Drawn & Quarterly artist and New Yorker contributor Adrian Tomine will offer a presentation of his cartooning career, in the RISD Auditorium on Friday, February 29 at 7pm. A book signing of his latest graphic novel Shortcomings will immediately follow. Shortcomings will be on sale in the Auditorium lobby prior to the presentation.

This event is free and open to the public, and is sponsored jointly by RISD’s Departments of Illustration and Continuing Education.

See Adrian’s work on the Drawn & Quarterly website.

One thing you learn not too long after becoming a frequent comics buyer is that the fuckers are inevitably a week, two weeks, three weeks, a month late sometimes. So, I was bound to miss a week eventually. You’ll just have to deal with last weeks comic book column being late. It’s not like they’re paying me.

Comics comics comics comics comics…

So when I first started this gig last year, a friend of mine was like, “Yeah, but it’s all about DC.” Since then I’ve been stranging to open my horizons and make in roads into the fantastical and confuzzling Marvel side of he aisle. As a testament to this, everything I write about this week will be Marvel. (more…)

The two comic books that bookended (and pretty much defined) my preteen years are now both headed to the big screen; Watchmen, which everyone already knows about, but Akira!? Hard to believe that Akira originally came out 26 years ago and ran for over 8 years in Japan before its graphic serialization in America. I had the originals, they were lost in a flood. ( IO9.com)

I’m going to do something different this week so, this column won’t take its standard gush-about-stuff-from-this-week format, because I’m responding to something Newbury Comics has done in their weekly comic book and graphic novel e-mail newsletter, which you can subscribe to here. For my thoughts on this week, you can check my blog.

Okay, so down to business. Publishing 10 best comic book titles of 2007 lists from your superexploited employees (I say superexploited because people who work in Newbury Comics don’t make a lot and tend to be people who chose the work environment because of an affinity for some superfluous product the store sells–i.e. comics, cds, hello kitty dolls–and so end up spending a huge portion of their limited income at the company store. I don’t even want to imagine the kind of debt I’d wrack up if I spent 5 days a week surrounded by comics for sale. Yikes. Sorry, huge tangent.) would not seem to be a task that the first week of February 2008 would call for. I know if I were left to my own devices I would never dream of publishing a list of my 10 favorie comics from 2007 this week, but Newbury Comics had to go and do that. What’s worse is that the lists provided by these guys (and they were obviously all male) demonstrate that they are even less equipped to provide such a list to the general public than I am. In the course of human events, there comes a time when I must cry havoc and let loose the dogs of war against Newbury Comics’ tardy best of 2007 lists. (more…)

So, indie comics. They’re hard to find out about, harder to follow, and have only eensiest fanbase because comics fans are loyal to properties, not creators. With all the big properties belonging to the big two (DC and Marvel) and the big two having a better [funded] publicity system set up, it’s hard for the little guy to compete.

However, this week fans of Kingdom Come’s Alex Ross were given a unique opportunity to break into a new indie comic on the ground-level. This week brought to stands surprisingly large piles of Dynamite Entertainment’s Project Superpowers #0 (above) at the special introductory low price of $1.00. The creative team headed by DC Comics superstars Jim Kreuger and Alex Ross and the fact that large distributors like New York’s Midtown Comics purchased many more copies than they would of most indie books gives the series a distinct possibility of a prominent future. (more…)

One of the great things about getting my weekly haul of comics each Wednesday is that I get to experience the full range of colors on the emotional spectrum revealed in last month’s Green Lantern #25. For instance, Jimmy Palmiotti, Justin Grey, and Renato Arlem’s Uncle Sam and the Freedom Fighters has continually provoked a response on the violet end of the emotional spectrum (i.e., love).

The week’s number 5 of 8 (right) rocked my world on whole new levels. First off, as always, the art was fantastic. And I must say that anything that opens with the Human Bomb in tank of water being forced to have sex with Red Bee who has been infected by alien insects and plans to turn the human race into a hive mind is golden by definition. Getting to discover (after all this time) the current Human Bomb’s origin story and the reintroduction into mainstream comics of a revamped, blue Neon the Unknown made it that much better. This current round of Freedom Fighters seem chockful of angsty men who were in love with female scientists before they became all strange and metahuman and it seems that our Human Bomb is no exception. Poor guy. The comic did have the problem of awkward dialogue at points, but the whole medium is riddled with this problem. Also, R.I.P. to Miss America and congrats to Doll Man for fathering a child despite being six inches tall.

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Let’s talk about comics. I love comics. A lot of other people (read: fanboys) love comics too. Some of them love comics so much they think that they would be better at writing them than the people who do even when the writer in question is my main man Mark Waid (right).

