Introducing The New York Times Graphic Books Best Seller Lists

Comics have finally joined the mainstream. Anticipation for the live-action film version of “Watchmen,” the dark and violent superhero opus that saw its birth in comic books and arrives in theaters on Friday, has built to a nationwide boil. And today The Times introduces three separate lists of the best-selling graphic books in the country: hardcover, softcover, and manga. We’ll update those lists weekly in this space, and offer a few observations along the way.

Here’s the first: Notwithstanding Terry & the Pirates, Green Lantern, and a trippy ecological romance called “Beanworld,” there is going to be a lot of Alan Moore on these lists for the first couple of months. Moore is the author of the “Watchmen” series, first published in 1986 (and collected into a 12-issue edition that is No. 3 on our hardcover list). On the softcover side, he is comfortably seated at No. 1 for “Watchmen” and No. 7 for “The Courtyard,” about an F.B.I. agent investigating gruesome murders.

The complete lists appear after the jump, as does an explanation of how they were assembled. See you next week!

Graphic Books Best Seller List (Hardcover)

1. Starman Omnibus, Vol. 2 by James Robinson and Tony Harris. (DC Comics, $49.99.) Jack Knight, the son of the 1940’s Starman, meets his disco era namesake and his father’s colleague, the golden age Sandman.

2. Eerie Archives, Vol. 1 by various. (Dark Horse, $49.95.) The gruesome magazine, following in the steps of its cousin Creepy, gets the hardcover collection treatment.

3. Watchmen by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons. (DC Comics, $39.99, $75.) This epic tale from 1986 signaled a new maturity in comic books.

4. Batman: R.I.P. by Grant Morrison and Tony Daniel. (DC Comics, $24.99.) Thomas Wayne, the father of the caped crusader, is cast in a sinister light.

5. Walking Dead, Vol. 4 by Robert Kirkman and Charlie Adlard. (Image Comics, $29.99.) The gripping story of the human survivors in a world overrun by zombies continues.

6. Beanworld, Book 1 by Larry Marder. (Dark Horse, $19.95.) The fantasy series, about a world of bean characters, gets the deluxe reprint treatment.

7. Mighty Avengers Assemble by Brian Michael Bendis and Frank Cho. (Marvel Comics, $34.99.) The first adventures of a new team of heroes gets an oversized collection.

8. Incredible Hercules: Love and War by Fred Van Lente and Clayton Henry. (Marvel Comics, $19.99.) The demigod finds himself in Atlantis – just in time for a war.

9. Batman: The Killing Joke by Alan Moore and Brian Bolland. (DC Comics, $17.99.) This critically acclaimed story from 1988 offers a possible origin for the Joker.

10. Complete Terry and the Pirates: Volume 6 by Milton Caniff. (IDW Publishing, $49.99.) The final volume of the series collects strips from 1945 and 1946.

Graphic Books Best Seller List (Softcover)

1. Watchmen by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons. (DC Comics, $19.99.) This epic tale from 1986 signaled a new maturity in comic books.

2. Secret Invasion: Runaways/Young Avengers by Christopher Yost and Takeshi Miyazawa. (Marvel Comics, $12.99.) The two teams combat the shapeshifting Skrulls.

3. Secret Invasion: Black Panther by Jason Aaron and Jefte Palo. (Marvel Comics, $12.99.) The Skrulls attack the hero’s homeland of Wakanda and come to regret it.

4. Captain America, Vol. 3 by Ed Brubaker and Steve Epting. (Marvel Comics, $14.99.) Bucky Barnes, former sidekick to the Captain, tries to fill his patriotic boots.

5. Tales of the Green Lantern Corps, Vol. 1 by various. (DC Comics, $19.99.) Get to know Green Lantern’s interstellar brotherhood in this collection of stories.

6. Showcase: Superman Family, Vol. 3 by various. (DC Comics, $16.99.) Jimmy Olsen and Lois Lane cause a lot of mischief in this black and white collection of stories.

7. The Courtyard by Alan Moore and Jacen Burrows. (Avatar Press, $7.99.) An F.B.I. agent investigates seemingly unconnected murders.

8. X-Men: Legacy – Sins of the Father by Mike Carey and Scot Eaton. (Marvel Comics, $14.99.) Charles Xavier, the founder of the X-Men, looks back at his past.

