Showing posts with label comics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label comics. Show all posts

Sunday, June 15, 2008

Help! Superheroes have taken over our living room!

Look at our living room! This is actually only portions of it.

After years of hauling around 14 boxes of comics, my handsome husband is now categorizing and selling his silver age comics, which he acquired as a boy collector and budding comic book artist. He can still draw a superhero amazingly.












Our living room has actually been like this for a month, or actually more, because I can remember us sitting by the fire and reading some of these. (But scootched really far away from the fire!) And I do believe it is now June.

It’s okay - I sort of like it, because the comics are so fun to look at. And often, I’ll walk in and find him reading them. For superheroes, my man is most partial to Hulk, and he has many of them, including the mysteriously valuable Hulk 181. He also seems to like Silver Surfer.

But above all he worships Jack Kirby, and he can tell Kirby art at a glance; he could even look at a superhero’s hands and tell you if it’s Kirby’s art.

He is a special conneissuer of Jack Kirby’s period of creative freedom when he went over to DC from Marvel and had full art and story control. The New Gods at right is an example of this. This is a photo - I don’t dare take it out of its plastic to scan it!

Did you notice the sad plants in the background above? I am totally paranoid to bring a watering jug in there, for obvious reasons.

Every once in a while he will come across a comic book with a ripped up cover - he and his young friend, also a budding pre-teen comic book artist, would apparently become so disgusted with certain non-Kirby artists that they would be driven to destroy the offending covers.

Others got the treatment you see below, where the young critics simply altered the work.

Note, if you will, the werewolf’s new and improved face, done by Mark many years ago.

I sort of got a kick out of this one, because one, it’s like a little window into his boyhood world. And two, look at the books we’re reading today. Werewolves are STILL fighting vampires. Have they learned nothing?

Saturday, February 2, 2008

The Buffy comic book: an exciting guest review - written by my amazing husband, Mark!

Before commenting on the Buffy the Vampire Slayer comic book, I should clear one thing up. Though many people would say that Carolyn Jean and I have a demented bias about Joss Whedon, I would like the state here, for the record, that we absolutely do not. We have arrived at the conclusion that Joss Whedon is the radiant god of all that ever has been or will be through the most careful, sober and objective analysis. There’s nothing biased about it.

That out of the way, I just read the first comic book that I’ve read since I was 13 years old. It’s the first Buffy comic (October 2007) that picks up right where the TV show left off, and it’s written by the colossal lord of creative genius, the maestro himself, Joss Whedon.

I have to say, although Joss, as I’ve established, rules the universe with his brilliant and benevolent hand, I wasn’t very excited about a comic book. That’s why it’s taken me so long to buy it. I just thought it would make me miss the show, and I didn’t want to open up that wound again and spend another year on thorazine mumbling Come back, Buffy! into the black TV screen.

But, on a whim, and because I’m fasting and delirious, I decided to pop into the comic book store I happened to be walking past and pick it up. So here’s the thing: It rocks!

Joss reigns supreme again! The comic has all the magnificent Whedon-ish humor and intrigue and his preternatural brilliance at building multiple dramatic arcs and his freakishly impossibly awesome dialogue. It’s just bursting with his charm and zazz and light playful spirit and the unstoppable lovable-ness of his Buffy character.

On top of all that, the art is superb! And Buffy even looks like Buffy, er, I mean, Sarah Michelle Gellar. Who knew comic books had gotten so sophisticated with all sorts of crazy perspectives and dynamic angles?

Anyway, if you’re a Whedon fan, which is to say, if you’ve ever seen his work (Buffy, Angel, Firefly), definitely pick up this most happy and excellent comic book. Joss Whedon rules! Buffy lives!