Tagged: ComicMix

Review: ‘Abe Sapien: The Drowning’ and ‘B.P.R.D.: 1946’

Review: ‘Abe Sapien: The Drowning’ and ‘B.P.R.D.: 1946’

It’s always a bit sad when someone quits a job, especially a well-loved and -trusted colleague who did a huge amount of the work. Sure, you’ll all take him out to lunch on his last day (or as close to it as you can manage), but that’s for his benefit. The next Monday, you all have to go back to work, and try to make up for what he used to do as well as you can.

Hellboy has been gone from the Bureau of Paranormal Research and Development for a while, now – since 2001, though the stories take place in various eras and times – and they’re still trying to make up for the loss. In an office, that would just entail some cursing, some longer hours, and a lot of questions about how to fill out the TPS forms. But for the B.P.R.D., there’s the little matter of saving the world without a nearly indestructible red guy with a sledgehammer for a right hand leading the way.

Since [[[Hellbo]]]y left the B.P.R.D., Dark Horse has published an increasingly proliferating array of stories set in the same world: an ongoing sequence of B.P.R.D. miniseries, and then short series about Lobster Johnson and Abe Sapien.

This year has already seen the Lobster Johnson trade paperback, and eighth volumes of both Hellboy and B.P.R.D. (which I reviewed together back in June), and now there are two more Hellboy-universe books to keep us busy.

[[[Abe Sapien: The Drowning]]]
Story by Mike Mignola; Art by Jason Shawn Alexander
Dark Horse, September 2008, $17.95

Abe has been at the center of several B.P.R.D. stories before, but this was the first time he got his name in the title – it’s a flashback story, set in 1981, when Hellboy was on an extended leave from the B.P.R.D. but supernatural mysteries still needed investigating.

B.P.R.D. head Trevor Bruttenholm had recently discovered that a British supernatural agent had used a rare and powerful Lipu Dagger to kill the evil Dutch warlock Epke Vrooman in 1884, near the Atlantic coast of France. Vrooman’s remains and the dagger are at the bottom of the sea, in a shipwreck. But surely an amphibious man wouldn’t have any trouble in diving down and retrieving the dagger?

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Manga (Black) Friday: Three Books of Revenge, Death, and War

Manga (Black) Friday: Three Books of Revenge, Death, and War

  • News
  • November 28, 2008

I’m writing this late on Thursday evening, full of turkey and stuffing and good will toward my fellow man. And I’ve been thinking that I don’t have any theme to unify them – I almost had three books starting with “G” and then almost had three volume twos  — but a theme just jumped out and poked me. Today is Black Friday, and these three books all fit that theme: they’re all pretty black. (Yes, I know that’s not what “Black Friday” means, but humor me.)

Gankutsuou: The Count of Monte Cristo, Vol. 1
Manga by Mahiro Maeda; Scenario by Yura Ariwara; Planning by Mahiro Maeda and GONZO
Del Rey, November 2008, $10.95

Gankutsuou is the least dark, at least at this point, but it clearly is going to get darker and bleaker. For one thing, it’s explicitly a retelling of Dumas’s novel The Count of Monte Cristo (“Gankutsuou” means “The King of the Cave,” and was the title of the first Japanese translation of Monte Cristo), which is not a tale of sweetness and light. And, second, our young hero Albert is the son of one of the men who schemed to put Edmond Dantes – surely you remember Edmond Dantes? – away for good, and, even worse, he’s the son of Mercedes, who was supposed to be Dantes’s wife.

Gankutsuou updates Monte Cristo to the kind of unlikely aristocratic interplanetary future that we don’t see much of any more; it never made a whole lot of sense as a setting, but I must admit that I missed it, and so I’m happy to see it come back here. Monte Cristo is a story that must be told in an aristocratic society – the Count himself only makes sense in such a world – and so it works; it’s a big, gaudy world, with extremes of wealth and poverty – just like the world Dumas wrote about.