9. Uncanny X-Men: End of History, Vol. 1 by Chris Claremont and Alan Davis. (Marvel Comics, $12.99.) The mutant heroes fight the Fury, an enemy of Captain Britain.

10. Superman: Camelot Falls, Vol. 2 by Kurt Busiek and Carlos Pacheco. (DC Comics, $12.99.) Is the man of steel doing humanity more harm than good?

Graphic Books Best Seller List (Manga)

1. Naruto, Vol. 38 by Masashi Kishimoto. (VIZ Media, $7.95.) The continuing adventures of the Naruto Uzumaki, young ninja in training.

2. Naruto, Vol. 40 by Masashi Kishimoto. (VIZ Media, $7.95.) Oh, Naruto, will you ever learn?

3. Naruto, Vol. 39 by Masashi Kishimoto. (VIZ Media, $7.95.) Oh, Naruto, will you ever learn?

4. Naruto, Vol. 41 by Masashi Kishimoto. (VIZ Media, $7.95.) Oh, Naruto, will you ever learn?

5. MPD-Psycho, Vol. 8 by Eiji Otsuka (Dark Horse, $12.95.) A police detective suffering from multiple personality disorder tracks down a serial killer.

6. Naruto, Vol. 37 by Masashi Kishimoto. (VIZ Media, $7.95.) Oh, Naruto, will you ever learn?

7. Naruto, Vol. 35 by Masashi Kishimoto. (VIZ Media, $7.95.) Oh, Naruto, will you ever learn?

8. Naruto, Vol. 36 by Masashi Kishimoto. (VIZ Media, $7.95.) Oh, Naruto, will you ever learn?

9. Naruto, Vol. 34 by Masashi Kishimoto. (VIZ Media, $7.95.) Oh, Naruto, will you ever learn?

10. Eden, Vol. 11 by Hiroki Endo. (Dark Horse, $12.95.) Elijah lives in a not too distant future where humanity is threatened by a virus.

Rankings reflect sales of graphic novels, for the week ending February 28, at many thousands of venues where a wide range of books are sold nationwide. These include hundreds of independent book retailers (statistically weighted to represent all such outlets); national, regional and local chains; online and multimedia entertainment retailers; university, gift, supermarket, discount department stores and newsstands. In addition, these rankings also include unit sales reported by retailers nationwide that specialize in graphic novels and comic books.

© hosive for Hosive, 2009. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags:

Feed enhanced by Better Feed from Ozh

…the current superman line written primarily by two of my favorite writers, geoff johns and james robinson. i’m a batman guy….not a superman guy but if these guys are writing, it matters very little what the subject is. overflowing with ideas, they have gone weekly with the storyline….new krypton…about a lost city of krypton replanted on earth with 100,000 kryptonians now inhabiting the planet but without any of the humanity of superman.

this is the focus of the mythos of superman….is superman super or man? what makes him superman? this storyline will explore kin who only have super but lack the soul instilled in clark kent by his adoptive parents…they have the powers but not the accompanying heart. what difference will that make?

this series inadvertently poses the obvious question….why do weekly comics have to be a year in length?….this story line will take place roughly over three months and be done. so perhaps they can tell great weekly stories without the insane, contrived format of dragging the plot over 52 issues.

the weekly episodes are also getting some great art by mega-artist alex ross who’s painted superhero work commands thousands and mind boggling tens of thousands. his work gracing the covers shows the commitment to pull out all the stops to make these issues memorable. i hate it when creators only go through the motions and slap things together.

alex ross is also involved in the other weekly storyline flowing out of both the justice society of america and the classic kingdom come series. when the original kingdom come series ended, alex ross and co-creator mark waid had more ideas about the futuristic universe but time limited them from pursuing the projects together so the company followed other ideas to capitalize on the money making moment. but alex still had his ideas….so together with geoff johns, they plucked the kingdom come superman and brought him into the mainstream dc universe to see what would happen. the series puts on display alex’s ideas that have never seen print until now.

alex ross even writes and pencils a full issue of superman as well as providing covers for the event. the superman special is breath taking….almost anything alex draws is magical.

i’ve always loved the heroes of the justice society….these are not the cool heroes but the washed up old heroes….these are my father’s father’s superheroes…and the trick is writing these old heads in a way that’s relevant. they play on the themes of nostalgia and legacy…having the older characters mentor the next generation of heroes.

the roster of characters is extensive as geoff johns keeps creating and revamping characters….each with a history and a storyline….proving that great writers can take “old” characters and do something great with them. there are no bad characters, only bad writers. i have collected stories with these characters since the 80′s and they have a special place in my heart so i am glad that dc is giving them the attention. however, as i go to print, geoff johns has announced that he is leaving the title. we’ll see who replaces him.

meanwhile, i hope geoff johns and alex ross do more weekly comics strongly.

