4thletter! is:

David! (likes music)
Esther! (likes Batmans)
Gavin! (likes Venoms)

FAQ!

What do you guys like?
good comic books

What do you guys hate?
bad comics (david also hates mediocre comics, but he’s a douchebag)

What do you guys hope for?
that you like reading us talking about comics

Got an RSS feed?
no doubt.

I need more scorn and tangents in my life. Can you help with that?
there is a podcast (the Fourcast!, get it?) where David and Esther talk about comics. subscribe via Podcast Alley , RSS, or iTunes. the podcast is currently on hold on account of Wondercon being the comic book equivalent of a ship filled with bubonic rats, but will probably be back next week.

Who pays for all of this?
David did, then Project Wonderful did, and now Amazon does. click the referral links (generally a book’s title) and use the search box over on the right–that keeps the lights on. or don’t, y’know. whatever feels right.

What’s up with the site, man?
yeah, it has a really unwieldy navigation system, but that is being (er, “will be”) worked on so that you can find stuff worth reading. in the meantime, just use the categories.

Lotta talk about Wonder Woman on Twitter recently, I figure due to the TV show, but she’s a character I could never really get into. My eyes just kinda glaze over. There have been bits and pieces (JLA Earth 2 by Morrison and Quitely, JLA Classified: Ultramarines by Morrison and McGuinness, sometimes the cartoon), but overall? I dunno, never clicked.

When it comes to women from an isolationist Amazon culture turned superhero who has a dopey blond-haired military dude for a love interest and a little sister who is also a hero, Zealot will always have my heart:

She’s basically Wonder Woman + All The Good Parts of Wolverine + Aristocracy + Guilt-free Violence. Wonder Woman’s always felt a little fluid to me, like people couldn’t ever decide what she was beyond “She’s in the Trinity, and sometimes she kills people I guess. Oh, no, wait, killing is wrong, so all of this awesome armor and her armory is uh ceremonial.”

Izza shame there’s only been something like three and a half readable Zealot stories ever, though. Great in theory, mumblemumble in execution.

Words on that one by Grant Morrison, pencils by Jim Lee, inks by Scott Williams, colors by Alex Sinclair. Wildcats #1. #2 is undoubtedly lost and gone forever.

Jay Potts is a cool dude, the creator of World of Hurt, and a blaxploitation genius. His Kickstarter campaign to get his webcomic printed has about seven days and a thousand bucks to go. He’s SUPER close to his goal, so if you’ve got the scratch, you should kick him a few bucks. I think this is something really worth doing, otherwise I wouldn’t be posting about it. For the folks who didn’t see my previous posts, here’s a quote from the campaign:

The first storyline, entitled “The Thrill-Seekers” finds Pastor in the middle of a search for a missing college student named Alicia Patterson. When Pastor’s missing person case turns into a murder investigation, his relentless quest for justice takes him from the city’s ghetto to a secret club of powerful, high society hedonists.

This Kickstarter project was started out of my desire to raise the funds to self-publish a graphic novel which collects the The Thrill-Seekers storyline. The graphic novel will also feature bonus material, such as production sketches, layouts and an introduction by author and filmmaker, David Walker of BadAzzMofo.com. The graphic novel will be an 88-page hardcover book with a landscape format of 13″ X 6.5″ to match the original dimensions of the comic strip. Although the interiors will be black & white, the cover will be in full color. Part of the Kickstarter funds will also be used to pay for an artist to paint over my cover pencils to recreate the classic, pulp feel of a Blaxploitation movie poster.

If you read the interview I did with Jay last year, you know that this guy is seriously talented. Give him a hand.

–The Comic Book Guide to the Mission is an anthology of stories edited and curated by my friend Lauren Davis. She enlisted some great writers and artists to tell stories about San Francisco’s the Mission. There’s a wide spectrum of experiences in the book, and it’s a neat trip through an area that I rarely visit for some reason.

-Jay Potts, creator of World of Hurt, has started a Kickstarter campaign to get his webcomic printed in a nice HC. A quote from the page:

The first storyline, entitled “The Thrill-Seekers” finds Pastor in the middle of a search for a missing college student named Alicia Patterson. When Pastor’s missing person case turns into a murder investigation, his relentless quest for justice takes him from the city’s ghetto to a secret club of powerful, high society hedonists.

This Kickstarter project was started out of my desire to raise the funds to self-publish a graphic novel which collects the The Thrill-Seekers storyline. The graphic novel will also feature bonus material, such as production sketches, layouts and an introduction by author and filmmaker, David Walker of BadAzzMofo.com. The graphic novel will be an 88-page hardcover book with a landscape format of 13″ X 6.5″ to match the original dimensions of the comic strip. Although the interiors will be black & white, the cover will be in full color. Part of the Kickstarter funds will also be used to pay for an artist to paint over my cover pencils to recreate the classic, pulp feel of a Blaxploitation movie poster.

You might remember Jay from this monster interview from last year’s Black History Month series. I’m a pretty smart guy, and I’m smart enough to know that Jay is somebody worth paying attention to. I’m planning to donate to the campaign because, my fetish for digital books aside, this is a book I wouldn’t mind owning in print. World of Hurt is good, man.

