Things to be excited about: Silver Age Teen Titans, Ghosts and Dark Horse's reprints of Marvel Star Wars...

I dropped some mega-bucks on DC's Silver Age Teen Titans Archives volumes 1 and 2, Showcase Presents Ghosts and Dark Horse's Star Wars Omnibus:  A Long Time Ago... volume 4.  These four massive books are on their way to me as I type this, through wind and rain.  Yeah, it's a dark day here in Japan with changeable weather threatening to wash out any weekend activities people may have planned now that the temperatures are easing off from the sauna range they stayed in all summer long.  Of course, with dengue fever closing Yoyogi Park in Tokyo, it's probably just as well.  Yet within my heart is a bright, warm light and its source is anticipation of some classic comic book reading material.

The Silver Age Teen Titans Archives books particularly delight me, since this is one of those series I've fallen madly in love with.  I just cannot seem to get enough of Bob Haney's socially aware writing or Nick Cardy's art.  Most especially the latter.  I've bought this material both in digital form and in Showcase format.  The digitals, on Comixology, never seem to advance past the five or so comics available in Silver Age Titans Archives volume 1.  The relatively inexpensive Showcase Titans books seem to be going out of print now.  I have copies of both volumes stored back in the US, I only have one here in Japan.  No luck getting the other one for a reasonable price.   So my unreasonable solution was to complete my Haney-Cardy-Neal Adams-and-others Teen Titans collection by paying even more for hardcover full-color stories I already own in multiples.

Teen Titans is no mere comic book series.  It is a way of life.

And since I was on a classic DC kick, what better choice to complement the superheroics than yet another Showcase Presents book featuring a horror anthology?  The artist line-up in DC's old horror books reads like a list of my favorites:  Cardy, Alfredo Alcala, Frank Redondo, Nestor Redondo, Sam Glanzman, Ramona Fradon, Jerry Grandenetti, Wally Wood, George Tuska, Gerry Talaoc and so many more.  And with Halloween coming up, I need some fun and spooky reading material.

Finally, my addiction to Al Williamson inspired my purchase of the Dark Horse Star Wars Omnibus:  A Long Time Ago... book.  I have the first three, which means I have Williamson's The Empire Strikes Back adaptation.  It also means I need his Return of the Jedi work.  And I certainly am not going to complain about having to look at stories by Carmine Infantino, Walter Simonson and Ron Frenz with inks by Tom Palmer.  This book also contains Star Wars #74, "The Iskalon Effect" (August 1983), with art by Frenz and Palmer.  It's one of the few non-Al Williamson Star Wars comics I bought during Marvel's original run of books.

Twenty Years of Hellboy...

I don't write a great deal about Hellboy, because I tend to think of it and its related titles as "new" comics.  That's how fresh it is.  But the first issue came out way back in March, 1994, which is well within the timeframe for this particular nostalgia-leaning blog.  And I'm a big fan of the property and a lot of the people who've worked on it, creator Mike Mignola foremost among them.  Man, I dig that cat's art and the weird pacing and tone of his writing.

Mignola is the reason I picked up a Hellboy book in the first place-- and it was the Seed of Destruction collection.  At the time, I really didn't care what the story was about or the characters in it.  I just wanted to look at Mignola's drawings.

Mignola first entered my particular radar through his work on the Topps comic book adaptation of Francis Ford Coppola's overwrought vampire flick Bram Stoker's Dracula.  I picked it up out of curiosity because I'd enjoyed the movie in a campy kind of way and I've always appreciated a Dracula story, any Dracula story.  I didn't realize I was actually about to encounter a new artist with whose work I'd become obsessed in the way I had with people like Jack Kirby, Joe Kubert, Al Williamson, Alex Toth and Mark Schultz over the years.  The comic book, written by Roy Thomas and drawn by Mignola and inker John Nyberg, blew the movie away, not the least reason being you don't have to deal with the hammy acting and outrageously bad accents when you read it.  Hooked on Mignola from that point, I started copying his art and looking for his other comics.  But I went about it in a kind of leisurely fashion, because I didn't buy Seed of Destruction until probably around 1999 or 2000...