Over on my side of the aisle (that is the DC side), many Flash fans are angry with Marky Mark for the creative direction he has taken the Flash by giving him kids. I would remind folks that this is the Mark Waid who Grant Morrison credited with trailblazing comicdom out of its dark, unshaven ’80s/’90s Hell with his work on the Flash in the introduction to Waid’s early ’90s Flash Year One story. This man knows the current Flash, Wally West, as well as anyone, because he wrote him into the character he is today.

Fans are mad that the book isn’t exactly like it was in the ’90s and think that it’s dumb that any superhero could ever have a family or worse yet that there be a family of superheroes. Their righteous discontent broadcasted loudly through cyberspace has driven Mark Waid off the Flash title and into the position of Editor-in-Chief over at the BOOM indepedent label. (more…)

I am not a happy camper right now, because every comic book store in striking distance of my sweet little hometown of Richmond, Ky, is sold out of what has routinely been my favorite book on the weeks it has come out: Uncle Sam and the Freedom Fighters. This angst aside, the comic book peace train must keep chugging along and it was a big week in comics with with other things that bear reporting nonetheless.

For instance, the delayed release of the Brave and the Bold #9 written by Mark Waid and drawn by George Perez (though in the hokey team up fashion of book, they both take the title “storyteller”). Following the tradition of the Silver Age book of the same title, the series is composed of storyarcs formed by broadly related team ups of different characters from around the DC Universe that weave together to tell a big story. (more…)

I always liked comic books growing up. What red-blooded American boy wouldn’t? When I was little, X-Men seemed like where it was at. Probably because of the cartoon on the Fox network and prevalent Arcade game. There was even a short period during middle school when I picked up the comic every couple of weeks off newstands — quite a feat for someone without a car. However, as I’m sure I’ve made apparent by now, I owe my current addiction to comic books and obvious allegiance to DC Comics to the allstar superteam that is the Justice League of America, more specifically the writing of Grant Morrison and Mark Waid.

Back in the late nineties and early part of this decade, JLA (and an embarrassing number of ill conceived, related miniseries) the book I followed (if in trade paperback form from the local media megastore in my hometown of Richmond, Ky). These high years of the Justice League title experienced by me in between the waning days of middle school and the first half of high school were super-influential in forming what I expect out of superhero comics. That is to say, superhero mega-epic that shakes the foundations of reality with a twist of the absurd to keep things interesting. The pages of JLA read like contemporary myth always pointing out that the Justice League was the Justice League, iconic and without equal–heroes as or more mythic than Hercules, Beowulf, Hiawatha, Lancelot, El Cid, or whoever you got. THEY WERE THE JUSTICE LEAGUE and it was bad ass.

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Geoff Johns, arguably DC’s biggest scribe right now, struck again and with gusto this week. Starting his career at DC with the Stars and S.T.R.I.P.E maxiseries in the late ’90s, Johns has produced one of the most solid bodies of writing in mainstream comics. His strength seems to be writing things that should not work and making them incredibly enjoyable. Following this trend, he has been one of the architects responsible for the best weekly comic ever 52, the rehabilitation of Booster Gold, the reentry into continuity of Midwestern vigilante Wild Dog, the fixing of Hawkman’s unbelievably broken continuity, and most significantly the resurrection of Silver Age Green Lantern Hal Jordan.Making it his mission to reconstruct the Green Lantern mythos, Johns has retconned Jordan’s disgraceful death in the early ’90s and laid the blame of his betrayal of the Green Lantern Corps and subsequent usurping god-like power from the Green Lantern central power battery on his possession by the sentient manifestation of fear itself. The project of reconstructing of the Green Lantern mythos in a characteristically Johnsian seemingly ill advised and radical way was continued this week in the final chapter of this year’s blockbuster Sinestro Corps War maxiseries taking place in The Pick of the Week: the super-sized and much delayed Green Lantern #25. (more…)

It was a great week to be a fan of superteams! Along with DC’s Justice League of America #15 (no less than two weeks late) and Justice Society of America #11, we got the premier issue of the Marvel’s third volume of the Ultimates (above) which is my Pick of the Week.