This first volume is mostly set-up; we start with Albert and his friend Franz in the midst of a Grand Tour of sorts – of the major planets of our solar system, apparently. They’re just coming to Luna for its fabled Carnival, where the mysterious Count of Monte Cristo meets, befriends, and helps Albert. (Albert, in that all-too-typical manga style, is an overly innocent, puppy-dog-ish young man with boundless enthusiasm and utter lack of guile. I’m afraid he’s in for it, and equally afraid that Gankutsuou’s creators have been utterly innocent of the knowledge of real young aristocrats to think that type is even possible.)

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Rich Faber needs your help

Rich Faber needs your help

  • News
  • November 26, 2008

I’m lifting this directly from Johanna Draper Carlson. Yes, again… but in this case, I hope she won’t mind, because Rich Faber, inker on Green Lantern, needs our help:

I first met him ages ago, back in the 90s, when he wanted a copy of a sketch Chris Sprouse did for me, to practice his inking. He’s kept at it, working on Roboy Red and Buzzboy, as well as a lot of other stuff.

Sadly, in August, his wife Traci was diagnosed with cancer, and they’re facing large medical bills. Here’s how he puts it (from the blog link above):

… lately things have gotten a little hairy, financially. While we have health insurance, it’s not covering everything. Medical bills and co-pays can truly be a drag. It’s been tough for us to maintain our regular work schedules between treatments (and Traci’s ensuing fatigue), doctor visits, and caring for our two-year-old son. … So we’re looking for ways to generate more income, in order to keep afloat.

He doesn’t want handouts (although I’m sure he wouldn’t mind any help) — instead, he wants to sell original art, t-shirts, and signed comics. He’s also taking commissions; email rich_faber(at)comcast(dot)net. (That’s also his Paypal account, in case you can donate, regardless of what he says.) They’re not hurting yet — but since Traci will be in treatment for at least a year, he’s planning ahead and trying to be responsible.

I know it’s tough times, and it seems that there’s always a request to help someone. There are plenty of deserving who need help, but if you can, check out Rich’s website and blog to see if there’s something you’re interested in.

So go. Rich has been nothing but a stellar professional and a friend to us here at ComicMix. Here’s his website, here’s his blog.

Bryan Singer and Warner Premiere to Work Together

Bryan Singer and Warner Premiere to Work Together

  • News
  • November 26, 2008

Warner Premiere is known to ComicMix readers as the source for the cool direct-to-DVD movies featuring the DC heroes but they also produce original fare as well.  This morning, they announced a deal with director Bryan Singer to create a “cyberpunk sci-fi thriller” H+, “which picks up after a terrorist fries the brains of a segment of the population ‘jacking’ into the net”

The series will be written by John Cabrera (Gilmore Girls) and Cosimo De Tommaso, who will also serve as executive producers. They conceived of H+ as a television series but  Warner Premiere’s Head of Digital Content, Lydia Antonini, persuaded them to convert it to a web-based series.

The new series, to debut sometime in mid-2009, will be produced by Singer’s Bad Hat Harry Productions, the outfit that already gives us House.

Warner Premiere is dipping its toe into live action after working on numerous animated efforts including the recently unveiled Peanuts, a full animated comic web series. They have 20 original web series in development, some of which will go to video, some to the recently relaunched TheWB.com.

Review: ‘Bourbon Island 1730’ by Appollo & Lewis Trondheim

Review: ‘Bourbon Island 1730’ by Appollo & Lewis Trondheim

Bourbon Island 1730
By Appollo and Lewis Trondheim; Art by Lewis Trondheim
First Second, October 2008, $17.95

Bourbon Island is a small but real place – it’s called Réunion these days, but it’s there, hanging near the east coast of Madagascar – and several of the characters in this graphic novel either carry the names of real people or are very similar to real people. But [[[Bourbon Island 1730]]] is a work of fiction – it’s primarily about people who never were real and about events that never happened.

It’s a looser and less tightly defined story than the reader expects at first: it begins with young Raphael Pommery, the assistant to ornithologist Dr. Despentes, traveling with his boss to Bourbon, hoping to find one last dodo. But Raphael is more interested in stories of pirates than in birds, living or possibly extinct. Raphael looks like our protagonist – young and more than a little romantic, just ripe for learning about the real world.