And wow, oh wow, when I finally got around to it, I found it was full of stuff that fired up the endorphin-receptors in my brain for a full-on rush of pleasure and good feelings.  And from then on, I had to buy every single Hellboy and Hellboy-related comic book I could get my hands on.  Nowadays there are so many to choose from, too.  The cast has grown over the years and there are spin-offs and off-shoots and even "other world" type, out-of-continuity stories.  Two movies, a cartoon.  Toys.  Other people are involved in the writing and drawing of Hellboy and his friends, but it's still Mignola's world.  He has the knack of choosing the best and most appropriate collaborators, too.  There are stories I've enjoyed more than others, but I can't think of one that's a real misfire or mistake.  Twenty years of quality entertainment.

I think this is the ideal model for how to handle comic book characters, creators and publications.  Kudos to Dark Horse for letting Mignola run with this and not trying to screw it up and put their imprint on it the way some other companies might have.  When you think of what could have happened to Hellboy if Mignola had been more successful pitching it to a certain other company before landing at Dark Horse... YIKES.

I should have blown up this blog with a major Hellboy write-up back in March, and I should definitely write more about the 1990s-era Hellboy books here.  And post some art from them because it's so damned cool to look at.

The New Mutants and my artistic misadventures up to now...

This unfinished sketch began its life as just a dull portrait of Dani Moonstar (AKA the Greatest Comic Character Ever Created) I did months ago, possibly in ArtRage Studio or Sketchbook Pro. Yesterday, feeling kind of feisty, I opened it up in Manga Studio and penciled over it and, I believe, fixed one or two things that used to bother me about it.

 For some reason, I felt a Hulk appropriate to the story and once I added the Jade Giant, obviously we needed a cringing Sam Guthrie doing a sort of Archie comics fear pose on the right. Such was my thought process at about 7pm, the end of a full day of drawing and self-directed art study which began around 630am. By the time I started coloring it, I was physically exhausted. I only got this far and decided to call it quits, but at that point I'd discovered oil painting and I played around with a digital piece I did a couple of years back of a screaming Captain Kirk being left behind in deep space by the Enterprise.

Yesterday's efforts included the writing, lettering and laying out of a story I call, "The Legend of Billy Jack versus Bruce Lee." I also drew Conan attacking Mickey Mouse, an image I've been toying with for the past month. The idea I could make the Conan figure look a bit like a John Buscema drawing wrecked me. Then I discovered my own line and had to re-draw it in a more personal way. In blue pencil just for fun.

I find I've developed some measure of precision to go along with the speed I've long had. I also have a tremendous amount of self-discipline where I can keep myself drawing for hours, minus a couple of rest breaks here and there, and push through blocks and frustrations to keep putting down lines. What I lack are basic storytelling skills and an appealing aesthetic quality. I don't have a particular "way" to draw eyes, or a characteristic approach to shadows and highlights. What I seek is a natural way of drawing, without getting hung up on ideas like "style."

 But at the same time, I want something I can reproduce consistently that looks attractive in case people might actually come to desire my art in some financially remunerative way. The way to do this is simply to do this. Then do it again. And again. Do it a million times if necessary, or even more.

I wish I had all day every day to devote to art, but I also have to do my regular day job. So for now, I'll be getting up at 5am to draw for two hours and then maybe 4 hours on a Saturday and a Sunday each as long as my wife is cool with it. I mean, she's pretty darned important to me!

Anyway, as I've no doubt mentioned here, many years ago I had this idea I could write a 48-page graphic novel or the first two issues of an ongoing series, a kind of "slice of life" thing partially inspired by the existence of Love and Rockets, Ghost World and even Peter Bagge's Hate. Visually, I wanted it to resemble classic romance comics, but with the clothes and hairstyles all up-to-date. Then I thought, "Hey, why don't you try to draw it in as close an approximation to Alex Toth's style as you can?"

