For The Love of Comics

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See more Valentines cards here and enjoy your VD!

Technorati Tags: Valentines Day, Chris Sims, Gwen Stacy, Spider-Man, Dark Humor

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Once again, it’s time for Friday! Night! FIGHTS!!11!!!111ONE!!!

This week’s contribution comes to you from the pages of Countdown 13.

1. This is an alternate universe’s version of Superman and another alternate universe’s version of Batman. For some reason, Superbrat Prime is more powerful than the real Superman, so who knows what’s up here.
2. Most importantly, the dude who wrote that scene also thinks that Countdown is a quality product.

I rest my case.

Technorati Tags: Friday Night Fights, Comics, DC, Countdown, Superman, Batman, disinformation

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Sorry for the complete and total lack of content lately, folks. I’m fighting off a particularly nasty strain of Florida Death Flu at the moment and I haven’t been in shape to do anything other than moan, groan, and hurl.

Hopefully, I’ve made it through the worst of it and I’ll be back to posting soon.

Technorati Tags: administrivia, death flu, somebody please kill me

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There is a growing trend of using comics as a supplement to traditional methods of promoting literacy, a trend that I support not only for its potential to spread the appeal of comics, but also because I can definitely see it working. Comics take the principle of a storybook - full of pictures - to another level and their sequential nature make it easier to follow the story, at least in theory.

Obviously, not all comics are for kids. It will be many many years before I recommend Watchmen, The Dark Knight Returns, or even Avengers to my son, but you can bet that the day will soon come that I’ll be sticking some Marvel Adventures and Teen Titans Go! into his chubby little hands. I think I can wait a while until after he can actually talk, though.

Thomas Hanson of Open Education has some very interesting articles for educators or parents looking for innovative ways to help their children learn to read:

• A discussion on the general concept, with an educator’s insight that there’s no way I could provide.
• An interview with Chris Wilson of The Graphic Classroom, further discussing the ideas behind this trend and the benefits of the concept. Mr. Wilson is somewhat of an expert in the movement and thus gives even further insight.
• Finally, Hanson and Wilson give us a list of their twelve best comic books for the classroom, including Maus, Blankets, Pedro and Me, and Bone.

In other news, I had a very busy weekend and it’s starting to look like a very busy work-week, so content may be a bit sparse, but I’ll do my best to at least give y’all something this week.

Technorati Tags: comics, education, classroom, learning, reading, writing, literacy, comics in the classroom

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Panels of Awesome is having a contest.

To enter, all you have to do is post about the contest in your blog and link back to POA’s post announcing the contest. Pretty simple, and definitely worth the prize of a 12-month subscription to the comic of your choice.

So get to work and get entering!

Technorati Tags: comics, contests, Panels of Awesome, Mike Haynes

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For anyone who tried to access the site sometime this afternoon to early evening and couldn’t, you have my apologies. Apparently my hosting company was having issues and I wasn’t the only one affected, since there were several other sites that I know to have the same hosting company having the same issues.

I haven’t gotten an answer back from the hosting company about what happened, but I’m going to let it slide since I know they’ve had a rough week - which is also why I’m purposely not mentioning their name.

Regardless, things seem to be working now, so … enjoy.

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Hey Folks,

You may notice some things changing a bit over time, with the biggest change - a new layout - already done.

That’s because we’re slowly undergoing a site redesign courtesy of the ubertalented Katie Yumol of KatieYumol.com.

We’re trying to keep from making this too disruptive and there should be minimal disruption to your access to anything here, but if something looks different, that’s why.

Now everyone, repeat after me… THANK YOU KATIE!!!!

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Just a quick braindump of a few things I found interesting; real content will be coming soon, I swear on Elvis Drinkmo’s copy of Batman: Year One.

First of all, I am now on ComicSpace, though I have no idea what to do there. If anyone would like to friend me and show me the ropes, I’d understand.

I’m trying to hold onto my thoughts on the recent Messiah CompleX issues until I have a few more read, but that was a definite “Oh Crap!” moment at the end of X-Men 206. Wouldn’t it be interesting if that character was a traitor all along, since their first appearance? That would cast some things in a much different light, at least.

The rest of this stuff is from Comic Book Resources, because they’re badass and I lost the other stuff I wanted to write about. They may require another “Quickie” post if I can ever find them.

