Independent Opinions, News, and Reviews of Graphic Novels, Manga, and Comic Books
I like to cook, but I like most to cook simple, tasty recipes that don’t take forever. That’s why I was interested in Michael Symon’s 5 in 5 for Every Season, a cookbook by the Chew cohost that promises recipes that only have 5 ingredients and can be cooked in 5 minutes, with a focus on seasonality, or using ingredients that are freshest in a given time of year. I don’t think I’ll be keeping this cookbook, though, for the […]
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It’s pretty tough to write a bio of a famous person who’s become well known for curmudgeonness. Bill Murray notoriously doesn’t like to play by anyone’s rules, to the extent of replacing his agent with an answering machine at an 800 number. So Robert Schnakenberg, instead of interviewing him, put together a kind of nerd trivia encyclopedia, a volume with short entries arranged from A-Z on topics related to the star. (He’s previously done similar books on Christopher Walken and […]
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These days, a comic guidebook doesn’t get published without including business advice. That’s a good thing — artists should learn more than they were traditionally taught about how to make a living (just as businesspeople should learn more about valuing creativity, but that’s a different post) — but with so many different formats and industry paths available to people these days, a lot of books aren’t clear enough about their target audience. (See, for example, Brian Michael Bendis’ Words for […]
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I had high hopes for The Monet Murders, since it’s a murder mystery set in 1934 Hollywood, but the book by Terry Mort is disappointing. For one thing, there are no real-life characters involved, even tangentially. All the characters are made-up types: the Jewish producer, several gorgeous starlets, a loutish actor, some drunken writers… although one of those is implied to be F. Scott Fitzgerald under a different name. Which feels like wimping out. This kind of novel doesn’t work […]
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At the beginning of the year, I wrote about the planned launch of ACE magazine, a new publication from the editor of Comic Book Artist, Jon B. Cooke, and publisher/retailer Robert Yeremian. “ACE” stands for “All Comics Evaluated”, and the magazine promised both interviews and reviews of current material as well as a price guide. It debuted in March, and it was monthly after that — until May, when issue #3 was published. No issues have followed, although issue #4 […]
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Out next month is an entertaining guide to the history of Doctor Who as seen through the different versions of his character over the years. The Doctors Are In, by Graeme Burk and Robert Smith, covers each Doctor, previous and modern (including “The Warrior” played by John Hurt). As part of their effort to answer “What made him the way he is? What motivates him?”, each chapter, one per version, includes the following sections: A profile of the actor and […]
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Out this October is The Question of the Unfamiliar Husband, the sequel to The Question of the Missing Head, a mystery I quite enjoyed. They’re both credited as written by E.J. Copperman and Jeff Cohen, who are the same person with different literary backgrounds: one alias writes mysteries, the other books on parenting children with autism. The protagonist, detective Samuel Hoenig, has Asperger’s Syndrome, and that condition drives his desire to answer questions brought to him. His different view on […]
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Mark Crilley has posted the below YouTube video announcing that Mastering Manga 3, a followup to Mastering Manga With Mark Crilley and Mastering Manga 2: Level Up With Mark Crilley, will be published next year (2016). He says in the video that he has plans for what he wants to cover, but he also wants to know what suggestions readers would like to see. He asks for ideas for what he hasn’t covered or what people think he didn’t cover […]
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