But Raphael doesn’t stay at the center of this story: in fact, no one that we see is really the protagonist. Bourbon Island instead centers on a character who never appears: the pirate Buzzard, the last great captain of a now-vanished age, imprisoned and facing a death sentence in Bourbon’s governor’s jail. Many of the settlers on Bourbon are reformed pirates, men who took an amnesty and laid down their arms – and it’s quite possible that a few or a lot of them may take up arms to free Buzzard.

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New and Old Fiction Served up at the Book View Cafe

New and Old Fiction Served up at the Book View Cafe

  • News
  • November 22, 2008

Book View Cafe is a new online publishing venture by a consortium of writers, many of whom are friends of ours here at ComicMix. According to their website, “Offerings range from novels to flash fiction and include both reprints and new work. Here on the Book View Cafe Blog, the authors talk about their work and offer ideas and opinions on the wider world of fiction.”

Visitors to the site, which went live this week, can sample long out-of-print works from the authors, read their blog posts, and soon buy premium content.

Authors include Sarah Zettel, Ursula K Le Guin, Vonda McIntyre, Irene Radford, Brenda Clough, Laura Ann Gilman, Susan Wright, and many others.

The subject matter is widely diverse across all lines of popular fiction. “Ideally,” the site states, “it would also provide you with a wider selection of fiction from some of your favorite authors than you’ve had before, and provide us a more direct link with our readers.  Of course, we also wanted to take advantage of the internet to get the word out about our books.”

As Gilman said on her blog, “The offerings on BookView Cafe will refresh on a regular basis, and range from novels to flash fiction and include both reprints and new work (and, yes, that includes new stories and novel out-takes from the Cosa Nostradamus books!).”
 

Manga Friday: Shojo (Slight Return)

Manga Friday: Shojo (Slight Return)

  • News
  • November 22, 2008

Once again I’m left with a stack of books that are sequels to other books – that’s what comics is about, isn’t it? stories that never end? – and so I shoved three of them together due to some vague shojo similarities. And they are…

Nephilim, Vol. 2
By Anna Hanamaki
Aurora, July 2008, $10.95

The first volume of Nephilim – which I reviewed back in August – looked a lot like an adventure story, with daring escapes, swordfights, chase scenes, and two battling empires. But it had within it the hints of the emotion-drenched shojo romance it was destined to eventually be. By the end of that book, the dashing nobleman Guy had saved the Nephilim Abel (one of a nearly-genocided race of people who all change sex at night, which must make pregnancies interesting) and they’d seemingly shared a “we both love each other” moment before they were rudely separated.

But it’s now a year later, and Abel is searching for Guy, while swanning over the one moment when he said he wanted to be her husband. (She’s a shojo heroine, so she spends a lot of time in a romantic reverie and hardly any time noticing the world in front of her.) The background is still of a world vaguely at war, between two large powerful countries, with the poor Nephilim (what of them are left) stuck in the middle. But that’s really just for added drama: the focus here has shifted decisively to “but does he luuuuuuuve me?!” territory.

Abel does catch back up with Guy, as we knew she would. She eventually learns he has a Tragic Secret (related to a Weakness He Is Too Much Of An Honorable Man To Tell, and which Threatens His Life when he Performs Great Deeds), and, even worse, that he has what looks like another romantic entanglement. (Interestingly – since he seemingly originally was interested in Abel during the day, when she was a boy – the woman he’s canoodling with now has a short, severe haircut and an tough, commanding attitude that some might even call “manly.”)

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‘The Champions’ Coming from McQuarrie & del Toro

‘The Champions’ Coming from McQuarrie & del Toro

  • News
  • November 21, 2008

Christopher McQuarrie (The Usual Suspects) remains one very busy screenwriter with his work on Valkyrie about to be finally seen on December 31.  Up next will be two new films which he will both write and produce according to IESB, The Monster of Florence and The Champions. The latter is a feature film based on the short-lived BBC series that he is co-writing with Guillermo del Toro who has been most vocal in his passion for the show which ComicMix also recalls most fondly.

The series lasted all of one season, 1968-1969, and was syndicated in America a few years later. It featured “the adventures of a team of secret government agents who are rescued from a Himalayan plane crash by an advanced civilization and given superhuman abilities.”