© hosive for Hosive, 2008. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags:

Feed enhanced by Better Feed from Ozh

the recent buzz on the internet amongst nerds is that barack maybe one of us. it started with a top 50 list of unknown facts about barack. then came the analysis…….

from pwbeat, heidi mcdonald’s comics blog:

This 50 facts about Obama article has spurred considerable hopes that the incoming US president might, at last, be the one to truly represent a long-oppressed minority in the White House. Eight simple words that spell hope for the world:

He collects Spider-Man and Conan the Barbarian comics.

Note the use of the present tense. While it’s a well known fact that young Barack was an avid comic book reader, and certainly no stranger to superhero imagery on the campaign trail, this one verb would have us believe that he still keeps a long box, or perhaps some trendy graphic novels, in his reading pile. Something like, CONAN: BORN ON THE BATTLEFIELD by Kurt Busiek and Greg Ruth, maybe? Or maybe he’s more of a Bendis fan?

We’ll leave the parsing of this particular truth to others. What with administrative transitions, and global recession and nukes in Iran, he’s got a lot on his plate, and to expect him to weigh in on the Clone Saga is just a bit much. Frankly we found this factoid just as interesting.

He has read every Harry Potter book
Maybe the president-elect is just, you know, kind of a nerd.

Developing?

*******************

here’s the rest of the list from the telegraph.co.uk

Barack Obama: The 50 facts you might not know

• He collects Spider-Man and Conan the Barbarian comics

• He was known as “O’Bomber” at high school for his skill at basketball

• His name means “one who is blessed” in Swahili

• His favourite meal is wife Michelle’s shrimp linguini

• He won a Grammy in 2006 for the audio version of his memoir, Dreams From My Father

• He is left-handed – the sixth post-war president to be left-handed

• He has read every Harry Potter book

• He owns a set of red boxing gloves autographed by Muhammad Ali

• He worked in a Baskin-Robbins ice cream shop as a teenager and now can’t stand ice cream

• His favourite snacks are chocolate-peanut protein bars

• He ate dog meat, snake meat, and roasted grasshopper while living in Indonesia

• He can speak Spanish

• While on the campaign trail he refused to watch CNN and had sports channels on instead

• His favourite drink is black forest berry iced tea

• He promised Michelle he would quit smoking before running for president – he didn’t

• He kept a pet ape called Tata while in Indonesia

• He can bench press an impressive 200lbs

• He was known as Barry until university when he asked to be addressed by his full name

• His favourite book is Moby-Dick by Herman Melville

• He visited Wokingham, Berks, in 1996 for the stag party of his half-sister’s fiancé, but left when a stripper arrived

• His desk in his Senate office once belonged to Robert Kennedy

• He and Michelle made $4.2 million (£2.7 million) last year, with much coming from sales of his books

• His favourite films are Casablanca and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest

• He carries a tiny Madonna and child statue and a bracelet belonging to a soldier in Iraq for good luck

• He applied to appear in a black pin-up calendar while at Harvard but was rejected by the all-female committee.

• His favourite music includes Miles Davis, Bob Dylan, Bach and The Fugees

• He took Michelle to see the Spike Lee film Do The Right Thing on their first date

• He enjoys playing Scrabble and poker

• He doesn’t drink coffee and rarely drinks alcohol

• He would have liked to have been an architect if he were not a politician

• As a teenager he took drugs including marijuana and cocaine

• His daughters’ ambitions are to go to Yale before becoming an actress (Malia, 10) and to sing and dance (Sasha, 7)

• He hates the youth trend for trousers which sag beneath the backside

• He repaid his student loan only four years ago after signing his book deal

• His house in Chicago has four fire places

• Daughter Malia’s godmother is Jesse Jackson’s daughter Santita

• He says his worst habit is constantly checking his BlackBerry

• He uses an Apple Mac laptop

• He drives a Ford Escape Hybrid, having ditched his gas-guzzling Chrysler 300

• He wears $1,500 (£952) Hart Schaffner Marx suits

• He owns four identical pairs of black size 11 shoes

• He has his hair cut once a week by his Chicago barber, Zariff, who charges $21 (£13)

