company, probably Quesada, decided that he would like to use Angela for Guardians of the Galaxy. Again, I have no idea why Marvel would want to do that, but I don't think that its outside the realm of possibility. It's also pretty clear, and has been since 1994, that Gaiman wants to finish the Marvelman story that Eclipse's bankruptcy intervened in. At this point, Marvel has a claim to a character that's as strong as anyone's, and they have Disney's money and legal muscle to back it up. Given all this, I can't help but wonder if Quesada called up Gaiman and said "Yo, Neal, I was wondering if you would be interested in a trade..." That Rich has even suggested that Marvelman is a possibility now makes me all the more suspicious.

What that means is, of course, an open question, and all of this is very, very idle speculation, but its the only way that I can make any sense of any of this, because, again, none of this makes any sense, from any perspective that I can get my mind around, anyway. If nothing else, its an important reminder that the people that pay other people to make the things that I love don't always make decisions I understand.

I am, however, always glad to read Gaiman's work, and so this is welcome news even if I don't understand it. I would also very much like to see a nice reprinted edition of Marvelman, with the long awaited conclusion to Gaiman's story in it. If this is a step in that direction, well, who cares how we got there?

Me Gusta Indeed

noreply@blogger.com (Josh Kopin) — Tue, 19 Mar 2013 17:18:00 +0000

Well, here's our answer to yesterday's mystery:

Welcome to Panel Syndicate, where artist Marcos Martin and writer Brian K. Vaughan deliver original comics directly to readers around the world, who pay whatever the hell they want for each DRM-free issue. Our first new storyline is THE PRIVATE EYE, a forward-looking mystery we created with colorist Muntsa Vicente. Set in a future where privacy is considered a sacred right and everyone has a secret identity, The Private Eye is a serialized sci-fi detective story for mature readers. You can download our 32-page first issue right now, for any price you think is fair. 100% of your payments go directly into our greedy mitts and will help fund the rest of a story that we're both very proud of (we hope there will be around 10 issues total; an old-school "maxiseries!"), so thanks for reading...
BRIAN & MARCOS

Me gusta indeed. Its nice to see that I was about 75% right yesterday. More once I have some time to click through it, probably tonight or tomorrow.

Me Gusta

noreply@blogger.com (Josh Kopin) — Mon, 18 Mar 2013 23:54:00 +0000

Earlier today, David Aja tweeted links to three promo images for Brian K. Vaughn and Marcos Martin's mysterious new project. The first, courtesy of Zone Negativa, is below, and others were posted to Spanish outlets RTVE (also, at Comicsbeat in English) and Entrecomics (all of this via Comics Alliance).

With teasers like this, unlike, say, with the mostly meaningless monthly solicitations from big comics companies, it's sort of fun to play "guess what this is going to be." This one is particularly interesting-- is there some reason that two thirds of them are exclusively in Spanish, other than Marcos Martin is Spanish himself? Is the series set in Spain? And why the free font? Marcos is a helluva designer, so that choice is probably meaningful, somehow. And what's going on with the people in the subway car? There are a bunch of human-looking folk, including the only character facing us, (the main character?) but also what look to be two mummies, a medusa, on the left, and a Greedo looking dude on the right. Then there's the funny steampunk helmet being worn in the compartir image, and also the slightly sci-fi cityscape of the seguir one, all of which adds up to... a monster sci-fi steampunk story?

More helpful, perhaps, are the words themselves: "like" (literally "I like"), "share," and "follow," which all have ubiquitous social media implications. That being the case, it may be Martin screwing with us a little bit, "like" and then "share" the images on Facebook, "follow" them via whatever outlet you please. But its also possible that they're actual hints, that the plot of whatever monster sci-fi steampunk he and Vaughn have cooking is social media related in some way, and that could be very interesting indeed. Martin's work is always good, and Vaughn's work with Fiona Staples on Saga has been consistently great for a year now. Whatever it is they've got going together, and there's no telling what it is just yet, I'm very excited.

