Wonderful Wednesday: THE INVADER

I thought this was really fun. I spent a lot of hours killing Space Invaders in my youth. Now I feel a little bad about it.

GO SEE THE REST OF THE COMIC HERE.

Important Spider-Man trivia to keep you safe from rabid Spider-Man Grammar Police

What with the new Spider-Man movie coming out, there are a lot of people talking about our friendly neighborhood Webhead. Since I care about YOU, the potentially brand-new-to-Spider-Man reader here at BHR, I thought it would be important to point out this little bit of punctuation-related trivia about Spider-Man's name: his name is Spider-hyphen-Man. Spider-Man. Not Spiderman. And if you get it wrong, geeks across the internet will make fun of you. Comics geeks and grammar geeks and (gasp of horror) Comics-Grammar-Geeks. The sort of people who like to write blog posts that say, "I found a mistake on the Internet."

 I know, I know, this probably shakes your world to the core and has you wondering, "What about Bat-Man or Super-Man? How deep does this particular grammar hole go?" Allow Geekdom to help you with this lovely piece of art from Cathy Leamy:

Why is this important now? Because this July Hollywood is re-setting the Spider-Man franchise with a new movie, starting out at the beginning with young Peter Parker in high school and his (original) girlfriend Gwen Stacy back in the picture. It actually looks pretty good. Check it out:

New Avengers Trailer....

FINE FINE FINE! I will go see the new Avengers movie when it comes out. Stop harassing me. SPOILER: Captain America is crushed to goo when Thor uses his hammer to crush him. I'm sorry, but there's no way his shield is going to help him there.

Interview with comic artist M.S. Corley

M.S. Corley is the artist on a comic book mini-series called The Strange Case of Mr. Hyde, which has just been released as a graphic novel/collection this week. The story, written by Cole Haddon, is about a Scotland Yard inspector named Thomas Adye who discovers someone is murdering prostitutes in Whitechapel... a certain "spring-heeled jack" whom no one can catch. Driven to find help in even the most unlikely places, Adye turns to a secretly incarcerated criminal, the infamous Mr. Hyde (from Stevenson's Jekyll and Hyde story). What follows is a bloody, philosophically-oriented thriller as Adye and Hyde attempt to stop the murderer... and Hyde attempts to bring out Adye's darker side. 


RIGHT NOW, M.S. Corley is offering free marker drawings (subject of your choice) if you send him proof that you bought the graphic novel, which is a fun way to get some comics and some original art!


For those who are reading with small kids or are sensitive to language, violence or dark stories, I'd say this book certainly would earn an R rating as a movie, so keep that in mind if you're considering purchasing the book. It's not for kids. 


I asked Mr. Corley to answer a few questions about his work on the series and he graciously agreed:

Mikalatos: So I've heard that writer Cole Haddon chose you as artist based on your unique style. Who are some of your artistic influences?

Corley: I'd say my biggest influence is Mike Mignola, he’s the reason I started reading comics regularly, realizing there was something other than superhero stuff out there (which is a huge genre, but it just doesn’t appeal to me). Other than him I try to find a variety of artists I enjoy and catalog their work on my computer to reference back, be inspired by or just get sketch practice from. To name some names, Akihiko Yoshida, Sam Bosma, Duncan Fegredo, Asaf Hanuka and Tetsuya Nomura.

Mikalatos: Were you a fan of Hyde or supernatural stories in general before you started on this series? 

Corley: Absoultely! I've been a huge fan of supernatural fiction since as long as I can remember. Something about the unknown world of the supernatural has interested me since I was a kid, I remember even back in elementary school I would look up books on Big Foot or UFOs or Ghosts in the library. As I grew older I started reading a lot of the pulp era work, and turn of the century stuff. I love old classic English ghost stories by M.R. James. Other favorites being William Hope Hodgson, H.P. Lovecraft, and Algernon Blackwood. My favorite time of the year for books is right around Halloween as the stores always put out new anthologies of ghost or supernatural stories and I buy up the lot each year.

