(A Once Upon a Time Challenge Read)

Not surprisingly, my first official finished read for the Once Upon a Time Challenge is a book from my alternates list, and one that I didn’t possess at the beginning of the challenge!

Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser is the re-release of the Howard Chaykin/Mike Mignola graphic adaptation of the classic characters created by Fritz Leiber and featured in stories that spanned a 50 year period beginning in 1939. The original comics have been out-of-print for years and Dark Horse has done a phenomenal job of collecting these for the first time in graphic novel format with a new cover image by Mike Mignola.

Continue reading Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser →

To conclude, for now, my celebration of the Robert E. Howard Centennial I go to the comics.

Last year on occasion I would hear Jeff and other patrons of A to Z Comics talking about Conan, but I was unfazed. Why would I want to read comics about a barbarian with an Austrian accent? would’ve been my reply had I been asked. However, when the first trade came out, Conan: The Frost Giant’s Daughter and Other Stories I picked it up to take a look and was blown away by Cary Nord’s art. I knew right then and there that I had to have it. After reading the book and reading the biography of Robert E. Howard that was included in the trade I knew I would have to go to the source material and discover Conan for myself, thus was born my affection for the work of Robert E. Howard.

The writing chores for the Conan series falls on the shoulders of Kurt Busiek. Busiek has a reputation as a very strong writer in this field and in reading his adaptations of Howard’s Conan stories I can see why. Busiek has written a very nice framing sequence in which to present the tales that ties each issue in the trade together quite nicely. Often in the life of a comic series the first few issues show the signs of growing pains in the writing. This is not the case with Kurt Busiek’s work on Conan. It is strong right out of the gate. And while the assumption would be that the comics format would have to focus more on the action of Howard’s stories Busiek manages to include the other elements from Howard’s stories that have made them stand the test of time.

The first thing that draws me to any comic is, however, the art. There are a handful of artists who I consider to be top notch in the comics field and Cary Nord is in that elite group. The standard process of comic art involves the artist first pencilling and then inking his drawings before the colorist goes to work. Some artists ink their own work and some have others ink their work for them. On rare occasions an artists pencils are so strong that to ink them would be a travesty. Cary Nord is one of those artists. During the planning stages of the Conan series Busiek wrote a script that Dark Horse used to audition over 20 pencillers. Nord’s audition work, included in the back of this first trade, was so strong that he not only got the job but it prompted colorist Dave Stewart to suggest skipping the inking process and coloring right over the pencils.

Cary Nord does not have a weak area in my opinion. Each character has unique qualities; he draws men and women equally well and his backgrounds are rich and lavish or sparse and unassuming depending on the needs for that panel. Some examples of his page work for Conan can be found here and here.

The addition of Dave Stewart as colorist for this series puts this book into the upper echelon of today’s comic series. Stewart is a mutliple award-winning colorist whose work is unequalled in my opinion. The colors are at once rich and soft and are a perfect compliment to Nord’s pencils. Stewart’s colors captured the appropriate mood in each panel. Cary Nord’s pencil work is so great that I would be buying the book if it was only his pencils however the work is enhanced by Stewart’s colors.

The second volume in the Conan series is currently out, The God in the Bowl and Other Stories,

and the third book is due out this May. Each book is put out in both hardback and softcover simultaneously which is a really nice touch by Dark Horse. I would recommend the hardback but the trade quality is outstanding as well and of course slightly less expensive. The God in the Bowl and Other Stories features work by additional artists besides Nord. The art is good but being sold on Nord’s work it is disappointing to me when he is not the primary artist on certain issues. This book also shows that not all strong characters in the Conan universe are males, the females can hold their own!

If you are into comics at all or, if you are curious as to what a great comic can do, I encourage you to pick up a copy of this series. Action, adventure, history, mythology, romance and derring-do abound.
_________________________

There is some controversy as to whether Robert E. Howard was born on January 22nd or 24th. Since Robert himself claimed the 22nd that is the date I went with. There is an interesting article, not all of which I agree with, that was in the Washington Post yesterday (the day they acknowledge as Howard’s birthday) here. For a good review of the article I point you to author James Reasoner‘s comments here.

_________________________

Tomorrow you will be set free from my Howard mania! Sex on Wheels is tomorrow’s topic. Tune in!

(Selina Kyle-Catwoman)

Congratulations to Darwyn Cooke who won an Eisner Award for Best Limited Series for The New Frontier on Friday at the San Diego Comic-Con. The Eisner awards are essentially the Oscars for the comic book world.

(Covers for Fables issues 12 and 18)

James Jean won an Eisner Award for Best Cover Artist for his work on Fables (as well as Green Arrow and Batgirl) and Fables itself won an Eisner for Best Serialized Story. Both Fables and James Jean are favorites so I’m really happy for their wins as well as Cooke’s. James Jean’s art is stunning. To sample the goods first hand you can download the first issue of Fables free in pdf format here and a sneak preview of the first several pages of The New Frontier here.

Fantagraphics won for Best Publication Design for their wonderful, magical ongoing series of Peanuts reprints. The first 3 volumes of this 25 volume set have been published thus far.

Every strip of Charles Schulz’s beloved series is being reprinted in book format in chronological order. I have all 3 volumes and they are beautiful books. The plan is to release 25 volumes, 2 per year, for 12 and a half years. More details on these books and the project can be found here.

