Some of the faces of ROB-CON 2016

The ladies were crushing it this year.  And there were no Doctor Whos, thank heavens.

Happy Halloween!

Hey you...

...have a happy free comic book day!

Things I really love

I really love the art of Jamie Hernandez, he of the comic book Love and Rockets fame. I think his art is beautiful. I love that it's black and white, or as the kids today call it, grayscale.

I love that his men are strong and women are sexy yet normal.
I buy old issues of Love and Rockets in the bargain bins at my local comic book shop just for the art.

I bought an older collection today called The Death of Speedy. Which is where all these panels came from.
Someday I'll read the stories in the collection but right now, I'm too busy enjoying the art.
I love the attention to detail.
The sense of people and place in all these panels.
They grab me.
I find most of them extremely haunting and astonishingly beautiful.

Sweet find

I not only remember the film this was based on, I remember buying a copy of this same comic book when it hit the stands in the early 1970's. I picked up this copy for two bucks today at a comic book sale in my town, and I'll be scanning and posting it on my scan blog in a few days.

Ahhh, how I love finding pieces of my pop culture past.

Blog love

I'm in love with two blogs right now. And they are:

1. Grantbridge Street & Other Misadventures. It's a blog that features scans of comic book stories and pretty women. If you don't like comics that are aimed at adults and pictures of beautiful women then don't check it out. But if you like stories written and drawn by people like Walt Simonson, Archie Goodwin, Jack Kirby, Brian Bolland, Milo Manara, and if you like 'fit birds' as the author of the blog calls them, then check out this great blog.
   
2. Cowgirl Chef. She's a Texas gal who lives in France and she cooks and shares her recipes and she's cute as a button and she's on Facebook too. If you hate good food, then you'll hate her blog. If McDonald's and Cici's Pizza are your thing, then her blog won't be your thing. However, her thing is just my kind of thing.
   

Comic book confidential

I outed myself as a hater of all things Superman on Facebook the other day. And one of my friends tried to convince me that I was wrong. He gave me the origins of how Superman came to be, which I already knew, and he even tried to bring it into the political realm by saying that he felt the Superman was the ultimate illegal alien and that he was a liberal.

Nope. I didn't buy it. Like I said I knew Superman's back story, all about how his Jewish creators got screwed over in their copyright fight with DC, and the rest. It all comes down to whether I find Superman a compelling and interesting character. And I don't. I never did. In fact, I'll go so far as to say I hated Superman comics, the TV show, and all the movies they've made with his character so far, the one exception is Hollywoodland, which is kind of about Superman in an oblique way.

My problem with Superman is that the character is boring. He's too goody goody, he's invincible, and they surrounded him with dopey blatantly stupid supporting characters that always insulted my intelligence. I mean come the hell on, how fucking stupid do Jimmy Olsen, he of the biggest unrequited gay crush in the history of comics, Lois Lane, and Perry White have to be? They work side by side with Clark Kent and Superman and they can't fucking tell Superman is really just Kent without his glasses? Bah, and triple humbug. Boooooooorrrrrrring and stupid.

I'll grant you that in the depths of the Great Depression and the years leading up to and through World War 2, the country needed a character like Superman. It was great to imagine that there was a perfectly invincible superhero who was out there protecting us and fighting crime. But those days are long gone and Superman should have been gone with them.

Growing up when I did there were really only two choices in comic book companies, Marvel and DC. And since Superman was the flagship product of DC, I hated most of the rest of DC's titles. I was a Marvel fan and remained so right up through the time in my early to mid 20's when I was a serious collector and reader of comics. I liked the X-Men, Alpha Flight, Thor, New Mutants, and some indie titles like American Flagg. I had nothing but disdain for most DC titles, including Batman, until Frank Miller's Dark Night.

But I can't say I hated everything DC put out. I loved, loved, loved Kamandi:
George Perez's Wonder Woman:
Most anything by Joe Kuebert, especially Tarzan and Sgt. Rock:
I loved this title in the early 1970's:
And I remember Walt Simonson's Manhunter from the early 1970's blowing my then young mind. The story was kick ass and the art was unlike any I had seen before. Frankly I was surprised that DC put something like that out.