• His favourite fictional television programmes are Mash and The Wire

• He was given the code name “Renegade” by his Secret Service handlers

• He was nicknamed “Bar” by his late grandmother

• He plans to install a basketball court in the White House grounds

• His favourite artist is Pablo Picasso

• His speciality as a cook is chilli

• He has said many of his friends in Indonesia were “street urchins”

• He keeps on his desk a carving of a wooden hand holding an egg, a Kenyan symbol of the fragility of life

• His late father was a senior economist for the Kenyan government

© hosive for Hosive, 2008. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags:

Feed enhanced by Better Feed from Ozh

the show features some more established artists….here is steve lieber who will become more mainstream once the movie whiteout comes out. i’ve also met frank miller, art spiegelman, jeff smith, and paul pope at this con….

it also features up and coming artists such as dash shaw who wrote and drew bottomless belly button declared by new york magazine as the graphic novel of the year….it also got great press from lots of national publications……its cool to meet and greet these guys before they become more famous….at least in the comic universe…..

we also get to hang with old friends like local artist mark burrier who we’ve connected with and gotten sketches from for years. we are his small time patrons buying comics, prints and shirts to support his art. theresa really loves his t’s and sports them regularly.

this time, the big ticket artist featured was one of my favorites….jason lutes. i’ve followed him for over ten year first with his moving jar of fools graphic novels about a down and out magician. and now on his epic decade long(and longer)production of berlin.

in honor of the small press expo, no superheroes this time for my reviews(most indie comics deal with topics non-superhero)but here are reviews of books available at the small press expo. i start with jason lutes’ berlin.

berlin is about…..(i’ll let the blurb on the back of the book tell it): a captivating trilogy set in the twilight years of germany’s weimar republic. the first book covers eight months in berlin from september 1928 to may day 1929…documenting the hopes and struggles of its inhabitants as their future is darkened by a growing shadow. the second book creates a seamless, street level portrait of their city as tension builds between communist and national socialist, jew and gentile, and the dawn of the second world war draws closer.

pretty heady stuff! accompanied by crisp, clean beautiful art.

i love comics(and movies)about cities or how a city is a character in a story. to the un-initiated, think about a movie where the city plays a major role….sometimes when i visit a city, i watch a few movies set in that city. think of your favorite nyc movies, sf movies, los angeles movies…this is your pre world war two berlin story.

this is a textured journey through the tangled lives of a large cast of characters living in berlin during that time. they capture the wide range of life in the city from the devout to the depraved….finding beauty in the zeniths and nadirs of humanity. an extraordinary achievement.

people might complain….that nothing happens! well that’s life….and its not that nothing happens….it just happens really slowly…and a whole lot of nothing in between. but that’s life too. it captures one slice of time in a city. and there’s nothing else like it in comics…and that’s good news, bad news to people. it depends on who you are. but its 100% art. and i love art…..stuff people produce because they just have to….leaving you wondering where these ideas come from(as a theology dude, i suspect that inspiration originates from a spark of/from god).

the series started in 2001 and its been almost eight years….it will be finished in another 8 years. truly an epic effort. the power of the medium of comics is showcased in telling this kind of story. comics are not just the funny pages for below average readers with bad social skills…..it can be literary, sophisticated and cosmopolitan.

up next is exit wounds by rutu modan. another book set in a city(or too)not too familiar to westerners. here’s the blurb from the back….in modern tel aviv, a young man receives an urgent phone call from a female soldier named numi; learning that his estranged father may have been a victim of a suicide bombing in hadera. as they unravel the mystery, the young man finds himself not only piecing together those last few months of his father’s life but his entire identity.

the jewish daily forward says this about it: exit wounds makes wry comments about classism and sexism in israeli society, the matter of factness of living with terrrorism, and how personal and political inevitably interwine.

its a mystery! its a love story! its a exploration of how our parents influenced us! its a snapshot of living in modern day israel under the threat of terrorism….perhaps a preview of life for us in the states?

its executed very well and feels very human. it affirms the deep things in life. more art!! yay!

finally, too cool to be forgotten is a time warp trip as middle aged andy wicks finally tries hypnosis to help him to quit smoking. but instead, he gets transported back to 1985…back to his high school days! and he gets to live his life over again. faced with the same choices with a head full of wisdom, what will he choose? what will he do with a second choice? this is both a meditation on our teenage years and our middle aged years.

alex robinson has been a favorite of ours during our small press expo days with box office poison and tricked!….real life with real nuance; slice of everyman everyday is his specialty. executed with charm and magic.

maybe for next time….more superheroes!

