Read Comments (30)

ACTION THWUP! Howdy and welcome, True Believers, to Comics Comics’ weekend edition, I’m your host, Frankie the Wop. No review of a comic or a soapbox rant from me this week cuz I spent most of the week swimming. And also preparing for a radio interview over at Inkstuds. Mr. Robin McConnell was kind enough to ask me to participate on a show about “fusion comics” where we could talk to two of our favorite fusion guys, Brandon Graham and Michael DeForge. What is fusion? We’re not really sure, but if you listen to the show, you might get an idea of where Robin and I are coming from. What follows are my notes that I looked at while on the air. There were a lot of riffs that I didn’t get to, so I thought I’d share them here. For ideal readers only. (more…)

Read Comments (10)

One of the few comics I’ve read recently that does not feel like it’s nostalgia driven or overly genre based. The press release for the book says it’s science fiction, but it feels like some weird hybrid of slice-o-life daily office life banality mixed with an action movie. The hook is that through time travel, whenever the clock hits 11:11 pm the protagonist switches from office life to action-hero life and thusly gets to experience both as the story moves forward, instead of the usual zero-to-hero plot development. Okay, maybe it is genre-based sci-fi. Still, it doesn’t FEEL like some re-hash of a genre comic book or a self-referencing comics nod. There’s even a comic book that is read by the zero/hero within this graphic novel that is used as a narrative device but that doesn’t FEEL nostalgic to me either. Hurm.

But all that is so inside baseball. I guess it’s from working at Copacetic. Like I can’t explain a lot of comics to customers in “comics terms” cuz most of our customers are fairly new to comics. So me explaining that it is Kindt’s brushwork that keeps this rollicking tale from coming across as a re-hash, or that his brushwork is, to me, a flowering of the alt 90’s Mazzucchelli/Pope bang-it-out approach and is a beautiful counter-point to all the slick photo-reffing schlubs who can’t draw an action scene to save their lives—that just barely makes sense to them, or maybe even to you, True Believer. But I gotta try, and will, for you, Believer, before I move on to how I pitch it to the lay people. (more…)

Read Comment (1)

Our own Dash Shaw continues to pile up the good notices. Bodyworld was reviewed over at The Grey Lady, by Mr. Douglas Wolk. Check it out, True Believers, check it out…

Read Comments (17)

Comics shop reverie. Ah, the new store. Up in the clouds. Heaven. Copacetic rules the roost in Pittsburgh. Best feeling shop in town. I guarantee it! I work Sundays folks, come on down! Take a seat in the easy chair and read the funnies. Have a coffee.

This was a big week for a fanboy/wanna-be-critic like myself. Can you say “paradigm shift?”

Let’s count ’em off: Bulletproof Coffin #2, Orc Stain #4, King City #7 (I know, that came out weeks ago but I missed it and had to re-order it), The Man with the Getaway Face preview, and the new Matt Kindt graphic novel, Revolver. What was I saying about the Direct Market being dead? Sorry, I was high. This has been a great summer already for my new drug: Fusion comics. My term for what Charles Brownstein calls “Boys Comics.” And the Direct Market is delivering my fix, so who’s complaining?

Leading off, The Bulletproof Coffin #2 By David Hine and Shaky Kane. This is my dream comic. I’m in love. This comic is my girlfriend. At this point I wouldn’t care if she fucked my best friend. This comic can do me no wrong. For me, it’s a perfect mashup of styles that POPS with bright colors and dripping blood. The whole book looks really sharp, I think, and the story’s clever unfolding owes a lot to its design. There’s another comic-within-a-comic interplay (Shield of Justice cover to your left) that twists up the story and makes it all swing. If you couldn’t find issue one, I’d say you could still jump on board with #2 and not miss the train. There’s a great synopsis on the inside front cover that made me laugh. Reads like a comic book, like serial entertainment. And for me, really, it’s just the joy reading a Shaky Kane comic. Talk about Fusion – Shaky’s able to somehow subtly, easily shift styles that it really creates a jarring, discordant note in the story. (more…)

Read Comments (11)

I’ll send ya a love letter… straight from my heart, fucker! You know what a love letter is? It’s a bullet from a fucking gun, fucker! You receive a love letter from me… you’re fucked forever! You understand, fuck?I’ll send you straight to hell, fucker!
-Frank Booth (Dennis Hopper), Blue Velvet

Like some haunting refrain of a long forgotten pop song or like David Lynch’s dreamy, uneasy nostalgia – Shaky Kane’s comics take me away to a place in space that is beyond past or future.

Written by David Hine, The Bulletproof Coffin is finally a vehicle for Mr. Kane to stretch out in and take us all for a ride. Hine has provided Kane with three narrative levels to engage the reader. There is reality, there is fantasy and there is the documentation of reality, y’know, simulacra or whatever it’s called. And Shaky Kane, the guy who has to draw it all, wisely chooses three styles to depict each realm. The styles are different enough from each other yet cohesive enough to make it all “hang together” narratively as well as symbolically.

Say what?

