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Ian Rankin

Read my first Ian Rankin novel a couple months ago. It was good enough that I picked up another this past weekend.

I noticed in the book I read that he was a comics fan, making references to Spider-Man and in particular Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends.

Looks like he's writing comics now.

That's cool. The interviews at Newsarama are a treat. He's not afraid to sound like a fanboy.

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Found on the Interweb

This post reports that Kaare Andrews (Hulk, X-men) is pitching for the He-Man movie. That might be interesting. I've enjoyed much of Kaare's work in the comic industry. The "article" refers to him as a filmmaker, too, but I'm not familiar with that body of work.


Crazy flashbacks of Marvel's NFL SuperPro are brought on by this.


A lot of comic fans are wrestling fans, so this might be of interest to them.


A nice interview with Tony de Zuniga, one of my favorite artists from the 70's (though I didn't realize it until I grew up and started realized that people actually wrote and drew comics).


It's funny, to me, to come across articles like this or this or this. It's as if the world has suddenly had a light turned on in their heads that comics or graphics novels might be something more than just superheroes and throw-away lit for kids. The great Art Spiegelman has known for years this, truth, though.

SLACKER!!

Just a short, crappy post today. I've been slacking at this, so I thought an update was in order. Not a whole lot of spare time recently, but I did get a chance to sit down and read a couple graphic novels/tpbs.

Street Angel is one of the best books I've ever read. I just could not put this down. I hope they'll do more in the future.

I'm hoping to get some more reading in this weekend.

Ride the Lightning, Mike.

The comic book industry became a much sadder place and the racks that much less colorful on Sunday. Mike Wieringo passed away from a heart attack. He was only 44. I didn't know Mike, but I enjoyed his work. I had really been enjoying his blog lately. He did sketches to keep himself fresh, but it was the fans that were rewarded. Whether it was a sketch of our favorite character or a character Mike had created on the fly, Mike's love of what he did shone through. He will be sorely missed.

Punisher Redeux

Almost missed this. Variety is reporting that Lionsgate is basically restarting the Punisher franchise. I guess once Thomas Jane stepped out, they figured they might as well just start over. Considering how much I didn't like the Thomas Jane version, I'd say that's not a bad idea.

Link via Heidi at The Beat.

Quick Reviews

Okay, so I've been catching up on some reading (thank you local library).

Among the books was Gene Yang's excellent American Born Chinese from First Second books. It's no wonder why this book has gotten much acclaim. The story revolves around an American-born Chinese who is coming to grips with his heritage. Yang weaves an impressive tale here consisting of three seemingly unrelated subplots.

Another book picked up was Kevin C. Pyle's Blindspot from Henry Holt and Co. This graphic novel was a coming of age tale about a boy getting ready to move and remembering some of the adventures he'd had. The story starts out well, but the pacing picks up a bit too quickly to the point where the book finishes and the reader is left looking for more meat. While Pyle manages to capture the experience of that age, his story seems as if the character loses interest in retelling his story here about half way through.

Also finally got a chance to read the Tokyopop book East Coast Rising by Becky Cloonan. I honestly don't know why it's rated teen. I saw nothing in it save some harsh language that I would prevent me giving it to my 8 year old. In fact, it's a book I think he might actually enjoy. Pirates, sea creatures, and lots of action. Cloonan fills the pages with some interesting characters and manages to tease the connections that each of them share. It's a fun ride, but ends rather abruptly. This was much like chapter one of a much longer story. Which is fine if volume 2 follows quickly, but it doesn't come out until next year. Will I still be interested? Maybe.

I picked up some mainstream books as well, including Paul Dini's Batman: Detective which was great. Each issue of Dini's run that's reprinted here was a standalone issue. The tales are adult in nature (definitely not something I'd give my 8 year old), but each story is reminiscent of the tales that I grew up with in the 1970's and 1980's.

Another DC book picked up was Robin: To Kill a Bird. Bill Willingham weaves a fairly entertaining tale through this. Though I knew some of the current happenings in the DCU, I don't follow all of the massive crossover stories that have been happening the last couple years. Willingham fills those gaps in nicely without making the reader feel like he needs to hunt down the other stories. The art was pretty good all around. I'm a sucker for Damion Scott's work as I enjoyed his run on Batgirl a few years back. Scott McDaniel picks up the slack with his usual flare toward the end. My biggest complaint would be the darkening that they've done with the character. They've put poor Tim Drake through the ringer in his short career as Robin. Might be a good idea to interject him with a little bit of lightness.

As I said, I've been catching up a lot this summer on my reading. I have others I may touch on later, but this is all for now.

Wizard World Chicago

Newsarama has a ton of articles on the main page about this weekend's Wizard World Chicago. With all of the announcements that San Diego had, I'm surprised there's much left over, but both Marvel and DC have been giving up some big news, including Millar and Hitch on Fantastic Four, Michelinie and Layton return to Iron Man, Alex Ross returns to Marvel with what looks like an Invaders series, a revamp of Johnny DC, and recent DC exclusive Francis Manapul taking over art on Legion of Super-Heroes.

There are some preview pages of Millar's 1985 series there as well as other items of interest.

Though there are other shows this summer, those two were probably the biggest with the biggest announcements.