Mikalatos: You and I have talked a little bit about how we're both Christian, and some of the challenges you face as an artist in the Christian community. What has been your experience with Christians looking at your (pretty dark, pretty violent) comic book series, and how do those two worlds overlap?

Corley: Most of the time it’s negative unfortunately. I think a lot of (perhaps legalistic) Christians don't understand why I would spend my time working on such things. Why draw such worldly things? I imagine they think I should just be drawing pictures of doves and Jesus all day. But this stuff interests me, I like ghosts, I like monsters! That's the kind of guy I am, and I don't believe Jesus looks down on me for it. But I do have lines I don't want to cross, specifically I'm not interested in drawing nudity. Not because I believe the naked body is bad, or sex is bad or anything like that. I just think it’s a slippery slope in the industry. Comics and art can be great without having to constantly draw scantily clad big breasted women running around. That’s why I love Mignola books so much, they're about great stories and great art.

Mikalatos: I understand that Hyde was your first full length comic mini-series. What lessons did you learn along the way as an artist?


Corley's answer to this and other questions (including the concept art that got him the job on this series) are below the cut:

The limitations of a Masculine Christianity, as presented by a romance comic in 1974

Given the recent brouhaha* over John Piper's comments about how Christianity should be "masculine," I thought you might enjoy the comic below. Especially if you're holding a cigar in one hand and a brew in the other with ESPN playing in the background and you're wondering what all them girls are upset about.

Just pretend that Liz says "church" instead of school below. She just wants to live out a masculine Christianity! But now all her friends think she is a "strange girl." You can click on the comic to see it larger.

This comic totally stolen from ComicsAlliance and Young Romance #197.

This comic is from 1974, the year of my birth, nearly 40 years ago. But it's still relevant for comments made in the church last week. Yay.

Responses to Piper's speech came from just about everyone who has a blog**, including but not limited to Brian LePort, John Stackhouse, Scot McKnight,  and Rachel Held Evans, who invited MEN to write in and share their thoughts on the topic and had over 150 responses!

No response, as near as I can tell, from Dr. Piper, either defending or clarifying his view.



*Or was it a BROhaha
** What did people in the church talk about/argue about before the Internet? They must have been really bored.

The new Avengers trailer

Because I worked at a comic book store I am contractually obligated to share this trailer for the Avengers movie here: Of course, since all you non-nerds out there were watching the Super Bowl today, you've already seen it. I didn't, because I was busy organizing my comic books alphabetically by the person who colored it.

Wonderful Wednesday: The Art of Ben Hatke

I stumbled across Ben Hatke's work last week, and had to go search him out online. Short story: charming, wonderful art with charming, wonderful stories. I just put his Zita the Spacegirl book on my "to buy" list because I think my nine year old would go crazy for it.

Here's a comic he put on his blog last week:

Aaaaaawwwww!

Now, go visit his site and say nice things to him. This... I COMMAND!

You guys do obey when I say that, right?

Behold! The Laughing Monk!

Every once in a while I kick around comic book ideas. It would be really fun to write a comic some day. I've got a little secret project brewing that I hope I can share with you soon, together with my new buddy M.S. Corley, but in the meantime I thought I'd show you a comic I started writing and then decided to sit on.

I love Batman, but I miss the old days when he was a shadowy vigilante who used his detective skills and fisticuffs to beat up and outwit the bad guys. The Zorro style Batman, basically. I wanted to write a character who was that sort of guy... protector of the downtrodden, ordinary man, hero. So I came up with The Laughing Monk, a swashbuckling vigilante on the Mexican border who protects the people of the border town of Todos Santos. I sent the script to my friend Steve Downer and he liked it enough to throw me a quick sketch of the Monk... as you can see he kept to the Batman/Zorro inspiration, and I like it a lot!

Here's the script for first eight pages of the first issue, and a synopsis of the first story arc. It would need another draft, for sure There are some things I'd need to change (my Catholic friends, for instance, tell me that the Father speaks like a t.v. priest instead of a real one). I named the main character after my maternal grandfather, just for fun, but if it were ever published I don't know if I'd do that.

Anyway, there you go, some fun for your weekend. Enjoy!

