Two Links

After seeing it mentioned on The Beat, I wanted to spend the afternoon watching The Maxx, the animated adaptation of Sam Kieth's bizarre and magnificent hallucinatory, superhero comic from the 90s. But mtv.com inserts a commercial between every scene and it was driving me mad. Someday when I have more patience I'll sit down and enjoy.

Instead, I got sucked into The Comics Curmudgeon. The commentary is pretty amusing, but I think a large part of the appeal is seeing other people get as angry at Archie and Beetle Bailey as I do.

Bright Starts.

Less than a year ago, Murphy commented on a missed opportunity by DC. The success of The Dark Knight film drove new customers into comics stores, looking for new Batman comics. What they unfortunately found was the middle of "Batman: RIP": a densely written, surreal breakdown of the Batman character. I agreed with Chris that despite personally enjoying the arc, it was the furthest thing from a comfortable starting point for new readers. It drew too much from Grant Morrison's previous year of Batman comics and well, basically was a little too Grant Morrison. And on top of that, I never felt Tony Daniel was the right artist for the storyline. In any case, it seemed like a missed opportunity to draw in new readers.

It turns out they missed the mark by a bit under a year, in the form of two of my favorite new releases.

Go buy Detective Comics #854.
Go buy Batman and Robin #1.

The former features Batwoman, a relatively new character getting her long-awaited starring role written by Greg Rucka. The first issue introduces the character, has a Batman cameo to ground it, and sets up her first case. It's engrossing and beautifully illustrated by J.H. Williams III. It's everything an introduction to a comic story should be.

The latter features the new Batman and Robin. It asks for more backstory but that depends on how much the new reader wants to know. The basics are easy. Bruce is gone. Dick Grayson has ascended to the cowl. Bruce's l'enfant terrible Damian is the new Robin. How things got to this point is sort of complicated (and isn't that what Wikipedia and trades are for?) But once you accept the starting point, it's a good one. And it doesn't hurt that it has great (slightly unconventional) artwork, courtesy of Frank Quitely.

Fresh Ink

Chris is a talented writer, but a poor self promoter. Go check out his weekly Fresh Ink column on Comics Alliance.

Two links

I've been wasting my afternoon, delighting at TV Tropes and Stupid Comics. The former contains articles like You Fail Biology Forever, Everything's Better With Dinosaurs, and A Wizard Did It. The later collects fantastic and bizarre images, particularly from golden and silver age covers.

EDIT: Also, TV Tropes just led me to this chart, in which you can see both a Robot Lincoln and an Astronaut Vampire. The internet ate my afternoon.

Two links

(via Laura Hudson, Comics Alliance)
#hawkeyesopoor Twitter meme Hawkeye jokes

(via Kate Beaton)
Hey Oscar Wilde! Artist depictions of literary figures

MoCCAfest 2009!

MoCCA art festival 2009, June 6-7. Chris and I will have a table (and hopefully I'll have more than just high fives to offer people). If you've never been, it's pretty awesome- lots of small press and minuscule press and minicomics and webcomics and people who get excited by all these things. Accumulating changes have made the museum less inviting this past year, but it remains an institution worthy of support and this is their big annual event, attracting all sorts of guests and exhibitors. There's no master list yet, but exhibitors include: Kate Beaton, Joey Comeau, and Bill Roundy (let me know more names).

http://www.moccany.org/artfest09-main.html

Making A Softer World

Open Book Toronto made a short documentary about A Softer World, following Joey Comeau and Emily Horne (and Ryan North) as they put together a strip.

Darwyn Cooke preview pages

(via The Beat)

I'm not nearly as familiar as I should be with Darwyn Cooke or Richard Stark novels he's adapting, but there's 21 pages of preview up at IDW and daaaamn, this shit is gorgeous.

http://www.idwpublishing.com/previews/parker/

Act-i-vate Exhibition

"The Evolution of the Concept of the Superhuman"

Earlier today, Jess Nevins (comics annotator extraordinaire) launched into a history lesson on his twitter account, tracing the history of the superhuman. Fantastic.

http://twitter.com/jessnevins