What to read?

What comic to read next? That is what I'm thinking about tonight. You think it would be an easy question to answer but somehow I make it complicated. I'll break it down into categories for you.

The first category is obvious. Get a comic from my new comic pile. Those are the latest ones I've purchased that I haven't cracked open yet. That pile isn't usually big. Tonight it has five comics in it. Sometimes I like to know I have some new comics to read so I don't want the pile to get down to zero. I don't buy very many of new comics so I don't want to read them all at once. It's a little way of having something to look forward to.

The second category is new graphic novels. Anything like the Rick Geary books or "George Sprott" by Seth that I might have lying around. They stand on their own and are not part of any series. They are new stories from a favorite author/artist. Sometimes I let these sit around for a little while too. It took me a few weeks to get to reading "George Sprott" because I enjoyed the idea of having a new book by Seth to read. They don't come out very often. I get to graphic novels by cartoonists I'm unfamiliar with quicker because I want to see if they are good. A strange little habit.

The third category is new collections of comics. Hard bound or trade paperback they are the way I read a lot of mainstream superhero stuff from Marvel or DC these days. I buy the latest Hercules series this way plus I've kept up with some of the Spider-Man books as they come out in collected form. "Young Liars" and "Criminal" are two other books I buy when they bind them all together. Sometimes when I want to check out what's been going on in a mainstream book the I don't regularly read so I grab a collected. Sometimes they sit on my shelf for a while because I'm not in the habit of reading the series. I have a few collected things I haven't read lined up. I could pick any one of them.

Category four is collections of old comics. Some of them I've read the originals before and some of them I haven't. I've got Creepies. Eeries, a volume of Herbie, a couple of Guardians of the Galaxy, and the Demon. That's just off the top of my head without looking. There always seems to be less of a rush to get to these. Maybe because, even if the printing is new, the comics are old. They've been around for decades. What's one more week? They can wait. Who's ever in a rush to read a twenty year old comic book?

The final category is, of course, all the comics that have been sitting on my shelf for years. The collection. Sure I've read them all before but some not for decades. I have plenty to pick and choose form. Too many some say. All sorts of genres and subject matter. I could pick for nostalgia, style, curiosity, artist, writer, character, or any other reason I can think of. I have a lot of comics. So what should I read?

Comics I Bought This Week: September 24, 2009

I'm back from the comic shop this week and I got no new comics but I did get a hard cover collection:

The Incredible Hercules: Dark Reign

And now for a review of something I've read recently.

Agents of Atlas: Dark Reign by Jeff Parker and Various Artists

I picked this book up because of a friend's recommendation. Unfortunately I found it a bit of a disappointment. It just didn't make any sense to me. It's another one of those books that makes the 2009 Marvel Universe look like the 1999 Wildstorm Universe. I know that doesn't bother a lot of people because they didn't read Wildstorm books in 1999 but I did.

The Agents of Atlas are a group of heroes posing as villains while running an evil secret organization. What? That makes no sense. They are trying to make the world a better place by running an evil organization and "Fighting it from the inside". That's like trying to stop Josef Stallin by running the Communist party for him. I don't get it.

And who are the villains of the book? The U.S. government of course. Much like the Wildstorm Universe of 1999 there are now tons of evil "Black Ops" organizations secretly running the Marvel Universe U.S. government. Norman Osborn, the Green Goblin, is in charge of national security. What? Nobody has noticed that he was a super villain for fifty years? And he hire all his old thug super villains to work for the NSA. What? In our world the Feds don't want to hire you if you smoked pot in college but in the new Marvel Universe it's okay for super villains to be federal agents? It makes no sense to me.

And what do the Agents of Atlas do to change their evil organization from within? Nothing really. After all they have to pretend to be evil in order to run the thing. Am I the crazy one? The did sell Norman Osborn and the US government some guns that didn't work. Oh great, now US soldiers will get killed and taxes will go up to pay for these non-functioning guns. How is this fighting evil?

They do flash back to the 1950's Agents of Atlas all the time. At least in that part of the story the heroes were heroes and didn't senselessly run an evil organization.

But I've wasted enough time on this comic. The people who made it are not untalented and it is pretty well drawn and well written. It just doesn't overcome it's own flawed premise for me. "Changing the system from inside" stories rarely work for me and it doesn't here.

Word Pressed

"I thought this was supposed to make things easier". That was the thought going through my head this week as I struggled to make a site for my new web comic. I already have a site for other artwork at jaredosborn.com and, though it was a lot of work, I didn't have much of a problem with. I used a program called "Freeway" to make it and it all went pretty well. But I rarely update the site because that is a lot of work. I am looking for something a bit different this time.

