Posted by Michael Pinto on Dec 19, 2006 in Comic Books
I’ve always enjoyed playing with Digg.com which is a social news site, but I have to admit I’ve always hated the fact that there isn’t a section for comic books. Now you might find a comic book link every now and then in the entertainment section, but you have to go through dozens of Paris Hilton and Britney Spears links before seeing anything half interesting. So I was quite happy to discover that someone had setup a similar social news site for comic books and related topics:
Posted by Michael Pinto on Dec 18, 2006 in Comic Books
Archie hasn’t quite gone manga yet, but a redesign of the classic comic book is in the works and what I see doesn’t look that good (see the illustration above). Here’s the source for the story:
“With more than 60 years of a certain…shall we say, style behind them, Archie, Betty, Veronica, and the whole Riverdale gang will be getting a new look in 2007, courtesy of artist Steven Butler. Rather than moving to a manga style, which has worked on Sabrina by Tania del Rio, this change will move the art towards a more contemporary comic book style, more realistic, and less cartoony. The move, an Archie Comics representative told Newsarama, is a continuing experiment and exploration with the characters, showcasing not only their timlessness, but theur adaptability as well.”
This new stye looks more generic than anything, it’s sort of manga light. I think the problem is that they’ve added too much detail to the character designs, and have lost any link to the fun spirit of the comic (the new characters look a bit too serious). Of course after half a century they should update the book, but I think they should have given more careful thought about how to update the look.
“Martin Nodell, the creator of Green Lantern, the comic book superhero who uses his magical ring to help him fight crime, has died. He was 91. Nodell was looking for a new idea for a comic book in 1940 when he was waiting for a New York subway and saw a train operator waving a lantern displaying a green light, said Maggie Thompson, senior editor of Comics Buyer’s Guide.
Nodell imagined a young engineer, Alan Scott, a train crash survivor who discovers in the debris an ancient lantern forged from a green meteor. Scott constructs a ring from the lamp that gives him super powers, and becomes a crime fighter.He brought his drawings and story lines to All-American Publications, which later became a part of National Periodical Publications, the company that was to become DC Comics, Thompson said.
The first Green Lantern appearance came in July 1940, an eight-page story in a comic book also featuring other characters. The character then got his own series, and Nodell drew it until 1947 under the name Mart Dellon. After its cancellation in 1949, the series was reborn in 1959 with a revised story line, and it has been revived several times. Meanwhile, Nodell left the comics field for an advertising career. In the 1960s, he was on a design team that helped develop the Pillsbury Doughboy.”
The Japanese manga Hana-Kimi has been turned into a live action tv show in Taiwan titled ‘Hua Yang Shao Nian Shao Nu’.
The manga centers on Mizuki Ashiya, a Japanese girl who lives in the United States. One day, she sees a track and field competition on TV, and becomes attracted to one of the competitors. She begins to idolize the young athlete and eventually transfers to Japan to attend the same school. However there’s is a catch, it’s an all-boys high school! So she must disguise herself as a boy to enter the school.
Here’s a trailer for the Taiwanese drama show:
And here’s some artwork of Ashiya Mizuki from the Japanese manga:
The one thing that I love about Sienkiewicz is the high quality of his draftsmanship and his use of color, which is wonderful. This site well worth checking out for any comics fanboy as it’s packed with all sorts of galleries of his artwork. In fact you can even buy his artwork online which is sorta of neat, however if you’re on a low budget you can also download wallpaper for free.
“Frank Miller, who wrote and co-directed Sin City based on his graphic novels of the same name, told SCI FI Wire that he plans to co-direct the upcoming sequel, Sin City 2, with Robert Rodriguez, despite rumors to the contrary. “Yes and yes,” he said in an interview following a preview screening of footage of 300, another upcoming film based on his work.
“We have all kinds of technical things we want to do, but there’s a major story called A Dame to Kill for [which was, fittingly, the second Sin City story and is a prequel of sorts to The Hard Goodbye] that we’re going to adapt,” Miller said. “That’ll include a new femme fatale and other characters.” Rodriguez has reportedly spoken with Angelina Jolie about playing Ava, ex-lover of Clive Owen’s Dwight.”