© hosive for Hosive, 2008. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags:

Feed enhanced by Better Feed from Ozh

this is courtesy of slashfilm.com and….my friend, angelo…..looks like my prediction of a y movie was right…but no skill here….they are making a movie of almost every comic. its like they’ve run out of ideas in hollywood and suddenly discovered comics and graphic novels and bowing down at their altars. my nerd existence is getting legit.

DJ Caruso’s Y: The Last Man in Summer 2010?

Today during our visit to Dreamworks, we got the chance to talk to Eagle Eye director D.J. Caruso with a group of select online journalists. During the discussion, the big screen adaptation of Brian K Vaughn’s Y: The Last Man came up, and Caruso dropped some potentially exciting news:

“What happened is New Line is now part of Warner Bros, and Warner Bros is now really high on the project. And Carl Ellsworth will probably be handing in a script to Warner Bros/New Line [real soon].”

Caruso says that in a perfect world, the film will hit theaters in Summer 2010.

“I was talking to Shia [LaBeouf] about this yesterday when we were looping him, because he really wants to do it as well, I would like to prep this movie in October, and start shooting it by January. Warner Bros keeps saying ‘We need movies for 2010? I’m like ‘We’re the movie!’” said Caruso. “[Shia] wants to do it, I want to do it. I think we just need to worry about him being exhausted, so I told him, if I prep it in the fall and we start in January, that’s a nice big break.”

Y: The Last Man is my favorite comic book series of all time. Shia would play Yorick Brown, a young amateur escape artist, and his Capuchin monkey, Ampersand, who instantly become the last two men on Earth after  something mysterious simultaneously kills every mammal possessing a Y chromosome – including embryos, fertilized eggs, and even sperm. Society is plunged into chaos as infrastructures collapse and the surviving women everywhere try to cope with the loss of the men. Yorick goes on a mission to find his girlfriend Beth, who was on vacation in Australia. However, DJ says that they aren’t planning “to follow that through-line [with his girlfriend Beth] out too much in the first film.” Yes, I said the FIRST FILM.

“I definitely see it as a trilogy. I see the first movie ending basically where you pick up six weeks after the incident then progressing down only a five or six week journey from that point on until the end of the first movie,” revealed Caruso. “It’s been hard in a good way just because there is so much good stuff to choose from. And every-time you start throwing certain scenes in the screenplay, you’ll see that it sort of dislodges and starts to head a different way.”

“We did something earlier where we sort of separated Yorick from Ampersand for a brief moment of time when Yorrick gets very sick. Also, the 355/Yorrick relationship, we’ve been working on that and not getting that right. Yorrick to me is so solid. It’s really like 355 and her joining with Yorrick that has been… and act three and where do you end the first movie, and where do you go from there.

Caruso claims that co-creator Brian K Vaughn is apparently “really happy” with the direction they have taken.

“I just want to fine tune it before I give it to the studio because I always think that first impression… Because to them Y: The Last Man… Now its Warner Bros. So you’re reeducating a whole different group of people.”

Caruso says that if the project was greenlit, it would probably be produced by Warner Bros and not “New Line” as it would probably be over the certain budget threshold that separated the two production labels.

“I’m still gonna give it to Tobey and Rick who are at New Line but I don’t know the policies at all. All I know is my agent keeps going ‘Oh my god, Warner Bros wants this’, which is great!”

