Archive for August, 2004
Superman/Batman #11 was the top-selling comic in July, thanks to artist Michael Turner
Michael Turner’s art seems to be everywhere you turn recently.
He’s working for DC Comics drawing the covers to Flash and Identity Crisis, on a six-issue arc on Superman/Batman and issue #1 of his new series, Soulfire from his company Aspen Studios just hit the stands last week.
In fact, Turner figured out that over the course of 2004 he’ll have drawn 13 issues and a whopping 71 covers.
So what motivates a man to work so hard?
“I’m trying to make up for lost time,” Turner told Metro in a phone interview from his California studio, making reference to the time he spent away from work during 2002 while successfully battling cancer
“I wanted to come back strong.”
And so he has.
Superman/Batman #11 was the No. 1-selling comic in July, while the Turner-covered Identity Crisis #2 was No. 3. Soulfire #1 is expected to be one of the highest-selling titles this month.
Turner, a special guest the Canadian National Comic Book Expo at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre from Friday to Sunday, credits a lot of his success this year to a lawsuit that prevented Aspen from publishing.
“We’ve made the best of a bad situation,” he said. “We would have never done the DC deal had we not had legal issues and the DC thing has been win-win for everybody.”
Seeing Soulfire, a series which has been in development for four years, finally be available to fans was special, Turner said.
“To see it finally on the stands last week was a huge deal for me,” he said, adding he cracked open some champagne to celebrate.
“Soulfire is a fun story. It’s different. It’s a futuristic, fantasy kind of story. And it gets crazier and crazier as you go along.”
The beginning of this tidal wave of Turner was not something he drew, but actually something he wrote, a Superman crossover entitled: Godfall.
“It was really funny how it all came to together. They (DC) said ‘hey, why not do a story about Kandor … GO!’” Turner said with a laugh.
The result was a six-part story that sees the Man Of Steel trapped in the miniature Kryptonian city, having lost his identity.
“We took Superman out of his element and into something completely different,” Turner said.
Godfall is in stores now in a classy-looking hardcover collected edition, featuring a cover gallery, production sketches by both Turner and series artist Talent Caldwell and an introduction by co-author Joe Kelly.
“It’s a really great package,” Turner said. “They did an excellent job.”
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An example of George Perez fine work on the JLA/Avengers crossover series.
It was the series George Perez had been waiting 20 years to draw.
All the legends would be there: Superman, Captain America, Wonder Woman, Iron Man, Batman, Hulk. Oh, and about 200 others.
JLA/Avengers (the JLA part standing for Justice League Of America for those not in the know) brought together the greatest super-hero teams from both DC Comics and Marvel Comics in one epic tale, written by Kurt Busiek and penciled and inked by Perez, who called it: “one of the most thrilling and greatest challenges of my career.”
“It was a fanboy dream to draw all those characters from two different companies meeting together, with, of course, the added pressure of 20 years of anticipation,” said Perez, one of the special guests at this coming weekend’s Canadian National Comic Book Expo at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre.
This inter-company crossover series was originally conceived in 1982, but fell apart just months after it began due to squabbling, in spite of the fact Perez had already drawn 21 pages.
When the plug was pulled it was thought this idea was dead. But the series finally became a reality late last year and early this year and it lived up to the expectations of many — including its artist.
“After everyone waiting for 20 years, including me, I couldn’t let that be less than my all-out effort,” Perez said.
The series has recently been collected in the Cadillac of hardcover editions, featuring a slipcase containing an oversized hardcover of the complete four-issue series and a fascinating companion volume that outlines its history, complete with annotated copies of Perez’s original 21 pages.
The collection is outstanding and very much befitting the scale of the project.
“I expected that maybe they would give it a hardcover collection, but to do it with this type of production value was really flattering,” Perez said. “It galvanized my feeling that both Marvel and DC have been trying very hard to make this project something that I can be proud of.”
Having recently celebrated his 50th birthday and completed one of the great works of his life, the Floridian artist says he’s in a great place in his life.
“I’m doing exactly what I love to do more than anything else,” he said. “At the age of 50 I’m looking at the road ahead that has … so many avenues waiting for me.
“This is a young medium. There’s always a new artist coming down the pike. That I’m still considered relevant at 50 and after 30 years as a freelance artist — I have a lot to be grateful for.”