As the years went on the death grip of DC and Marvel was finally broken and many different comic book publishers have come and gone and with them many different kinds of stories have been told and are continuing to be told. And the competition forced Marvel and DC to be more innovative and daring. Surprisingly, DC won that battle years ago with it's launch of Vertigo. The Vertigo line from DC tells grown up stories that use groundbreaking and eye popping art. Vertigo is responsible for giving us Sandman, Y the Last Man, Fables, Hellblazer, Greek Street, and many more gritty interesting books. Marvel meanwhile languishes in it's bathtub of tired old worn out titles that include about fifty slightly different permutations of X-Men and Spiderman.

So now the worm has turned and these days I hardly read any Marvel, the last good thing I read from Marvel was 1602, and I read mostly stuff from DC's adult imprint Vertigo. However despite that change in my reading habits, I still despise Superman. And if you love Superman, that's cool. Really it is, we can still be friends if you love Superman while I hate him, it's not essential that we agree on everything to remain friends.

So long Harvey

Harvey Pekar has passed away. With his passing we lost one of the most miraculous people ever. But if he heard me say that he'd laugh in my face. And maybe punch me as well. But it's true and here's why:

• In a time when comic books were not held in high esteem, when only a few companies published comic books and they tightly controlled who could write, draw, and colorize them Harvey managed to get a comic book about his seemingly mundane life not only published but distributed as well.
• The stories he told in his comics were not the type of stories that would ever have been put out by Marvel or DC.
  
• After managing to get his comic books published, he parlayed that into many TV appearances on the old David Letterman show on NBC, that was waaaay back when Dave was edgy, super funny, and cutting edge.
• Then finally pop culture caught up with Harvey and showed him the love and attention he deserved. There was the great film about his life American Splendor and more of his work was published both in serial and graphic novel form.

His was a long shot life. I'm not about to get into his personal neuroses or his illnesses, be they real or imaginary, it's his professional and pop culture legacy that interests me. For a working class stiff of a guy who toiled in obscurity but who kept plugging away at his dream to have finally 'made it' to where he did in his life is amazing to me. His life shows that if you keep trying, sometimes you can succeed.

And his life and example have also inspired me to try my hand at producing a graphic novel. The project I'm working on now owes a huge debt to Harvey because in the back of my mind for a few years now I've thought that if someone like Harvey can get his stories out there in comic book form, then a guy with a fertile imagination like me should be able to as well. It's taken me a bit longer to get off my monkey ass to get started but now that I have I look at Harvey as a pioneer and as a hero in the field of comic books and graphic novels.

One of my comic book aficionado blog buds posted that Harvey was 'gone.' I disagreed with him because with the pop culture legacy he left behind, Harvey will never ever be gone from our collective consciousness.

The stars came out for Free Comic Book Day here in Johnson City

Wonder Woman came by and she was looking very hubba hubba.


Bo Bo the Stuffed Bear came by. Thankfully he didn't eat anybody.

Two Face showed up.

And the Corn Syrup Twins were there as well. They brought a special guest with them. Yep, you guessed it, that's Morty Finklewitz under that cheesy Spiderman costume.

I got a ton of free comics and I bought some wildly racist war related comics ad well as a couple romance comic books too. I'll be posting stuff from them across my blogs and on Facebook. So stay tuned.

Do your progressive duty

Buy this copy of Captain America at your local comic book store today. If you do you'll be helping a locally owned small business and you'll piss off the tea baggers. If this issue sells well then maybe Marvel won't back down from the right wing backlash against them. I got my copy and I'm damn glad I did.

Make it work!

After months of telling me they didn't have it, I found this at my local comic book store today:
Again, I'm no fan of the superhero comics, but come on, it's Tim Gunn on the cover! How often in the famously hetero world of comic books do you see a gay man portrayed as a hero and on the cover of a nationally released comic book? Hardly ever, that's how often you see it.

This shows once again that Project Runway rules. Hell yes, it does.

Comic book cover of the week

May I suggest a coat?

