Independent Opinions, News, and Reviews of Graphic Novels, Manga, and Comic Books
written by Galen Goodwin Longstreth; art by Maris Wicks In this wonderful picture book, each page is a complete illustration, with a rhyming caption over top describing how this large family — parents, four kids, large dog — decides to spend a day in the country, hiking in the woods, having a picnic, swimming in the river. It’s a terrific paean to enjoying the outdoors and being part of such a family. The art is amazing, too, with such active […]
Read more
After vampires, fairies, and Frankensteinian monsters, this installment of the supernatural romance series gets back to the classics: ghosts. Nora and her family have moved into a new home that’s also a landmark, the prior home of a writer. Odd things start happening — the TV comes on by itself, small items go missing — until Nora sees Tom, a boy about her age who died over a century ago. He’s not the only ghost in the house, though, and […]
Read more
I got a quick taste of the Dance Class comics by Beka and Crip as part of the Papercutz Free Comic Book Day comic. Since then, I’ve had a chance to read the two slim volumes released so far, and I’ve enjoyed them. So, You Think You Can Hip-Hop? The books, translated from the French (where it’s called Studio Danse), consist of single-page strips that each provide a gag. Yet reading a bunch of them together, a picture of these […]
Read more
Christopher Hart, the bestselling author of how-to-draw books who doesn’t take criticism well, will be releasing another book on August 7 from Watson-Guptill. Manga for the Beginner Kawaii promises to teach readers “How to Draw the Supercute Characters of Japanese Comics”. The sell copy references Hello Kitty and Pokemon, for some quick reference points, in explaining “the superpopular manga genre of Kawaii”. (I wasn’t aware it was a genre, instead of a style or a design choice, but I also […]
Read more
Given how much I enjoyed the first season of Sherlock, I’ve been eagerly anticipating this second season. When I heard that the episodes were clipped when they aired on PBS, I skipped watching them and went straight to DVD, which allowed me to wallow in all of them at once. I love this show, even more than Doctor Who. (They share a producer in Steven Moffat, who co-created Sherlock with Mark Gatiss.) It’s a wonderful modernization of the characters and […]
Read more
Continuing the motion comic adaptations from Joss Whedon’s run on Astonishing X-Men, Astonishing X-Men: Torn will be available on August 14. The motion comic version of Astonishing X-Men: Gifted first came out in September 2010, with Dangerous following last month. That was only the first half of the Joss Whedon and John Cassady run that began in 2005, though. The third book, Astonishing X-Men: Torn, reprinted issues #13-18 and will be adapted here. The motion comic version of Torn, if […]
Read more
The third Blake Edwards movie returned to DVD courtesy of the Warner Archive is Victor/Victoria. (I covered the other two, S.O.B. and Skin Deep, last month.) It’s also the best of the three, with its bizarre plot — a soprano who can’t get work pretends to be a female impersonator in 1930s Paris — allowing for commentary on the economic struggles of entertainers, the civil rights of homosexuals (tolerated in the theater, not so much elsewhere), and gender roles and […]
Read more
Following Superman vs. the Elite, the original DC animated film out next month, the next Warner cartoon movie release will be The Dark Knight Returns Part 1 (as revealed in the special features for Superman vs. the Elite). The Dark Knight Returns Part 1, based on Frank Miller’s classic graphic novel, is due out in fall of this year, with Part 2 following in 2013. Peter Weller, best known as Robocop but always Buckaroo Banzai in my heart, voices Batman, […]
Read more