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August 23, 2004 | Trades
The Metabarons Vol. 1: Othon & Honorata
Alejandro Jodorowsky, Juan Gimenez
Humanoids/DC Comics
$22.95/$14.95 US (Paperback)
*** 1/2 (out of five)
The Technopriests Book 1: Initiation
Alejandro Jodorowsky, Zoran Janjetov
Humanoids/DC Comics
$22.95/$14.95 US (Paperback)
*** 1/2 (out of five)
Alexandro Jodorowsky has been one of the most prolific and influential people in comics over the past 25 years — outside of North America.
The Chilean, best-known as the writer/director of cult films, Santa Sangre, El Topo and The Holy Mountain, has been working for years with French publisher, Humanoids, with much of his work seeing print in English only recently.
An agreement between Humanoids and DC Comics for the U.S. company to publish English adaptations of the many diverse works originally released overseas delivers us two of Jodorowsky’s most acclaimed series, The Metabarons and The Technopriests.
Full of wild concepts and visuals, the like of which are rarely seen in North American comics, both series blend strong characterization, tremendous pacing and a downright peculiar predilection for adding extraneous prefixes to the simplest of words.
The Metabarons is a galaxy-spanning tale of the rise of a man named Othon from space pirate to the most lauded soldier in the universe, while The Technopriests sees a boy named Albino try to rise up from being an unloved bastard-child to become a member of the elite game creators of the Technoguild.
Jodorowsky, 75, who will be a special guest at the Canadian National Comic Book Expo from Friday through Sunday at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre, possesses a rare quality like animator Hayao Miyazaki to imagine worlds the rest of us are too grounded to perceive. These first North American glimpses into his comic-creating mind are well worth the time.
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August 23, 2004 | Trades
Batman: Death And The Maidens
Greg Rucka, Klaus Janson
DC Comics
$30.95/$19.99 US (Paperback)
*** 1/2 (out of five)
Batman’s greatest enemy is dying.
Ra’s Al Ghul, the Demon’s Head, has survived for over six hundred years by renewing himself in his Lazarus pits. But there are few left, and the villain needs the Dark Knight’s help to find one before he withers away.
What can Ra’s offer the world’s greatest detective in exchange for this information? Nothing less the means to communicate with the parents he lost so long ago in a hail of gunfire.
While the pair play their cat and mouse game, the sinister Nyssa appears, denying aid to Ra’s in his quest for a pit, while telling Batman to simply let the villain die.
Flashing back in time, we learn Nyssa’s age belies her beautiful appearance and that her life and Ra’s’ are very much intertwined.
Death And The Maidens examines family, destiny and the hard choices that people make, leading both Nyssa and Bruce Wayne to surprising realizations.
Veteran artist Klaus Janson (Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, Daredevil) gives this series an edgy feel with his ink-heavy work, while writer Greg Rucka (Wonder Woman, Queen & Country) has crafted a smart Batman story that shakes up the status quo, which will no doubt have lasting repercussions on the life of the Dark Knight.
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August 23, 2004 | Trades
Robin: Unmasked
Bill Willingham, Rick Mays, Francisco Rodriguez de la Fuente, Aaron Sowd
DC Comics
$19.95/$12.95 US (paperback)
*** 1/2 (out of five)
Tim Drake is just your average teenaged boy. Or rather, Boy Wonder.
It’s autumn in Gotham City and Tim is a busy young man. He’s starting at a new high school, trying to find his way in the social order and looking to balance his relationship with his girlfriend with his after-school job — which happens to be as Robin, Batman’s sidekick.
Unmasked, which collects the first five issues of writer Bill Willingham’s work on Robin, sees Tim wrestling with the notion that while trying to stop a criminal, he thinks he accidentally killed him. Meanwhile, his father begins to piece together Robin’s secret identity.
Tim finally being exposed as a hero to his father is a moment many long-time Batman or Robin readers have been expecting to eventually come along, but credit to Willingham, he does it with style. The outrage Tim’s father expresses, the calm demeanor of Bruce Wayne when confronted with the news and Tim’s grudging acceptance of his father’s punishment all fall right as you’d expect — until a killer twist ending.
Robin is a character with long roots who has long been due for some more attention and Unmasked is a great start in that direction.
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August 23, 2004 | Trades
PVP Vol. 1: At Large
Scott Kurtz
Image Comics
$11.95 US (paperback)
**** (out of five)
To say PVP is a funny comic strip doesn’t seem to do it justice.
How about: PVP is milk-coming-out-of-your-nose funny?