Process: Hawkguy

noreply@blogger.com (Josh Kopin) — Sat, 16 Mar 2013 19:43:00 +0000

PAGE NINE - DAVID

CLINT and CHERRY, lit by Kate’s TAILLIGHTS, stare at their wheelman leaving them out to dry.

They look at each other.

CLINT stomps across the street, CHERRY waiting in the shadows. A TRACKSUIT stands outside, not noticing. A couple other STRIPPERS, a few PATRONS mill about the front door of the club. We can all but hear the OONTZ OONTZ music from within.

The TRACKSUIT is bro-ing at one of the strippers as CLINT stomps up, shouting HEY ADIDAS —

— and PUNCHES THE SHIT out of him, knocking the big guy off his stool.

The guy GETS UP in time for CLINT to HIT HIM BACK TOWARDS THE DOOR with that stool, hard —

(How to make HAWKGUY #8 Page 9 by David, Matt, Chris, and Matt)
(MF soundtrack: “Red Dress,” TV on the Radio)

Last week, Matt Fraction shared all of the work, from script to finished page, that went in to page nine of Hawkeye #8. See the rest here.

The Great American Comic Book Shop: Boston

noreply@blogger.com (Josh Kopin) — Tue, 12 Mar 2013 14:00:00 +0000

Comicopia, Boston, MA

Jeph Jacques's Simple Statement

noreply@blogger.com (Josh Kopin) — Mon, 04 Mar 2013 15:00:00 +0000

Jeph Jacques's Questionable Content was the first webcomic I ever loved. At a time when I was eagerly approaching both comics and music, it was a welcome mixture of form and content, and it had a main character, Marten, who felt like the kind of person I wanted to be. Although my goals have changed slightly since then, I've been reading the comic, which celebrates its tenth birthday in August, steadily for almost eight years now.

Comics that run so long tend to go through phases of life, sort of like people, and Jacques's is no exception. Starting as an aloof and wistful sort of daily gag strip, QC become a soap opera and then transformed into something different entirely, much more complex, but retaining elements of both. For about a year now, long past that last transition, he's been busy expanding the cast to include a bunch of entry level interns at Marten's job in the Smif (yes, Smif) College library and letting his comic breathe. QC is as good now as its ever been, maybe even better.

Last week, Jacques's latest arc, the wedding of his Marten's father, Henry, climaxed with a simple but very important panel:

I think that Claire, one of those interns mentioned above, is probably referring to the length of the wedding (Jacques's commentary on the strip, "a quick wedding is a good wedding," back this up), but I think that it's more important than that: I think this is what the future looks like. Marten's father is married to a man he loves, no big publicity campaign from the comic's author, no bolded message to USA TODAY. Marten's father is married to the man he loves. And that's it.

Does the Word "Blacklist" Make Anyone Else Uncomfortable?

noreply@blogger.com (Josh Kopin) — Fri, 01 Mar 2013 15:07:00 +0000

Via Brandon Graham, I came across this post from Frank Santoro, which I've quoted in its entirety below:

Before Watchmen blacklist
Here’s a handy list of all the comics makers who participated in Before Watchmen. I refuse to buy or read anything by these folks: Neal Adams, Rafael Albuquerque, Michael Allred, Brian Azzarello, Lee Bermejo, Jordi Bernet, Tim Bradstreet, Massimo Carnevale, Cliff Chiang, Michael Cho, Amanda Conner, Darwyn Cooke, David Finch, Gary Frank, Richard Friend, Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez, Michael Golden, John Higgins, Adam Hughes, Phil Jimenez, Jock, J.G. Jones, Dave Johnson, Michael Kaluta, Chip Kidd, Andy Kubert, Joe Kubert, Jae Lee, Jim Lee, John Paul Leon, Joshua Middleton, Phil Noto, Kevin Nowlan, Olly Moss, Joe Prado, Paul Pope, Ivan Reis, Eduardo Risso, P. Craig Russell, Steve Rude, Chris Samnee, Bill Sienkiewicz, Ryan Sook, Brian Stelfreeze, Jim Steranko, J. Michael Straczynski, Jill Thompson, Bruce Timm, Ethan Van Sciver, Len Wein——————————————————————————————————————————————-for context please read this article by David Brothers http://www.comicsalliance.com/2012/04/18/creator-rights-before-watchmen-avengers-moore-kirby/