 I guess I kind of had in mind Mark Schultz's first Xenozoic Tales story, titled "Xenozoic!," which he drew as an extended Wally Wood riff. Well, I quickly learned I was in no way Alex Toth or Mark Schultz. But by that time, I'd already written the whole thing. I did it Sergio Aragones-style, with the entire 48 pages thumbnailed, complete with dialogue.

 Realizing I'd set the bar impossibly high for someone whose last lengthy sequential work was a three-page Jurassic Park parody done in 1993, I decided to limit myself to just writing it and getting someone else to draw it. I typed it up in what I think is standard script format, completed the forms and documents and sent the whole mess to Dark Horse Comics, the only place taking those kinds of unsolicited submissions at the time. That it then disappeared without a trace into their slush pile and then, no doubt, into a recycling bin where it eventually became an ingredient in someone's computer desk or a Blo Pop stick (I hope the latter!) let me know my writer's skill level and commercial instincts!

Rejection is just part of aspiration.  I don't save them because I'm not sentimental and I have little or no ego, but I've since received some actual rejection letters for short stories I've written.  That's more fun that silence, and from them I gained a feeling of accomplishment.  The thing is, you can't give up.  Ever.  So even though I was in the process of changing from a low-paying graphic design career to a higher-paying English teaching one, I carried the layouts and script with me to Japan where I worked on them from time to time.  When I bought Manga Studio 5 with my new-found education riches, the first thing I did was lay out the first half as a single comic book issue and letter it, editing and fine-tuning the dialogue throughout.  Soon I'll do the other half and complete the story.  I know how it ends and how to get there.  I know what everyone says and does and why.

I drew here and there, but largely just spent my time bouncing around between my adopted hometown and Tokyo, checking out rock shows and living the life of a language mercenary.  This left little time for the kind of dedicated study of art I'm making now.  And why am I doing this?  Encouragement from a pro who sent me a message on Facebook and asked me directly why I wasn't drawing.  Why I had never gone for it.  I thought about that for while and after I had thought about it long enough, I realized I had to start drawing again on a regular basis.  I couldn't let my skills rust anymore.  I then went to work drawing every single day and recently, I've been spending longer hours at it.  I'm improving faster than I ever thought possible.  And it's been pretty fun despite smashing headfirst into the upper limits of my capabilities, which aren't as high as I'd like.

There are some hugely talented people out there who can blow my wheels off!  I mean, WOW!

Then, this past weekend, I decided that so-called graphic novel needed some new thought and a new beginning.  I came up with a kind of one-page prelude to set the scene and one of the character conflicts.  This leads into my original opening sequence but enables me to show, rather than tell, and opens up the possibility for more natural, less expository, dialogue from the two co-leads.  They're half of a quartet of characters whose adventures and misadventures drive the story.  This made me re-think another scene near the beginning that will no serve to sharpen the book's main dilemma, the one shared by all four people.

And with that, I must go teach an English conversation class.  So I'm out!

A few more words on Comixology...

Okay, so I downloaded and set up the new iPhone app, downloaded a few of my comics to it and gave it a try.  Not bad, not bad.  I think it's as good a reading experience as you could expect on an iPhone with its relatively tiny screen.  Comixology seems to have addressed my main complaint-- the difficulty of getting out of a comic once you're in one so you can read another.  This was driving me crazy.  Where the heck do you press the screen?  I found it a lot easier in the new app.

One feature that's gone is the ability to buy comics within the app itself.  I found that out via IDW's website.  There's all this new Amazon.com-related info there, none of which I understand.  I have a ton of IDW comics on Comixology and I was a little concerned when I couldn't find their listings on the actual website.  The ones I've already paid for are still there, so that was a relief.  I'll say it again-- buying a license to read comics on your various devices is not the same as buying the actual comics and you're subject to losing access to a lot of books you've paid the same price for as you would a physical copy no one can come confiscate from you. 

