2 Weeks Left on Kids Comic Con 2 Africa Kickstarter

Posted on | September 1, 2010 | No Comments

Alex Simmons and Kids Comic Con are trying to go to Africa. They have 14 days left on their Kickstarter fundraiser, and are close to $15,000 shy of their goal. It’s a worthwhile project, and the Kids Comic Con is great on any continent, so help out if you can!

[Links RoundUp] In which I round up links.

Posted on | August 31, 2010 | 1 Comment

I have links.

CBR talks to Nat Gertler of About Comics about reprinting Salimba, the 1986 jungle girl adventure comic written by late Thundercats/Silverhawks/Time Spirits writer Steve Perry and drawn by Concrete creator Paul Chadwick.

Sales of Salimba benefit The Hero Initiative, which helped Perry with things like rent and medical costs towards the end of his life. Says Nat Gertler:

The book hits in October, and can be found in the August Previews – the one that’s in readers’ hands right now – on page 216, item AUG10 0727. One thing that I’ll note is that the more copies that comic shops order up front, the more we print, and that means the more The Hero Initiative gets. Customers can help The Hero Initiative (and me) by letting their comic shop know – now – that they’re going to want a copy.

I loved me some Silverhawks when I was a kid.

–

More stuff about The 99 from Newsarama.

Oh, because I love you, here’s all the stuff from Newsarama about The 99.

And a video from The 99 website. But that’s it. Stop asking. Seriously. Stop. If you don’t stop I will turn this blog right around and go back home!

–

Marvel corrects the Runaways movie casting call.

–

Shawn Martinbrough BET videos? Shawn Martinbrough BET videos.

–

Former Milestone writer John Rozum on Doom Patrol creator Arnold Drake (w/shout out to Matt Baker and It Rhymes With Lust).

–

Are all green comic book/cartoon characters ethnic?

–

From a story about a historical graphic novel set in Brownsville, documenting the neighborhood’s transformation:

For Lemelman, a recent trip to the site of his father’s candy store — now home to an apartment building — was bittersweet.
He saw himself reflected in a young African-American boy he saw playing outside.
“Maybe he’ll write a graphic novel about his own life,” Lemelman said. “One ethnic group comes in and makes the place their own, and then another comes in and has another story to tell. People are coming in all the time and renewing this American experience.”

Just thought it was a nice sentiment, I dunno. I don’t have to explain myself to you people.

P.S. Said graphic novel’s website: http://twocentsplain.com/

–

LA Times George Herimann story about how William Randolph Hearst and other patrons from America’s elite kept Krazy Kat going.

–

A review of a Deadpool Team-Up inked by Black Comix contributor Rob Stull,
with preview of same.

Sort of about Wesley Snipes movies & comics, more about ice skating uphill

Posted on | August 30, 2010 | No Comments

Over at Newsarama, Troy Brownfield is talking about the line Wesley Snipes’ Blade says before he kills the big boss villain Deacon Frost (played by career broody-villain-portrayer Stephen Dorf) in the first Blade movie. Brownfield pegs the line as a comic movie WTF moment, on the scale of Superman’s cellophane chest S.

The Blade dialog in question, for those of you who have not had the pleasure:

I must disagree Mr. Brownfield. To paraphrase the verbal poesy of the Daywalker, it is you who are the metaphorical motherfucker, here attempting to ascend the slippery heights of correctness, perched atop naught but ice skates of ignorance.

Unless, that is, you have accidentally mislabeled this particularly historic moment in the cinema of comics adaptation. Perhaps you instead intended to describe the–if you’ll pardon the pun–sharp wit of Blade as a WTFWITSFGDA?! comic movie moment.

(That’s “What the Fuck Why Is This So Fucking Goddamn Awesome?!”, for those of you out there obsessively updating the Urban and/or Oxford English Dictionary.)

Seriously, are you kidding me? What was he supposed to say? “You’re iced, Frost!” “Suck it, blood sucker!” “Now I will explode you with this dart that I superfluously spin kick into your face, vampire scum!” “Eat it, D-bag!”

No, seriously, are you attempting to poke fun at reality by presenting its direct opposite in internet form? That line is the single moment that upgrades the first Blade movie from solid to WTFWITSFGDA in that most important of movie review metrics, my brain.

(Tangential useless trivia: The success of Blade made Marvel move into more massive movie-making.

“Made Marvel move into more massive movie-making.” Try saying that three times fast.

You will fail.)

My point is this: Blade calling Frost a motherfucker engaged in some serious uphill skating? In icy conditions no less? That was brilliant. That bit of dialog is one of the rare moments where Blade came out of that action hero glower, that “I am the growly vampire hunter killing machine” robo-cadence. “Some motherfuckers are always trying to skate uphill” adds some personality, puts some stank on it, if you will, the verbal equivalent of the ridiculous roundhouse that sends the dart thing into Frost’s dome, making him go all splodey.

