December 17, 2006 Johanna Image Comics 2 comments

Hawaiian Dick: The Last Resort

Hawaiian Dick: The Last Resort is a welcome followup to Byrd of Paradise, the story that introduced island private eye Danny Byrd and his police officer friend Mo Kalama. This time around, Byrd has been hired by Italian mobsters trying to open a resort hotel. They’ve been running into all kinds of glitches. They think it’s sabotage from their Irish competitors, but the locals say it’s sorcery, that the white men are getting what they deserve. And they might be […]

December 17, 2006 Johanna Comic News Leave a comment

Archie Characters Redesigned

The news of the day is the planned new look for Archie’s classic characters, starting with Betty and Veronica. They’re aiming for a “new dynamic art style… with a more realistic look”. (And Betty’s really cute.) Artist Steven Butler (penciler of Sonic the Hedgehog and former artist of Web of Spider-Man, Silver Sable, and The Badger) is responsible for the redesign. Stories will also be longer. The first tale sounds familiar — Veronica falls in love with a new bad […]

December 17, 2006 Johanna DC / Vertigo One comment

Batman/The Spirit

After Absolute DC: The New Frontier, I will check out anything Darwyn Cooke does, even if it’s written by a mega-hack like Jeph Loeb. And I found that that was the key — look at the pictures, ignore the hackneyed text. For instance, Batman’s introductory splash page is marred by an unnecessary and pointless “I’m coming for you, Joker!” Those visuals, though… mmmmm. Commissioners Gordon and Dolan commiserating in front of a huge hearth in a men’s club room populated […]

December 14, 2006 Johanna Comic News One comment

Real Comics for Girls

I haven’t had a chance to explore this site in depth yet, but it looks very promising. Gurl.com, a site aimed at teenage girls, has their own comic section. I’m told that they’ve been around for ten years, which is quite impressive, and I like their focus on community building. And oh, yeah, their comics are by women. One of their staff sent me a message with a quote I loved: We’ve always known teen girls were into comics, because […]

December 12, 2006 Johanna Comic News 3 comments

Happy Holidays! Best of 2006

The more I’m able to knock off the to-do list, the more I look forward to the winter holidays. These wonderful comic-themed advent calendar countdowns help, too. Here’s my list of the ten best graphic novels of 2006. Fun Home: A Family TragicomicAs excellent as everyone says it is, this graphic memoir is all the more powerful for what it doesn’t show about Alison Bechdel’s father’s hidden life. Dramacon Book 2Easily the most entertaining graphic novel I read this year. […]

December 8, 2006 Johanna Other Publishers One comment

Big Fat Little Lit

Many of the stories from the previous three Little Lit hardcover volumes have been reprinted in this new paperback edition. It’s a wonderful anthology with contributions from a wide range of very talented artists, all edited by Art Spiegelman and Françoise Mouly and now available at a bargain price. It’s a great sampler to expose kids to a variety of approaches to art, too; styles range from colorfully cartoony to classically illustrative. Like their classic forebears, the modern fairy tales […]

December 6, 2006 Johanna Marvel One comment

Nextwave: This Is What They Want

Nextwave: Agents of HATE Volume 1: This Is What They Want collects the first six issues of the superhero satire. Third-rate characters from the outskirts of superherodom assemble into a team dedicated to, as one of the taglines puts it, “healing America by beating people up.” Elsa Bloodstone is a violence-loving English Buffy type, a gorgeous fighting machine. Tabitha, PMS made flesh, is a California party girl formerly known as “Boom Boom” because she blows things up. The team’s Captain […]

December 2, 2006 Johanna Dark Horse 5 comments

The Perhapanauts: First Blood

The Perhapanauts are a motley group of monster hunters who are themselves imaginary creatures. First Blood, written by Todd Dezago and drawn by Craig Rousseau, introduces them through a fight with a murderous shape-shifter. The Bureau of Extra-Dimensional Liabilities and Management (BEDLAM) has as its mission to investigate the creepy and paranormal. Their agents consist of a psychic, a ghost, a sasquatch, a mystery man, and Choopie, a partially evolved Chupacabras (goat-blood-sucker). When battling, their struggles reveal the team members’ […]

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