Quick hits while I’m at lunch at work:
ITEM! Jog wrote a great review of The Spirit over at Comixology. He pins down a lot of what I liked about the movie, and even calls to attention a few things I completely missed, like Spirit’s inability to commit to women means that he also cannot commit to death, who is personified as a woman.

ITEM! I talked about Models, Inc. and Marvel Divas a Saturday ago, wondering if the former had been bumped for the latter. I realized shortly after the post went up that it’s 2009, we have the internet, and you can just email people and ask. I emailed Paul Tobin, asking if the series had been canned, and got a very nice response back. In short, the series is in moderate limbo, but is being reworked. Mary Jane is out, but the series is going to be set in the modern Marvel U. There’s no schedule for it yet, but it isn’t erased. So, cool! I can’t wait to see it. I’m very, very skeptical of a 3.99 price point for any comic, but Models Inc. is just the kind of series I’d like to see more of.

ITEM! I still don’t care about Marvel Divas, though. Doesn’t sound like my kind of book at all.

ITEM! It’s a good week to be Jog, because he also talked about some French comic or something yesterday. (It’s Metabarons.)

ITEM! The only Dark Reign book I’ve really liked so far is Elektra. Zeb Wells and Clay Mann told a fun story of a ninja assassin coming back from the brink. It’s light, but fun work. The other Dark Reign titles? Ehhh. Norman Osborn has been replaced with Snidely Whiplash, and is suddenly the guy who will order people to shoot down a commercial aircraft just to see if maybe the new Iron Maiden (dumb name) is worth bothering with. The Hood is suddenly monologuing his evil little heart out while torturing subordinates, making him a cut-rate Kingpin. I don’t know, it’s just coming off overall lame.

ITEM! I liked Fear Agent, but Rick Remender’s Punisher? I can’t do it, man. I think Punisher really probably died with Ennis to me.

ITEM! I have a similar problem with the X-Men. Mike Carey’s first 12-18 issues were really very good, but the last great run was Grant Morrison’s, at least on the writing side.

ITEM! Speaking of New X-Men, here’s the last word on sexy comics, from New X-Men Vol. 5: Assault on Weapon Plus:

Actually, I was thinking about how weird and sexless and unarousing this is.

from marvel’s essential power man & iron fist volume 1, words by mary jo duffy, pictures by kerry gammill and ricardo villamonte

(i loved every bit of this book. it’s full of great bits with both characters.)

Images from First Shot, Last Call, Split Second Chance, Hang Up on the Hang Low, and A Foregone Tomorrow.

Read the rest of this entry �

I keep trying to think of an appropriate goodbye for 100 Bullets.

In the past year, I’ve lost The Wire, The Shield, and Garth Ennis’s Punisher MAX. After this past Wednesday, 100 Bullets is gone, too. That’s four great pieces of crime fiction, or noir, or whatever, gone in just under a year. It sucks, but they all got to tell their story to the very end. 100 Bullets is probably my favorite of the four, or at least it is right now, and I have this driving need to pay homage to it somehow.

An issue-by-issue, or trade-by-trade, retrospective sounds so unbearably pat and boring that I just can’t do it. I wouldn’t get anything out of it, and neither would you. I think instead, I’m going to do something different from what I usually do.

100 Bullets, 100 moments. I’ve said before that many moments from 100 Bullets stick out in my memory. I skimmed through all 100 issues and found 100 moments I thought I’d share.

The twist is that these aren’t going to be your usual scans_daily-style “Aw man that rules look how awesome that dude is there doing that awesome thing.” 100 Bullets excels in that Azzarello’s words, Risso’s art, and Mulvihill’s colors mesh into an amazing thing. They build characters, whether that character is a person or a city or a car. The storytelling comes from an odd angle, whether it’s from above meathooks or beneath a table.

So, here’s the plan. Five days. Twenty moments a day. I say moments, as there are a few that are full pages, but most of these are just single panels. I’ll put links at the top for the trades represented, but no commentary is coming otherwise. Just panels, posted in chronological order, that show the team at work. There will be cursing, maybe some violence, who knows.

Fans feel free to chime in down in the comments. I’m sure that a lot of these will kick up memories for you. On Saturday, I’m going to do my big 100 Bullets post to close out the week. If you don’t know 100 Bullets, this won’t spoil much, if you care about that kind of thing.

Ten new headers are up, too, to commemorate 100 Bullets week. Check out the whole series on Amazon here, and I’ll catch you in the morning.

Todd Klein, letterer extraordinaire and letterer of the upcoming League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Century, takes on Comic Sans.

It’s a great read, as usual.

Remember Blokhedz? I reviewed it a couple years ago after NYCC2007, shortly after its animated series was announced. The animated series is here, and it’s coming courtesy of Mission G. Click here to watch it, or just check it out right here on 4l!.

I watched it, I dug it, and I’m gonna keep watching. It’s a short start, but a good one. I recognized a few voices (Talib Kweli, Bobbito the Barber, Charlie Murphy maybe) and caught a lot of references. The Dungeon of Rap should be familiar to any Nas fan, for example.

I like it.