This is why I haven't invested heavily in old school Star Wars comics on Dark Horse's website, as much as I crave Archie Goodwin-Al Williamson-Carlos Garzon magic.  And also those Carmine Infantino-drawn oddities like talking rabbits, Sergio Aragones as a space pirate and whatnot.  With the license reverting to Marvel, I have this worrisome feeling the Dark Horse issues will vanish from computers around the world. 

So not being able to find single issues of IDW's Powerpuff Girls (one of the best comics to come along in quite some time, but I don't cover it here because it's not archaeological) had me thinking along those lines.  Did something happen with the Amazon purchase?  I'm at work and can't research this further or look into whether the various parties are working through legal agreements or if I'm just an idiot who can't search Comixology properly.  I lean towards the latter.  The point is, my stuff is still there.  And I don't really care about buying comics within the iPhone app.  I can never remember my Apple password anyway!

One plus of the changeover to the new app is the $5 gift card Comixology gave me.  And lo and behold, Marvel Monday just happened to have Amazing Spider-Man for .99.  This was exactly what I was hoping for.  Well, not quite.  What I really wanted was Fantastic Four #50 and some more Nick Cardy Teen Titans, but I'm not going to complain because I picked up five classic Spidey issues, four by Steve Ditko and one by John Romita.  I love me some Ditko-Romita-John Buscema-Gil Kane Amazing Spider-Man.

Well, the next step is re-downloading everything.  You can find all your books in something called the "cloud," which makes me think of magical nonsense spaces and floating castles of pink gingerbread and blue sugar-cream where knights in gleaming armor and ladies in flowing damask fly around on winged dragons, but apparently is just a computer server somewhere.

I bought Mike Allred's Red Rocket 7 on Comixology last night...

Man, I remember when Red Rocket 7 came out.  1997.  It's right at the tail end of what I consider appropriate for this blog-- pre-2000 stuff.  I try to keep to stuff even earlier than that, largely the late 70s through the mid-80s when I was first following comics as a fan rather than an occasional reader.  But why not talk about some late 90s/pre-millennial stuff?  You know, if it's really funky and cool.  Like Red Rocket 7!

Anyway, I'm about to tell you a fun story about buying the original print version of Red Rocket 7.  I didn't start buying it until later, much later, than its debut.  I believe this.  I may be wrong.  I think I started buying it in the summer of 1998, after its print run concluded.  The reason I think this is I have a strong memory of buying it in Athens, Georgia, and getting into a discussion about its weird dimensions.  If I had bought it in Albany, the people there wouldn't have said boo about it.  People in Athens have opinions about things and they like to engage with you about said opinions.

I didn't move back to Athens until the summer of 1998.  I lived in a one-bedroom apartment off Baxter Street and the A/C was a wall-mounted unit in my bedroom.  It sounded as if someone had cranked up a VW Beetle in there, barely put out any cool air at all, caused me to buy two box fans which further contributed to my localized noise pollution and kept me up all night with the sweats.

My job was as a "graphic designer" at the local daily paper and I was supposed to be sort of an on-staff cartoonist as well, but mostly what I did was put together used car ads I had very little say over the design of all day then drive home and read comics and try to draw, draw and draw more at my lovely drafting table in the sweltering sauna I called an apartment. 

My salary was dismal, my career prospects even more so.  My social life consisted of crashing parties with the few friends I had and eating food out of the refrigerators or popping microwave popcorn and having fights with it in the kitchen.  These friends and I sometimes crashed tailgate parties outside Sanford Stadium during football season got on free beer and stuffing our faces with free chicken sandwiches and hamburgers, and, when everyone else had gone to watch the game, stole all the whiskey fifths we could get our hands on and passed them out to homeless people on North Campus like liquored-up, idiot Robin Hoods. My romantic life consisted of mooning over this incredibly cool and well-connected artist and her hair of ever-changing shades of red, who sometimes talked to me and sometimes ignored me depending on her mood or what drugs were influencing her that night. 