© hosive for Hosive, 2008. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags:

Feed enhanced by Better Feed from Ozh

in this segment, i’ll detail my amore for the art and medium of comics. the title comes from a comic shop i frequented as a kid and a nod to my boy q and his blog. i only recently restarted this feature so you might want to go back to the earlier posts to read what this is all about. ironically….despite this picture, i don’t really read too much marvel stuff.

here’s what i’ve been reading lately, starting with my non-spandex pick:

y the last man just finished not that long ago…and with the current comic avalanche on hollywood and movies, this modern classic should be adapted very soon. but that’s what we thought about the watchmen 25 years ago. and watchmen was named on time magazine’s top 100 novels of the 20th century! but watchmen gets its due in the spring of 2009. hopefully, y gets greenlit faster!

y is not about superheroes but a thriller about a plague that wipes out every male on the planet except for one guy named yorick and his monkey. the women rule the world and yorick is the last man on earth. what happened? what will happen to humanity? who did this? it’s a series of mysteries and social analysis….for example, what happens when women are really in charge? the answer…a nuanced, depends on which women!

brian k vaughn who writes for lost(the tv show)scripts this 10 volume set. pia guerra provides most of the pencils. and they create a realistic, disturbing window into a possible future. high recommendations but be warned…its an rated r read. i took a girl to an anime movie once and her mom thought i took her to a cartoon…like for kids. this is not for kids.

j g jones provides the covers and when i actually met j g, sketching in my sketchbook above, i thought he looked really familiar. on the covers of y….he drew himself as yorick!

speaking of j g jones, he’s doing the covers and most of the interiors for final crisis…the universal cataclysmic threat to all the dc heroes. reading this series feels like something evil has crawled into the room…under the couch or under the bed….something insidious is taking over the world…and everything is falling apart. it comes from one of the writers i trust, grant morrison. he crafts complex mindbenders that make you feel like you’re on something…..drugs done for you! which might just be the case.

i’m a sucker for these epics and i trust grant and j g to deliver. the third issue just came out with a bunch of specials to supplement the story. this is definitely worth my time as opposed to other dc mega projects that have just bored me.

© hosive for Hosive, 2008. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags:

Feed enhanced by Better Feed from Ozh

in this segment, i’ll detail my amore for the art and medium of comics. the title comes from a comic shop i frequented as a kid and a nod to my boy q and his blog. i haven’t done one of these in a long time so you might want to go back to the earlier/first post to read what this is all about. you can use the nifty select category button on the right if you are on the agapeshack.com site. sorry, facebook.

in high school, there were two forbidden planets in nyc…one downtown and one midtown. i even saw/felt the presence of stephen king at the midtown one. i was looking at books and felt a shiver go down my spine when i heard the cashier ask someone for a few autographs. i turn around and see the scary nerd red sox fan who is stephen king. he was creepy even back then in the 80′s. that moment and picking up mike grell’s green arrow run starting with the longbow hunters are the clearest memories from that forbidden planet.

2 forbidden planets! but….that was the high level of comics sales back in the day. today, comic shops have closed down and are getting smaller.

i intend to use these columns to tell you what i’m reading but i’ll start off by telling you what i’m not reading.

i’m not reading trinity, the new dc weekly series. i gave it a try…three issues worth…and i was bored. i would have given it a longer chance that three issues but the main reason i cannot risk another 52 week series is…..

this:countdown. cover #6 says it inadvertently…countdown was a disaster. no payoff. weird writing. and the sin that cannot be forgiven: not interesting.

i am a sucker for these gimmicks. i love comics and willing to give any innovative format a chance but 51 weeks later….i felt ripped off. i hung in there for a year and paid way too much for this nonsense. i can’t take a chance with trinity. if i read that the reviews are good, i’ll pick up the trades(paperback collections). i’m wondering if the competition, marvel comics was right in their response to whether they too would dabble in weekly comics: “we don’t do comics weekly…we do them strongly”

i’m spending my money on people i can trust….grant morrison, geoff johns and the return of my favorite writer: james robinson.

one thing i am reading and re-reading is starman….my favorite monthly comic of all time. i introduced steph to this comic and she devoured it. they have just come out with the first of these omnibus type collections of the whole run. it is about a gen x’r reluctant hero who finds himself….yes, its about good guys and bad guys but like all good fiction, its about life and is a mirror for us to see ourselves clearly. and as you can see, the art is amazing. the comic is also about the city….james robinson wanted to make opal city a character in his story: from the skyline to the suburb to its shops to the citizens that inhabit. he wanted to show why you love a place….a city…a home. pretty literary stuff for a comic.

this is light years ahead of countdown. go to the barnes and nobles and flip through it. then buy it. or again, the offer is open to come and borrow it or read it at the agapeshack on the upper, upper west side.

a non-superhero comic i’m reading is this autobiographical travel log to north korea, the other white meat. its the diary of an animator who gets sent to north korea on a project and he starts sketching and recording the culture shock and difference. my wife, of course was totally into this especially after we went to see propaganda village and the north earlier this year. steph is reading it now….even new friend michelle, herself an artist has read it. and her sister too. i am going through it slowly as to savor it.

i will try to feature comics that are not just super-tights…though starman is more than adults wearing underwear on the outside. while, most of american culture is enamored with super-hero culture(check your movie theatre), i hope they also discover the non-super hero side of this genre.