Blade 2, was all the weaker in that it lacked any mention of matriarchal copulation. I just checked on YouTube, and when Blade kills Ron Perlman, he says some shit like “You’re blushing,” repeating one of Perlman’s earlier lines. And it wasn’t exactly a brilliant zinger when Perlman said it the first time around.

“Some motherfuckers…,” on the other hand, is like “Yippee-ki-yay, motherfucker,” in Die Hard, “I came to kick ass and chew bubble gum, and I’m all out of bubblegum,” in John Carpenter’s They Live, or “Every time a bell rings an angel gets its wings, motherfucker” in It’s A Wonderful Life (directors cut).

–
Speaking of Wesley Snipes, the former Passenger 57 has collaborated with Training Day director Antoine Fuqua to create a comic called ‘After Dark,’ given a glowing review here by Philadelphia Daily News Comics Guy Jerome Maida. Well, okay, the actual comic is written by industry vet Peter Milligan (of X-Force, X-Statix, Human Target, I think there’s an X-Men run in there somewhere…) and painted by an artist I’m unfamiliar with named Jeff Netrup, but Snipes and Fuqua… created the world of the story, I guess? Anyway, I’m sure Milligan and Netrup wouldn’t look as cool holding up the logo.

I’m curious to see how this is. Usually comics like this run the risk of being too blatant as adaptation-bait, but as a comics writer Milligan is a motherfucker who ice skates downhill. If you know what I mean.

[LinksRoundup] Tepid brain tapioca

Posted on | August 27, 2010 | No Comments

Just a few links to round out the week. I haven’t been sleeping great since my bout with surgery last week, so I’m lacking the usual hilariousness for y’all at the moment. To give you an idea of the current temperature of my brain tapioca: I was watching Sid the Science Kid with my kid this morning, and I almost thought a joke about how rain clouds wear “thunderwear” was funny. Yep. It’s that bad.

So, while I flirt with a weekend coma, and hopefully regain some manner of intelligibility, here’s what you should do:
–

Check out photos from ONYXCON 2010 and its attendant events!
–
Listen to the Comic Book Diner podcast, featuring Rich Faber, John Gallagher, and Black Comix contributor Jamar Nicholas. And while you’re at it, why not catch up with them at this weekend at the Baltimore Comic-Con, Booths #2401 and 2402.
–
Read about Craig Yoe’s new George Herriman book.
–
Gaze upon a preview of Anne Frank: The Anne Frank House Authorized Biography by Sid Jacobson (not Johnson, as a bit of a typo at the link would imply) and Ernie Colón.
–
Learn about the Stanford Graphic Novel Project, a creative writing course where students collaborate to produce honest to goodness (and honestly good) graphic novels. From John Seven’s article:

This year the project published, Pika Don, an extraordinary first-hand account of the aftermath of nuclear explosions by the late Tsutomu Yamaguchi, a Japanese engineer during World War II who somehow managed to witness and survive both the Nagasaki and Hiroshima Atomic bombs. The first book to come out of the SGNP in 2008 was Shake Girl, detailing the life of a Cambodian girl whose family was torn apart by the genocide and who eventually becomes the kept woman of a corrupt public official, a karaoke star and finally the victim of a vicious acid attack. Published in 2009, Virunga is the second book and told the story of the first female park ranger in Colonga National Park in the Congo, who attempted to save gorillas during a civil war.

You can see the GNs online at the project’s site.
–

Charlie Fab Goublie’s Blackbird Arrives!

Posted on | August 26, 2010 | 1 Comment

From Black Comix contributor Charlie “Fab” Goublie comes the news that his graphic novel Blackbird: Growing Pains is now available for purchase. Awesome hip hop martial arts superheroics well worth your comics dollar.

Quoth the press release:
AVAILABLE ONLINE HERE:
http://www.indyplanet.com/index.php?id=3997

“THE ARTWORK IS CRAZY AND THE STYLE IS UNIQUE AND FRESH!” -CARL JONES (Producer for The Boondocks)

Synopsis:
Taking place in fictional city of Grimsburg (aka Grim City), Blackbird tells the story of Antwon Jenkins. When Antwon loses the only family member he has ever known to the streets, he is moved to bring justice to the city by becoming the crime fighting avenger Blackbird. With the support of his new family and friends Antwon struggles to rid the streets of crime and corruption, as well as deal with trials of being a young adult.

