LARRY HAMA, CLIFF CHIANG, & CHRISTINE NORRIE TO HEADLINE SPECIAL “SECRET IDENTITIES” EVENT AT NYC’S MIDTOWN COMICS ON MAY 23!

May 12, 2009 – SIUniverse Media and Midtown Comics in New York City are proud to present a special book signing event featuring the editors and contributors of the groundbreaking SECRET IDENTITIES: The Asian American Superhero Anthology at the Midtown Comics Time Square location on Saturday, May 23 at 3:00pm.

Joining Secret Identities Editor-at-Large KEITH CHOW, Art Director JERRY MA, and Senior Artist JEF CASTRO are three of the biggest names in the comic book industry:

- LARRY HAMA: The legendary writer/artist of Wolverine, Bucky O’Hare and Batman and creator of the G.I. Joe universe is currently writing G.I. Joe: Origins for IDW Publishing. In Secret Identities, Hama is the subject of Tak Toyoshima’s interview piece “S.A.M. Meets Larry Hama” and contributed a one-page teaser for a story called “Her.”

- CLIFF CHIANG: Hailed for his fluid and confident storytelling and sweeping line work and nuanced style, Chiang has worked as an artist on several high-profile projects including Batman, Human Target, Green Arrow & Black Canary, and Grendel: Red, White, and Black. He is currently working on the Neil Young graphic novel Greendale for DC/Vertigo. In Secret Identities, Chiang illustrated “Jia,” a character concept by X-Men 2 actress Kelly Hu.

- CHRISTINE NORRIE: Dubbed a natural storyteller by Publisher?s Weekly, Norrie has earned two Eisner nominations, a Russ Manning Promising Newcomer Nomination, and a 9th Panel and New York City Comic Book Museum Award. Her most noted works include her original graphic novel Cheat, the Oni Press series Hopeless Savages, the Scholastic/Graphix teen drama Breaking Up, and DC Comics? Green Arrow/Black Canary Wedding Special. Along with writer John Kuramoto, Norrie contributed the story “David Kim” to Secret Identities.

An exciting series of Marvel Comics superheroines presented in the Japanese Bishoujo (pretty girl) style with original designs specially created by the incomparable illustrator Shunya Yamashita! Each PVC statue stands approximately 8″ tall. Suggested retail: $59.

Black Widow – July 09, Rogue – August 09, Scarlet Witch – Fall 09.

Click to enlarge. No larger image for Scarlet Witch, unfortunately.

This week’s Entertainment Weekly has a piece called “The Truth About Twitter”, mostly name-checking various celebs who’ve embraced it. The thing that got me was the sidebar, though, where they ranked the value of stuff being tweeted and listed the # of followers different Twitter personalities had. At the time they went to press, MC Hammers had 167,000 followers, doubling John Mayer (80,300) and crushing the likes of Martha Stewart (35,900) and Snoop Dogg (27,700)…

Scott Pilgrim just turned 24, and things couldn’t possibly be better! This means things are about to get infinitely worse. Suddenly, two of Ramona’s evil ex-boyfriends are in town, and they’re playing dirty. His band is in turmoil, and his own exes aren’t making things any easier. And what’s up with Ramona, anyway? She’s been acting kinda weird ever since they moved in together. Scott’s precious little life is coming back around to bit him in the butt, and it may not be pretty!

So I guess Obama is providing an economic boost already — just slapping his name on stuff is driving people into stores…

Midtown also has the 2nd printing for $5 and 3rd printing for cover price:
http://www.midtowncomics.com/Neshop/SearchResult.asp?chkshowthum=1&WhereFrom=SeriesSearchResult&txtTitle=Obama

Of course, you can still get all the latest posts (broken down into Reviews, Features & Interviews, Bloggery & Commentary and News & Linkage) by clicking, what else, Latest Posts.

Shout out PCS compadre David Brothers for giving a COMIXUP heads-up over on 4l.

Please note: the guy holding multiple copies is a Midtown employee playing hype man. Midtown had a strict 1 COPY PER PERSON policy. I had to reiterate this in numerous over the past week — which I tried to lighten by saying “Even if Obama himself shows up, he can only get 1 copy”, probably to no effect.

Beyond the fact that Marvel didn’t print anywhere near enough copies for the demand, there are a couple other things that strike me as crazy about this whole media circus:

1) Obama only appears in the five page back-up.

