Story of the Year

Unknown Soldier #13-14; Joshua Dysart, writer, Pat Masioni, artist

Best Writer

Alex Simmons, Archie & Friends

Best Artist

Jay Potts, World of Hurt

Best Male Character

Isaiah Pastor, World of Hurt; created by Jay Potts, writer and artist

Best Female Character

Aya, Aya: The Secrets Come Out; created by Marguerite Abouet, writer, Clement Oubrerie, artist

Rising Star Award

Jay Potts, World of Hurt

Best Reprint Publication

Aya: The Secrets Come Out; Drawn & Quarterly

Best Cover

Luke Cage Noir #1; Tim Bradstreet, illustrator

Best Comic Strip

The K Chronicles; Keith Knight, writer and artist

Fan Award for Best Comic

Luke Cage Noir; Mike Benson & Adam Glass, writers, Shawn Martinbrough, artist

Taken during C2E2.

Rock-em-sock-em robots. Hugh Jackman will be in it too.

Also: Tune in to CBS’ Medium this Friday night. Robert Roach‘s comics, Menthu and The Roach, can be seen in a scene taking place in a comic shop!

“The Painted Man is a collection of coming of race memoirs that finds a dad confronted by racially charged questions posed directly by his young son and the people they come into contact with. Throughout the book father and son attempt to answer these questions organically, through experiences and interactions, or by soliciting the opinions of professionals in the fields of Early Childhood Education and Psychology.”

The Painted Man blog

LA Banks

Neo-Pulp. To us this means high-energy stories with lots of twists and excitement. Lots of action, hot girls (but not sleezy), guns, swords, fights and magic. We have the Tough Guy, the Femme Fatale, the Maniacal Villain…all that, but every one of them with a modern spin… The Rundown. Big Trouble in Little China. The Three Musketeers. Crouching Tiger. Cowboy BeBop. We pretty much threw everything we loved into a blender and this is what came out.

Prodigal: Egg of First Light

‘Meet the Haunteds’ is a perfect set-up for social commentary on everything from race issues to family problems,’ said Carr. ‘This is another wonderful property from Platinum Studios, which is turning itself into the go-to independent comic book company.’”

This won’t even be out until next year and it’s already got a movie deal. How do these things happen?

Regardless, this better be an amazing book to overcome a premise like that.

At least I assume he’s a star of some sort. Anyway, it’s a video interview taken during C2E2.

video interview

Related: Don Cheadle solo interview.

Also: Shawn Martinbrough interview.

To see Chris Hemsworth in the movie version, click here. Gotta say it’s a very close match. And I like that Hemsworth has the beard.

So yeah, participating comic shops across the country will once again give away free comic samplers that they had to pay for themselves. Check with your local shop to see if there are any additional events, like sales or creator signings, planned. Among this year’s batch of free comics includes the Radical Publishing sampler, which will contain the first eight pages of After Dark, the forthcoming sci-fi book conceived by Wesley Snipes and Antoine Fuqua (and written by Peter Milligan).

Can Stan Lee be far behind?

This article, coming as it does in the wake of the news about a gay character being introduced into the Archie-verse (though we all know who was really on the down-low), has relevance for readers of this blog as well. We saw writer Alex Simmons write some Chuck stories last year (and he’s up for a Glyph Comics Award this year), plus there’s the current storyline involving Archie and Pussycat Valerie, so it does indeed appear as if the Archie-verse is expanding in all directions.

That’s Herge’s native country, in case you didn’t know

Y’know, this is slowly becoming almost as ridiculous as the Muhammad cartoon controversy, which has recently spun off onto some bizarre tangents. No one’s died over Tintin in the Congo yet, but the length of this campaign makes me think some perspective may be necessary. No one denies that the images of Africans in the book are stereotypical, and I realize that Tintin is as big in Europe as Spider-Man is here, but the specific targeting of this one particular graphic novel made decades ago in a less enlightened time (relatively speaking, of course) makes me wonder: why stop here? Why not go after more comics with images we don’t like? Hell, why stop with comics? Would an introductory essay to put the book in historical context really not be enough to appease these people? I suspect not, and that’s unfortunate, to say the least. Whether intentionally or unintentionally, art has the ability to provoke, and how we respond to these images says as much, if not more, than the images themselves.