And... I don't know. I understand the impulse, certainly-- although I think it's better manifested simply by not buying any of Before Watchmen-- and its possible that I'm resisting because I like Allred, Azzarello, Chiang, Cooke, Pope, Risso, Rude, Samnee, Steranko, etc. and don't really want to have a moral hangup over buying and enjoying their work. Still, this strikes me as a little extreme, and I'm not quite sure I understand the moral principle behind it: is blacklisting creators really something that we want to get involved with, particularly with our "handy" list by our side? The blacklist is absolute, after all, and I wonder where it ends-- should we boycott any shops that sold Before Watchmen? I bought Minutemen #1 because, frankly, I was curious -- should people be boycotting me and my blog? Or, to put a finer point on it: if you expand this principle just a little, we should blacklist Jonathan Hickman, because he's worked on the Avengers, and Fraction, because he worked on the Fantastic Four. And so on. Very, very quickly, you've boxed out a lot of people, people who like comics and people who are just trying to make a living.

Look: the comics industry is sick. Very sick. Maybe even more sick than most industries, although I doubt it. The abuses that Moore and Kirby suffered collectively represent a very serious moral breach. Comics' wizard and its king have made some extraordinary work, and it seems unlikely that anybody quite like them will ever come around again, even though people have been aping them for decades. But focusing on them obscures the problem: nobody should be treated like that, and comics'll do it to anybody. As consumers, it may very well be that it is our responsibility to work against that, but a blacklist is too easy, and too righteous. And it never does anyone any good.

Wednesday's New Thing: Guardians of the Galaxy 0.1

noreply@blogger.com (Josh Kopin) — Thu, 28 Feb 2013 00:18:00 +0000

Although I long ago understood that the numbering of comic books has little meaning outside of marketing, Marvel's .1 initiative has always seemed sort of goofy. Whether or not a book's number is actually important in any way, it certainly appears to have market value; that's why the comics person sometimes seems, from the outside, like a peculiar sort of counter, trying to piece everything together by completing a collection. So, although the .1 books were designed as "good jumping on points!," they actually make everything more complicated simply by bearing such arcane numbering. I have a feeling that this scared off new comics readers, that is, the sort of person that Marvel was ostensibly interested in attracting with the initiative.

This Guardians of the Galaxy issue, though, is particularly silly seeming. Since the series hasn't even really started yet, it reminds me of an old George Carlin joke about airplanes: "preboarding? What does that mean? Do you get on before you get on?" Look: the #1 is the ultimate in jumping on points, because every reader is starting from the first position together. The fact that comics sometimes run into the dozens, even the hundreds, of issues is precisely why the industry thinks it needs good jumping on points. That said, many of my not-comics friends have told me that one of the great things about serialized books is the ability to pick one up without the slightest idea of what came before and then enjoy the damn thing anyway, and it may be that a certain percentage of new readers are happy to start anywhere. Assuming, however, that issue numbers in the hundreds do put some people off, the companies seem to think that they are compelled to start new books (or, I guess, renumber old ones) after awhile. And, so, even though this issue is sort of a prologue to the upcoming Guardians of the Galaxy ongoing, this particular .1 strikes me as unusually silly; if it's important to the story, why not just start here? Or why not make it a one-shot? Prologue to Guardians of the Galaxy: Peter Quill: Starlord #1!