For my web comic site I decided to try out something called "Wordpress". It's blogging software that a person can install on his own site and the software manages the look and updating of your blog. It's supposed to make things fairly simple but it hasn't quite worked out that way for me yet.

The strength of Wordpress is its open source flexibility. Lots of people write their own code that works within the Wordpress software that changes the look of a blog. They are called themes and there are a lot of them to choose from. The theme am particularly interested in is called "Comicpress". It is specifically designed for web comic sites. There is a place to put everything I would need.

One of the problems with making a web comic site it that it has to be updated all the time. If you want to do a daily strip then a new one has to be posted everyday. Yeah, that's obvious but still has to be done. One of the good things about Comicpress is that you can automate the posting process. Upload the strip, tell it when to post, and then forget about it. You can upload all of your strips for the week at once.

Lots of web comics and blogs in general use Wordpress and the Comicpress theme so it must work. Just not for me quite yet. I managed to install Wordpress pretty easily. I picked the layout I want but the overall look of the page is still fairly ugly. I figured out how to change the layout around a bit but I don't know how to change the overall look of the page. Color, font, and background are all still a bit of a mystery right now.

I've been digging around for more themes and plugins to help me and some of them do but I'm really not much of a code guy. But, of course, that doesn't really matter when I can't even do the things I know how to do. I went to change some things and kept getting error messages. Error messages are no fun.

It's one thing to get error messages when I'm trying to change the look of the page but an entirely other level of frustration when I get error messages trying to upload the comics. I mean, that's the whole point of the site. How could that part not be working? I can upload the comics to anywhere on my server with my FTP program but somehow that doesn't matter. When I upload through Comicpress all I get is error messages. I have no idea why.

The worst error messages to get are ones that I know couldn't possibly be true. That one was "File name invalid". Now I'm no coder but I do know how to name a jpeg so it can be seen on the Web. It's not hard. Don't use any of the restricted keyboard symbols in the name. That's it. So how come every time I tried to load a strip it told me the name was invalid? I don't know but it sure was frustrating.

I had my FTP program open uploading and downloading stuff, was on Wordpress forums, my server's FAQ page, and any place else I could think of and it helped not in the least. I got a couple of minor things to work briefly but I still can't post my comics to the site. It's real annoying. Especially since it works for other people just fine.

So that's my web comic update. I've got plenty of the strips done. That's not the problem right now. It's the site build that's driving me crazy. But that was just my first day trying to figure it all out. Maybe a light bulb will come on during day two. Whenever that is.

Comics I Bought This Week: September 17, 2009

I'm back from the comic shop this week and I got two new comics plus a book about comics:

The Walking Dead - 65

Ex Machina - 45

"Marvel Comics in the 1960's: An Issue by Issue Field Guide To a Pop Culture Phenomenon"

And now for a review of something I've read recently.

Mysterious the Unfathomable Issues 1-6 by Jeff Parker and Tom Fowler

One week I was picking up some new comic series that I had never read before. I do that from time to time to try and find something new. It was issue number two that I picked up and I liked it. I didn't see another issue until number four came out but I liked that one too so I tracked down the ones I missed.

"Mysterious the Unfathomable" is a book about a magician of the same name. He poses as a stage magician but his magic actually works. A lot of actual magicians do the same thing in the world of Mysterious. The book also stars his new assistant. A young woman named Ella.

I'd say the book was in the comedy/horror genre. It's drawn in kind of a big foot style but with more detail than is normal for that type of drawing. It's kind of Eisner-esque. I like the artwork. It's well drawn but sometimes the storytelling suffers because there is so much jammed into a panel. I get it though, the artist is trying to fill up the page with the world and it's creatures that he has created.

The horror angle mostly comes from the story. Mysterious gets involved in the affairs of some demons and bad guys from hell who want a piece of him. The demons may look a bit like Dr. Suess characters but they'll kill you and eat you just the same. There is definitely death and danger in this book.

Mysterious and some of his compatriots are not very exemplary people. He's not a bad guy but not quite a hero either. This is not a book about a heroic magician as we are all used to. It is a fun book though. It's not the greatest comic ever made but it's a good example of the craft. If you want to check out something a little different give Mysterious the Unfathomable a try.

TV TV

I've been completely out of the movie loop lately. I haven't gone to the movies in ages nor have I been able to sit down and watch a movie at home. It's weird and I don't know why but I think it's because TV shows have gotten so much better and just out compete movies for my attention.

TV shows now all have plots and characters that develop over hours and hours of story time yet with each individual show telling its own small story. TV shows have become novels with each episode being a chapter in the book. No matter how long the movie it's always a short story in comparison.

The one thing movies have going for then is spectacle. The big screen and the loud sound. People love spectacle which is why so much movie time and money go into special effects. One of the first things out of my friends' mouths when describing a film is usually, "The effects were great". Or the opposite.