What’s an Ultimate? you might ask. Well, a couple years back someone at Marvel had the beautiful idea of starting an imprint with a new continuity for all their famous characters. So when you go to Newbury Comics and look at the Marvel side of the rack along with Amazing Spider-Man, Astonishing X-Men, and Fantastic Four, you’ll also see Ultimate Spider-Man, Ultimate X-Men, and Ultimate Fantastic Four. This is absolutely wonderful because Marvel continuity is really hard to follow. The Ultimates are the equivalent of Marvel’s Avengers (think the Justice League, only less cool) in this imprint. (more…)

I’m a happy man this week, because my two favorite books came out: Countdown to Adventure #4 of 8 with stories by Beechen and Gray and the Pick of the Week: Uncle Sam and the Freedom Fighters #3 of 8 with Arlem’s art conveying Palmiotti and Gray’s story well and the stunning as ever cover by Dave Johnson. You all have heard me rant and rave about these two series enough at this point, so it’s probably safe for me to focus on something else at this point, suffice it to say that you need go out and by Uncle Sam and the Freedom Fighters #3 right now, because an army of six inch tall people (made thus by military experiments) has declared war on the federal government. I was also finally treated to the tenth installment of Sinestro Corps War which is around 3 weeks over due with a different author and sentiment than earlier parts of the series. Tomasi did a good job writing it, because we never got Tales of the Sinestro Corps presents Anti-Monitor and it seems like the series is puttering out. I hope I am proved wrong, because it’s been a blast heretofore.

I was also sad this week because I was forced for financial and artistic reasons to drop three titles. I am no longer reading Chuck Dixon’s Batman and the Outsiders, Simon Furman’s Transformers: Devastation, or the X-Men Messiah CompleX miniseries. In Dixon’s there wasn’t enough Batman for my taste, Transformers has been washed up for years (if you really want to read something good by Furman check out his run at the end of the old Generation 1 comic in the ’80s), and the art and story in Messiah CompleX were not doing it for me. But for you, my beloved readers, I’m still going to try to keep my ear to the ground and eventually figure out what’s going on at Marvel, so don’t get discouraged. Market forces tell you not to buy unentertaining comics. You should listen. (more…)

  Despite the abhorrent lack of the annual JLA/JSA Thanksgiving team ups to which I’ve grown accustomed over the years (check out: JLA/JSA Vice and Virtue), sitting in my parents new den in faraway Richmond, Ky, I had the pleasure of reading two books by Mark Waid starring the Flash that captured the spirit of Thanksgiving: Flash #234 and the Pick of the Week: Brave and the Bold #8. Ol’ Marky Mark’s Kingdom Come miniseries was the reason I got into DC Comics back in 8th grade and so I make a point of trying to read everything he puts out within reason. I have not been let down by his ongoing runs on the two aforementioned titles.

Waid’s run on the Flash back in the ’90s was well appreciated by many fans. He turned former Kid Flash Wally West into the definitive Flash for my generation and invented such important Flash concepts as the Speed Force–the extradimensional energy source from which all superspeedsters draw their power. However, in the world-shattering Infinite Crisis, Geoff Johns sent Wally into the Speed Force with Kid Flash, his wife and two kids. Only Kid Flash, Bart Allen returned and he had aged four years to pick up the mantle. (more…)

This week, I have one piece of advice for you and one piece of advice alone. This will strike some of my readers as unorthodox for me, because I’m going recommend something about a Marvel comics character that no one cares about instead of giving advice re: DC. Go to the comic store. Go to where they have this week’s Marvel titles. Among the endless X- and Avengers books you will The Pick of the Week: Captain Marvel #1 of 5 by Brian Reed, Lee Weeks, et al. Unlike most of Marvel’s books, in this title you don’t have to deal with endless Wolverine.

Talking about Captain Marvel can be confusing, because both of the big two (i.e., Marvel and DC) have a character of that name. The original Captain Marvel (now owned by DC) is a teenage boy who when he utters the name of the wizard Shazam is endowed with the powers of ancient gods and becomes essentially Superman in red with cornier facial expressions (yes, that’s possible). In the heyday of superhero comics in the ’40s, he was America’s most popular superhero, surpassing even Batman and Superman. Unfortunately, he went out of print for a 20 year period when his original owners at Fawcett were sued by DC with the claim that Captain Marvel was copyright infringement on Superman in the ’50s. Long story short after trials and retrials, the slump in superhero comics and the ongoing litigation made it cheaper for Fawcett to just settle by giving up on the poor guy and leasing him to DC. DC didn’t start using him again till the ’70s. You can get the d/l on him here. (more…)

Welcome to the second weekly installment of “This Week In the Multiverse,” broadcasted to you from my Fortress of Solitude deep within Vartan Gregorian B on Thayer St.

Last week, I promised you that I would talk up the two best things spinning off from last year’s weekly 52 series. But first I want to say a fond farewell to Earth-3’s hero, the nemesis of Gotham City’s Owl Man, the Jokester. The dear clown departed from life this week in Countdown 29. I knew he was not long for this world when they introduced him two weeks ago in Countdown 31, as there’s only so much one can do with a good version of the Joker, but seeing him cut down so soon was almost too much for me to bare. In two issues of Countdown and one Countdown special edition, we saw him throw himself into battle against the entire Crime Society and his capacity to love his daughter. I hope Jason Todd feels bad for yelling at him last week. (more…)