Comic Features

c2e2 2011 – Day 1

Welcome, welcome to our recap of the events of c2e2 day 1. Not a lot happened on the first day so rather than a bunch of little posts we’re compiling it all into one big post. Although you’ll probably not find it too long either. To kick off the day Kevin and I and all the other registered professionals, meaning exhibitors, panelists and press were invited to walk around the sales floor for the first four hours of the day. This was fun in the fact that we had the opportunity to see the booths before the crowd and map out where everything was. A booth we spent a lot of time at was Mattel’s booth. Mattel was displaying a lot of new action figures from Ghostbusters to He-Man and WWE. The largest display though came from the Green Lantern movie. 

You Missed That Issue? Celadore #1

Vampire hunters are cool.  They are tenacious and they are armed to the teeth with all the latest Vampire technology and they know all the ways how to kill a vampire.  Usually when you think of vampires, you think of big dudes, who have nothing to lose and are very cool and calm people, and for the most part the hunters are men with the exception of Buffy. That is not what you get when you read Celadore.

You Missed That Issue! – Small Gods #1

Welcome to another You Missed That Issue! where I will talk about a comic within the past decade that is a modern classic but was unfortunately overlooked.

I wasn’t expecting much from Small Gods, but I thought I’d try this title from Image publishers since it was free. Going back I would definitely pay for more. It deserves recognition for trying something new and without the classic tight-wearing superheroes with indestructible bodies. The art also takes a creative approach. It was in black-and-white, which seemed appropriate to me and I liked the way the characters were drawn. Few comics have been drawn in black-and-white and there are even fewer that can successfully pull it off but this title did a great job. The best piece of art I saw was a collection of visions the lead character has that have less shading and are clearly different from the rest. It was composed of two stories, but only one that I believe deserves the title of a modern classic since it shows innovation and creativity. Today, a lot of creativity is lost in series since people start buying a series just to see a character rather than experience a new and original story. Some people will settle for anything as long as it has there favorite character in it – I know, I am definitely guilty of this myself when a comic features Catwoman or the Clown Prince of Crime Joker.

Moon Knight: The Bottom

I had just gotten a job and was always interested in comics and I absolutely loved the 90’s cartoons based off of comic characters. There was the X-Men, Spider-Man and Batman just to name a few. Anyways I walked into this comic shop that my mate works at and I spent almost three hours browsing amongst Marvel, DC and all the various others. Even though there were all these characters I already knew about, this one volume kept calling to me, Moon Knight: The Bottom, a guy I had never heard about but decided to buy that instead of anything else and it is something I definitely will never regret. Straight out I realized this guy was a nutjob. Marc Spector had alienated himself from his friends. He had broken and weak legs and kept seeing this apparition that may or may not have been an Ancient Egyptian God, whom he may or may not believe in. The God was claiming to be Khonshu, God of Vengeance and of the Moon.

My Start With Comics

My first comic, I think it was Iron Man; the first appearience of War Machine. The cover was of War Machine with all his weapons ready to fire and the title was scratched and War Machine was written all over. Then again it might have been a Spectacular Spider-man… Either way none of them lasted my furious childhood. I think I draw on them or something… After that I remember picking up a Fright Night comic in a supermarket. Like before… this one did not escaped my furious childhood. But from that last one I started drawing from it, instead of drawing on it. A bit later I picked a copy of Batman versus Predator number one. It was my first number one issue and I felt proud of that. This book was so cool that I kept re-reading it every five minutes, until I wore it down but sadly… it did not escaped the wrath of mom! In my teen years, I collected a couple of X-Men comics and discover the joy of collecting. I collected a lot of crap. I did not have any ground breaking run and the two or four titles became twenty almost forty.

Digital Comics: Are They Worth It?

Digital Comics are great because you can read them anywhere especially if you have a mobile device. They save space in your house and there are several services to download digital comics. The major problem with digital comics is the price point that some of the publishers establish for these books. It seems like publishers are taking advantage of what people would pay just to download a 28 page book that costs only a little more than their print counterpart. Recently, I acquired an Android Phone and I was very excited about my device because this meant that I could read some comics whenever and wherever I wanted. I downloaded the Comixology application from the Android marketplace and browsed their selection, which is amazing. 

You’re What’s Wrong With Comic Books

You may have noticed that a lot of Indie books have been getting some good/decent reviews lately and probably think we/I’m am being biased. That these little books aren’t that good because you’ve seen the art and thought that it looks like crap compared to the two big multi-million dollar companies that you’re used to. Well maybe I don’t see comics like that. I don’t see art like that. Each and every comic I personally review is judged on its own merits, but granted there are times when similarities or past creators work is brought up.

But what aggravates me the most is that comic book fans are so unwilling to give a comic a chance if it’s not from the big two. You can make an argument here that Image and Dark Horse are part of the big league too, but they’re not. They may not worry about going out of business anytime soon but they are far from being the top dogs of Comics. I can’t even remember the last monthly book I saw from Dark Horse as they’ve mostly moved into releasing Manga and are making a killing there. Otherwise Hellboy and B.R.P.D. is the only thing coming out on a regular base. Buffy was promising for a while, but it seems that once Joss leaves a book it can’t stand on its own.

Alpha Flight Changed My Life

The first issue I read of Alpha Flight
was the first comic book I read after taking a three year hiatus from
light comic book collecting. I had less than twenty comics at the time,
simply a casual reader that knew bare-boned facts about Batman from the
animated TV series rather than the comics and did not faithfully walk
into a comic store every Wednesday in need of my weekly comic book fix.
Before this one issue of Alpha Flight I was more interested in
other things. This one comic took my life in a completely new
direction and became my favorite series – if not for the nostalgia then for the array of colorful characters and story that I feel are lacking in most comics today.

I do not even remember where I got the issue from, but I remember reading Alpha Flight
#15 with non-existent expectations. By the end, I had already grown
attached to the few characters portrayed in that one particular issue.
Looking back, whenever I read over that issue of Alpha Flight I
look at it a little more objectively; it was a great issue but still
had its share of flaws. But the entire series embodied qualities I
enjoyed: teamwork, friendship and the horrendous pain of losing this as
more and more members of Alpha Flight were killed off in the coming
years. All these qualities made this series amazing to me and
encouraged me to try and find more.

Marvel Character Affinity: Rulk

When you think of Rulk, one name and one name only comes to mind. No it’s not Bruce Banner, The Leader or the Abomination (Although that is a word associated with Rulk a lot), no its Jeph Loeb. After a very successful run of Hulk books that included Planet Hulk and ending with World War Hulk, Marvel gave newly contracted Loeb the go ahead to screw up everything Hulk and make this reader hate it even more than Brand New Day. After finally making the Hulk somewhat intelligent and putting Bruce and Hulk in symmetry with each other, Loeb came along and threw all that out the window.

Marvel Character Affinity: Scourge

Back in the 80’s before Brubraker’s Eisner award winning Captain America. Mark Gruenwald had a legendary run the character as well. One of the interesting characters that came out of that run was, Scourge. But to not be confused with other characters of the same name, the character’s full named is the Scourge of the Underworld. His mission statement was for justice to be served. Of course his brand of justice was twisted. Scourge is a serial killer who kills supervillians. He was the first Dexter before Dexter (the now popular serial killer of serial killers) he was a master planner and a master of disguise that managed to fool Spider-man, Captain America and even the Avengers. His goals were met, killing many villains in the process. Sure most of them were annoying z-listers like Cyclone, Death Adder, Megatak, Mirage, Melter and Titania among many others characters we like to called losers or popularity-challenged-villains. Yet Scourge managed to get the job done and escape with ease.