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that's awesome. the only downside to Dave Gibbons being a consultant on this film; he had to stop writing Green Lantern Corps. he was starting to use a lot of the ideas that Alan Moore came up with in the 80s, like Mogo the living planet and the Children of the White Lobe.

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Thanks for the info Kris - sounds like the Sinestro/Green Lantern Corps is stuff that I should check out. I haven't read anything graphic novel related for a long while.

 

you definitely should. the Sinestro Corp War is probably the best comic book epic, since Crisis on Infinite Earths.

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4340.jpg

 

This was absolutely masterful. Even if it were a dry exercise - which it isn't, by a damned long shot - it'd still be an expert lesson in pacing and nuanced storytelling. One of the best pieces of fiction I read in 2007, in any genre or format.

 

rutumodanexitcover.jpg

 

The same could be said for this book, which seemed to come out of nowhere. (Actually, it came from here: http://www.actustragicus.com)

 

And on a personal note, I'm working on some stuff for Image and Arcana that'll start coming out in May. Expect big pimpage, motherfuckers!

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hmm:

 

NY Post article about fan's reaction to OMD. SPOILERS

By DAREH GREGORIAN

 

SWINGER:Spider-Man plays the field.

 

January 7, 2008 -- Spider-Man, you dog!

The first issue of the Amazing Spider-Man to feature a single Spidey in 20 years hits comic book stores this week, and the first page shows the webbed wonder's alter ego Peter Parker locking lips with a woman who isn't wife Mary Jane Watson.

 

"The first page is a real shocker and it's done on purpose. It's a bit of a slap of reality to longtime readers," said Marvel Comics editor-in-chief Joe Quesada.

Those readers are still reeling from the company's controversial move in the most recent issue, where the friendly neighborhood wall-crawler and his missus had their marriage wiped out.

 

The wife-out happened when the couple struck a deal with a devil-like character named Mephisto to give up their marriage in return for saving the life of Peter's near dead Aunt May.

 

"You two will no longer be married. Because you two will never have been married. It simply never happened," Mephisto tells the pair.

The supernatural split has enraged many spider-fans who'd invested years in following the relationship and were offended by devil ex machina. Some have been venting their anger online, organizing campaigns to send Marvel torn up Spider-Man comics and threatening boycotts of future issues.

 

"In all honesty, everything we're seeing we fully expected. We knew going into this if we were going to tell this story that this was going to be initial reaction," Quesada said, but it was a necessary evil because a single Spidey is "truer to the spirit of the character."

"There's a certain amount of stability that comes with being married. Once he does become stable, you take away some of the drama that was a crucial part of his life," Quesada said.

He said he didn't want to divorce the pair or make the web-slinger a widower because that would make one of their company's biggest icons seem too old.

"He can grow as a character, but growing old is a big mistake," Quesada said. "This is something that had to be done." As for striking a deal with a bad guy, Quesada said the web-swinger "has a long history of making mistakes and bad decisions. He's very human."

In the first bachelor issue, which comes out Wednesday, the "modern Peter Parker" shows off some of his new attitude, telling his mysteriously back from the dead and now thrice divorced best friend Harry Osborn "I'm too young to get married."

Besides the brief buss with a woman named Mia Flores who accosts him in a nightclub, the comic unveils some other changes Mephisto has made to the hero's life. Despite having previously revealed his secret identity the world, now no one, including his beloved aunt, remembers Peter Parker is Spider-Man. Mary Jane is an actress living in Los Angeles, and although she and Peter had been engaged and dated for a long time, they're now on the outs.

The publisher is confident in the new direction - beginning this week, the formerly monthly comic will come out three times a month.

Quesada said the storyline, entitled "Brand New Day" shouldn't be considered a knock on matrimony.

"It's just a story," he said.

Statusquo.jpg

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well shit, this just ruined my day. :(

 

STEVE GERBER PASSES AWAY

 

After a battle with pulmonary fibrosis, acclaimed and beloved writer Steve Gerber died on Sunday from complications due to his condition. The news was confirmed by a close acquaintance. He was 60 years old.

 

Gerber was a comics fan all his life, having started the fanzine Headline in his early teens, and eventually finding work as a writer at Marvel in the early

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Why Comic Books Scared Us So

In his 1953 novel "Fahrenheit 451," named after the temperature at which paper catches on fire, Ray Bradbury painted a picture of a society beset by book-burning. In his vision, the censors didn't bother to throw comic books on the pyre because they just weren't worth worrying about.