I love the second sentence in the copy in this panel from an old comic book. "It's a cold world...." No shit it's a cold world. If the temperature drops below 75 and you're wearing a fur loin cloth, it's gonna be fucking chilly.

Tor was not one of Joe Kubert's finest comic book efforts. 'Cold world' my ass, what the hell were you thinking Joe? Oh yeah, one more thing Mr. Kubert, man didn't walk the earth at the same time as the dinosaurs did, unless you listen to Kirk Cameron that is.

The reviews are in!

I tried out this series the other day:
I love this period in English history. I love all the back room maneuvering, the Byzantine backstabbing and jockeying, and the betrayals and betrothals that took place back then. But I didn't care for this series. My problems with it are as follows:

• All the actors and too clean and shiny. Bathing back in those days was not something people did that often.
  
• All the actors have bright clean perfectly perfect sets of teeth. Which of course is bullshit. Dental hygiene was unheard of back then and most certainly all of the people portrayed would have, when they reached the ages portrayed in this series, had yellow, or more likely, brown stained teeth. And some of then would be missing teeth as well.
• There not enough facial hair. Shaving back then was pretty hit or miss and most of the men in this show look too clean shaven.
  
• There's way too much cleavage, which don't get me wrong, I really liked seeing it but it just wasn't believable to me. Women back then were much more modest and the would not have been running around with their boobs half hanging out.
  

The show is well written and for the most part it's well acted but it's far too steeped in our modern day romantic notions of what we think it must have been like back then for it to be enjoyable to me. I was distracted by all the boobs, the clean shaven dudes, the pretty white teeth, and the lack of grunge.

I'll give the rest of it a pass.

Step Brothers is very funny and although it's also formulaic, it's also very enjoyable. It's a different kind of funny than Talladega Nights and that's a good thing.

As usual Ferrell and Reilly are very funny and so are all of the supporting cast. Mary Steenburgen as Will Ferrell's mom is really great, I love her in most everything I've ever seen her in. As good as those actors are, the movie is stolen by Kathryn Hahn who plays Will Ferrell's put upon and unloved sister in law who enters into an affair with Reilly's character. The scene where she declares her love for him and tells him she wants to roll him up in a tiny ball and keep him in her warm vagina forever is priceless, as is the scene where they get it on during Christmas dinner.

The special features on this one are fun as well. The 'making of' featurette is funny, as are the gag reel and the line-o-rama. I highly recommend this silly comedy.

One of the benefits of living so close to my local library is that I can go there pretty much anytime I want, except on Sundays during the summer because it's closed then. Another benefit is the head of my local library is a comic book geek who is also a friend and having a comic book aficionado at the helm of my library means that our local library is full of great graphic novels like the one pictured above.

I was unfamiliar with the character of The Goon so I had no expectations going in when I checked out this graphic novel. After reading it and soaking it in, I can tell you it's a fantastic story and the art is really great. It takes place during the Depression era so it makes sense that the vast majority of the art is done in a various sepia tones. The author, Eric Powell, gives you just enough dialogue to keep the story going but he relies heavily on wordless panels to get even more of the story across and those wordless panels often say more then a panel with words in it ever could.

I can't recommend this graphic novel more highly. It's really really good. And if you never read a graphic novel or think you might like to try one, then you really can't go wrong with this one.

Restablishing my geek cred

Here's some of my favorite comic book artists of all time:

Jim Steranko

Joe Kubert

Steve Ditko

Walt Simonson

Jack Kirby

John Severin

George Perez

Bill Sienkiewicz

I haven't kept up with the comic book world in years and I know there are many new terrific artists out there who I am not familiar with but those listed above will always be among my favorites.

Why do guys love comic books so much?

It must be because of the stories. Yeah, that's it.

The stories.

For no reason at all...

...I now present some art by some of my favorite comic book artists:

Bernie Wrightson:

George Perez:

Jack Kirby:

Steve Ditko:Howard Chaykin:

Brian Bolland:
Walt Simonson:
And my all time favorite, Bill Sienkiewicz:

That's all for now.