Brian Azzarello and Eduardo Risso’s 100 Bullets #100 drops today, and it’s the end of the series. I’m planning on picking my copy after work.

I’m kind of sad about it, but a different kind of sad than I was when I finished the first issue of Flash: Rebirth. Rebirth was a signal that the DC Universe is moving in a direction that is pointedly Not For Me. The end of 100 Bullets is the end of a series that was definitely, 100%, absolutely aimed directly at my temple.

100 Bullets started before I got back into comics, and to be honest, I’m not sure exactly when I started it. I think it’s Thomas Wilde’s fault, and skimming covers and wracking my brain leads me to believe that I began picking it up regularly during the Chill in the Oven arc, mid-2003. I know that I read the first arc, then Counterfifth Detective, and then started over again from the beginning.

Since then, I’ve bought every issue and every trade, something I rarely do. Double-dipping is a sucker’s move, but I dig the series enough that I didn’t mind paying twice. While looking over the covers, I was struck with memories ofa series of moments from the series. The Saddest Thing in the NOLA arc, Cole’s one-shot, the peckerwood joke in Chill in the Oven, the history lesson in issue 50, Lono and Loop’s discussion of the d-spot, Victor Ray indulging himself on a mission by doing the Frank Castle thing, Graves losing it when someone important dies, Dizzy’s ascendance, Lono’s look as he realizes that he killed a friend, the teenage pregnancy drama that plays a background role to Graves telling a mother exactly why her daughter died, Remi Rome going from amazing character to my most hated and back around again, the way that Loop’s dad was Mr. Hughes to the Minutemen, never ‘Curtis.’ Dave Johnson’s amazing covers.

These are just moments in the series. The moments build to the story arcs. Dizzy going from hood rat to high class. Loop learning how to be a man via Graves’ guilt over how Loop’s father was treated. The reconnection and dissolution of the Minutemen once again. The fall of the Trust.

It’s a series I’m very fond of, and was hands-down the best comic of the week each and every time. It’s one that rewards repeat readings, and even readings where you skip all of the words and just take in Eduardo Risso’s art. It made me a believer in Vertigo in a way that Sandman and the rest of the boring fantasy books that’d previously made up the bulk of Vertigo didn’t.

100 Bullets was, for me, a Thing. It’s the only comic I’ve bought for six years straight, month-in, month-out. It was my only mainstay, and now it’s gone. I think the comics world will be poorer without it. I can’t think of a comic I’ve enjoyed as consistently as 100 Bullets. I can’t even think of a creator who’s delivered as consistently as Azz and Risso have.

100 Bullets is The Symphony. It’s talented creators dropping in, doing some amazing work, and dropping out, leaving the track, or the genre, or the industry, or their peers, a drooling and shuddering mess. It’s Wu-Tang Forever, with RZA’s arrogant insistence at the end of Bells of War, halfway through Disc Two, that Wu-Tang Forever is so ahead of its time that “niggas ain’t gonna figure it out til the year Two-G.” It’s Raekwon on The Closing on the same record, explaining that he looks at other emcees and realizes that they’re going to stay garbage because they don’t know any better.

Azzarello and Risso’s 100 Bullets is a challenge. It’s saying, “Look, we did this. This is us. Ante up.”

I’ll be sorry to see it go. I keep thinking that I want to do this big, bang-up, blow-the-doors-off outrospective, but I don’t even know if I know where to start or if I even should. Luckily, Tucker’s got an Off the Shelf for us, and I hope to see Matthew Brady writing about it, too. I really enjoyed his Monster series, though I don’t think I ever remembered to link to it, and I know he’s a fan. I’m curious to see what kind of send-off the best comic book to come out of Time Warner will receive.

100 Bullets is 13 volumes, and pretty cheap on Amazon. You can catch each volume for around ten bucks new, less from a third-party seller. In fact, the first book’s like five bucks right now. Links below. If you haven’t started, you should. I’m not at all exaggerating when I say that it’s easily my favorite comic, and one of the most rewarding I’ve ever picked up. Click here to look at the entire 100 Bullets catalog on Amazon.

from marvel’s supreme power: nighthawk. words by daniel way, art by steve dillon.

(when it comes to supreme power, daniel way > jms. his nighthawk is like batman after waking up on the wrong side of the bed.)

I had a weird realization at some point last week, I think it was. I started writing about comics a little over four years ago on livejournal, in January 2005, and moved to blogger and my own URL on March 25. I drafted Gav and another friend to help write and we puttered along until September ’05, where we petered out. In November, I moved the blog to WordPress, losing the blogger posts in the process, and relaunched. Check the rhyme. Once we got going, we kept going. I’m not even remotely happy with my old posts, but that’s just me. Four years later and a couple roster changes later and we’ve got a great crew, varied tastes, and writers I would read even if this weren’t my blog.

4l! has a new logo now, courtesy of my friend Adam Rosenlund. I asked, he delivered, and I left impressed. We’re reworking the headers to fit the new logo, too. Rather than doing a cool comics scene or something super dialogue heavy, we’re going to post ones that are just great examples of comics art. The four we have up for this week are pretty easy. There’s a cool Reed Richards panel, a Venom bit for Gav, a Batgirl for Esther, and a Peter Parker for me. We’ll keep it moving with these, so that there’s always something new for you to see up top.