What little money I had in those days I spent on Chinese buffet, beer and comics.  Comics, especially those by Mike Allred and Mark Schultz and Los Bros Hernandez and Peter Bagge, were fast becoming an obsession with me again after years of remission.  So of course I wanted to read Red Rocket 7. 

But when I bought it, the guy who owned the comic book store told me it pissed him off.

"Why?  Why would it piss you off?" I asked.

"The size and shape are totally fucked up!" he told me.

I was standing there thinking what a neat little package Red Rocket 7 was.  It had these sturdy covers of some kind of thicker-than-usual stock, and both the graphics and dimensions recalled 45 RPM records, of which I still had a stack of back at my mom's house.  The comic book store guy told me he got all that and thought it was pretty clever and would always be enthusiastic about Allred's work, but at the same time, the size and shape it meant the book sat like an oddity on the shelf.

Maybe it affected sales.  I don't know.  For all I know, Red Rocket 7 sold billions of copies.  Maybe the comic book guy was upset at the idea people would reject Red Rocket 7 because they couldn't fit it in their comic book longboxes and that was a downright shame, because it deserved a much wider readership.  Maybe I destroyed my memory with a few too many drunken weekends-- god knows I can't remember much about any of them but I hear stories that fill me with shame-- and I'm making up most of this story out of bits and pieces of things that have nothing to do with Mike Allred and Red Rocket 7.

Still, nearly sixteen years later, I'm fairly certain the book's size and shape were at issue.  And for some reason, I never bought every issues.  I think I bought the first four or five, then stopped.  I have no idea how the story ends.  And I do know now that it's been digitized, its size and shape no longer matter in the least.  It fits right inside my phone and I can take Red Rocket 7 everywhere I go.

Now I do own all of it, and if I feel up to it, I'll post some thoughts about it here.  It will probably be the most recent comic we wrestle with on this blog.

Steve Rude announces the end of Nexus

That's tough news to take, but every story has to end sometime.  According to the latest Steve Rude newsletter, jauntily titled "Old Year, New Year, Easy on the Cold Beer-- It's Still Rock and Roll to Me," when Rude and writer Mike Baron finish the Nexus story currently running in Dark Horse Presents, they will "suspend things for now."  Or, as Rude writes, "[We feel] our finest work is yet to come, as represented with the upcoming climax of the Nexus/Clayborn saga in Dark Horse Presents comics."

Baron will continue writing novels, and Rude will do some mysterious project for DC West, then jump back into his personal, creator-owned properties with the return of The Moth.  You may remember a certain 5-issue miniseries Rude worked up with Gary Martin a while back for Dark Horse.  I liked it a lot.  The circus setting, the diverse cast of characters, the old-fashioned heroic virtues on display and all that kind of thing.  Right in my comics-enjoying wheelhouse, as it were.  This won't be self-published; it's coming out under the Flesk Publications banner.

So here comes the end of about thirty years of exciting and provocative space adventuring.  I'm not sure what more Baron and Rude could have done with Nexus and Sundra.  Nexus has quit being Nexus, come back again, killed more mass murderers than any handful of Wolverines, Ursula X. X. Imada met her long-fated demise, other characters have died and lived and aged, and now there's a newborn child in the mix.  While I don't know how Baron and Rude will leave their little family and cast of thousands, I have a feeling there will be a fitting valediction that will leave us satisfied.

And yet still wanting more.

