LeSean Thomas is, without a doubt, one of the dopest artists working these days. He’s done animation on shows like The Boondocks, where he co-directs and supervises character design, and Ben 10: Alien Force, where he’s done design and storyboard work. Comics fans will know him from his Street Fighter, Cannon Busters, and Ninja Turtles projects.

“Midnight Marauders” is not just the title A Tribe Called Quest’s dopest album. It’s also the title of LeSean’s upcoming art book, Midnight Marauder volume 2. Here’s the info straight from the publisher’s site:

“Artist LeSean Thomas ( Co-Director/Supervising Character Designer of Peabody Award Winning “The Boondocks” Animated Series / Cartoon Network’s Ben10: Alien Force animated series) returns with his highly anticipated MIDNIGHT MARAUDER: THE ART OF LESEAN THOMAS VOLUME 2, a second collection of illustrations, conceptual designs and tutorial anecdotes. Featuring visual ranges from American animation and anime-influenced stylings to edgy, urban-driven aesthetics, it’s a visual tour de force of unique and dynamic work from one of today’s top American contemporary character artists.”

He sent over a preview for us to check out and I can verify that it looks great. We’ve got four pages and the cover linked below. Check those out, and then go to his site and order it. If you can’t wait until July, hop over to his DeviantArt page and check that out, too. He’s got storyboards, Boondocks art, and a ton of sketches.

Look for more with LeSean on PCS soon.

The comics industry is a small one, so it’s easy to get used to seeing the same names over and over. It’s also easy to put a personal face on tragedy. I’ll let iFanboy tell it:

As reported by the Grand Rapids Press and discussed on the Bendis Board, David Pirkola, owner and operator of Apparitions Comics and Books in Grand Rapids, Michigan was robbed at his store and then shot by the robber. He is currently in stable, but critical condition at a local hospital.

We’ve spoken with Peter Ryan, who along with Stephen Jayner owns Capital City Collectibles in Lansing, MI and are close friends and co-owners of Apparitions Comics and Books, and he confirmed that David is in the hospital and stable, but still severely injured. As you can imagine, no matter how speedy the recovery, getting back to running his business will be challenging. Even normally, running an independent comic book store is an incredibly difficult job, and many retailers often operate with limited or no personal health insurance. Given that retailers are such an important part of our industry, we want to help out as much as possible.

So iFanboy is putting out the call to you, comics fans to help a retailer in need. We’ve set up a PayPal donation button below to allow you donate as much as you’d like. You can use credit cards or bank accounts, and don’t need a PayPal account to donate. All money donated will be sent to David Pirkola to help with his medical bills, as well as to keep his store afloat, so if you can spare it, please donate below.

We will also be reaching out to our friends in the industry to help as well, so stay tuned for possible giveways or auctions of comics goodness, the proceeds of which will go to helping David and his recovery.

Visit iFanboy and give if you can.

PopCultureShock is in full effect at New York Comic-con, with Kate, Jon, and I walking the show floor. The crowds are nuts, the creators are running around having fun, and I’ve been politicking like crazy. (Continued)

Empowered is:

• sexy.
• funny.
• in poor taste in all the right ways.
• quite possibly the most likeable super-hero super-chica in comics right now.
• all of the above.

Correct answer? All of the above.

Adam Warren’s sexy superhero comedy’s third volume came out a little while ago. It adheres to a classic chestnut, the old “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it… unless you know how to make it better.” Empowered 3 is unequivocably better than the other books in the already excellent series.

You can’t really talk about Empowered without dealing with the elephant in the room. It’s a sexy superhero comedy with adult situations, a little bit of bondage, and a lot of broken self-esteem. Is it offensive? Is it fair? Is it right?

Honestly, I feel like the proper answer is “All of the above.” Despite the trouble she gets into, and clothes that she sheds, Empowered never gives up hope. When put into situations that would make other heroes declare “Empowered no more,” she sits down, cries, bucks up, and gets back to work.

It’s this trait that has made Empowered one of the most likeable heroines I’ve read in a long while. The never-say-die attitude that she sports is a sign of true heroism to me. Even better, when she can’t handle a situation on her own and collapses into despair, she has her boyfriend and Ninjette to help pick her up off the ground.