I’m thinking of new things for 4l! for 2009. I already have some things in the works, but give me time. If you absolutely can’t get enough of us, you can follow me on Twitter for a daily dose of disrespect and music references.

MODELS, INC. #1 (of 4)
Written by PAUL TOBIN
Pencils by VIÇENC VILLAGRASSA
Cover by SCOTT CLARK
Fashion Week is always a hectic time for models, and this year is no exception. Between escaped wolves, robbery attempts, and overly friendly police officers, Mary Jane Watson, Patsy Walker, Jill Jerold, Chili Storm and Millicent (Millie the Model) Collins are testing the limits of their endurance. But when a brilliant young set designer is found murdered with three bullet holes in his back, and Millie proves to be the prime suspect, the models are forced to play detective in order to save one of their own!
32 PGS./ Rated A …$3.99

MODELS, INC. #2 (of 4)
Written by PAUL TOBIN
Penciled by VIÇENÇ VILLAGRASSA
Cover by SCOTT CLARK
Millie Collins suspected of murder? Could it get any stranger? How about when she’s linked to a second murder by a policeman who’s intent on making a name for himself, and who has romantic intentions on Mille? It will take the investigative skills of Chili Storm and Mary Jane Watson, along with the ever-helpful Peter Parker, in order to turn up the clues to turn Millie loose!
32 PGS./Rated T+ …$3.99

Anybody remember Marvel’s Models, Inc.? Paul Tobin and Viçenç Villagrassa have been working on Marvel’s all-ages Adventures books. Models, Inc. was to have been a book edited by Mark Paniccia, who just this past week released the delightful debuts of the all-new Savage She-Hulk (Fred van Lente/Peter Vale) and Exiles (Jeff Parker/Salva Espin). Looking over Paniccia’s profile on Comicbookdb.com reveals him to be a pretty solid editor. He was behind Agents of Atlas, Daughters of the Dragon, the Franklin Richards books, the New Warriors, Spider-Man Loves Mary Jane, and (word to Gavok) Marvel’s recent trips back to the What If? well. He’s delivered on some pretty fun and engaging comics concepts, and put his faith in a lot of the non-Bendis/Brubaker/Millar guys at Marvel to great success.

The mini-series was supposed to start in February, after being solicited in November, but we’re two months past that now and Marvel’s just announced a new series, Marvel Divas.

This also seems like the perfect time to announce our Marvel Divas limited series, beginning in July, from Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa and Tonci Zonjic, featuring some of the Marvel Universe’s greatest female heroes in a way you haven’t seem them before. I’ll let Roberto explain:

“The idea behind the series was to have some sudsy fun and lift the curtain a bit and take a peep at some of our most fabulous super heroines. In the series, they’re an unlikely foursome of friends–Black Cat, Hell Cat, Firestar, and Photon–with TWO things in common: They’re all leading double-lives and they’re all having romantic trouble. The pitch started as “Sex and the City” in the Marvel Universe, and there’s definitely that “naughty” element to it, but I also think the series is doing to a deeper place, asking question about what it means…truly means…to be a woman in an industry dominated by testosterone and guns. (And I mean both the super hero industry and the comic book industry.) But mostly it’s just a lot of hot fun.

Robot 6 has an interesting comments thread about the series and other issues.

Here’s the cover, which interestingly enough is named “vixens001_cvr.jpg.” Was the series Marvel Vixens at first?

In the writer’s own words, the series is “sudsy fun” and “naughty” and “hot fun.” Contrast this with Paul Tobin’s description of Models, Inc.:

The series itself is a murder mystery. The models are all staying at one of Tony Stark’s Central Park mansions because it’s Fashion Week in New York, and they have so many events to attend that they decide on a central location. Fashion Week is already buzzing because of the murder of a well known socialite and the disappearance of several important works of art by artists such as Otto Dix and Egon Schiele.

Then, when a second murder takes place, Millie Collins becomes the prime suspect, and it’s up to the models to band together to unearth the real murderer. Crime, suspense, and high fashion. Alert the paparazzi!

One has a description that’d fit with your average Skinemax movie, or Bill Jemas’s Bad Girls for Fanboys movement. The other sounds like, well, a murder mystery. Jeff Scott Campbell’s cover is, well, a J. Scott Campbell cover. Big on Comic Book Sexy, low on variety. Models, Inc.’s covers were take-offs on the stereotypical Cosmo/Vogue covers, Glamourpuss-style.

When you put them up side-by-side like this, I feel like one of these books would be interesting and fun, and the other wouldn’t. Obviously, I’m pre-judging here, but as a consumer, that’s what I’m supposed to do. Models, Inc. sounded like the kind of self-aware-but-funny comic I dig these days, and fairly non-exploitative. Marvel Divas sounds like the opposite.

I couldn’t find a statement from Marvel online about its cancellation, but the series has been wiped from Marvel’s site entirely. So, what happened to Models, Inc.?