Wonderful Wednesday: What if you mixed "Jaws" with Charlie Brown?

Artist Charles Forsman thought it would be fun to illustrate key scenes from the movie Jaws in the style of the Peanuts cartoons. And he was right!

Be sure to click over to his site, where you can also see Raiders of the Lost Ark with Popeye or buy prints of his work.

Dracula The Unconquered!

My friend Steve Downer has a new comic that just came out today. Steve has been a professionally published comic colorist for a while, but this time he's teamed up with some buddies (and Steve is doing the pencils as well) and they're doing a digital-only launch of their new comic, DRACULA THE UNCONQUERED!

The story follows Dracula as he is resurrected in the early days of the 20th century. He'll be running around the world fighting monsters and ghosts. Is he protecting the world for the world's sake or keeping it safe so he can rule it? Who knows? Anyway, check it out... it's only a dollar! Here's a 6 page preview.

Wonderful Wednesday: The Art of M.S. Corley

Last week I stumbled on the blog of M.S. Corley. I was actually looking at book covers online and discovered his Harry Potter covers that were made to look like old Penguin books. Like this:

As I looked through Mr. Corley's work, I saw a lot of things to like. This picture of Jonah is a favorite:

 It turns out that he's also a professional comic book artist as well, most recently working on The Strange Case of Mr. Hyde, in which a detective requires the help of Mr. Hyde (yup, that one) to track down and stop the terrors of Jack the Ripper (yup, that guy).

I found his work so much to my liking that I dropped him a note saying how much I loved it, and then we started emailing back and forth and then we talked on the phone and, well, suffice it to say we're cooking up some interesting things together which I hope to eventually share with everybody here. In the meantime, go check out his blog and dig around a little, there's a lot of fun stuff on it!

Review: The Last Dragon by Jane Yolen and Rebecca Guay

I just read an advanced copy of the graphic novel The Last Dragon by author Jane Yolen and illustrator Rebecca Guay.

If you're a fan of fantasy fiction, chances are you already know and love Jane Yolen. This story is vintage Yolen... a charming, enjoyable tale with an almost surreal fairy tale vibe, Yolen tells the story of a young woman in a small town where dragons had been completely killed off hundreds of years ago. But a carefully hidden egg has now hatched, and the whole town is in danger, as the last dragon begins eating livestock... and the townsfolk. Panicked, the town sends an envoy to find a "hero" but end up with an opportunistic con man whose most valuable skill is a love for flying kites.

The art by Rebecca Guay (whose work I first saw in the "Books of Magic" comic series) is perfect for the story. She's produced beautifully painted fantasy illustrations throughout, making sure the dragon is fantastical and the people look like someone who could live next door instead of steroid-induced monstrosities (a common issue with comic art).

The story was a lot of fun, with a careful buildup and a satisfying ending. There's no gore or violence despite the fact that multiple people are eaten. I'm thinking of buying a copy for my daughters, who are always looking for a new fantasy book... the story is about courage and the commitment we should have to protecting those around us, and those are great themes for my kids to be thinking about!

All in all, a fun and engaging graphic novel that I can heartily recommend!

Book Berzerker presents Richard Stark's Parker: The Hunter

When I got home from class yesterday I was excited to see that my copy of Parker: The Hunter had finally arrived.

Adapted from Richard Stark's novel of the same name, Hunter is the story of a criminal named Parker who is double crossed by his wife and partner and left for dead. But he's not dead, and he shows up with a cold, calculating plan for revenge. Parker is played out with almost machine-like implacability, but that's just a mask for the raging emotions underneath.

This book (Darwyn Cooke's doing) has some of the most gorgeous sequential art I've seen in a long time. It's well worth your time to click through the link above and click "search inside this book" to see a few pages. The whole thing is done in black and white with blue shading. I'm about halfway through the book right now and if you're a fan of Chandler, Connelly or crime fiction in general, this is a book you're going to want to pick up.

Campus Crusade for Christ in the Funny Pages

This last weekend was Free Comic Book Day... my kids got an Archie comic and liked it so much that I decided to go back and look around and see if I could find another one for them. What I found was an old Spire Comics "Christian" Archie comic called Archie's Sonshine.