 

Not so in mid-century America. For more than a decade, countless parents and teenagers made bonfires of comic books, reducing everyone from Captain Marvel to Archie to ashes.

 

It wasn't so much Superman & Co. that drove the book-burnings, although even the Man of Steel had his critics. Instead, psychiatrists, politicians, and editorial writers feared the most extreme comic books

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51PP7xt+1zL._SS500_.jpg

 

So thundered psychiatrist Frank Wertham in his 1954 Seduction of the Innocent, a book which accused comic books of breeding juvenile delinquincy (quoted on p. 6 of Hajdu's book). Today, Wertham's comparison between Hitler and comic books seems ludicrous. But at the time, millions of Americans took it seriously, and it brought down the comic book industry.

 

David Hajdu's wonderful The Ten-Cent Plague is a history of the culture war over comics that spanned the decade after the second world war. By the mid-40s, he claims, comic books were beyond doubt the leading form of popular entertainment, selling an astounding 80 to 100 million copies each week. Some 650 titles were released each month, and the industry employed around 1,000 writers, artists, and editors. The leading comic book publisher was EC, headed by the genius William Gaines.

 

The genre in those days, lead by EC, focused primarily on horror and crime, and some of the covers, interior artwork, and story lines could get gruesome: pools of blood, severed heads, stony-faced and scary killers. The artwork and storylines could get sexy too: heroines in filmy negligees, the occasional cleavage or bare foot showing. Middle class parents, egged on by a few religious leaders and political conservatives, began to express concerns, and those concerns grew into a national crusade against the "corrupting" influence of comic books. Editorials raged against them, politicians speechified against them, the Senate held hearings, and schools and churches sponsored comic book bonfires.

 

In an effort to salvage what it could, the comic book industry organized the Comics Magazine Association of America in 1954, and promised to watchdog its product by promoting "wholesomeness and virtue" (p. 319). But the resulting CMAA Code, written to placate the blue-noses, destroyed the comic book. Cops and other authorities were never to be depicted with "disrespect." No comic book could use the words "horror" or "terror" in its title. All "lurid, unsavory, or gruesome illustrations" were forbidden. Ditto on the depiction of the "walking dead, vampires, ghouls, werewolfs, and cannibals." Ditto on "words or symbols which have acquired undesirable meanings" (pp. 291-292).

 

You get the drift. The enforcement of this Code transformed comic books into "funny books." Interesting art and storylines disappeared in the wake of the Code, to be replaced with comics about anthropomorphized animals. But the kids (and adults) who'd avidly read the old comic genre wanted little to do with its antiseptic replacement. By the mid-1950s, title release per month had dropped to one-third its mid-1940s level, and 8 out of 10 comic writers, artists, and editors were out of work. Most of the titles released by EC disappeared overnight.

 

William Gaines rebelled against the death of the comic by publishing MAD, which in a roundabout way (sketched by Hajdu in his final chapter) inspired the underground revival of the comic book in the late 1960s. But before that resurgence, one of the most brutal massacres of any culture war fought in America gutted an entire genre of popular art, and in the process intimidated and de facto blacklisted hundreds of talented artists.

 

Hajdu's book is a fascinating, frightening read. My guess is that few of us--even those of us who, like me, were kids during the comic book purging era--are familiar with the witch hunt that Hadju chronicles. It's well worth knowing about, particularly in an era when a new front of the current culture wars seems to open almost every week.

 

I can't wait to read this.

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two words:

 

Maggots

 

Ninja

 

that will answer the question. but really, I love cartoons, comics, etc. I'm going to school to do it for a living someday. love me some Chris Ware, Brian Chippendale, Gary Panter (one of the greatest living visual artists, IMO,) Tom Hart, Dan Clowes...I love these guys as much as any member of Wilco. just throwin' those names out there so maybe somone can agree with me on how rad Gary Panter is. but really, I love how universal comics can be. there are some great storytellers and then some crazy visual artists who love comics. both sides bring some really great stuff to the table. (Brian Chippendale v. Chris Ware) I just wish that art historians weren't so brutal on comics, because there's something to be said about meaning something to someone who isn't pretentiously educated in the ins and outs of the douchebaggery that is art criticism, theory, and history. but I love anything that PictureBox publishes as much as I love some manga.

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