www.CafeSale.net – bengal

I forget how I found this (a link off a link off a link off a link), but I really, really dig this art. Some of it is nsfw, mind, but the Catwoman pieces are the bomb and the general sense of fun and style is prevalent. The website design is also pretty tight. Go give it a look. I’m probably going to go through the site (once i get some free time) and work up some iPhone wallpapers.

Where am I gonna be tonight? Isotope, the comic book lounge in never sunny San Francisco. Chris Onstad, writer of Achewood, is doing a signing to celebrate the release of his Great Outdoor Fight hardcover. It lasts from 8-midnight.

People, drinks, food, music, buttons, and signings. Sounds like a good mix.

If you aren’t reading Achewood, you should be.

(ps, tupac died twelve years ago today!)

Any video game fans here reading 4l?

Anyone opposed to more video game/movies/music content?

edit: also, you can find me on Xbox Live as hermanos or on PSN as fourel. If you add me, throw me a message letting me know who you are.

Funnybook Babylon – Archives – Tough Love Tuesday Breaking News: Insufficient Censorship

The reason behind All-Star Batman & Robin the Boy Wonder’s recall revealed! The censor bars didn’t print properly a whole bunch of times! Cusswords are visible! Look out! Don’t click through if you don’t want to see Batgirl being super-sassy:

(this makes the comic late, which sucks)

Marc Bernardin, Adam Freeman, and Afua Richardson created Genius.

In thanks for them making it, you should take advantage of this being the last day to vote and Vote for it in Top Cow’s Pilot Season 2008 contest.

Also, Adam Freeman wrote this.

Go, vote.

There’s a line from the Atmosphere song “Always Coming Back Home To You” that I like and reference probably too often for my own good. “I swear to God, hip-hop and comic books were my genesis.” It was true when I first heard it and it’s still true. Rap and comics have been two of the handful of constants in my life so far. It isn’t exactly a question of which one I like more. It’s more that both have had different effects on my life.

Comics helped a lot in teaching me to read. Obscure science terms, made-up words, and things that sounded like made-up words but were actually real words after all littered my early comics reading experience. So, comics taught me a love of words.

Rap taught me to love wordplay. It’s about taking a phrase you know and turning it on its head. High School Me would hate me for being about to quote Young Jeezy, but this part from his verse on Put On is great and he’s from the next town over, so suck it, 2001-me.

Passenger’s a red bone, her weave look like some curly fries
Inside’s fish sticks, outside’s tartar sauce
Pocket full of cel-e-ry, imagine what she telling me
Blowing on asparagus, the realest shit I ever smoked
Ridin’ to that trap or die- the realest shit I ever wrote
They know I got that bro-cco-li, so I keep that glock with me

And yeah, it’s typical ignant thug rap– this is still Jeezy, after all. He makes the extended food metaphor work, and for some reason, it ends up being pretty clever. There are other great examples. Big Pun had that killer tongue-twister flow (Dead in the middle of little Italy, little did we know that we riddled some middleman who didn’t do diddly) and Ghostface is still rap’s very own Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

Another place where rap and comics intersected for me was in that they both portrayed heroes and role models for a very young David Brothers to take in. The difference between the two is that comics had heroes, black or white, who were generally written for white guys by white guys, while rappers were generally black guys who were usually aimed at a black audience.

The majority of black comics characters were, for years, either black characters filtered through an extremely non-black lens (Storm), unrelateable (Panther), parodies (Cage), or awful (Bishop).

Rap offered a slightly different perspective. I was just old enough to sneak in on the tail end of the pro-black movement of rap. Midnight Marauders hit when I was nine or ten (along with the Malcolm X movie). I had the Wu. I had Nas. I had a ton of people who taught me that being black is awesome, having money is great, and that crime is exciting. When it came down to choosing Iron Man or Tony Starks… I went with Ghostface Killah.

Most comics, with the notable exception of Milestone and occasional “outreach” books, aren’t aimed at me. That’s changed somewhat in recent years, but Marvel and DC are still relying on the same fanbase they’ve had for forty-plus years.

This brings me around to what I think are the two most important books in comics since… I dunno, the Jemas-era began. Nat Turner by Kyle Baker, and Sentences by Percy “MF Grimm” Carey and Ron Wimberly are books that are aimed at me. They’re by black people and aimed, if not at black people directly, at a wider audience than just “fanboys.”

Both aren’t necessarily the most marketable “comic books.” One is a book about a guy whose claim to fame was killing a lot of white men, women, and children after he was given a sign from Heaven. The other is about a rapper, but the greater message isn’t about “bitches and switches and hoes and clothes and weed,” which is what you’d usually see out of basically anything involving rap in the media at large.

