Speakeasy Blog Shut Down?

While taking cheap shots at Speakeasy in my previews writeup (coming soon), I tried to visit Jonathan Martin’s Speakeasy update blog only to discover that it no longer existed. Wikipedia reports Jonathan Martin’s “Speakeasy Comics Archive” (a blog dedicated to Speakeasy-related news) was shut down, presumably under “trademark infringement” litigation. Does anyone know anything more about this? Jonathan, are you out there to comment? If it’s true that Speakeasy legally pressured someone who was exercising free speech in commenting on […]

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Banana Sunday

Banana Sunday, written by Root Nibot (aka Paul Tobin) and drawn by Colleen Coover, is the kind of imaginative work that’s perfect for comics. It’s got a creative premise — a girl named Kirby starts at a new school while taking care of three apes — that would be too expensive or ludicrous to do anywhere else, yet it emphasizes internal conflict with sympathetic characters. The emotions are universal, such as young love on a first date or a reporter’s […]

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Mr. Majestic

This collection of large-scale superhero adventures is powered by over-the-top ideas. Joe Casey and co-writer Brian Holguin set their stories across the cosmos, while Ed McGuinness draws a hugely muscled alien-to-look-up-to hero in Mr. Majestic. The first story features Majestic having to hide our solar system from aliens. Desmond, his super-smart boy inventor friend, is only one of the many scientists that help plan a solution to the problem. It’s refreshing to hear, early on, Majestic disavowing the idea that […]

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Totally Obvious

While travelling one weekend, I got the chance to read Totally Obvious: The Complete Master of the Obvious Collection in its handy, laptop-friendly PDF format. It’s all of Steven Grant’s essays published online under that title from 1999-2001, almost 300 pages of good writing and great insight. Most of what I’ve learned about comics — the medium, the industry, the artform, the business — has come in bits and pieces over more than a decade now. There are very few […]

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She-Hulk: Single Green Female

She-Hulk: Single Green Female collects the first six issues of the acclaimed superhero comedy series. Writer Dan Slott does a great job balancing jokes and character bits while exploring how a citizen of a superhero universe deals with life. Jennifer Walters is an accomplished lawyer who’s also the super-strong She-Hulk. She’s become something of a party girl, dating models, winning cases, and saving the world with the Avengers. Her new boss, though, the head of a prestigious law firm, wants […]

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Smut Peddler #3

Smut Peddler #3 is a minicomic anthology of tasteful but titillating erotica. 48 pages of diverse sex-inspired stories for adults for only $5! I’m the Submissions Editor (which means that the folks who do all the real coordination and assembly work — Trisha L. Sebastian, Sean Bieri, and Carla Speed McNeil — ask me what I think during the selection period, and I’m quite honored to participate). That means this is NOT a review! This is me telling you why […]

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Alichino Volume 3

I flipped through Alichino volume 3 by Kouyu Shurei. I can’t say read, because I can’t keep the characters straight and I have no idea what’s going on. It sure is gorgeous to look at, though, with beautifully detailed, gothically inspired pretty people arguing about souls, death, and revenge. I only picked it up because I thought it completed the series, and then I’d have the whole set. Imagine my surprise to read the short interview with the author at […]

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The Dead Boy Detectives

Jill Thompson brings together Sandman characters and shôjo manga in The Dead Boy Detectives. Charles Rowland and Edwin Paine are two British schoolboys who happen to be ghosts and who love investigating mysteries. They’re asked for help by Annika, a student at a prestigious Chicago boarding school, when her roommate goes missing. There’s a ton of entertainment in this packed original graphic novel, with jokes, character work, clues, and atmospheric illustration. Thompson does a terrific job capturing elements of the […]

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