These are the Eisner winners that matter most to me but the complete list of this years winners can be found here.

To close I’ll include a brief shout of congratulations to Eric Powell for his Eisner wins for The Goon and to Brian K. Vaughn for his Eisners for the new series Ex Machina. Both are really fun comics worth checking out. And a hearty congratulations to Jeff Smith for winning an Eisner for Best Graphic Album-Reprint for Bone: One Volume Edition. This is a grand, epic, and entertaining tale, especially if you are a fantasy/Lord of the Rings fan.

Speaking of LOTR, let me also point out that today in 1954 The Fellowship of the Ring was first published! A truly red letter day for fantasy geeks everywhere (present company included)!!!

(cover image of issue 6 of The New Frontier)

Yes kids, it is Wednesday once again and I’m in the mood for a little comic book chatter. Jeff Smith, in a cunning ploy to take more of my money, recently loaned me his issues of the DC comics 6 issue series The New Frontier, written and drawn by Darwyn Cooke. It is safe to say that I have another comic book idol and I’m going to have to pick up copies of this for myself.

(back cover image)

Before giving it a proper read I flipped through issue number one. As I gazed at Darwyn Cooke’s art my heart skipped a beat, streams of light burst forth from the heavens and I could hear an aria in the background. Well, it felt like that anyway. Cooke’s art is reminiscent of mid-century “retro” science fiction art, advertising, and the “good girl” art of the 1950’s, all of which are personal favorites. Darwyn Cooke has a background in animation but his art cannot be relegated to being merely ‘cartoony’. His work has such a historic feel to it. I cannot say enough about how much I like the look of this book. Darwyn’s inks are very tight and Dave Stewart’s coloring is phenomenal. The New Frontier is nostalgia in print form.

(New Frontier art page sans color)

The New Frontier not only showcases Cooke’s amazing artistic talent, which he has in spades, but proves he has the chops to write a good story. Set in the time between the Golden and Silver Ages of comics, Cooke has fashioned a tale that places DC’s comic heroes amidst real world events that were taking place during and right after WWII. In this period of war and paranoia the government outlawed all but the most stalwart of superheroes (Superman, Wonder Woman). Events, however, lead the world to a point in which heroes of all kinds had to be summoned in order to avert total destruction.

The New Frontier is told in a series of vignettes focusing on both well-known and lesser known characters from the history of the DC universe. While bound as 6 separate issues each issue was actually three times the standard comic book length. The varied plotlines are tied together within the framework of the rise of Hal Jordan to the role of the Green Lantern. Cooke uses the origin story of Hal Jordan to personify the real life “fly boy” pilot heroes of WWII and it works to great effect.

(Hal Jordan and Carol Ferris)

I love Darwyn Cooke’s response in this interview as to why he focused on the Hal Jordan character:
“Most importantly, I suppose, was my personal attachment to Green Lantern and Hal, coupled with the Mercury and Apollo Space programs. These were the stuff of my childhood imagination. It is almost impossible to explain to someone what it was like to be a kid during that era unless you were there. Today we worship fey actors and millionaire children who throw or hit balls. But the Astronaut — good f***, they strapped in on top of huge jerry-rigged tubes of unstable fuel and fired themselves toward the heavens!” (The entire interview is terrific)

Cooke does a masterful job of weaving these tales together in such a way that each issue builds upon the other and he then brings all the characters together for the climatic, world changing event. The story is fascinating on so many levels. It includes characters that I either hadn’t heard of or knew little about in addition to the major superhero characters. Cooke penned the tale in such a way that you can follow the story even if you don’t know all the players but also whets your appetite to find out more about these characters’ history. The inclusion of a portion of John F. Kennedy’s New Frontier speech in the denouement was a stroke of brilliance and evoked powerful emotions in me as I closed the final page of issue 6.

This tale speaks so well to the times we are in right now. It speaks to the need for men and women of courage and intelligence and belief to rise up and face the challenges of today’s world. It touches on the fact that heroes are not perfect but that we can rise above our base humanity during times of great need and touch the lives of those around us. And in both tone and art it points back to a time that we today glamorize as being a simpler time but one that Cooke believes is quite similar to our own. The stories are collected in trade form and continue to be available in their original format and I highly recommend giving this a read. Few comic stories grab me like this one did and I’m still in awe this creative masterpiece. You can glimpse a ‘sneak peek’ on the DC Comics site here.

Here are some more examples of panels/pages from The New Frontier. These are from the original inked pages before colorization.

For fans old and new here is a link to a page featuring examples of Cooke’s art as well as some really cool sidewalk murals inspired by his art.

I’ll end this with the exciting news (at least to Jeff and I) that Darwyn Cooke plans on releasing a creator owned original graphic novel. In discussing this he mentions pondering whether “the notion of the heroic ideal [is] still valid today? Could I tell an exciting story that convincingly portrayed people doing the right thing in today’s society without seeming naive or nostalgic? It also deals with something I prefer to spandex — Giant Robots! I’m hard at work on this now, and I hope for a late 2005 release. Tentatively this book will be about 150 pages and will see a hardcover release first, with softcover to follow.”

Darwyn Cooke and giant robots!?!?!? Exciting days ahead, indeed!!!