Creator Scott Kurtz’s witty and wild web comic (www.pvponline.com) migrated to the printed form a while ago and is now even more accessible in At Large, the second collection of printed PVP strips.
Set in a fictional video game magazine office, PVP follows the sophomoric antics of the staff: Francis, the teenaged office tech and video game nut; Brent, the magazine’s pompous creative director; Jade, the lone female on staff, who is determined to prove women like gaming too; Cole, the editor-in-chief and resident Dungeon Master; and Skull, the office intern, who also happens to be a kindhearted, big, blue troll.
From office-wide Nerf gun wars to a hilarious Dungeons & Dragons revival and a scathing send-up of The Matrix (a cow instead of Keanu in The Mootrix), At Large shows Kurtz’s sharp eye for the picking out and poking fun at the inherent ridiculousness of both gaming and pop culture.
A strong mix of stand-alone gags and multi-page tales, PVP should be required reading for fans of comic strips.
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August 23, 2004 | Trades
Firebreather
Phil Hester
Image Comics
$13.95 US (paperback)
*** (out of five)
Being a teenager can really suck.
Unless you were, or are, beautiful and athletic, chances are high school was a total drag that you just couldn’t wait to escape.
Because — in one of the most ironic twists of adolescence — while the beautiful and athletic are the minority, it is the various and different majority who are made to feel outcast.
Which brings us to Firebreather, perhaps the ultimate tale of having trouble fitting in.
Duncan Belloc-Rosenblatt is the lovechild of an ordinary human woman and a 250-foot tall, fire-breathing dragon. His skin is orange and scaly, he has horns and sharp teeth and people point and stare at him wherever he goes.
But underneath all that, Duncan is just a regular teenager, who wants to have friends, maybe even a girlfriend, and to fit in.
Now most adolescents were never that bad off, but the message of alienation in this series by writer Phil Hester (Green Arrow) and artist Andy Kuhn will hit very close to home for the comic-collecting crowd that read it.
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August 23, 2004 | Comics
WE3 #1 (of 3)
Grant Morrison, Frank Quitely
Vertigo/DC Comics
$4.50/$2.95 US
**** 1/2 (out of five)
What happen when you cross a dog, a cat and a rabbit with some high-grade weapons technology and arguably the most talented writer/artist team around? Simply one of the best comics of the year.
Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely, the lauded creative team behind New X-Men, are back with a story that Vertigo’s website affectionately calls “part Incredible Journey, part Terminator.”
WE3 — Bandit the dog, Tinker the cat and Pirate the bunny — are part of an experimental program of the U.S. military to use cybernetically enhanced animals as weapons.
But when the government decides to pull the plug on the project, will the enlightened animals just roll over and die?
WE3 is brilliantly conceived, cleverly written and visually breathtaking. Morrison and Quitely are back with a vengeance and WE3 is not to be missed.
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August 23, 2004 | Comics
Astro City Special #1
Kurt Busiek, Brent Anderson, Alex Ross
Wildstorm/DC Comics
$6/$3.95 US
*** 1/2 (out of five)
Astro City is back after an eight-month hiatus and it’s just like old times.
This special examines the life of Supersonic, a retired senior and former super-hero who is forced back into action to stop a giant robot from leveling the city.
As Supersonic flashes back and forth between battling for his life and looking back on his prime, readers are treated to everything that is good about Astro City.
Writer Kurt Busiek’s love for the heroes of yesteryear, Brent Anderson’s terrific art and legendary painter Alex Ross’ cover all make this special exactly that.
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August 23, 2004 | Comics
DC Comics Presents: The Flash #1
Dennis O’Neil, Jeph Loeb, Doug Mahnke, Ed McGuinness, Mark Farmer, Dexter Vines
DC Comics
$3.85/$2.50 US
**** (out of five)
The death of former DC Comics editor Julius Schwartz earlier this year has brought out some of the best and the brightest talent in the comic industry — not to mourn, but to celebrate.
Schwartz was a visionary, a man who helped usher in the silver age of comics, who had a tremendous impact on hundreds of characters and comic book creators in his career.
To commemorate his life, the company he worked so hard for all those years has commissioned a series of DC Comics Presents stand-alone issues, featuring modern creators’ takes on some of Schwartz’s best ideas.
The Flash special is the best of the bunch, featuring an Alex Ross painted cover, stories by Jeph Loeb and Dennis O’Neil and art by Ed McGuinness and Doug Mahnke — and an illustrated appearance by Schwartz himself.
These books are a thoughtful idea with excellent results.
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