2) OBAMA DOES NOT EVEN LOOK LIKE OBAMA. I realize this was probably a last minute idea on Marvel’s part — and a fairly brilliant one at that — but could they not find someone who could do 5 pages AND draw Obama?? Sorry Todd Nauck, but that is NOT cutting it. This is one time when it would’ve been better to have somebody do severe photo-referencing or even Greg Land style tracing. I mean, now you’re gonna have tons of casual fans pick the book up and see this unrecognizable Barack Obama. I’d be embarrassed.

3) The first guy in line was apparently there at 6AM! And it was probably like under 20 degrees at that time!

Also FYI, the 2nd printing will be available January 21st.

CNN was already at the store shooting a piece earlier this week. Meanwhile (or should I say months prior to this) Savage Dragon put Obama on the cover was greeted by crickets.

2nd printing should arrive later this month (21st or 29th).

Although there are a couple existing comic news feed aggregators (none of which appeared on my radar before I started this project), COMIXUP goes a little further by adding site “avatars” and excerpts for each post, as well as categorizing them all for easier browsing. Additionally, COMIXUP also includes the latest posts from creator, publisher and retailer blogs.

This week I started including podcasts which you can listen to with the embedded audio player and videos which you can watch inline, plus recent images posted on DeviantArt. (As with every aspect of the site, I’ll be expanding things as we move along, but these three areas may be more worthy of the “BETA” label.)

COMIXUP is also running a banner exchange program — current partners include Comic Pants, Major Spoilers and Panels of Awesome. Thanks & shout-outs also go out to Johanna at Comics Worth Reading and Justin at 13 Minutes for posting COMIXUP announcements. (And yes, this is a blatant attempt at getting everyone to link to COMIXUP, whether it be with banners or without :)

If you?re interested in adding your feed, joining the network, or have any questions or suggestions about COMIXUP, please send me an email

Thank you,
-Jon Haehnle

Joker: Oh, and you know the thing about Chaos?

(pause)

Joker: It’s fair.

[...]

There’s a reason you’re seeing Al Harrington having a renaissance there and why the Knicks as a whole look like they’ve been released from prison. D’Antoni has tapped into something ethereal that exists in players that tend to falter in traditional systems. Players that are made of athleticism and style, but little toughness or resolve. He is, somehow, able to tap into something philosophical with his teams and bring out the best in players that previously had nothing resembling a “best.” He does so by feeding what many consider the worst parts of them previously. He takes their little world and he turns it in on themselves. It’s fun. And it’s tempting. It’s that chaos being introduced to a system. And from a player’s standpoint, it allows them to freelance and always look to score. It’s… fair.

Also mentioned in the post, the fact that the Knicks beat the world champion Celtics at MSG last night. Which was awesome lol

Jason Aaron
Dan Abnett & Andy Lanning
Lee Bermejo
Simone Bianchi
Dennis Calero
Keith R.A. DeCandido
Phil Jimenez
JG Jones
Ron Marz
Tony Moore
Rick Remender
Eduardo Risso
Brian Wood

Also, 25% Off All Graphic Novels, plus variant covers for those who care about such things: Dark Avengers #1 by Adi Granov and Witchblade #124 by Tyler Kirkham

Check http://www.midtowncomics.com/custompages/nycc-2009.asp for updates

I guess this is real(?) even if I half expect to find out it’s just one in a series of “Is [fill-in-the-chick] The New Black Panther?” ads with Elektra, Black Widow, Storm and other potential mystery Pantherettes (inevitably drawn by Greg Horn…)

I really liked Echo when she debuted in Daredevil and was glad to see her show up in New Avengers, even if her inclusion there felt a bit random. But replacing T’Challa? That makes no sense to me…

(Echo by David Mack wallpaper at PCS Papes)

Plot-wise, the scenario for the Dark Reign one-shot is similar to the Illuminati’s — a peak into the initial meeting of a clandestine group of power players uniting to secretly manipulate the Marvel Universe. Only difference is, the members are a decidedly more villainous mix: Norman Osborn, Doctor Doom, Loki, Emma Frost, The Hood and…

…some overweight, stubbly-faced bum who seems to be hitting ineffectually on Emma Frost?