At least they have the opportunity to conclude Nexus where they want, unlike with "Nightmare in Blue" where economic factors forced them to leave things kind of hanging.  That was truly heartbreaking in a way this latest announcement isn't.  I wanted to weep at the time.  Similar causes seem to have crashed Rude's attempt at self-publishing, too.  Hey, I forget that story and it's too cold here to spend a lot of time looking it up.  You probably know more about it than I do.  We Nexus fans were definitely lucky Mike Richardson at Dark Horse acted the way I wish all comics publishers did: making sure Baron and Rude got their character and story rights back, then giving them a place to tell more Nexus stories when they felt it was time.

One thing I really regret about this is, they had just introduced long-anticipated character Origami into the storyline.  I don't think the character is exactly as they intended.  My guess is they took the concept and folded (ha ha, aren't I clever) it into the Nexus universe just to make sure the name and costume didn't go to waste.  I would love for them to revisit her sometime.  Or someone under their supervision!  It's hard to resist a character whose catchphrase is, "I like to fold things" as she zips away from the mayhem she's caused.

Well, I'm looking forward to more Baron and Rude.  And The Moth!

Everything old is new again or ten things I'm excited about in 2014!

1.  Barbarella.  Humanoids, Inc. will publish a brand-new English language version of Jean-Claude Forest's sexy 1960s space adventure featuring the coolest 1960s space adventurer with updated and modernized whatchamallits by Kelly Sue DeConnick.  Dialogue?  Worldview?  I don't care.  Her adventures have been out of print in English for some time now, which is kind of ridiculous when you consider her pop culture significance.  There wouldn't be a Vampirella without Barbarella, and possibly not even a Red Sonja series.  As a character, Barbarella kicks much ass.  Despite her reputation as a sex kitten, in today's terms, she has what you would call "agency."  Therefore, she's a sextacularly retro space ace for today's on the go post-modern libertine!  Or something like that.

2.  Teen Titans.  With the publication of the long-awaited volume two in the Teen Titans DC archives hardcover series, it's just a matter of time before individual issues pop up on Comixology.  And this means more Wonder Girl with art by Nick Cardy.

3.  Pepper.  Last week I bought an Archie Comics digital exclusive containing 100 pages of gorgeous Dan DeCarlo-drawn pre-"ears for hats" She's Josie comics, which led me to discover the star's witty erstwhile best pal Pepper.  Pepper didn't make the transition to rock stardom with Josie and Melody, and that's a real shame because she's super cool with her cynical attitude and wild cat-framed glasses.  Those would have been so appropriate for the band.  Don't get me wrong-- Valerie is great.  But why couldn't the Pussycats perform as a quartet?  You know, Pepper on bass?  She could have been their Kim Deal, for crying out loud!  Anyway, 2014 is the year I bore you to tears celebrating Pepper.

4. X-Men.  Marvel has been dropping John Byrne-drawn issues on Comixology like they're on fire (that cliché worries me-- is this a good quality or a bad quality for something to have?), which means we're about one or two away from having a complete run available stretching from the initial Dave Cockrum issues (glorious) all the way to the celebrated "Days of Future Past" storyline that's being adapted into the latest film in the X-Men movie franchise (as my wife says, "I don't give a shit about that," but you might, so there!).  They'll probably get to the second Dave Cockrum run, which suffers from lackluster scripting but looms large in the early days of my initial fandom because those were the ones I bought in convenience stores and newsstands as Marvel published them.  I subscribed during the Paul Smith days, which saw Chris Claremont return to form.  Those should be on Comixology this year, too.

5. Fantastic Four #51.  Marvel and Comixology have every issue of Jack Kirby's legendary company-building stint on Fantastic Four through #50, which is the overall narrative's natural climax.  But it's in its anti-climax Kirby and Stan Lee produced the humanistic "This Man, This Monster," which is as close to superhero comic perfection as you are ever likely to find.  Kirby and Lee turned out a few solid stories and even some classics after this, but this is Marvel's 1960s apogee.

