Frank Frazetta, who passed away May 10 at the age of 82, wasn’t the most prolific comic book artist–his interior comics pages in the last four decades of his life, especially, were scarce to nonexistent. But his impact on American comics was enormous: the entire modern sword-and-sorcery genre is arguably directly descended from his …
This is what happens when Techland goes to the comic book store: Mike Williams, Evan Narcisse, Douglas Wolk and Lev Grossman end up talking about what we picked up. This week, we discuss the first issues of I, Zombie and Astonishing Spider-Man/Wolverine.
MIKE: I’m just a huge fan of Mike Allred’s art on I, Zombie. It’s one of those …
The next few months will see a whole colony of Batman comics written by Grant Morrison. Besides the ongoing Batman and Robin, whose most recent issue ended with one of those classic Morrison twists that are obvious only in retrospect, he’s writing the six-issue miniseries Batman: The Return of Bruce Wayne (which launches next week), as …
Here’s a thought exercise. Imagine a world–let’s call it Earth-45–where pop singles have had a decades-long tradition of only being in print for a day. After a store ran out of the new Beatles or Madonna single, it was gone, and until recently the only way to hear old songs was to scour used record stores. At some point about twenty …
Iron Man 2 opens on Friday, and if you’re excited about the Jon Favreau movie, you might want to pick up a collection of the comic book series that inspired it. Iron Man’s been appearing in comics more or less continuously since he was introduced in 1963’s Tales of Suspense #39, and there’s a hefty stack of books collecting the various …
They’ve both been active in American comics for so long it’s hard to believe they’ve apparently never worked together before, but May 26’s X-Men Forever Giant-Size #1 looks like it’ll be the first collaboration between Chris Claremont and Warlord/Jon Sable artist Mike Grell. We’ve got the cover and an exclusive preview of a few interior …
This is what happens when Techland goes to the comic book store: we end up hanging out afterhours, talking about what we picked up. This week, Douglas Wolk, Mike Williams, Evan Narcisse and Lev Grossman discuss Matt Fraction and Salvador Larocca’s Invincible Iron Man #25 and Dan Clowes’ Wilson.
DOUGLAS: I’ve been consistently …
In the last month or so, there have been three new books by the Hernandez brothers, the brilliant cartoonists responsible for Love & Rockets: Gilbert Hernandez’s High Soft Lisp, Jaime Hernandez’s Penny Century and a big hardcover called The Art of Jaime Hernandez: The Secrets of Life and Death. Los Bros, as they’re sometimes called, have …
This Saturday, May 1, is Free Comic Book Day, the annual event when a couple of thousand comic book stores across the country have a bunch of special issues that they give away for free. Most of the participating stores will limit the number of freebies you can walk away with. Also, life is too short to read bad comic books. So here’s a …
There are certain comics that are really just meant to be looked at, and Brendan McCarthy’s Spider-Man: Fever is one of them. McCarthy makes images that lunge for whatever part of the brain feels the tremor of the uncanny. His most spectacular pages elicit a giggle, then a slow stare, and then (if you’re really lucky) nightmares. The …
“The Losers,” Sylvain White’s movie about a Special Forces team that sets out for revenge on a betrayer who thinks they’re dead, opens this Friday. The movie is based on a comics series that ran from 2003 to 2006–but its roots actually go all the way back to the ’50s… sort of. Here’s the scoop.
Around 1952, in the middle of the …
The two Geoff Johns-written or -cowritten series that launched this week, Brightest Day and The Flash, both feature one of Johns’ signature tricks. A few pages before the end of Johns, Peter J. Tomasi and Fernando Pasarin’s Brightest Day #0, the story’s narrator is suddenly surrounded by visions of the future: ten panels, each drawn by a …