Is that supposed to be Namor?? I’m sorry, but that is probably the fattest, fugliest Sub-Mariner I’ve ever seen. Panel after panel I kept looking at this chubby-faced bozo and wondering if Bendis decided there was one last one Skrull still running around, and he was impersonating Namor. Also unrecognizable: Norman Osborn on Maleev’s cover. I thought that was Pete Wisdom or John Constantine or somebody there in the middle. How are you gonna draw an Osborn, especially Norman, without the trademark crazy-cornrows-coming-to-a-point-in-the-forehead hair??)

Further adding to Namor’s complete lack of regality was the trademark Bendis-speak coming out of his mouth. Not saying this kind of snappy banter doesn’t work for some characters, but when you have the likes of Namor, Doctor Doom and Loki all sitting in the same room talking in the same “um, exactly” voice — that’s just not working for me. (In fact it really takes me out of the book).

But setting aside the aforementioned absurdities, I do think Bendis gave a believable, and interesting, explanation as to why Norman Osborn called this particular “cabal” together, and what each of them has to offer, and gain. There’s even a fairly cool little exchange between Doom & Namor. So despite the fact that parts of this book were cringe-worthy, I am looking forward to seeing how all Dark Reign stuff this plays out — I’m just glad there’s I don’t have to read any more of it by by Bendis & Maleev.

MTFC stands for Make The Fucking Comics, a phrase originally coined quite pointedly by Cheryl Lynn in addressing the lack of representation of black and Latino girls in comics. “I can see that I am going to have to make the fucking comics. And you see, I don’t want to make the fucking comics. Making the fucking comics is hard fucking work.” She goes on to list all the things that have to get done in the thankless job of making the comics, and all the real, important reasons why somebody has to make them. (I highly recommend reading the whole post.)

I’m not going to sit here and say that MTFC is going to be any kind of difference-maker, or that any of the kind of hard work Cheryl talks about went into this thing. Because as you can see, nobody drew a damn thing — all the characters of our ghetto webcomic are the products of an online Mii generator. I tried to use Yahoo’s avatar generator because they have a nice selection of cool clothes and actual *backgrounds*, but I couldn’t seem to make one who actually looked black. Which is sort of a requirement for what we’re want to do here.

As it turns out, I’m kinda digging the stupid Mii look. I might be the only one, but — as stated above — Fuck it, I’m on some DIY shit. (All of which is not to say that I am not-so-secretly dreaming about some kick-ass artist who can actually draw cool looking minority characters being a MTFC fan and wants to get on board…)

The idea behind MTFC is that our crew has bought a comic shop, and the comic follows their trials & tribulations in running that. But honestly any “plot” is kind of secondary as I really just envision the strip being a bunch of guys — modeled somewhat on the PCS crew — talking about the shit we normally talk about.

I’ve got 4 MTFC strips done so far. Check them out and please leave some feedback!

Yet another reason Wikipedia is awesome:

In the entry for assonance (”the repetition of vowel sounds to create internal rhyming within phrases or sentences”), examples are given from a list of poets including Edgar Allen Poe, Alfred Lord Tennyson, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Robert Louis Stevenson and… Big Pun!?!

Obviously, Pun’s contribution here was the immortal “Dead in the middle of little Italy, little did we know that we riddled two middle men who didn’t do diddily.”

Like Rakim said, “RAP is Rhythm And Poetry.”

In my mind, Watchmen imagery is first and foremost the bloody yellow smiley & Rorschach — they encapsulate everything that is cool to me about Watchmen.

However, this poster is supposed to bring in the “civilians” as we call them –movie-goers or casual fans who haven’t read the book — and that audience is almost solely familiar with Watchmen via the movie trailer, which doesn’t make prominent use of the smiley. And after polling a handful of “civilians” I know, I found the figure who stands out most from the trailer is Dr. Manhattan. More than a few responded, “Watchmen, that’s the movie with the big blue guy right?”

Because of this, all my initial mock-ups featured Dr. Manhattan — and man did they look really lame. Everybody kept saying he just looked really weird and creepy, which was true. I mean, you’re that tall and you’re BRIGHT BLUE. You’re gonna look a little freaky. So, “focus groups” be damned — we finally decided to give in and feature every fanboy’s favorite, Rorschach.

Visit JimmyKitty.com for more Bomb Queen goodness!

PCS will be doing video interviews at both events, natch ;)