United Artists President of Production, Don Granger, told the site, "The Champions is not just a strong concept with serious franchise potential, we believe that with Chris and Guillermo’s combined creative vision it can be an incredibly original film."

"Champions is a great premise with fascinating potential,” McQuarrie added. “I wanted to be involved from the moment Guillermo and I first discussed it."
 

‘Wonder Woman’ DVD Details Released

‘Wonder Woman’ DVD Details Released

  • News
  • November 18, 2008

Warner Home Video has announced a March 3, 2009 release date for its direct-to-DVD Wonder Woman film. It will be released in what has rapidly become a standard pattern for genre offerings:a Single Disc DVD for $19.98, 2 Disc Special Edition DVD for $29.98 and Blu-ray Disc for $34.99. The animated original movie will also be available OnDemand and Pay-Per-View as well as available for download day and date. Originally, the DVD had been announced for February release but was delayed a few weeks for unspecified reasons.

From clips ComicMix was shown, it’ll be well worth the wait.

Produced by the multiple Emmy Award winning animation legend Bruce Timm, Wonder Woman is an origin story and features a stellar celebrity voice cast including Keri Russell (Waitress, Felicity), Nathan Fillion (Firefly), Alfred Molina (Spider-Man 2), Virginia Madsen (Sideways), Rosario Dawson (Sin City), Oliver Platt (The West Wing) and David McCallum (NCIS).

Wonder Woman begins on the mystical island of Themyscira, where a proud and fierce warrior race of Amazons resides.  They have raised Princess Diana, a daughter of stunning beauty, extraordinary strength and incredible fighting prowess. Diana possesses a host of super human powers granted to her by the gods and goddesses of Olympus and her strength and stamina are unparalleled. When Air Force fighter pilot Steve Trevor crash lands on the island, the rebellious and headstrong Diana defies Amazonian law by accompanying Trevor back to civilization. Meanwhile, Ares (the God of War) has escaped his imprisonment at the hands of the Amazons and has decided to exact his revenge by starting a world war that will destroy them all. It is up to Princess Diana to save her people and the world by using her gifts to become the ultimate Wonder Woman.

Wonder Woman: 2 Disc Special Edition and Blu-Ray versions will feature collectible packaging as well as 185 minutes of incredible bonus features such as:

•    Wonder Woman: A Subversive Dream – She is one of the pillars of DC Comics. We examine why Wonder Woman is important in the grand scheme of the DC Super Heroes and how her raw strength and power helped define a new generation of empowered women, who realized that their gifts of intellect and strength were just as powerful as their male counterparts.

•    Wonder Woman The Daughters of Myth – The riveting documentary historically defines the meaning of the Amazons and how this links in with the evolution of the Wonder Woman character from comics to screen.

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Manga Friday: Four and Four and Four

Manga Friday: Four and Four and Four

  • News
  • November 14, 2008

Sometimes I even confuse myself, and I think I’ve just done it with that sub-head. These three books are all the fourth volumes of their series, all things I reviewed before, and all from Yen Press (because they and Del Rey are the most consistent at sending me books for review – hint, hint, other manga publishers).

Alice on Deadlines, Vol. 4
By Shiro Ihara
Yen Press, November 2008, $10.99

I’ve reviewed all three of the previous books in this series: one, two, three. And I’ve enjoyed them each slightly less than the one before, as the series wandered away from its lecherous-angel-of-death-wreaks-havok-on-the-life-of-a’”normal”-teenage-girl premise into more generic monster-fighting, evil-corporation, and true-love lands.

Lapan is that angel of death I mentioned – shingami, to be more Japanese about it – and Alice is the nubile young woman whose body he is currently inhabiting, and cladding in unlikely underwear almost as often as he’d like. Alice was bounced out to a skeleton in the first volume, but she’s off in the spirit realm as this book opens – spending a season dead, more or less – and returns later on. There are a number of other characters, including, in this book, several members of the Tsurukame family, which owns and runs the corporation that sends out the shingami. They, confusingly, also seem to be part of the natural order of things, so perhaps the Tsurukames are subcontracting from whatever gods are behind everything.
 

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