The homey Julian Lytle has started up a webcomic called Ants, which stars, yeah, ants. They talk, they play games, and they’ve got flavor. Get up on it before it gets popular so you can shame the scrubs who discovered it late. He updates once a week right now.
Adam Rosenlund, the guy who drew this:
He’s pushing out rap & comic remixes over there, like Darkseid x Suge Knight or Biggie Smalls x MODOK. Go give it a look, bookmark it, and grab the RSS. It’s clever, and totally worth it. In his own words:
Destroy All Mics! is a visual mash-up of hip hop and comic icons. Sometimes the connections are merely physical in nature, some are derived from word play, and some draw loose paralells to the more dramatic stories found in each. That’s what these are all about. Suggestions are also welcome!
Are you digging his Top 70 Deadpool Moments? Take a moment and digg it, too! If digg isn’t your thing, but you’re on Comics Blips, you can vote them up there, too.
I’m looking forward to Jimmy Palmiotti, Justin Gray, and Amanda Conner’s Power Girl. I dig Graymiotti’s work when they get a chance to tear things up in their own corner of things without worrying about whatever greater status quo there is. Their Jonah Hex is one of my top three books coming out of DC/Vertigo, easy. Over at Marvel, they did the sublime Daughters Of The Dragon
The latter two books are pretty cheesecake, but fun. Gray and Palmiotti give their main characters (Colleen Wing and Misty Knight in one, Wolverine and Black Cat in another) a lot of personality and manage to come up with some pretty funny funnybooks, without veering into outright comedy quip-a-minute Deadpool antics. The art helps a lot, too. The pair have an eye for talent, nine times out of ten, and Khari Evans/Joseph Michael Linsner are pretty great collaborators.
I’m looking forward to Power Girl because adding Amanda Conner into the mix is just icing on the cake. Other than being Palmiotti’s wife, she’s also an amazingly good cartoonist. Her comics look like Janelle Monae’s music sounds— just full of fun and eagerness and personality. They’re like the bit at the end of ’80s teen movies where Ferris Bueller has won, the loser got the girl, and everyone is dancing. They’re happy. And yeah, they’re a little bit sexy, too. Conner draws cute people doing neat things. That’s probably why she’s on the book in the first place.
If you put out a book that’s just Amanda Conner, Philip Bond, and Cameron Stewart trading pages on art, well, you’d have a hit. Doesn’t even matter what it is, I don’t think. I’d read what they draw regardless. Not liking Amanda Conner is like not liking air, only worse.
DC’s blog “The Source” (no benzino) recently posted two new variant covers for Power Girl #3 and #4 by Guillem March, artist of the upcoming Gotham City Sirens. March is a pretty good artist, but not really my thing. These covers, though, are emblematic of my main problem with more than a few books in DC’s line right now.
(the thing about “parents just don’t understand” is that they do understand. they are just smarter than you think they are, and generally smarter than you.)
The more I think about it, the less I have to say.
100 Bullets is really a series that speaks for itself. The craft and love that went into it shows on every page. You’ve got a ton of fully-realized characters, a mega-arc that gives up amazing chances for discussion and speculation, and a concept that could go on forever.
The main reason why I just did five days straight of images is because I know that fans of the series, those who stuck with it and came out on top, are gonna get it. You see “Jungle or zoo?” and know what it says about Jack’s life. You can look at a single panel of Remi Rome and see his try-hard swagger. You see “Pun. First syllable a PUN-ish-ment,” and think back to how Loop went from a boy to a man, and ended up smarter than anyone else expected.
The thing about being a comics reader is that you come to expect a certain kind of storytelling. X-Men, Superman, Green Lantern, Spider-Man, all of those feature characters, but aren’t really about the characters. They are corporate icons, mascots, and on some kid’s underwear. They can’t change too much, so all of the bang of the characters has to come from action. It’s Frank Castle putting on some superhero gear, holding a gun, and saying something out of an action movie. It’s Hal Jordan once again proving that he’s the prettiest princess on the block by overcoming everything and everyone. And, at the end of the issue, everything is back to normal.
100 Bullets is a story about the characters. It’s money shots aren’t all tied up in explosions, headshots, and fist fights. Those are there, of course, and they are good, but the real bang comes from the characters. It’s Wylie and Dizzy reminiscing over lost loves together, the look in a man’s eyes as he sees his brother for the last time, or the quiet respect that everyone has for Mr. Hughes. It’s the quiet goodbye a man gives to his family before he goes off to do some dirty work, and a peck on the forehead that tells you all you need to know about him and his viewpoint on life.
The Trust, the attache, the mega-arc, all of that is wonderful, but for me, the real joy in 100 Bullets is about the characters. It’s about how they bounce off one another and figuring out what they’re thinking. It’s about who, not what.
I discovered 100 Bullets shortly after I got back into comics, and month-in, month-out, it has been heads and shoulders above every other comic that I’ve read. The weakest issues or arcs are only weak by the high standard set by the others. Risso, Azz, and Mulvihill blew me away for six years straight, and have me looking at other comics now with a jaded eye.
Blackest Night and Dark Reign are boring to me. After the deep-seated menace of Lono and his inability to tell right from wrong, Norman Osborn’s Snidely Whiplash antics are cheap and hollow. After reading about Remi Rome being the most cocksure, try-hard, desperate to please young kid on the block, Hal Jordan is a caricature of somebody’s grandpa’s idea of a superhero.
I can’t take all these stories about how Soandso Lass and Generigal are strong female characters and wonderful and et cetera, because they aren’t. They’re stupid, hollow, and empty. The black characters, too. Luke Cage leads the Avengers now? De-evolve, thug, crawl back in the ocean. Loop and Curtis Hughes, Dizzy Cordova, and Megan Dietrich are characters that you can appreciate without having to go, “Well, they’re great, except for…”
You want your strong, fully realized, and respectful characters of whatever race, creed, or sexuality? 100 Bullets has your black dudes, latinas, old white dudes, Russians, whatever.
That’s where 100 Bullets wins. Even with all of the insane acrobatics, intrigues, and unkillable villains, 100 Bullets is real. It gives you characters who you can believe in, characters who seem like people you could actually know, and put them into situations that only make them more interesting. It’s a book that challenges you with its story and forces you to care about the people you’re reading about.
I had six years of glimpses in on these characters that I’ve grown to love. Its quiet moments are just as loud as the bits where someone is being murdered. I’m going to miss it.
Images in this post from Once Upon a Crime
Images in this post from Strychnine Lives
Images in this post from Six Feet Under the Gun
Images from this post from A Foregone Tomorrow