Sentences was probably my favorite complete book out of ’07, including single issues, and it totally got robbed for that Eisner. I think it’s an important step in a lot of ways, and the least Vertigo-style title Vertigo has published. It isn’t a long and boring, goth-y, about vampires, religion, or your usual Vertigo cliche of choice. It’s just about a dude, his life, and the choices he made that got him to where he is now. It’s also about growing up black, falling into traps, and digging your way out of a hole you’ve dug for yourself.

There were any number of scenes and references in that book that I immediately got. I thought the bit with the mom in the beginning was hilarious. Why? Probably because I’d seen my mom swing on a grown man for messing with my little brother and any number of verbal sonnings while out shopping. I can relate to Carey’s love for his grandmother because we’re on the same level there.

In a very real way, it’s a book about me and my experiences. It’s about someone who looks like me, has gone through some of the same things I’ve gone through, listens to the same music, and even hung out with some of my own heroes. I don’t have to play down the obvious racial and class differences between me and most comics characters. I don’t have to worry about shocked stares when I say I haven’t heard of some apparently huge band. It’s the power of shared experience working in my favor. I finished the book feeling like I could go “Midnight Marauders or Low End Theory?” and “Ether or Takeover?” and get into an hour-long fight or an hour-long conversation, depending on the answer.

(Midnight Marauders and Ether are the right answers.)

Kyle Baker’s Nat Turner was my Sentences for when it came out. I recently re-read it on a long plane ride few weeks back, and finishing it prompted a few things. First, it made me realize that I had to do this essay. Second, I resolved to give the book (which I had just purchased a few days earlier) away the first chance I got, because people need to read it. And I did.

Nat Turner, the person, has been an interesting figure to me since I first heard of him. It could have been from a rap song, or from one of the footnotes in a school textbook that Baker mentions in his text pieces in the book. I know (off the top of my head) that he was mentioned on Wu-Forever, Sean Price’s Brokest Rapper You Know, and the Talib Kweli + dead prez joint off Lyricist Lounge.

Nat’s claim to fame, and I’m not embellishing anything here, is that he killed fifty-plus white men, women, and children. He led the largest slave rebellion in the States. Obviously, he was a murderer, and that isn’t something to be proud of. At the same time, though, he stood up tall and spat in the face of a system and country that believed him to be less than human. There’s a lot to appreciate in this story, though that probably makes me sound like a sociopath.

Baker’s approach to the book gives it a storybook kind of feel. There are only a few word balloons, leaving the action to stand on its own. The majority of the text is taken directly from The Confessions of Nat Turner. It comes in chunks and often relates to the scenes being depicted on the page, but its tone is jarring. The rebellion happened 160-some years ago, so the language and times are different. It’s like peeking into another world, or reading about a faraway land. The essay is very methodical and sometimes stilted. Premediated is an apt description, as well.

The art sells every emotion and scene perfectly. Sadness, determination, hate, and love all come through clear as a bell. One scene expertly shows a situation in which killing your own child is the greatest act of love you can perform. It’s depressing, it’s tough, and it’s a downer, but it’s a necessary one. It’s like medicine. You have to take it, and after you get past the taste, you’ll feel better.

I feel like it’s a book you should have to read at least once. It tells a story that doesn’t get a lot of attention, but is still well-known and loved by a lot of people. It’s a story that illuminates both universal rights and what happens when someone is pushed too far and too hard.

Nat Turner and Sentences were like comics dipping their toe into the pool. They were warning shots. They are saying “We are here, we have always been here” to the industry and “Don’t go anywhere, there is something here for you, too” to the audience. I really wish that these books had been around for when I was younger. They’re exactly what I was looking for, but didn’t know I was looking for.

It was the equivalent of one of my favorite images from the past.

Now, though, I just want more. My two loves are on speaking terms. Let’s keep at it, yeah?

I’m not kidding, vote for Genius. Do it once a day from here on out. It’s down to the final stretch for voting, and Genius has a chance to take the top spot.

Voting for Genius means a vote for a book starring a young and intelligent black girl who is not afraid to both take no prisoners and do what has to be done because it has to be done. There are no capes, no powers, no shenanigans– just someone who has been born into a role that shows up time and time again. It’s exciting, it’s interesting, and most of all, it’s new. It isn’t Starship Troopers Meets Jaws (“we’re gonna need a bigger spaceship”) or some other dumb high concept book. It’s new and it’s a comic book.