Contents:

-Intro by the legendary Dawud Anyabwile (Brotherman)
-Complete story
-Preproduction stetches & designs
-Cover and Promotional art
-Guest Pinups from:
Mshindo, Ashley Woods, John Jennings, Shawn Alleyne, Stanley Weaver, M. Rasheed and Kanji.
-Creator commentary & thank you’s

EXCUSIVE BLACKBIRD 2 “STREET WARS” PREVIEW including:
-First 10 pages of story
-Preproduction sketches
-Character designs & bios
-Promotional art

[LinksRoundup] Comics, I know you can hear me.

Posted on | August 24, 2010 | No Comments

Welcome back, Black Comix fans. I took a few days to myself to recover from various ailments, which of course means I have a metric ton of links to help you while away the hours of whatever it is you’re doing but not paying attention to because you’re screwing around online instead.

But I sincerely hope that, if you are reading this are reading this at work, you’re not like an airline pilot or some manner of nuclear safety engineer or a fry cook, because all of those jobs involve great danger and volatile chemicals, and I don’t want some terrible disaster and loss of life on my conscience because the inescapable wonder that is my scintillating prose and hypnotic hyperlinks made you take your eye off whatever readout, gauge, or tub of bubbling oil you were meant to be watching. If you’re in danger of killing, maiming, or burning someone’s food because you’re online right now, just bookmark this page and come back later, after you clock out. That’s all I ask.

Let’s wade into the linkage, shall we?

–

Mike Thibault posts a cartoon map of Harlem hot spots created in 1932 by Esquire cartoonist and Cuties creator E. Simms Campbell.

Never heard of E. Simms Campbell? Learn more about Campbell at Tim Jackson’s Salute to Pioneering Cartoonists of Color.

–

Comics critics Tucker Stone and David Brothers have been tag-teaming the Don McGregor and Billy Graham Black Panther story “Panther’s Rage” in a fine series of essays entitled Fear of a Black Panther.

Part One: “Panther’s Rage,” Ch. 1-3
Part Two: “Panther’s Rage,” Ch. 4-6
Part Three: “Panther’s Rage,” Ch. 7-9
Part Four: “Panther’s Rage,” Ch. 10-13

The Comics Reporter Tom Spurgeon also chimes in with some discussion of Panther’s Rage as emblematic of 1970s comics, and the sort of “real world” implications of superheroism that became hallmarks of the genre a decade later with Watchmen and Dark Knight Returns. I think Stone said that last bit, too. Maybe Brothers also. I dunno, I read them all at once.

A brief tangent for those of you who may not be big into comics history: This Black Panther story seems tobe an early spark in the explosion of superhero “realism” in the 1980s, with superhero characters re-contextualized in worlds where the characteristics of the genre have consequences that occur based on real world logic. If America has a superhuman, America wins the Vietnam War, shit like that. This was followed by the 90s “grim n’ gritty” explosions and blood and guts and T&A and chromium, and then into whatever era of corporate superhero stuff it is now, characterized as it sometimes is by the women in refrigerators and the Green Arrow’s sidekick Speedy doing heroin (perhaps a speedball shot?) in an alley and then beating the ass off some adjacent alley-dwellers to protect a decomposed dead cat he thinks is his dead daughter and whatnot. Superhero decadence was I believe the term that caught on.

–

Witchita graffiti law worries cartoonist Ram Hull about sketching in public.

–

An interview with animator/comics creator Lien Fan Shen, creator of Taiwan’s first lesbian-themed comic.

–

Vertigo editor Jonathan Vankin talks about Mat Johnson and Simon Gane’s Dark Rain: A New Orleans Story.

–

The title says it all: 5 Black Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Who Use Social Media.

–

Allan Holtz once again celebrates Herriman Saturday by posting an old comic strip by Charles Schul- Oh, wait, no. This one’s by George Herriman.

–

Recent talk about the Islam-inspired superhero comic The 99 from CNN and Newsarama.

–

Stan Simpson talks with Bro./Prof. William Foster about African Americans in comic books.

–

Bit of a work slowdown

Posted on | August 19, 2010 | No Comments

I’m getting some minor sinus surgery tomorrow, and then the school year starts, and only one of those things involves anesthetic, so expect bloggery to be spotty for a couple weeks until I acclimate to things.

To stave off your hunger for things Black Comix, I dropped some links on the Facebook page.

Peace!
Damian

[f-bookRoundup] Some things people have put on the Black Comix facebook page recently

Posted on | August 19, 2010 | 1 Comment

The other day I started telling some folks I don’t see often about Black Comix. And they were like, dude, we’re friends of Black Comix on facebook, we know.
It’s odd, but I tend to forget that other people look at facebook, because pretty much all I do is post links and then get the hell off it. I mean, sure, I peruse my newsfeedstreamwhatever when I open it up, and occasionally I write a goofy status or something, but there’s just something about the anesthetic blue and white of that place that puts me off. That and the enormous time drain it represents, and I’m working on negative time right now. I need 36 hour days and the ability to not sleep. I mean, I sort of have that ability, to not sleep, but my wacky superpower fantasy involves not sleeping and also not feeling like you haven’t slept.
Well, that and the powers to shoot lasers out of my forehead and rearrange reality to suit my fancy.

