Time for another look at– holy shit, we’ve got new headers now! Look at the top of the site! Then refresh a bunch of times! Plus the site is all different and rounder now! Neat!

Amazing Spider-Man #623
Mark Waid, Tom Peyer and Paul Azaceta

Deadpool Team-Up #895
Christopher Long and Dalibor Talajic

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Time for another go at trying to portray the comics we’ve read in one singular panel. I was asked to go with the last page of Secret Warriors, which is great in its own right, but a little too weird out of context.

Amazing Spider-Man #622
Fred Van Lente, Joe Quinones, Greg Weisman and Luke Ross

Batman and Robin #9
Grant Morrison and Cameron Stewart

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It’s a pretty big week for this installment. How big? This one’s all me. Ow, my wallet.

Authority: The Lost Year #6
Grant Morrison, Keith Giffen, Brian Stelfreeze and Joel Gomez

Avengers vs. Atlas #2
Jeff Parker, Gabriel Hardman, Scott Kurtz and Zach Howard

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Marvel recently released the Deadpool variant cover to Siege #3, the one that’s tied to their promotion involving Blackest Night covers. Here it is:

Never change, Marvel.

More meat than last week. Also features Deadpool’s new black glove fingernails. hermanos pointed them out to me and I can’t not notice them throughout that issue. Why does Deadpool now have black glove fingernails? Why?

Blackest Night: Wonder Woman #2
Greg Rucka, Nicola Scott and Eduardo Pansica

Deadpool Team-Up #897
Adam Glass and Chris Staggs

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I was never an Ian Churchill fan, even as a kid. I have some friends who really dig his stuff on the various X-books in the ’90s, but I never got into him. And when I came back to comics, his art was of a style that I definitely wasn’t into. It was a little too derivative of Jim Lee, but even more stereotypically Image Comics– unlikely breasts, boobsocks, stick legs, super long torsos, poor acting, etc. He was, in essence, what I didn’t like about superhero books.

Back in October, I read interview on CBR with Churchill about him doing an arc on Jeph Loeb’s Hulk. The stuff about him adjusting his style in the ’90s to be more like Jim Lee in order to get more work was interesting. I’ve heard about Herb Trimpe trying a similar tactic and not meeting with much success. I read the interview, found it a little interesting, but still decided to skip the issues. How different could the style be? It’d still look more or less like his work on Supergirl, right?

I skipped the first couple issues and didn’t think twice. I saw the cover to the second issue on a wall at the comic shop and was kinda surprised. It really, really didn’t look like Churchill’s style. Lots of spot blacks, no crosshatching, the hair wasn’t plasticky… weird. So I picked it up. That ended up being a good decision.

I really dig Churchill’s new style. He’s jettisoned a lot of what I disliked about his work and come up with something really interesting and neat. You can look at it and see some of Churchill’s flourishes. The chins are undeniably Churchill’s work, but overall, his style is something like Dan DeCarlo meets Ed McGuinness, with a small dose of Humberto Ramos in terms of character anatomy and structure. It looks good on the page, and is appealingly “superheroic” in terms of style.

I’m enjoying Churchill’s storytelling a lot more now, too. He’s still using around the same number of panels as in his prior work, but the cleaner style gives him room to make the faces more cartoonishly expressive. The figure work is better, too. There are still muscles stacked on muscles, but the lack of excessive detail makes it look cleaner, less cluttered, and more attractive.

A few artists I like have gone through serious changes to get where they are now. Chris Bachalo reinvented himself as as a monster of an artist, a guy who can make anything look good even as he weirds it up to the max. Travis Charest used to be a crappy Jim Lee knockoff before he was a master of hyperrealism. Patrick Zircher went from doing okay middle of the road stuff on Cable/Deadpool to knocking Terror, Inc. all the way out of the park with a fresh new style. (Ask Carla about his work on BLOOD COLOSSUS sometime.) With able assistance from Mark Farmer on inks and Peter Stiegerwald on colors, Churchill has managed to reinvent himself for the better.

It’s a special Christmas edition of TWiP! I’m not just talking about Guy Gardner’s festive new Lantern color scheme, but at the end of this week’s entry, we have a little extra surprise from guest panel guy David Uzumeri!

Anti-Venom New Ways to Live #3
Zeb Wells, Paulo Siqueira and Marco Checchetto

Authority: The Lost Year #4
Grant Morrison, Keith Giffen and Darick Robertson

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Absolutely massive set of comics this week. What If: World War Hulk is my pick of the week, even despite the crappy Thor story and the even worse comedy stuff at the end. The main story rocks.

Adventure Comics #5
Geoff Johns, Sterling Gates, Jerry Ordway and Francis Manapul

Batgirl #5
Bryan Q. Miller and Lee Garbett

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-Wait, who is that? Who let Gavin on the podcast? Did he hack my computer?
-Theme music: 6th Sense’s 4a.m. Instrumental
-I Made Esther Read: Street Angel, by Jim Rugg and Brian Maruca. Check out this clip.
-Deadpool. What’s the deal with that guy? And Agent X, remember that?

And of course, there’s bad news– the Fourcast! is on hiatus for at least a month and change. Unavoidable technical issues, time, unrelated stress, blah blah blah– we’ll be back at some point in January, most likely. Call it a holiday, and call it a comeback in a month or so.

Subscribe to the Fourcast! via:
–Podcast Alley feed!
–RSS feed via Feedburner
–iTunes Store

This time, I’ve sadly been left high and dry by my 4th Letter comrades. Feh. Guess I’ll have to take care of this week myself. Maybe they won’t have anything to add to my weekly segment, but I’ll have something to add to their little podcast tomorrow, just you wait and see.

Adventure Comics #4
Geoff Johns, Sterling Gates and Jerry Ordway

The Authority: The Lost Year #3
Grant Morrison, Keith Giffen and Darick Robertson

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