Comic Books

cross-posted from: https://lemm.ee/post/57681239

"Mystery of Penquan Island" is the first LoK one-shot graphic novel. It takes place after the show, and focuses on Mako.

When a strange missing persons case falls into his lap, Mako is forced to choose between his job and doing what he feels is right! An upturned room and an unhelpful witness aren’t promising starts to the investigation, but when his brother Bolin comes across a surprising clue that ties their own mother to the case, the pair embark on a journey to the small, rustic island of Penquan. The island’s inhabitants seem to have things to hide, and the brothers are determined to get to the bottom of it—even if it means uncovering uncomfortable parts of their family’s past.

The comic released March 4th. It is written by Kiku Hughes with art by Alex Monik and Diana Sousa, made in collaboration with Mike and Bryan.

EU sellers: Genialokal (german independent bookstores) - Lehmanns (german) - Bol.com (Benelux) - Bookshop.org (UK)

US sellers: AbeBooks (owned by Amazon) - Amazon – Barnes and Noble

New list is up! Short one for me this week it seems

Hyde Street #4 - My favorite Ghost Machine title so far.

Cruel Kingdom #3 - Might have missed #2, but #1 was good!

That's it lol, what are you grabbing this week?

cross-posted from: https://feddit.uk/post/24996057

CB Cebulski: In our careers exactly, there's always that Marvel-DC rivalry that people talk about, but at its core, we're fans of each other's work. There's mutual respect on the editorial and creative level, and we really enjoyed working together. This was a really good project to have done, but I think there's another white whale; we got the omnibuses out, but maybe there's another white whale we haven't seen for 20 years or so?

Marie Javins: I'm trying to figure out what you could possibly be talking about. the only other white whale I can think…. ohhhh…. should we do that?

CB Cebulski: Should we?

Marie Javins: Should we ask them?

CB Cebulski: What do you think? Another crossover, a modern crossover. Are you up for it? What do you think?

[There is an appreciative cheer from the retailers]

CB Cebulski: I guess the retailers voted, so I guess we have no choice but to do this, Marie.

Marie Javins: Right, can I make more fart joke comics as part of this?

CB Cebulski: I don't think that that's exactly what they were talking about.

Marie Javins: But I brought the swatches. I brought the swatches from the printer, you can smell it. You can come and rub and smell it. I've got them right here.

CB Cebulski: Well, I don't know that's what their applause was about. I think they're talking about a Marvel/DC DC/Marvel crossover in… can we get it done in 2025?

Marie Javins: That's tight, but I guess we could, like, later this year?

CB Cebulski: I guess so, 2025, we got, we got what, ten months to go? I think we could put together some creators and some character ideas and do something.

Marie Javins: But even if I start right now, it's gonna be… later. You're all right. [To audience] I already know he secretly started you know, mine might be a little later, but they don't have to be the exact same time.

CB Cebulski: In all seriousness, folks, We are doing two crossovers, two one-shots, Marvel/DC, and DC/Marvel.

Marie Javins: He's going to do the Marvel/DC one… Can we tell them anything else? Do you think it's okay if I tell them that it's Bat-Mite2/Punisher?

CB Cebulski: I don't think we've gotten that far yet. I wouldn't want to lie to them if that's not what we're doing, which I don't think we are

Marie Javins: I think it sounds good.

The cover and the inside art is drawn by Jim Lee, who is my favorite Punisher artist. He gives Frank a proper grittiness, has exaggerated but rarely wonky figures, and pays attention to drawing guns both in making them look like more than collections of random bits and in choosing unusual models. In the cover Frank has an L86 LSW in hand while speeding towards tropical danger. While the LSW sadly doesn't actually appear in the comic, the Sterling submachinegun is a decent consolation prize.

Full credits:

A jet ski, a Hawaiian shirt, a bueatiful sunset, and all the ontologically evil thugs you can shoot.

Micro, Frank's long time sidekick, gets to do some actual shooting this issue rather than simply being Frank's man in the chair.

Punisher holds bloody stick while someone else babbles about the plot, big Doomslayer 2016 energy.

Frank shooting his acquired Sterling SMG.

More Sterling action.

Frank is trapped.

Fortunately, he thinks up a clever plan to escape.

Budda budda budda firefight.

Micro opens fire to make an intentionally flashy entrance.

He then uses cultural appropriation for good in order to scare the superstitious thugs.

Micro meets up with Frank and they share what passes for humor.

cross-posted from: https://feddit.uk/post/24764450

Yanick Paquette is one of my favourite comic book artists, including work on Terra Obscura, Seven Soldiers, Batman, X-Men, Swamp Thing and Wonder Woman. But he wants everyone to be a better artist. And on Substack, that is what he is setting out to do, with his Secrets Of Drawing posts, illustrated Scott McCloud Understanding Comics style. He tells me, "I write and draw to scratch my pedagogical itch", that's a desire to teach, "and help fellow artists as I've been helped by my other masters before. They are free masterclasses and turn out to be more time-consuming than expected to produce. Knowing that they are being read and enjoyed goes a long way to justifying carving out time for this little pro bono project."

Credits:

I didn't really follow the story beyond an uprising against Darkseid on the planet Apokolips, but art was wonderful.

Super heroic moron flying through space, vaguely near his space horse.

An especially super heroic landing.