I've never cared about special effects. I don't know why but they never make or break a movie for me. Maybe I can't get into them and forget they're effects like my friends do. They are always just well crafted or poorly crafted effects to me. I prefer well crafted but they don't make me believe fantastical things better than poorly crafted ones. It's the writing and acting that make me believe. Not the ray guns.

So while I couldn't bring myself to sit down and watch any movies lately I did just sit and watch all of season three of the TV show "Dexter". It's a show I never thought I'd get into because I found the concept so dumb. It's about a serial killer who's victims are other serial killers. Sounded dumb and unbelievable to me but the writers and actors pulled it off.

Dexter works for the police as a lab tech/blood spatter expert so he has access to police expertise and can learn of killers who have escaped the reach of the law. Plus a policeman adopted him as a child, recognized the signs of a young sociopath killer and gave him a code to live by. Dexter only kills those who deserve it, covers his tracks, and tries to act normal even if he is not. All that makes the show believable to me and I never expected it to be.

Another show I just sat through was season four of "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia". This was my second time around with these thirteen episodes and they are funnier than any movie I've seen in years. The show stars four people you've never heard of and Danny DeVito. They own and run a bar in Philly but that's not what the show is about. The show is about whatever funny, absurd and tasteless hijinks the cast gets into any given week. The characters have bad judgement, limited social skills, aren't as bright as they think they are, and don't let common sense get in the way of hatching a plan.

If I were to go into the plots and shenanigans that go on in this show I would never be able to do them justice. Suffice it to say that they're funny. If you don't like absurd and tasteless humor brought to you by characters with little redeeming social value than stay away from this one. But if you like funny then this show is funny. It's the show that makes me laugh out loud to like I was a little kid.

Those are just the two of the shows I've been watching lately instead of bothering with any movies. I also managed to track down some copies of an old yet to be released on DVD TV show that was a favorite of mine. "Two Guys and a Girl". I got some grainy low res copies that were better than nothing and watched an episode or two at a time all summer long. The show held up pretty well. Better than any silly "Tranformers" movie that I will never watch. And now that football season has started who needs movies? Not me.

Comics I Bought This Week: September 10, 2009

I'm back from the comic shop this week and I only got one new thing:

Love and Rockets: New Stories - 2

And now for a review of something I've read recently.

Captain Marvel Masterworks Volume 3 by Jim Starlin and others

This volume reprints the Jim Starlin drawn and plotted Captain Marvel comics from 1973-1974. These were some of my favorites when I was a kid so it's nice to have a new hardcover printing of them. They came out a few years before I started collecting comics so I never bought them off of the racks but borrowed a friend's copies (probably in 1979 or so). It was always one complete story to me.

Even years after they came out these stories had a big impact on me. They were the first time that I read comics that had a real far-out "cosmic" plot that was epic in scope. It starts our with Captain Marvel being a regular super hero and ends up with him being some sort of special cosmic protector. It also starts out with Thanos being a typical strong armed super villain and ends up with him being a mad god.

I've known people ten or more years younger than me who find these comics too old fashioned for them. They like Starlin's "Infinity Gauntlet" Thanos stories better than these. I find those stories a pale imitation of these issues. I guess it matters which ones you discovered first and how old you were when you read them.

The one old fashioned thing about these stories is the amount of recapping that's done. When these were first printed the comic came out bimonthly. That's eight weeks between issues and it was always assumed that each issue might be someone's first so they'd do a quick recap to catch people up. There is a lot of plot going on in these comics so there is a lot to recap. Every two issues or so we get a recap. These are actually well done and integrated into the story but to a modern comic reader they are out of place. We barely get a story these days and never a recap.

One of the reasons I like these issues is that you can see Starlin's work growing by leaps and bounds issue to issue. He was just starting out back then and his artwork and writing grow as issues pass. He gets more and more ambitious and it's fun to watch.

I still like these comics. I think they hold up well and that is not nostalgia talking. The artwork is nice and I enjoy the story line. There is a reason it's such a famous run of comics. Starlin took the Lee/Kirby cosmic "Galactus Trilogy" story and ran with it a little further. He added some 1970's acid trip mysticism to it and made it his own. Fun stuff.

I must say I was even impressed with the three Wayne Boring drawn issues that started out this volume. Captain Marvel wasn't a well respected comic before Starlin took over and I expected nothing from these three issues but they were okay. I've never been a big fan of Boring's Superman but he can draw well and tell a story. I was well prepared to skip those three issues but I didn't.

So if you're a Starlin fan or are just curious about the antecedents of a lot of today's comic book cosmic epics check out this volume of Captain Marvel. It's still a favorite of mine. Now I have to read Stalin's original "Warlock" run.

