Just got confirmation for Midtown’s initial creator signings at NYCC 2009 — and they’re looking pretty darn good!
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
First Black Panther isn’t a man anymore (o-kay), now he isn’t even black??
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)
 Is this really the same Bendis & Maleev who had that great (some would say classic) run on Daredevil? And more to the point, the Illuminati special I enjoyed?
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.
I don’t know what happened with the Blog@Newsarama crew suddenly calling it quits, but apparently they’re moving over to Comic Book Resources. Don’t know exactly how they’ll be folded into operations there as CBR already has the Comics Should Be Good blog, but that’s a nice score for CBR however it works out. I sort of think Newsarama doesn’t really care, because in the grand the grand scheme of things they seem to be about the big mainstream picture — but Blogarama always seemed like a good addition for them because it kind of helped them speak to a segment outside their usual audience. It almost seemed like people who hated Newsarama and what it stands for could still go to Newsarama, only they were reading Blog@Newsarama.
I’ve wanted to do a PCS webcomic for a while now, but it never happened mostly because I CAN’T DRAW TO SAVE MY LIFE. But I finally said “Fuck it” and got on some DIY shit.
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.”
Here’s the latest Watchmen poster I made for Midtown. It’s going to be 6 feet tall, in the window facing 7th Ave.
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.
Here’s a poster I did for a couple upcoming signings at Midtown:
PCS will be doing video interviews at both events, natch ;)
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