6. Samurai Executioner Omnibus.  Dark Horse is putting out a single book containing 798 pages of ultra-violent samurai slashing action from masters Kazuo Koike and Goseki Kojima.  A guy named Frank Miller would mine their stuff for his own reputation in the 1980s, but this is the 1972-76 original from a couple of legitimate geniuses.  Their Lone Wolf and Cub is essential, but Samurai Executioner is pretty darn close to necessary, with plenty of cinematic, evocative storytelling at its finest.  Oh, and it's only $19.99 for something that provides a meatier reading experience (as in the meat that Yamada Asaemon carves from his foes) than its equivalent in monetary (if not aesthetic)value-- about 5 flimsy 32-page issues of any given new monthly from Marvel or DC that will take you about 5 minutes to read and forget.  Okay, I admit I'm being unfair.  But even the best current series from either of the Big Two cannot hope to measure up to this work and you're paying less per page for it.  This should be the Event Comic of the Year.  Trust me-- you will never forget Yamada Asaemon.

7.  Lone Wolf and Cub Omnibus Volume 4.  Speaking of... here it is.  As I wrote above, these are essential.  Everything I gushed about with Samurai Executioner goes double for these.  This one is 696 pages for $19.99 and it's simply one of the greatest comics ever published.  I will be purchasing all of these in 2014.

8. The EC Archives:  Vault of Horror Volume 3.  Dark Horse does it again!  This is a very pricey book, but it's the continuation of Dark Horse's deluxe reprints of EC classics.  The Archives series started at Gemstone (I own several of them as well), but hit a rough patch.  Dark Horse re-launched the series in October 2013 with Tales from the Crypt Volume 4.  Fantagraphics is putting out books spotlighting individual artists (and those are beautiful), but here's your chance to see their work in context, with colors recreated from Marie Severin's originals.  Volume 1 of their Weird Fantasy reprints follows in April.  I'm more of a horror and Weird Science freak when it comes to EC, but any of these archives would be a welcome addition to my library.  And yours.

9. Warren horror.  Yeah, I know I'm going to sound like a Dark Horse shill, but they consistently put out products I love!  They're not only giving us EC and influential manga, but they're also continuing their long-running Creepy and Eerie Archives series this year.  I received Creepy Archives 10 for Christmas, and I'm certain 2014 will see me adding to my collection.

10. New discoveries of amazingly cool old stuff.  Like Pepper up there.  A couple of weeks ago, I had no inkling she even existed.  My knowledge of comics doesn't extend much farther than the ones I read when they were new and the artists and writers I grew up admiring, so I'm discovering wonders almost daily.  Certainly there are Jack Kirby stories out there and more I haven't read that I'm looking forward to uncovering and sharing with you, the reader of this blog!

Note:  Oh yeah, there are some new comics coming out this year that I'm also looking forward to.  Fantagraphics has Love and Rockets books coming out and their reprinting of Takako Shimura's heartbreaking Wandering Son.  Plus a whole lot more from Dark Horse, Image and even Marvel and DC I'll be checking out.  And there's a slight chance for some more Nana-related artwork from Ai Yazawa.  She revisited "Junko's Place" last year and apparently produced a Christmas card for Cookie magazine.  And even if we don't see new Nana, my big wish for Ms. Yazawa in 2014 (and in the future) is recovery, health and happiness.

Steve Rude does Black Friday the right way!

From the Steve Rude Art Newsletter e-mail

I love getting these updates from the Rudes.  And the Dude has been hyper-creative lately.  There's a new Nexus storyline appearing in Dark Horse Presents and now this Black Friday Blitz.  If you're interested, this may be your big chance to get a Batman drawn by Steve Rude.  He usually refuses to draw Batman commissions.  I'm seriously considering asking for a Dani Moonstar.  It's pricey, but it's worth it.

Edit-- Oops!  Rude's not doing commissions right now because of his Nexus schedule.  So that gives me time to think of something truly special to ask for when he opens his commissions list again!  Although I'll happily do without as long as it means he's drawing Nexus.