Contemplative

I'm kinda burnt out this weekend. All week I've been working on a photograph of a friends' wedding plus doing a bit of paying work. I got it all done but it took a while. The photo was especially tough for some reason. Between the two things I ended up working ten to twelve hour days all week. It's not like I haven't done that before but somehow it's tougher with fewer projects to work on.

I've worked that many hours countless times before but usually I'm switching between three or maybe more projects. I can burn out on one and move to the next. That is unless it's paying work that has to be done. Somehow it's less taxing working a few projects rather than on one or two things that have to be done no matter what. My brain gets in more of a rut. I don't like brain ruts.

I think I've got that big photo done. I'll have to look at it again next week because I'm too burnt out on it right now to see it clearly. That happens when I work on something intensely for a long time. I cease to see it as it is. Especially at the end of working on something. I'll put a piece away for a week and then look at it again to see if it needs any finishing touches. Sometimes it does and sometimes not.

What to work on next is always the question I have. Shopping for a new car sure has cut into my personal art time and that task has yet to be finished but I still want to get things done. I've been working on my web comic strip and will continue to the best that I can but I also have to work on getting the site it's going to appear on up. That's no where near as interesting as working on the strip itself. But it has to be done.

I have more photos I want to work on. I recently made a masked street photo and want to do some more of them plus I have another large photo collage, like the one I just made of my friends' wedding, to finish up but I'm a little burnt out on photography right now.

I recently started a cover recreation but didn't finish it. For some reason I wanted to recreate an old golden age cover by Alex Schomburg. I was doing a pretty good job of it. I remade all of the logos and trade dress on the computer and traced/re-penciled the cover art. I printed the rebuilt cover out in blue line to ink it but got bored with the whole shebang about halfway through inking it. It's still sitting there undone. Maybe I'll finish it and maybe I won't. I don't know yet.

I also have handful of "Covers to comics that have never existed" that I have yet to finish. Those are the pieces I do that look like old comic book covers. They are all originals and not recreations of anything but I haven't mustered up the interest to actually finish one of them all summer. Weird.

Another thing I want to start is a t-shirt store. One of those online ones where I would post designs and the web site would make the shirts if anyone actually orders one. I started one of these stores years ago but barely did anything with it. The money to be made on such a site is miniscule and wasn't worth the time spent but for some reason I want to give it a go again. I'll have to crunch the numbers and prove to myself all over again that it's a waste of time. We'll see. It could be fun to make t-shirt designs.

I have to do some drawings for a group of paintings I've been meaning to start. I stretched many canvases early in the year and never quite started what I wanted to paint on them. I painted and finished other things but somehow never these particular ones. I'll have to see if I can get them going.

I could also start some more of my new dark charcoal drawings. They only take a few hours to do and maybe would fit better into my shopping for a car time frame but I still don't have a real handle on them yet. They are a work in progress as far as a genre of work for me.

So that's it. Once again I am wrestling with the eternal question of what to do next. Isn't everyone?

Comics I Bought This Week: September 3, 2009

I'm back from the comic shop this week and I got five new comics plus a hard cover collection:

Buffy Season 8 - 28

North 40 - 3

Savage Dragon - 152

Grim Jack "The Manx Cat" - 2

Strange Tales - 1

"The Invincible Iron Man: World's Most Wanted Book 1"

And now for a review of something I've read recently.

Conan Volume 7 "Cimmeria" by Tim Truman, Richard Corben, and Tomas Giorello

This is now my second favorite volume of the Dark Horse published Conan comics. The first is Volume 0 "Born on the Battlefield" and this is a close second. It's the best of the Tim Truman written Conan comics.

It's a story about nostalgia and going home. Plus blood and guts sword fights too. There are two plots going on. The first is about Conan returning to his home village in Cimmeria (drawn by Tomas Giorello) and the second is about Conan's grandfather (drawn by Richard Corben). Y'see along the way home people are telling Conan stories about his grandfather who also was one of the few individuals to leave Cimmeria and go adventuring.

The artwork on the book is very good and the story well told. I like Corben's art a bit better than Giorello's but that's to be expected. Corbrn is an old master. Still Giorello's work was pretty good.

The whole tone of the book is dripping with nostalgia as Conan goes home again to see all those he hasn't seen in three years or so. Some things have changed and some things have remained the same.

Stories about his adventures have made their way back to his village so he is a bit of a local celebrity. Of course the way home isn't an easy one and he has to fight his way through the mountains as he runs into all manners of sword and sorcery.

The tales of Conan's grandfather are also nicely done. They contrast with Conan's own life as his grandfather came home and settled down after his adventures. We as readers already know that Conan is never going back to Cimmeria again. He never goes home and settles down. It's a nice read all around.

So if your a Conan fan or a fan of good comics pick up this volume of Conan's tales. It's a good one.