The dearth one-shots is frustrating for me, in part because I think that a publisher dedicated every month to putting out two or three books that are tied only vaguely to stuff that came before or that will come out later is a publisher dedicated to innovation, or, at least, to trying new things. I expect that the big companies don't make the single serving books because they don't sell as well as the ongoings, but I suspect that they also aren't motivated to go do it, because trying something different would force them to seek new ideas. This isn't something that Marvel and DC are very good at; instead, they prefer to recycle old things and then trick people into believing that they're about to read something new, hence Guardians of the Galaxy #.1 and the ongoing growing pains of the New 52. Of course, one-shots really are a hard sell, innovation or not, and it may just be that the market doesn't really want them. That's a shame, but its not very hard to understand why; there is, after all, a certain joy in reading a book that's a specific part in a longstanding story.

I'm sort of vaguely interested in Guardians of the Galaxy, because I like Steve McNiven's art and also because I'm curious about how Marvel makes comics that tie-in to its movies, and so I have a feeling I'll pick this up when I go to the store in the next few days. I do wonder, though-- will it sell the same way that the #1 will next month? And, if it does, does it mean that we asked for all this?

The Great American Comic Book Shop: Cincinnati

noreply@blogger.com (Josh Kopin) — Sat, 23 Feb 2013 15:00:00 +0000

Up, Up & Away, Cincinnati, OH.

Wednesday's New Thing

noreply@blogger.com (Josh Kopin) — Wed, 13 Feb 2013 22:41:00 +0000

Uncanny X-Men #1. More on this soon.

Thor: The Mighty Avenger and The Aesthetics of Scale

noreply@blogger.com (Josh Kopin) — Wed, 13 Feb 2013 14:15:00 +0000

Over at his newly reinvigorated blog, Chris Samnee has posted a sketch of Thor and the Warriors Three.

Samnee hardly needs a good reason to sketch, although I imagine that he might be a little bummed out these days. It turns out, though, that he picked these particular characters in honor of Marvel's upcoming reissue of Thor: The Mighty Avenger. TTMA is one of the great unsung comics of this century, an all ages, absolutely free from the shackles of continuity Thor story, the real main character of which is Jane Foster, here an academic working at a museum. Roger Langridge wrote with a nice combination of for-the-neophyte and for-the-obsessive, totally reworking the character's history, but also nodding along to the tune of its contemporaries by setting it in Oklahoma, although in Bergen rather than Broxton. Rereading the first issue now, it seems pretty clear to me that whoever wrote the script for the Thor movie used this comic for part of the inspiration and they couldn't have made a better choice.

The book was also the first extended encounter I had with Samnee's work, which I've since come to adore. Although the look is very typical for the artist, simple and bold, I think it might be his best work: the line is thinner than the one I usually associate with him and the compositions are less crowded, giving the book a gorgeous, spacious quality. Matt Wilson's not-quite-flat colors also need their due, as they detail the compositions while complicating them only slightly, joining Samnee's art with a consistent visual tone.

For whatever reason, TTMA didn't sell well, and it only lasted eight issues. I suspect its unfortunate demise had to do with a misunderstanding about what could be expected, sales-wise, out of an all-ages title; as the mainstream newsmedia never fails to remind us, comics ~~aren't just~~ aren't really for kids anymore. A few neat looking all-ages comics boutiques not withstanding, the children's market is probably not as robust as any of the big companies would like. So when Marvel eventually collected TTMA, they doubled down, publishing it in a scaled-down digest format, presumably because little books fit better in little hands. Insofar as this cramped the book's style, turning the spacious into the claustrophobic, it was a small tragedy.