Part 5 of the 5-part One More Day interview with Joe Quesada has just been posted. After reading the interview(s), I’ve come closer to understanding Quesada’s point of view regarding Spidey stories being better off with him being single, but that doesn’t excuse the fact that the idea and execution of One More Day has been utter crap. Quesada mandated a horrible story with a terribly contrived plot and a deus-ex-machina ending that he doesn’t feel needs to be explained (It’s magic, we don’t have to explain it!) in the service of what he feels is the greater long-term goal of the character and his story. If he’s okay with that, fine, but he really needs to be honest about it, both with himself and his fans.

Keith Giffen has moved his intermittent online column from Wizard.com to CBR. Along with being very careful to separate himself from the recent Wizard-bashing, Keith gives us his plans for the column and his resolutions for 2008, or at least the first 2 or three months of 2008.

Finally, for the next 14 weeks, CBR will be featuring the cards from Marvel’s Skrull’s Most Wanted playing card deck week is the worst of the worst, the “Aces” of the deck, which basically amounts to the Illuminati, minus Dr. Strange, because nobody messes with Dr. Strange. Or because Dr. Strange is a Skrull like Blackbolt. It could go either way, really. I’m interested to see if Marvel will actually release these cards as a promo item; that could be a cool collector’s item.

That’s all for now, folks. Like I said before, I plan to get some real content up soon, after I catch up with a bit more comics reading.

tag: Administrivia, comics, ComicSpace, Illuminati, Keith Giffen, Marvel, Messiah Complex, Miscellany, Quesada, Skrulls, x-men

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Hey all, just a quick note to say I’ve returned from the land of crappy dial-up and I’ll probably be posting a little somethin’ somethin’ once I get caught up on some work backload.

Happy New Year to you all, I hope everyone had an excellent holiday.

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Another semi-geek thing that I’m into are podcasts, especially podcast novels. I may sit down and write a post one day spotlighting my favorites, but there are two specific podcast novelists that I have a reason to plug today. Coincidentally, they’re also my two favorites, but that’s not really the point.

JC Hutchins recently completed the podcasting of his Seventh Son trilogy, which was one of the greatest stories I’ve heard or read in a long time. JC explains the plot better than anyone, so I’ll just quote him:

7th Son is a free serialized audiobook. It chronicles the story of seven strangers who have been brought together after the recent assassination of the U.S. president. These men quickly discover they all appear to be the same man … with identical childhood memories.

Unwitting participants in a human cloning experiment, these “John Michael Smiths” have been assembled to catch the man who murdered the president. Their target? The man they were cloned from; the original John Michael Smith, code-named John Alpha.

In creative writing classes, they teach you that writing a good “hook”, or opening line to your story, is essential. I can’t think of one better than “The president of the United States is dead. He was murdered in the morning sunlight by a four-year-old boy…”

Last year for Christmas, JC released the song “Seven Days of Clonemas” sung by fan favorite character Kilroy 2.0. This year, JC has released Clonemas Don’t Be Late. I strongly recommend both for your caroling needs.

Also, congratulations to JC for inking a deal with St. Mary’s Press to publish the trilogy in print! Book One: Descent will be released in 2009 - expect to see me pimping it.

Scott Sigler is the diabolical genius behind several excellent podcast novels, like Earthcore, Infection/Infected, The Rookie, Ancestor, and the currently running Nocturnal. Sigler is a master of horror and suspense, putting out work that - in my opinion - is better than the more recent work of his idol, Stephen King. One thing that really makes Sigler’s work stand out to me is that the underlying plot of his novels has basis in scientific fact or theory. He may take it to a crazy place sometimes, but he’s not completely pulling it out of thin air.

Sigler also recently inked a deal with Crown Publishing. The first book under this deal, Infected, will be released in April 2008. You can pre-order it now from Amazon.

And I believe that’s all for now. As I mentioned before, I’ll be going on vacation to a place with little to no internet access, so posts aren’t likely until I get back on January 4th. Happy Holidays to all of you and I’ll see you in the new year.

I leave you with this image from the late great Mike Wieringo, found via the Perhapablog.

tag: Podcasts, JC Hutchins, 7th Son, Clonemas, Scott Sigler, Infected, Mike Wieringo, Tellos, Happy Holidays, Merry Christmas, See Ya Next Year

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