-I bought Joell Ortiz’s Free Agent the other day. It leaked late last year on Amazon and was quickly pulled. I forgot about it until recently, and found that it actually came out in February. It’s not bad, maybe a solid B. He uses a little too much hashtag rap (That’s where you kick a punchline and then explain it… Drake.) for my tastes, but Ortiz is an extremely lyrical dude. For every hashtag rap he kicks, he busts out several tongue twisting skyscrapers, so I guess I can’t complain too much. It sticks out like a sore thumb, though. The title is apt–it feels like an album where he’s trying to prove his worth. He raps about himself, rapping, murder, drugs, and women (hip-hop’s favorite subject matter, in order of popularity) and does it well.

The guest features are surprising solid. Joe Crack goes in on his, but the highlight is probably “Put Some Money On It,” where the Lox, especially Styles P, come off real hungry. Jada’s got that old Raekwon slow-flow menace going on, too. “Killing niggas with the flow, H1N1.” “Call Me” makes me hope that Novel and Joell put together a full-length that I can buy some day. They work well together.

Do you get to call it a tribute if you get to keep all the profits and capitalize on someone’s death?

Hey DC, I really, really, really need this to not be true.

FLASHPOINT: GRODD OF WAR #1
Written by SEAN RYAN
Art by IG GUARA
Cover by FRANCIS MANAPUL
FLASH FACT! Africa belongs to him!
One-shot • On sale JUNE 15 • 32 pg, FC, $2.99 US • RATED T

Seriously DC Comics: get a black friend. Male or female, it doesn’t matter, just get one. We’re easy to find. Get one and then ask him if it’s cool to have Africa ruled by a monkey. Just run it by them, real casual-like. “Hey man, what do you think about this?” If they give you the gasface or their eyebrows narrow… change your plans.

How come Africa is always the one continent that someone gets to rule ALL of? No one rules an entire continent in the real world, and Africa has dozens, if not hundreds, of distinct peoples and cultures. I get that treating it as something other than a homogeneous Dark Continent would require, I dunno, opening Wikipedia or something, and that it’s just easier to make up a country with an African sounding name. I get that you guys don’t actually care about colored folks. They’re just action figures yet to be produced, a checkbox waiting to be ticked on the path to a “diverse” universe. Your track record has proven that, and as much as I wish otherwise, I can’t really fault you for it. You’re in the business of making profit, and black people don’t sell to the pet market you’ve groomed. It is what it is. This is the world we live in.

But for really real, though: you seriously need to get a black friend.

‘Cause you’re looking real stupid right now.

catherinethegame.com
07.26.11

CBR is saying that Dwayne McDuffie has died. I’m pretty bummed out. He’d said a couple of nice things about my writing over the past year, which, I dunno, felt like getting a compliment from a father or something. I’ll have more thoughts later, I’m sure, but ugh.

I wrote a bit about Cat Shit One for AOL. You can read that here before watching Cat Shit One in full rightchea:

Or you can buy the DVD or Blu-ray. 30 bucks feels like a lot for 22 minutes, though. I’m torn. I liked it, but I dunno if I thirty dollars liked it.

I liked Deb’s look at the series a lot, too. Great job breaking down the context.

In contrast to the wackness from the other day, here are some people who understand the internet:

-Paul Tobin and Colleen Coover’s Gingerbread Girl is going to be serialized online for free before being collected into a trade. You can preorder Gingerbread Girl or check it out on Top Shelf 2.0. Why is this cool? No particular order: 1) It’s free, which is always a nice price. 2) These are two extremely talented creators doing creator-owned work 3) Top Shelf 2.0 is nice and easy to use.

–Young Justice is DC’s latest stab at a cartoon and it seems pretty okay. I watched the first two and thought it would be something good to binge on when they get like ten episodes down. I don’t have cable, though, which puts me at a disadvantage for watching it. BUT. Episodes go up on Amazon either the same night or the next morning after they air. Here’s a link to “Independence Day, Part 1”, the first episode of the season. It’s three bucks per HD episode or slightly less if you buy a season pass, which will also download episodes for you automatically. I like this, and I like that they’re not fooling around with idiotic delays or exclusivity. If you want to watch it, you can kick Amazon three dollars and watch it. Three bucks adds up over time, but taken in short doses? Easy as pie. All TV shows should do this.

-I wanted to check out that new Sherlock show, but paying seven bucks an episode for a show I’ve never seen, movie-length or not, seems like a bit much to do all at once. I looked up Luther, though, because Idris Elba is that dude and I’d heard that it was great. News flash: Luther is $0.99 per episode in HD, which makes it six whole dollars for the entire first season. Yes: this is good. Probably not sustainable, but if you want to talk about impulse purchases, this is how you do it. Price it lower to sell more.

–Cat Shit One is coming to Youtube for free for two full weeks on Feb 5th, for at least one episode. This story of animals fighting in the MIddle East has had my attention for months now, and this release is great. Skip the first 1:15 of that video (it’s some dumb toy) and flick it over to display in 720p. It looks great, and I can’t wait to see it. If it ends up getting a digital release via Amazon or iTunes, I’m kicking money their way.

–Skottie Young released The Adventures of Bernard the World Destroyer digitally for only two dollars. Bought it sight unseen. Young’s art is dope, and I’m curious to see how he swings when he does creator-owned.