I can’t help but find Empowered, the character and the book alike, as it’s basically a quintessential old school superhero comic. There are life lessons learned and taught, some excellent action, and a whole heaping helping of fun. On top of that, it’s a very sex-positive book, but one that’s not afraid to poke fun at itself.

Empowered’s hallmarks are its uninked art style, plucky superheroine-in-distress (or distressed superheroine), and sexy situations. Warren expands on the Empowered formula by going a experimental with his art for a couple chapters. He inks these with a sharpie, giving it a nice chiaoscuro look. Think Sin City and you’ll be close to the mark.

Of course, there’s plenty of his normal Empowered style, as well. The scratchy, but tight, pencilwork is still great looking, and Warren’s facial expressions are second to none. Bleary, drunk, and teary-eyed Emp is cute, funny, and heartbreaking.

Of course, the highlight of the book is the final fight scene, which sprawls over a ton of pages and still manages to remain tightly paced and emotional. I don’t want to completely spoil who is involved, but we see some of Warren’s best action scenes yet and a new facet of Emp.

Overall? Empowered 3 is the bomb. I feel like everyone should be reading it, and I can’t wait for the next volume.

How do you treat your comics?

Do you keep buying books you don’t like, just to keep a set? Do you read once, and then bag and board them? Do you not even read and just go straight to the slabbing? Are they an investment for you, or is it just a hobby?

For me, monthly comics or floppies or whathaveyou are disposable entertainment in every sense of the word. I don’t own any longboxes and I have maybe three dozen comics in bags and boards. They are ones I’ve owned since I was a kid (X-Men #1 with the sweet gatefold cover) or books that I’m planning on turning into custom hard/softcover trade paperbacks, like Flex Mentallo or Wildcats 3.0.

My floppies tend to get pretty beaten up. I tend to keep them in the plastic bag from the comic shop, and those bags get stacked up in a closet. When the stack is high enough for me to notice it, I go through, clear out the comics I don’t want to keep or plan to convert to trades on (most of them) and either junk or donate them.

That’s half a lie. Comics are hard to give away.

Anyway, floppies are pretty much completely disposable to me. If I lived in a world where we got between two and four fat graphic novels about each character with an ongoing series a year, I’d be pretty happy. Make them hardcovers and I’d be in bliss.

It isn’t that I don’t like floppies, so much as I just prefer books with solid spines, maybe a dust cover, and maybe even a slipcase. Floppies are great, and I’ve been buying them since I was a kid and buy them to this day. In the long run, though, I like being able to read a complete story without picking six different issues out of the closet. I want it on my own terms.

I guess that’s the crux of how I view my comic-reading habits. I want to be comfortable. I want things on my terms. I want to be able to read stories how I want, when I want, with a minimum of effort. For me, this means trades. I can stack them up on a bookshelf (or beside my bed…) and pull one off and get a done-in-one story. Reading that in floppies would require more effort.

Again, I’m not dissing floppies. They serve a great purpose and are probably 100% necessary in the scheme of things, but I feel like I could do without them. The occasional one shots are super cool, like the New Frontier Special or the rumored Losers movie special (whenever that gets off the ground). Some series need the monthly format to be able to survive. Others use the monthly format for pacing purposes.

It’s kind of interesting. I think that I treat floppies and trades the same way in the long term. I’ve got a stack of “To Read” books by my bed that’s been there since Wondercon a few weeks back. I’ve got a stack of floppies a mile high in my closet. It’s disposable entertainment at work: I love comics, but believe that they are meant to be read, rather than saved. Beat them up, stick them in your back pocket, lend them to friends, do whatever you like to them. Just read them and enjoy them, however you prefer to do so.

It’s all about the love, isn’t it? My belief in comics can be summed up with this rambly quote from Flex Mentallo, also known as the best love letter to comics ever.

“Totally amazing names… I mean, when you think about it… they’re, like, archetypal… they come right up from the depths, those things… how can they say that stuff’s stupid? Why do people get so ashamed of things? …I mean, I really love those comics…”

I love comics.

It’s A Southern Takeover

So, uh, I guess I should introduce myself.

I’m David Brothers and I’m your new Senior Comics Editor. I stole the title of this column from the excellent HBO show “The Wire” and the quote from Grant Morrison’s Flex Mentallo, one of the best comics I’ve ever read. I’ve been writing about comics since 2005 and reading them for substantially longer. My site is 4thletter!, which I run with a few old friends. We talk about funny stuff, social issues, and dumb comics. Give it a look.