“Frank Miller, the famous graphic novelist turned director will be moving from his own work by taking Will Eisner’s classic “The Spirit” and adapting it for the big screen. “We’re working on the script right now,” commented Miller at the LA premiere of ‘300.’ “We’ve got a good strong story to work with, and we’re hoping to be in production either spring [2007] or [this] fall .”
Miller promises fans of the series that, “it’ll be very faithful to the books.” Miller also indicated in the interview with IGN that he has one actor (who he wouldn’t name) in mind for the role of the hero.”
“Zack Snyder, who will direct an upcoming film version of Alan Moore’s seminal graphic novel Watchmen, told SCI FI Wire that Warner Brothers likes his take on the material, which goes back to the source for its inspiration, closely following the original 1985 setting and alternate-history American mileu in which Richard Nixon is still president. That faithfulness to the graphic novel, which has been famously considered unadaptable to film, ironically, provided the key to unlocking the script, Snyder said.”
“Created in 2006, Cover Browser displays galleries of comic book covers for comic book fans like myself to explore & enjoy (there’s also links to find out more about individual comics or to buy them). At the moment, there are 6,541 covers available.”
Posted by Michael Pinto on Oct 17, 2006 in Comic Books
This is an amazing online exhibition of sketches, many of which have an editorial cartoon look to them. It’s amazing first hand look at the “war to end all wars”:
“The images presented on this website are from a set of two World War One sketchbooks archived in the University of Victoria’s Special Collections Library. They contain approximately 130 water-colour and pen and ink images which were produced by a British soldier based in France and Belgium between 1917 and 1918.”
“The show tracks a century of formal comics invention (in Newark, mostly early strips; at the Jewish Museum, different comic book incarnations) through what are meant to be mini-retrospectives. This means Elzie Crisler Segar’s “Thimble Theater,” which introduced Popeye (he was far, far darker than the spinach-addled television cartoon), and Milton Caniff’s superstylish “Terry and the Pirates.” It means Frank King’s languid “Gasoline Alley” and Chester Gould’s “Dick Tracy,” which set the standard for hard-boiled grit and packed a visceral punch that came from tightly organized colors and shapes (Mr. Spiegelman calls it “blueprint Expressionism”) until Mr. Gould went kind of gaga and launched Tracy into outer space to fight bad guys on the moon in a rocket-powered garbage can.”
“When I learned that it is possible to read every X-Men comic ever made*, I had a bright idea. I was going to read each comic starting from the very beginning. It was going to be epic, it was going to be awesome, it was going to be the nerdiest thing I could possibly do. And then I read Uncanny X-Men #1. And that sh*t was bad.”
A good bit is about the artwork below:
“3) Overt sexism. Don’t give me the “it was a different era” bullcrap. The treatment of Jean was absolutely ridiculous! Take a look at this panel, shortly after she was introduced to the rest of the team.”
“X-Men director Bryan Singer is promising fans more action, if and when Superman Returns 2 gets the go-ahead. Hopefully it will get a better name as well. “When you do a first film like X-Men, for example, you’re introducing a world and a set of characters,” Singer told TODAY. “Once those characters are introduced, once we’ve lived with them for awhile and we know them, when you get into a second film like an Empire Strikes Back or a Wrath of Khan, you can make an action-adventure film and you don’t have to bank all that time getting to know the characters. Now you can raise the stakes, raise the jeopardy and make a leaner, meaner movie”.”
“Although 2006 is beginning to wind down, we here at IGN Comics are just getting started. With the end of the year approaching, it’s always nice to reflect on what has come in the past 12 months. With the December solicits hitting earlier in the week, we thought it would be appropriate to pick out some fantastic art. We separated Marvel and DC to avoid fanboy tendencies, and tried to pick out the 50 best pieces of cover art that we could. Trust us, it was no easy task.”