© hosive for Hosive, 2008. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags:

Feed enhanced by Better Feed from Ozh

in this segment, i’ll detail my amore for the art and medium of comics. the title comes from a comic shop i frequented as a kid and a nod to my boy q and his blog.

my love for comics/graphic novels started in chinese school when a dean confiscated some poor kid’s collection(not allowed in chinese school) and gave them to me….while i was still in class! my mom was a teacher at the school and good friends with the dean. i learned something about how power works that day(but that’s another entry).

next my uncle robert fed my habit by telling me stories of his collecting days and even buying a few issues for me. had a hard time finding money to fund my next fix but one time, my great-grandfather once gave me 50 cents to buy 2 comics. however, i hit a road block when my aunt and uncle came from hong kong and i asked them to pick a comic for me at the newsstand and they came back with some barbie dress me up book with cardboard cutouts you put different paper dresses on. something was lost in translation.

in my early junior high days, my dad would take us to barnes and nobles(when the only one in the world was in nyc)and forbidden planet(a branch of a famous london comic shop)in union square. it had two full floors of nerd and geek goodness and i was on my way to full addiction. later on, during the bust years of comics, the store relocated to the much smaller location it still inhabits. i don’t pick up comics there regularly because its too far south from where i live.

i’ll chronicle this journey in further editions but this is what i’ve been reading and re-reading lately:

box office poison is the story of (mostly)singles living in the city during the 90′s which sounds like a long time ago but not to old farts like me. its moving, sarcastic, with an ensemble of flawed but beautiful characters. there are so many character moments lovingly crafted by the author who clearly adores his creation. i followed this when it was a comic and even more so when i met the creator, alex robinson, at the small press expo. when it was finished and compiled, i got this edition. like any great fiction, there are new things to be discovered with each read.

green lantern has been getting great reviews mostly because of master super hero writer geoff johns. almost everything he writes is worth reading in the dc universe. this is a sprawling popcorn summer blockbuster sci fi epic. i waited until the hardcovers…..vol 2 comes out later in the spring. a rival/evil group of (yellow)ring wielding characters wage war against the good guys who use the green rings. rumor has it that there will be multiple colored ring corps by the end of the year. this was the sleeper hit in the dc universe this year!

here’s something marvel, something odd. james sturm, who i also met at the small press expo, imagines the folks that that the fantastic four is really based on and tells their story. he treats them as if they are real people….and this is their biography. when i met james and asked him what kind of comics he did….without hesitation, he asserted: historical fiction. wow! this guy has guts! and imagination! this is a surreal classic illustrated by the great guy davis.

i’m also slowly re-reading the cerebus epic….16 or so phonebook sized volumes about……we don’t know. when we were in college, q, phil and i devoured these books and still had no idea what they are about. all we can say is that its about the life of a talking aardvark…and about life. reading these volumes is making me nostalgic of the days when we had so much leisure time to just read in the spring air and the endless summers. a simpler era when good friends bonded deeply….before real life, distance and misunderstandings separated us.

i’m still reading the kind of comics that come out every week….in fact, this is a weekly comic. 52 issues that come out in 52 weeks. this is the 2nd weekly experiment by dc and sadly, it has been disappointing. not enough plot, payoffs or good creativity. but i’m a sucker for this stuff….i believe in the idea of a weekly comic and hope that the new one, trinity, about the big three, superman, batman and wonder woman will be better. i love the dc universe and i’m an easy sell for gimmicks and events!

finally for this edition, i’ve also been reading clandestine, which i thought was from my childhood but i discovered was from my college days(i guess a second childhood). it’s a marvel book but really an independent minded superhero story by the great alan davis. its about family with the powers and personalities reflecting the weirdness found in any family. more clandestine stories on the way! yay!

all these comics are available at your local store, amazon and of course at the tsang household! come visit us and ask for these recs!

© hosive for Hosive, 2008. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags:

Feed enhanced by Better Feed from Ozh