Last weekend, I wrote about comics' unique ability to suggest through variation of panel size, and now I can't help but wonder if there's a minimum threshold for that. On the other hand, Archie and other books are published in small magazines all the time, but those stories are designed for that size. So it seems more likely that the nature of TTMA changed, that it got less good despite no actual change in content, not because of the size of the book itself but instead because it wasn't designed to be so small. I also wonder if the same thing is true about the scale up-- I've never read one of those neat IDW artists editions or any of those massive Marvel omnibuses, so I don't know for sure. But I get the feeling that they might be weird, or certainly awkward, reading experiences; nobody is big enough to read a thousand page collection the same way they read a single issue.

The nice thing about this particular reissue of TTMA is that they've scaled it back up to original size, so that you can, in reading it, get a much better idea of why the book is so great. Surely, for Chris Samnee, the Warriors Four, and the rest of us, that's a good reason to celebrate.

The Best Way To Promote A Comic?

noreply@blogger.com (Josh Kopin) — Sat, 09 Feb 2013 03:42:00 +0000

Earlier this evening, Marvel released a trailer for the upcoming Age of Ultron event, written by Brian Bendis and penciled by Bryan Hitch. Rich Johnston has, very kindly, made it embeddable:

In the past, Jon has fantasized about a future in which comics, and not just the movies based on them, are promoted on billboards in prominent locales, but, save that Fables spot that Vertigo ran on the BBC a few years ago, I'm not sure I've ever seen something quite like this. It's interesting for a few reasons, not least of which is that I hadn't realized that Marvel was releasing Age of Ultron at such a fast clip. Three issues a month seems onerous, and I wonder if it might affect the sales of either the crossover or of some the company's other books. I know that, in terms of my own purchasing, it's a lot easier to take an extra $3.99 out of my wallet once in a given month without thinking about it than it will be for me to do it three times in the same span, so I think I'm going to pass. On the other hand, one of my major complaints about crossovers, Marvel's in particular, is that they last so damn long; even shipping twice monthly, waiting for AvX to conclude was numbing. With AU lasting just three months and change, I can return, blissfully, to stories I actually care about much sooner than before.

To return to the trailer itself: I wonder if this is the best way to advertise comics. It is certainly one way of doing it, but it fails to achieve what's really great about the movie preview, which is that it can give a real sense of the thing that it promotes, while also divulging just enough plot detail to hook an audience. Now, there a few ways to nitpick this particular trailer-- it relies mostly on already revealed covers rather than delivering much in the way of the new, the narration is reminiscent of those old commercials for Power Rangers video tapes, it utilizes animation in a way that is even more insipid than most motion comics and, most egregiously, it doesn't do a good job of explaining who the creators are-- but I wonder if even one that was more well made woud be a good way of giving a sense of what a comic would be like.

Part of the reason that I suspect it can't be is that video and comics work on similar, but fundamentally different, visual principles. Each is a kind of window, yes, but, when you watch a film or a tv show, the size of that window, in this case some kind of screen, tends to be the same when you start the thing as when you end it. This seems likes it would be true with comics-- page sizes tend to be internally consistent-- but the base unit of the comic isn't the page; it's the panel. This is not to say that panel sizes can't be consistent, just that they aren't always, and, specifically, that Bryan Hitch doesn't make his that way. Hitch's "widescreen" art style is neat because it gives comics, very small in physical size, a wonderful sort of scale up, making some of his scenes seem grandiose in a way that is much more common in film. That said, the style only really works when there are also many smaller, less grandiose scenes, which is why no one constructs comics out of splash pages alone, and why they didn't even when the widescreen style was in vogue. The AU trailer, which generalizes panel size by mediating panels, not pages, through both editing techniques like the Ken Burns effect and the consistent size of the YouTube screen-within-a-screen, totally robs Hitch's art of what makes it work. Watching the trailer, it is possible to see that some the art takes the wide view and that some of it does not, but seeing that isn’t really the same as understanding it, isn’t the same as being convinced of it. That comics can make meaning through the way that the size of its building blocks relate to each other is one of the things that makes the form unique, one of the things that makes it great.