Of course the kids love it.

I liked this bit where Ethel becomes a Christian and then heads off to the beach with her Four Spiritual Laws:

Archie isn't thrilled about that way of doing things, but Betty says there's nothing wrong with it. Notice also the cameo of the swinging, bearded hep cat who shows up on the beach in his van to tell all the kids about God (you can see what he looks like in the top panel of the page below).

In the end, I thought this was a funny little reminder of how present Campus Crusade for Christ was in the mainstream Christian culture in the 1970s. I'm guessing it has been a long time since a CCC tool was referenced in a comic book... this one is from 1974, the year I was born!

Anyway, enjoy (if you click on the pages you can see them larger). If you want to see full Spire Comics that have been scanned in, check out this page.

Writing a New Book Starting Tonight

Krista's away on a wives' retreat with other CCC wives tonight and tomorrow night.

Usually this means that I rent crappy movies, feed the kids crappy food, and do my best to explore mindless entertainments too "low brow" for my wife. Tonight I had decided to watch "Shawn of the Dead" because it is something Krista will never, ever watch and I thought it might be fun.

But then I thought that instead I would work on a new book. I finished my previous book a while ago and my agent has been shopping it around. I'm certain that if anyone ends up publishing it that there will be plenty of work yet to do on it, but last weekend a new idea for a book jumped into my brain and has been carving out a little cave for itself in my thought life. When this happens to me I don't usually get much rest from the incessant nagging in my brain until I finish it... so I thought I'd go ahead and use tonight for something a little more productive. I wrote the first chapter late last weekend and wrote chapter two tonight. I've got three all blocked out, and a solid idea of the overall plot, though it's not a beat sheet by any stretch of the imagination. And I have a title I really like, but you'll have to wait a while for that. I want to savor it for a little while.

Anyway, my friend Adrian sent me an email a long time ago about how I should be reading the comic "The Immortal Iron Fist" so when the local comic book shop had a big sale this weekend I bought a big stack of them and have been enjoying them. So I'm off to bed RIGHT NOW to enjoy one more ish of Iron Fist before sleepy time.

And, for those of you who need some feeling of progress, who want to know how much of the book I've written so far (always keeping in mind it's a first draft), here ya go:

3543 / 60000 words. 6% done!

Six percent. Wow. I feel like I've accomplished something now. <--- that's sarcasm for all of you out there with busted sarcasm sensors.

Free comic in my mailbox

Longtime readers already know that I used to work at Flying Colors Comics. In honor of Flying Colors' 20th anniversary, Joe Field (owner of Flying Colors) put together a comic of his own. Today in my mailbox I discovered a copy of that comic, along with a nice note from Libby (Joe's wife). Thanks, Joe and Libby!

Two of my buddies, Adrian and Chris, did the art for one of the stories. The first link is their shared blog, the second is Chris' art blog. Well done, guys.

Free Comic Book Day

This Saturday is Free Comic Day.

You just walk in and pick up your free comics. It's a great way to get a couple of free reads. Of course the plan (like any addictive substance) is that you'll get hooked and keep coming back for more.

I put a picture of one of the free comics on the side here in case, for instance, you happened to be looking at BHR one day and your son (who is too young to watch Spider-Man) happened to see pictures of Jesus and Spider-Man together and tried to convince you that meant he should be allowed to watch it. Now you can go get this comic FOR FREE and then hand it over.

NOTE TO PARENTS: If you have young kids, I'd suggest you read the comics before giving them to your kids. I personally always liked it when my dad read my comics. Now if I find a good one I let him read it when I'm done.

ANOTHER NOTE: If you're in the San Francisco Bay Area be sure to head over to Flying Colors Comics (my former workplace) to snag your free comics, and be sure to say hello to all my buddies there.

Not to sound like a cranky old man

But is it really possible that our house consumes so much toilet paper?

Also, Krista and I played Twister with the kids tonight. Twister is not so easy as I remember.

Lastly--and I'm absolutely certain that none of you care--but there will be a new Ambush Bug miniseries this summer.