You’ll probably see a little bit from those guys on PCS over the next few weeks. I’ve been tasked with revitalizing the comics side of PCS, since Kate has been doing such a great job on the manga side of things. It’ll be an interesting ride! I’ve got pretty much total control in revamping the comics, so hopefully I won’t screw it up too bad. My main focus is keeping regular content going again. We’re gonna start slow while I build up a good content schedule, but we’ve already hit the ground running.

Alternate Current stealth-debuted on this past Thursday. Schedule and writers willing, it’ll hit every Wednesday. It is, in essence, a soap box. We’re going to have a different writer each week talking about a different subject. It’s an open forum. Our inaugural column was on how Jon views ASBAR. The next one could be a critical analysis of the gender politics vis a vis the socio-political economic and racial policies of New Deal-era Superman. It is, quite literally, a place where you can talk about whatever you want. Interested? Drop me a line. I’m also planning on rolling out a couple of regular columns, too, so if you’ve got that killer idea that everyone needs to hear, email me.

Picks & Pans are sticking around! We’ve got a great group of reviewers, and getting alternate opinions on comics is great. Jon’s Comic Rankings is a great experiment, too, and one we’re gonna keep going and expanding upon. It collates reviews from all across the comics internet, similar to GameRankings.com, and puts them into nice and neat tables for you.

I’ve got to do a bit of cleaning up, so pardon the dust. Just make sure that you keep coming back for more. Tell your friends, respond to posts, and let’s do it big.

Got ideas for the site? Want a column? Want in on Alternate Current? Email me. Let’s talk.

The Many Adventures of Miranda Mercury

Let me list three of my top five favorite creators: Frank Miller, Jim Lee, and Brian Azzarello. All three of them dropped books this past week, and yet my book of the week was produced by Brandon Thomas and Lee Ferguson?

Let me introduce you to The Many Adventures of Miranda Mercury #295. No, you didn’t miss 294 issues of a comic somehow– Miranda Mercury’s conceit is that there is a storied past behind the title character and that this is just the latest of her adventures. Miranda is a hero in the Doc Savage, Tom Strong, Flash Gordon, Buck Rogers mold. She’s out to have a good time, see the sights, and maybe even learn a little bit while she’s out and about.

The book first caught my eye because it stars a black female. If you’ve been reading 4l, you know that I feel pretty strongly about the lack of positive black females in comics. Lee Ferguson’s art delivered up a black girl who is both cool and attractive without being sexed up. Thomas’s script brought it all home when it put Miranda’s quick wit and stubborn will on display.

Basically, this comic is great. The cover page ties into the story in a big way (here’s a hint: it’s the first page of the story), the art is insanely attractive, and the story is a great one. Despite being dropped in mid-scene, it’s very easy to follow. You have the villain, the heroine, the sidekick, the hook, and the twist. The villain is a short fellow with an anger problem. The heroine is a skilled fighter in that Indiana Jones kind of way. The sidekick is a supersmart kid with a penchant for possibly being too smart for his own good. The hook is a magical cube that lets you have one wish once you solve its puzzle. The twist? The twist is something I won’t ruin, but which casts the series in a new light.

This isn’t Brandon Thomas’s first comic. He wrote an issue of Robin a few months back, just pre-Resurrection of Ra’s al Ghul, that was the best single issue that book had seen in probably eight years. It was just a quick done-in-one about Robin, and ended on a few pages that really nailed the Batman/Robin dynamic for me.

Thomas displayed a deft grasp of the characters and dialogue in that book, and it’s carried over to Miranda Mercury. You get a feeling of real history between all the characters, but not the kind of history that feels manufactured. There’s none of the “Like that time on Alphozon-VII, where you narrowly escaped my clutches!”-style awful exposition. Just quick lines that hint at a shared past and allow your imagination to fill in the blanks.

The Many Adventures of Miranda Mercury #295 is, as far as I’m concerned, an incredible success. The characters and art are equally vibrant, the story has a great twist at the end without being an annoying cliffhanger, and I’m genuinely interested in where the story is going to go. Miranda Mercury is an A+ right off the starting block.