That the trailer can’t communicate why I might be interested in AU as a piece of art rather than as a particular story is why it fails. I know it might not be for me--it's too general to be coded for people who are already readers of comics-- but the hook isn’t such a great one that a potential reader would be sold on the book on plot alone. If Marvel really wants to bring new people into the fold, shouldn't they emphasizing what makes their product interesting? And if they want people like me to take a risk on a book that we're not otherwise inclined to buy, particularly if they’re going to ask us to shell out $11.97 a month to follow it, I can't help but wonder if there's some way to give us some of what we love.

From the Deepest Darkest Corners of the Internet

noreply@blogger.com (Jon Gorga) — Mon, 04 Feb 2013 20:03:00 +0000

"Deep Dark Fears" by Fran Krause (@frankrause)

Do you like humor?

Of course you do.

Are you afraid of entirely irrational horrifying things that could never actually happen but oh god oh god what would you do if they did?

Of course you are.

Well one comicsmith has combined these two things in a single brilliant, hilarious, terrifying webcomic: "Deep Dark Fears".

Each installment either illuminates something I was already irrationally afraid of or reveals to me something I hadn't previously thought of that I should absolutely have already been irrationally afraid of. Very educational.

Proof of its usefulness? Google "deep dark fears" right now and no psychologists' websites pop up. Only the webcomic!

Seriously now. "Deep Dark Fears" is brilliantly executed. It truly does plumb down deep into the strange part of the human brain that creates every-day scenarios just on the edge of believable and makes you laugh while doing it: What would happen if juuussst the edge of a speeding car clipped a part of your body? Is that sharp thing juuussst the right shape to really screw me up? What if I'm tired and fall asleep on my feet at juuuusssssssttttt the absolutely wrong moment? What if we're surrounded by ghosts all the time and we don't even know it?!

You'll be immediately impressed by Krause's cartooning:

The economy of line used to show you a closed eyelid and a set of pursed lips is awesome. THAT'S good cartooning. (Can you see where this strip is going?)

The one about video game logic applied to real life struck me because I've had nearly the exact same thought in the same context (a contender for best comics of 2013):

THAT'S hilarious.

Then there's the one about ghosts, that is so simple and so wonderful that it's already on the Long and Shortbox best comics of 2012 list.

"Deep Dark Fears" is worth a look because it's holding a mirror back at your crazy, needy, terrified, over-active subconscious and being funny while doing it.

Or maybe that's just me? EEP!

"Deep Dark Fears" appears weekly and is hosted on Tumblr here.
The comicsmith Fran Krause maintains a website here.

~ @JonGorga

A New Field of Battle

noreply@blogger.com (Jon Gorga) — Thu, 31 Jan 2013 19:18:00 +0000

The intrepid and versatile Jason Latour (@jasonlatour) has released preview pages on Flickr.com just yesterday for an upcoming comic with a remarkable battalion of talent around him!

Industry giant Mike Mignola (@artofmmignola) and his sometimes collaborator John Arcudi are writing the story and the inestimable Dave Stewart (@Dragonmnky) is coloring Latour's line-work:

Notice the sound effects! They're hand-drawn and the "eeeeeee" continues from the first panel to the second in a graphic way that's really fun and feels accurate. Notice the choices in relative panel sizes for presenting details, a scale of height, and then a scale of destruction. It works! It's awesome.

The comic's name is "Sledgehammer '44" and I choose to be excited about it because it looks like the best elements of "Atomic Robo" combined with the best elements of "Band of Brothers". WWII Sci-Fi fancifulness with a hint of gritty. To my knowledge, no publisher or release date has been attached to this project.

Now don't just click on this link and only read page one, it was page 4 that first made my eyeballs do that "Wolf and Red"-thing. Page 3 [excerpted above] is actually even more beautiful and displays awesome storytelling choices, while being slightly less dramatic. Read the whole preview.

Get excited.

~ @JonGorga

P.S. ~ If you're too young for "Wolf and Red", I think this will clear everything up.