For The Love of Comics

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Have you been interested in checking out The Boys, but hesitant because you missed out on the beginning or just not willing to shell out the cash for something that may offend you beyond your tolerances?

Dynamite has a solution for you!

To celebrate their five year anniversary and the release of The Boys Limited edition hardcover, Dynamite gave Rich Johnston an online version of the first issue, remastered, to share with the public.

Head on over and check it out, but be warned that this is a Garth Ennis book and thus, by definition, over the top with its violence and general offensiveness. I love this book, you may not.

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Look, I’m just going to level with you. I haven’t read a comic in months, and I don’t know if I’ll ever get back to my previous level of reading.

With my life basically falling apart these last few months (which is a long story that I know you’re not interested in), most of my time these days spent rebuilding that life and spending time with my family, and the lack of anything truly capturing my interest in comics these days, comics just are not a priority.

My first instinct is to just shut down this blog, to let the url registration expire and stop paying the hosting fees and just let For The Love of Comics die a quiet death. But I don’t really want to say goodbye to this thing and feel like I just might have some things left to say.

So I will continue updating when I have something to say, but that could leave some huge gaps between updates

Which is where you come in. I’m going to pretty much throw the doors open for contributors. Do you have something to say about what’s going on in comics today? Is there a comic that you think everyone just HAS to read? Is that comic yours? Send me an e-mail with your story idea or, even better, the story itself.

Do you see yourself wanting to contribute on a regular basis? Drop me an e-mail and I’ll set you up with your own writer account here so that you don’t have to go through me every time.

In short, I’d love to hear any ideas from anyone. You’ve let me stand on a soapbox long enough; it’s time I shared.

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The Good: Roman Dirge’s new publisher, Titan Books, sent me a free review copy of Lenore’s return.

The (sorta) Bad: I’m sure Titan would have liked me to review the issue before it hit stands, but it only arrived from England this weekend. Sorry guys!

Back when I was a kiddie goth and into independent comics, I was always more of a Jonny The Homicidal Maniac guy; Lenore was more my sister’s style. Since then, I’ve moved away from my goth tendencies and seeing Lenore stuff prominently featured whenever I walk by a Hot Topic left me somewhat skeptical before I even received the comic.

After reading this issue, though… well, it’s still really not my thing but I can still appreciate the artwork and the appeal of the black, somewhat corny and over-the-top humor. What really impresses me is that Roman Dirge does the whole thing (writing, drawing, and coloring) himself and still maintains a pretty high standard of output.

In this first issue of Lenore and Dirge’s return, we learn her (apparently secret until now) origin story when she wakes up on a mortician’s embalming table. As you may expect, hilarity ensues.

It’s hard for me to really give an opinion on this. Will I be reading any more of this series? Almost certainly not. Should you? If you enjoyed the original Lenore series, JTHM, The original Ren & Stimpy, current cartoons Flapjack, Fairly Oddparents, and things along those lines, definitely. If not? I’d give it a skip.

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So I thought the biggest news (for me) today would be that I’m not thirty years old, but Disney had to outdo me by buying frickin’ Marvel!

Here thar be press release:

Burbank, CA and New York, NY, August 31, 2009 —Building on its strategy of delivering quality branded content to people around the world, The Walt Disney Company (NYSE:DIS) has agreed to acquire Marvel Entertainment, Inc. (NYSE:MVL) in a stock and cash transaction, the companies announced today.

Under the terms of the agreement and based on the closing price of Disney on August 28, 2009, Marvel shareholders would receive a total of $30 per share in cash plus approximately 0.745 Disney shares for each Marvel share they own. At closing, the amount of cash and stock will be adjusted if necessary so that the total value of the Disney stock issued as merger consideration based on its trading value at that time is not less than 40% of the total merger consideration.

Based on the closing price of Disney stock on Friday, August 28, the transaction value is $50 per Marvel share or approximately $4 billion.

“This transaction combines Marvel’s strong global brand and world-renowned library of characters including Iron Man, Spider-Man, X-Men, Captain America, Fantastic Four and Thor with Disney’s creative skills, unparalleled global portfolio of entertainment properties, and a business structure that maximizes the value of creative properties across multiple platforms and territories,” said Robert A. Iger, President and Chief Executive Officer of The Walt Disney Company. “Ike Perlmutter and his team have done an impressive job of nurturing these properties and have created significant value. We are pleased to bring this talent and these great assets to Disney.”

“We believe that adding Marvel to Disney’s unique portfolio of brands provides significant opportunities for long-term growth and value creation,” Iger said.

“Disney is the perfect home for Marvel’s fantastic library of characters given its proven ability to expand content creation and licensing businesses,” said Ike Perlmutter, Marvel’s Chief Executive Officer. “This is an unparalleled opportunity for Marvel to build upon its vibrant brand and character properties by accessing Disney’s tremendous global organization and infrastructure around the world.”