If I absolutely have to sell it to you through a superheroic lens, consider it “What if the spirit of Oracle from DC Comics, Batman from DC Comics, Malcolm X from X-Men, and Huey P Newton from Fantastic Four had a baby and that baby grew up in South Central?”

or

“What If Hannibal (not from the A-Team) was reincarnated into the body of a young girl from LA in the modern day?” if you’re a history buff

or

“What if this was the best new comic idea in years and it didn’t get any traction because you didn’t vote for it“

For serious, do you know a teen who’s curious about comics? Male, female, whatever? You can slide her this book. It’s got the right mix of “Fight the power” and “Knowledge is power” to both educate and entertain. It’s got all the fixings for a good comic and one that can pull someone in. You know how many comics I can give to my cousins? Not very many.

This is one of them. I asked for this comic over a year and a half ago and these people came through. Let’s support this book.

You can read the full issue here if you’re undecided. It’s the kind of idea that’s so awesome that everyone else is like “Ugh, I had that idea ages ago I just didn’t want to do it because it was too much awesome.”

I feel terrible that I didn’t write about it here more, because it’s exactly what I want out of comics. I got to meet the writing team at San Diego, and they were super excited about the book. I didn’t get a chance to chop it up with them, since they were signing at Larry Young’s table and I’d already spent half the con harassing Larry & co, but they’re good people. The artist is an Ormes member, and that makes her good people, too.

Go, vote.

I read SpeedForce.org, and had hyperborea.org in my RSS reader before it turned into/launched a blog. I’m a big Flash fan, and it is the Flash resource as far as I’m concerned. I don’t use it as a resource (like Wikipedia’s intended use) so much as a place to go and find something interesting to read, and something after that, and something after that (like Wikipedia is actually used).

Anyway, an interview went live on their site today with Tom Peyer, outgoing writer on the Flash. It’s a good interview, and well worth clicking through. Here’s an excerpt, though.

SF: Online fan discussions can get rather brutal. Do you keep an eye on fan message boards or blogs, or do you generally keep away from them?
PEYER: There are nice moments. Writing about one of our issues of Flash, a very nice blogger said that he was moved to read a comic that really understood what it’s like to be a parent. I don’t have children, so I took that as a great compliment. The negative posts don’t bother me anymore. The readers paid their money and have a right to express themselves. That doesn’t mean I’ll agree with them. I don’t voraciously consume the comics internet — when I’m not working, I like to read about other things — but I like it.

Is he talking about my Flashy Dynasty post? I think so! That rules.

You can check out my other posts on Flash here. It’s all the tagged ones, anyway. This one by Gavok is probably the best, though.

Four Color Heroines interviews noted bloggers Cheryl Lynn and Valerie D’Orazio, among others, at New York Comic-con 08. I wish that the interviews went a little more in-depth or were just longer in general, as we don’t get much more than a taste of each interviewee.

Couple last hits. Jeff Lester and Graeme McMillan of Savage Critic(s) did their own list, one of them under threat of violence from yours truly.

Besides that, friend of 4l Abby L. hit me with her own list of 50 Things. Check them out.

Firefighter
Daigo of
Fire Company M
“…I am trying to give a name to the force that set them in motion.”
Making comics
Making Comics
Dazzler in the 70’s

Kitty Pryde’s horrible old costumes (rollerskates what)
Days of Future Past
Storm
Nightcrawler
The Wake

Making fun of Liefeld and Land
Please
Save My Earth
Snow falling in Bone
Etta Candy
Brian K. Vaughan

Eyeshield 21
Rose of Versailles
Thor
Hellboy
Strangers In Paradise

Eisner’s Comics and Sequential Art
Runaways
She-Hulk
A Superman for All Seasons
Crime/Horror comics

The convoluted backstory of The Green Lantern, explained to me aloud
by a friend.
Kate Beaton
Lackadaisy Cats
Osamu Tezuka’s Phoenix
Awesome Andy

Big Barda
American Born Chinese
Persepolis
Superman: TAS and Batman: TAS
My LCS – The Source

Checkerboard Nightmare
Spike of Templar, AZ
Oracle
355
Gratuitous male ass shots

And now, my first and benchmark comics: (Note that not all of these
are quality comics…)

What If Volume 2 #89 Spider-Man: Arachnomorphosis
X-Man #34: The Wanted
Disney Adventures’ Bone
Tintin: Cigars of the Pharaoh
The Jar

Cardcaptor Sakura single issues 1-10
Identity Crisis
John Byrne’s She-Hulk
Oh My Goddess single issues
Runaways