The story concerns a company that hauls away dead people’s stuff. Well, they’re more like Repo Men. Scavenging valuables before it all ends up in a landfill. One of the movers, Steve Newman, likes to cherry pick choice bits from each estate he visits. He has a collector’s mind and fills his “den” at home with lots of pop culture detritus: old toys, a Manson poster, rayguns, old TVs, old comics; the usual stuff for a guy who likes wacky shit. It’s an interesting way to pinpoint exactly what type of guy Newman is. He’s obsessive and probably a little like you if you’re reading this blog about comics.
(more…)

Read Comments (2)

Hey there, True Believers, it’s that time again! Time for Brian Chippendale’s Marvelous Coma blog to drop the hammer on all your wednesday comic book shoppe fantasies! Brian has served up yet another installment of his home cooking, and holy shit, it’s hot!. Check it out!

Read Comments (31)

*You know who’s publishing the best art comics for the disaffected 19-year-old kids who hang out at the record store? Image Comics. I sell the shit out of King City, Orc Stain, and Bulletproof Coffin to the kids who hang out at the record store downstairs. Just sayin’.

*Night Business needs to go full color! Did you see Ben Marra’s story in the Diamond Comics #5 newspaper? Start a Kickstarter for that, Ben! Make a business plan that involves turning the book into a video game or something. Anything. Just go color!

*I was at a crazy comics warehouse out in the middle of nowhere looking for something and heard the local kids talking the usual Marvel/DC smack. Then one of them declared he loved Scott Pilgrim. His friend said, “I thought you were being sarcastic when you said that before … and now I think you’re serious.” Eventually the Scott Pilgrim fan convinced the kid in the Green Lantern shirt to buy volume one of Scott Pilgrim. Cue the doves and violins.

*Jim Rugg, Tom Scioli, and I were driving back from the crazy comics warehouse out in the middle of nowhere and talked the whole time about web comics and counting off favorite cartoonists who have let the industry crush them, crush their souls, dreams, haha, y’know, just a casual drive under gathering dark clouds. We weren’t having this discussion last summer. That was the Direct Market is over talk. And the summer before that was the Kramer’s Ergot 7-Final-Crisis-countdown. Just sayin’. And then I come home and read on CR that DC Comics just announced their digital comics initiative.

Read Comments (4)

*Copacetic Comics has moved to a new location. Here’s the local Pittsburgh Post Gazette article on the new store. I’ve been working on Sundays and it’s been awesome. So much room, literally up in the clouds, third floor of a building on a hill overlooking some of the most beautiful parts of this wacky town. I just love it. Bill Boichel, the owner and my hero, seems like he’s a new man. The customers are arriving in droves. Old and new. It’s like Bill’s old store back in the ’80s where we could all just hang out and shoot the shit. The coolest thing is watching the local kids come in and buy dollar comics. I sold 10 Iron Mans and ten Thors to two little kids the other day. Now that we have the room to put out all of Bill’s back stock we can really offer bargains. Lots of locals have been bringing in their own zines and comics to sell. It’s quickly turning into an “interzone” to be proud of, what with Mind Cure Records and a coffee shop in the same building.

*Bill Boichel gave a lecture at the Carnegie Library tonight in Pittsburgh. Tom Scioli, Ed Piskor, Jim Rugg, and I were in attendance. Bill gave the usual spiel about watching comics grow from obscurity to mainstream acceptance. And then I argued with him that we’ve been having the “comics aren’t just for kids” discussion for 20 years and I’m tired of it. Bill retorted that it’s “all gravy” as far as he’s concerned. “If you were running a comics shop like I was 25 years ago, you wouldn’t care that we’re still having that discussion.”

*Tom Scioli, the local self-publishing powerhouse, recently wrote me an email saying, “I’ve left the world of print behind (not really). Check out my new ongoing web comics, American Barbarian and 8-Opus.” Yes, check ’em out, True Believers, Tom’s idea of a short story is about 100 pages, so you hang on for a long ride.

*Ed Piskor, the other local self-publishing powerhouse, recently went to Denmark with heavies, R. Crumb, C. Ware, C. Burns, and D. Clowes. That’s right, you heard it here first, now Eddie is going by “E. Piskor” to reflect his new star status.

*Jim Rugg, I’m happy to report, is “not so intense” since Afrodisiac has been released and subsequently sold-out it’s first printing. Here’s Jim’s poster for new Copacetic Comics location.

*There was a Steve Niles signing here in Pittsburgh. I’ve never read his comics but I love pointing out that he was in Gray Matter! Scroll to the bottom of this page to see his recordings. One of my favorite bands out of the DC hardcore scene.

Read Comments (13)

Our own Dan Nadel spoke with Chris Marshall over at
Collected Comics Library. Check it out, True Believers-
slack off at work early with this one. Why are you at work anyways? It’s summer!

Collected Comics Library Podcast #274

Read Comments (6)

I found this Thor origin story by Steve Ditko in a comic called The Saga of Thane of Bagarth issue number 24 from 1985 which was a reprint of an old Charlton comic from 1973. I’ve never seen or heard of it before.

I posted it on my back issue blog. Check it out!