Under the deal, Disney will acquire ownership of Marvel including its more than 5,000 Marvel characters. Mr. Perlmutter will oversee the Marvel properties, and will work directly with Disney’s global lines of business to build and further integrate Marvel’s properties.

The deal still has to be approved by Marvel shareholders and get antitrust approval, but I seriously doubt either will be a problem.

Really, this could either be a huge benefit to both companies or could drag them both down (see the AOL/Time Warner merger). My bet is on it being a good thing, though. Disney has a history of letting its acquisitions keep doing what they do best. Once Marvel’s distribution deals with Sony and Paramount end and Disney’s comic deals with other companies expire, they’re looking at some streamlined, profitable processes.

Besides, you know you’re dying to see a Muppets-as-X-men parody just as much as I am. Animal is the best there is at what he does!

That Sorcerer’s Supreme Apprentice idea, while a joke, would also be pretty awesome.

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In the process of trying to catch up on pretty much everything, I found this video from the “I’m a Marvel, I’m a DC guy” featuring Green Lantern and Deadpool arguing over who Ryan Reynolds will play first, if at all.

Just for the record, my vote is for Deadpool, since I can’t even picture Ryan Reynolds as Hal Jordan.

via Robot 6

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First, here thar be spoilers. If you have somehow not read Blackest Night #1 in the past month and still plan on reading, you may want to skip this post. I’ll be spoiling what I feel is the moment of the issue.

The first issue of Blackest Night came out almost a month ago, but I haven’t stopped thinking about it.

It starts out pedestrian enough with heroes and loved ones remembering their fallen. Then it gets a little weird when Alfred finds Bruce Wayne’s grave desecrated, not the least because I’m not sure how there’s even a body in that grave with Bruce stuck back in the stone ages, but whatever.

Then? Then it gets downright disturbing. Something about Sue and Ralph Dibny coming back as evil zombie things and murdering Hawkman and Hawkgirl, just when she’s about to admit that she may love him, really messes with me in a way that seeing Bruce Wayne’s skeleton sticking up out of his grave, the Guardians of Oa being attacked and devoured by one of their own, or the Martian Manhunter about to attack two of his oldest friends doesn’t.

Maybe it’s seeing the Dibny’s – who affected me on such a deep level when we saw how broken Ralph was after losing Sue and he wasn’t complete again until he was reunited with her in death – ripped from their peace and turned into what appears to be the total antithesis of who they were that disturbed and disgusted me so deeply.

Regardless of the reason, I finished this issue more bothered than I have been by anything in years, and I read Garth Ennis books religiously. For a few minutes, I considered not finishing Blackest Night if this is what they were going to do to characters we loved so much.

Then I realized that this must be exactly what Geoff Johns was going for. The horror of the Black Lanterns is that nothing is sacred anymore, nobody is safe, and the heroes of the DCU will probably have to face and fight some of the people they loved most in the world.

That’s fucked up, but that’s also some good writing.

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DC’s The Source blog revealed a page from Green Lantern 43, which serves as a prologue to the big summer Blackest Night event.

Click to embiggen

There are a couple of interesting ideas indicated in these panels, but maybe the most interesting (to me, at least) is the idea of Ralph and Sue Dibny being on the same “team” of the person who raped Sue – Dr. Light.  The only thing I could think of that could be worse would be having the woman who killed Sue – Jean Loring – as a Black Lantern.

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The speculation is over, Marvel has revealed that the upcoming Reborn miniseries will feature the return of Steve Rogers.

New York Daily News had the scoop.

“The original Captain America is finally coming back,” Marvel Comics editor in chief Joe Quesada told the Daily News. “We’ve been patiently planning for this moment for 21/2 years.”

The rest of the article is a basic rehash of what we already know. Cap died two and a half years ago, major uproar, Reborn will be five issues, yadda yadda yadda. You can read the article here.

I’m sure this is good news for most fans, but I’m actually pretty disappointed. The death of Steve Rogers was such a major move that I think it needs to stick awhile longer. We’ve seen some great stories about what the loss of Steve meant to his friends and enemies, and there’s still alot of ground that could be covered. Not to mention that this does a huge disservice to Bucky, who had just seemingly gotten comfortable in his own skin and the Captain America uniform. The article doesn’t mention what will happen to Mr. Barnes, by the way.

It doesn’t really matter what I think, though. Marvel’s going to do what they’re going to do. I just hope they can make the story of Steve Rogers’ return as good as the story of his death.

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Here’s a little cool somethin’ somethin’ I found over at Geek Orthodox. This dude found words to put to the orchestral theme for The Dark Knight, with some cool and hilarious results.

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Crossposted from my DaddyGeek blog

Here’s a cool little blast from my past. Artist Brent Engstrom designed a mashup of the Endless from Neil Gaiman’s Sandman series and the Garbage Pail Kids from my youth.

Check out Engstrom’s blog for more cool artwork!

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