I would be known as No-Sleep Laserhead: Reality Bender.
Great, now I have another comic script to work on.

Anyway, facebook. Right. It’s there, as the f-book widget to the right proves. And it turns out that most people, unlike my antisocial ass, actually look at the stuff on there. (I knew there was a reason I kept posting those links.)

But it occurred to me there might also be people that look at the blog and not facebook. And you people, (while I applaud your denial of the 2-D relationships based on the silly shit I type in that “What’s on your mind?” box at 12:03am); you non-rabid facebook un-aficionados who follow the blog; you hypothetical humans that probably don’t exist might be missing out on the links being posted over on the f-book by people who are not me.

Thank yourselves you are not me, you people who are not. Heavy is the burden of No-Sleep Laserhead: Reality Bender. Heavy indeed.

—

Raymond Leonard, publisher of Day Dream Production, and creator, writer, and artist of Guytron shows off an image for a 2011 creator-owned project called Agent Solo The One Man Army.

–
Steven ‘Sash’ Scott drops a rendition of the first black superhero action figure with his piece SUN-MAN REBORN!

–
Illustrations from Three J Productions comic book miniseries The Enforcers decorates our virtual wall.
–

Fear Not Films hooks us up with a preview of the indy animated short film about Hurricane Katrina called Take Too Long.

–
This is just a random sampling of what’s going on on our beloved Facebook fan-page: Awesomeness that transcends my Oscar-the-Grouch-style fist-shaking towards that most wondrous of magical social networkings, tha FB. Visit today, won’t you?
–


To learn more about Sun-Man, check at your local library, then come back to the computer and click this link.

Jamal Igle Joins Gail Simone on Birds of Prey?

Posted on | August 16, 2010 | No Comments

Bleeding Cool begs the question.

Shepherd Hendrix Will Reconcile You…

Posted on | August 16, 2010 | No Comments

… to the fact that he’s inking comics legend Neal Adams art for the graphic novel The Reconcilers, written by Erik Jensen.
The press release and preview can also be found on Broken Frontier.
Cop it via Amazon:

P.S.

keep looking »

FACEBOOK

BLACK COMIX on Facebook

CHECK OUT! J2D2

• Groovy Time Bomb: an abstract webcomic
  43210 […]
  Damian Duffy
• Mr. Bombhead: Guru
  […]
  Damian Duffy
• The Blueprint
  To be a doctor is to be a storyteller. To write the story of a life. To suture language and science to organs and viscera and connective tissue.Sometimes there’s too much autobiography. A cardiologist sees only heart conditions, a neurologist only maladies of the brain.But, when you specialize in treating galaxies, you tend to take in the bigger picture.Fa […]
  Damian Duffy

CHECK OUT! ARIE MONROE

• Psylocke Sketch 3
  […]
  Draw Like Crazy
• Psylocke Sketch 2
  […]
  Draw Like Crazy
• Psylocke Sketch 1
  […]
  Draw Like Crazy

SUSCRIBE & FOLLOW BLACK COMIX

PRE-SALES: SUPPORT THE BLACK COMIX MOVEMENT!

AVAILABLE ON AMAZON.COM

MARK BATTY PUBLISHER

SUPPORT BLACK COMIX ON FACEBOOK/TWITTER!

MAKE THE BLACK COMIX COVER YOUR FACEBOOK or TWITTER AVATAR

Blogroll

• Arie Monroe
• BLACK SUPERHERO
• Check out Twisted Comix
• J2D2
• Mark Batty Publisher
• Revolutionary Times
• STREET KNOWLEDGE MEDIA

Revolutionary Times

• "50 Ways" - The Reveal
  Due to be on sale soon. Promise. […]
• "50 Ways" Cover Redesign X Specs
  After some technical difficulties (and some external hard drive woes), the "50 Ways" book is finally under way into being released hopefully this month. And with that said, here's the redesign of the cover and back cover as well...Specs: Soft cover108 pages, full color 9x7So hopefully once we get these out around as promo to these publishers, […]
• "50 Ways" Preview: The Comic
  Almost ready, folks. July is the official month. […]
• [Revolutionary New Beginnings]
  Although the page is currently under production, this signifies the beginning of the epicness that we've been waiting for quite a while now. Plus keep a look out here for some sneak peeks to he "50 Ways" book. - Sean […]
• [Revolutionary Sightings - Desmond's Comic]
  As we slowly creep on the come up, we're starting to get some visual love on the Man's manufactured interwebs. So shouts out to good friend/artistic colleague Joe Foo and "Desmond" for the love on the site. Check them out! […]