Category Archives: Comics
Gamer Girl & Vixen – Valentines!
Happy soon-to-be Valentine’s Day, everybody! Seeing as how I’m making a romance comic in Gamer Girl & Vixen, my creative team and I decided to celebrate this most Hallmarky of holidays with some Gamer Girl & Vixen valentines! Designed by the one and only Gemma Moody, these Valentines are offered to all of you free of charge! Print them off and hand them to your loved ones. Or e-mail them. Or better yet, save them and then post them to Facebook or Twitter when the big V-day comes. And be sure to link people back to my articles, or to our Facebook, Twitter or Tumblr! Spread the love, my henchies!
So please share and celebrate! They’re all yours!
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The 6 Best and the 6 Worst Parts of DC’s New 52
The New 52 is over; long live DC Comics. After more than three years of sticking to their rigid, grim and gritty house style, the second biggest publisher in comics has decided to try something different — and I couldn’t be happier. I quickly soured to the New 52 and have barely hung on all these years later.
Get out of there Cyborg, you’re not Justice League
When DC rebooted their entire comics lineup in 2011 — including everyone from Superman and Batman to Green Lantern — they decided that the best way to reach fans was with dark, gritty comics aimed at teenage boys and young men. They published 52 comics a month and called the whole event the ‘New 52’. But comic book fans are prone to change, and nowadays we want a variety of different comics and styles, definitely not just grim and gritty. Marvel Comics, the biggest publisher, understands this and routinely beats DC in sales.
So starting in June, DC will abandon their New 52 way of thinking and will start offering new comics with new styles for new audiences. It’s a great plan! But before it’s gone, I wanted to take a look back at 6 things I liked and 6 things I loathed in the New 52. Hopefully DC can learn from this.
Review: Saga #25
The long wait is over, and our beloved Saga has returned, as good as ever. A lot has changed since the start of the last volume: Hazel, Alana and Klara are prisoners of Dengo the Crazy Janitor, Marko and Prince Robot IV have forged an uneasy alliance and are in pursuit, and Lying Cat and her homies are on a quest to save The Will! We’re spread across the galaxy in the new issue, but writer Brian K. Vaughn and artist Fiona Staples take the time to check in on everybody for updates. It’s a solid issue with a lot of forward momentum.
Saga #25
Saga #25 also has the requisite single line of narration that threatens to tear my heart to shreds.
Comic Review: 9/10 – Great.
Don’t worry, though, my heart is fine. It wasn’t that bad, but Vaughn really knows how to stab the knife. How can you tell if you’ve created beloved characters? When the simple promise that ‘they’re in a story, so drama has to happen to them’ is enough to make your readers wince in pain. I can’t be the only one who wants Marko, Alana and Hazel to live happily ever after from this second forward.
But the story must move forward, drama must happen, and hearts must be broken. That Vaughn and Staples are able to so expertly craft such a tale is a testament to their skill as storytellers. Every single character feels real and full, and I’m excited to catch up on all their storylines. Once again, we have no idea where Vaughn and Staples are taking us, and I’m as excited as ever to find out where we’re going. It will no doubt be an emotional roller coaster.
Join me after the jump for a full synopsis and more review!
Hench-Sized Comic Book Reviews – 2/7/15
What a week! Just yesterday, DC Comics announced a new rebranding of their entire New 52 line! Gone are the last vestiges of that reboot and the DC house style! Now they want to produce a variety of comics for the wide variety of people that read comics! That’s exciting news. Marvel has found a ton of success going down that route, and if DC is willing to bite the bullet and follow Marvel’s lead, then we’ll all benefit.
The most important thing is that we will get good comics. Like this week’s Unbeatable Squirrel Girl.
Squirrel Girl #2 easily picks up Comic Book of the Week for being so gosh darn hilarious! I hope you’re reading and laughing along with me. But this week also so good issues for Ant-Man, Ms. Marvel, Star Wars and the long-awaited return of Hawkeye! Matt Fraction and David Aja’s archer-led comic was close to capturing the top spot, but it took a little stumble.
This week you can check out my review of Black Vortex Alpha over at Word of the Nerd. It’s a cosmic crossover between the Guardians of the Galaxy and the All-New X-Men, and while writer Sam Humphries is having some fun, it’s not better than the sum of its parts.
Comic Reviews: Angela: Asgard’s Assassin #3, Ant-Man #2, Batman Eternal #44, Hawkeye #21, Ms. Marvel #11, Star Wars #2, Unbeatable Squirrel Girl #2.
2 New Robin Comics Coming This Summer; DC’s ‘New 52’ Out the Door…Kind of!
Breaking comic book news today is that DC Comics is going to do a little rebranding of the New 52 this June. They aren’t producing 52 comics a month anymore, so the name doesn’t make any sense. The New 52 continuity and characters will remain the same, but they’re bringing in 24 new comics and basically just doing away with the ‘New 52’ name tag. All of this will launch after the April-May Convergence mini-series. IGN has part of the scoop. And CBR has some more! And Newsarama has even more!
Chief among the new comics will be something called We Are Robin. I have no idea what this is, but I am hugely excited!
I’m going to be scouring the Internet for any news about this series. Will it star the various Robins already hanging out in Gotham City? Or, like the cover implies, will it be about a bunch of street kids who wear Robin-branded clothing? Who knows! I am beyond excited to find out.
Also announced is a new solo series for Damian Wayne, which will replace the Batman and Robin ongoing. Robin: Son of Batman will be written and drawn by Patrick Gleason, a true superstar!
No word yet why Robin will be teaming up with a giant red monster.
There will also be new comics for Bat-Mite, Bizarro, Black Canary, Cyborg, Dr. Fate, Martian Manunter and many more. My favorite comic book artist, Bryan Hitch, will also be taking over both writing and art duties on Justice League! Check out the various titles at the links above.
Another announcement I’m excited about will see Starfire split away from the long-running Red Hood and the Outlaws comic into her own series, written by the Harley Quinn team of Jimmy Palmiotti and Amanda Conner, with art by Emanuela Lupacchino. That sounds pretty amazing, considering I love me some Harley Quinn comic. The Outlaws book will be shrunk down to just Red Hood/Arsenal. Could this be an attempt to finally cater to fans of the Teen Titans cartoon? Starfire’s new costume seems to suggest as much (though she’s still wearing incredibly short shorts)!
That is a damn good idea, since everybody was pretty soured to Starfire in the New 52, whereas she could be getting a ton of fans.
I’m going to try to update this post throughout the day with new information as it comes in! For me, I’m just excited to see Robin getting some attention! I can’t wait to find out more about We Are Robin!
What do you henchies think? Any of these new comics look good to you? Or do you think DC should do away with the New 52 entirely? Looks to me like they’re going to take a play out of the Marvel NOW! playbook and just introduce waves of new titles to see what takes off. The focus of this new rebranding is to reach out to a wider audience. When the New 52 launched, it was rigidly tied to DC’s grim and gritty house style, but then both Marvel and DC had much more success with a wide variety of comics (like Ms. Marvel and Batgirl). Now it looks like DC learned their lesson. The house style is out and variety reigns!
I like the sound of that!
Sound off in the comments!
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Henchman-4-Hire