I do genuinely love the old school approach to color of metallic objective like Darkseid's armor here.

Sire, the peasants are revolting.

This panel suffers from some proportion issues meeting with the intrinsically goofy design of Darkseid to produce a kind of squished action figure visual.

A standout panel. The white silhouetting is inventive and evocative.

A helmeted lasergunslinger.

Oh good lord. At least there won't be a closeup of that face.

Oh no.

The planet broke before the peasants did.

Just a super intense panel.

New list is up! Short one for me, which is fine because instead of picking up last week I got into meshtastic and let my comics sit in my box lol. Let's see..

Toxic Avenger #5 - The End. Was better than it should have been!

Black Hammer Spiral City #4 - Mantis P.I. has been good so far.

Warm Fusion #2 - I think I missed #1?

Space Ghost #10 - Behind as hell but still picking them up.

Well that's it for me, what're you pulling?

This is a short story from the February 1982 issue of Epic Illustrated.

The story begins with the British and Germans in the trenches of WW1

The main character is shot and in his daze gets separated from everyone else in no man's land.

Eventually he finds himself in a fantastical world.

Eventually he meets a German soldier, and they share a meal before he passes out again, and wakes up back in the trenches.

There's a final few panels where the apparent hallucinations are given some context as German officers decide not to use the "experimental" new gas anymore after reports one of their own men was affected and reported having a friendly meeting with a British soldier.

cross-posted from: https://feddit.uk/post/24443359

Abstract

The portrayal of comic book characters is often oversexualized, which is intended to boost sales in a market traditionally dominated by male readers. However, the comic book market today has a diverse readership, and women in particular consume more comics than in the past. Against this background, the present study uses a sample of 648 comic book covers to empirically test whether the underlying sex sells logic actually works. In this context, the results of the regression analysis show no evidence that sexualized images are associated with comic book sales. The article provides theoretical explanations for this result and discusses scientific and managerial implications of this finding.

Valentowitsch, Johann (2024) Journal of Managerial Issues, Vol 36, Issue 3, p188

cross-posted from: https://feddit.uk/post/24430300

There used to be two types of Godzilla stories you could tell. The first used Godzilla as a metaphor, mostly for the horrors of atomic warfare – see the original 1954 Godzilla or Godzilla Minus One. The second has Godzilla acting as a protector of the Earth, often battling other monsters or teaming up with them – Legendary’s MonsterVerse built an entire franchise on this concept alone. But Godzilla: Heist #1 from Van Jensen and Kelsey Ramsay takes a different approach, seeing the King of the Monsters unwittingly play accomplice to a grand heist.

This happens thanks to an extremely clever thief named Jai. Using a series of drones and a computer that predicts Godzilla’s movements, Jai is able to lift $90 million from a casino. But this puts him in the crosshairs of another group of thieves, who strong-arm him into using his skills to break into Whitehall, which is home to Britain’s defense ministry. Like any good thief, though, Jai has a few tricks up his sleeve.

I was genuinely surprised by Godzilla: Heist, and not just in terms of its high-concept pitch but that Jensen actually puts a lot of work into pulling it off. His script starts off slow, showcasing Jai setting everything into place before Godzilla bursts into the scene. Like any good heist, Jensen throws in a few twists, including the real reason why Jai decides to go along with the Whitehall job, which involves another major figure from Godzilla lore.

...

Godzilla: Heist #1 is a truly unique Godzilla story, mixing the absolute destruction the King of Monsters is known for with a high-stakes robbery. If this is the level of creativity IDW is going for with its new Godzilla books, it’s sure to pull in plenty of new fans.

cross-posted from: https://feddit.uk/post/24429805

Following the previously announced Godzilla Vs X-Men, Godzilla Vs Fantastic Four and Godzilla Vs Spider-Man, I get the rather predictable word that it will be followed by Godzilla Vs Avengers #1 one-shot for June. However, that still leaves two of the six slots unfilled. Might one of them be Godzilla Vs Hulk? And the other, either Godzilla Vs Deadpool or Godzilla Vs Jeff The Land Shark? Anyway, I do know Godzilla Vs Avengers #1 one-shot for June for sure, with covers by Lee Garbett, Mike Allred and Nick Bradshaw. But that is all. The first, Godzilla Vs FF is out in a month.

Cover at the Simon Comics crowdfunding campaign.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/simonstudios/simon-comics-presents-killshott-stuntman-and-pathetic?ref=discovery&term=Killshott&total_hits=5&category_id=250

New list is up! Looks like a slimmer week for me thankfully

Eat Sleep Reap Repeat #1&2 - gonna have to special order these, looks fun though! Something about reaping souls, I've been sort of obsessed with the idea of multiple reapers having an agency of sorts and the office-like behavior therein since The Mighty Boosh's cab scene.

From The World Of Minor Threats The Brood #3 - You know me and my Minor Threats! Best superhero/villain series I've read so far, of course being that I'm not usually a fan of that stuff the competition is pretty slim, but still I'm not a fan generally but like this one, that's saying something!

Let This One Be A Devil #1 - Jersey Devil?! Let's fucking go. Dude also did one recently about Project Blue Book, I think me and this dude would get a long lol.

Herculoids #1 - ?!?!? Other people know this show?! I have to buy this to send to a friend, we used to get mega stoned and watch it lol.

Space Ghost #10 - I'm so behind..

w0rldtr33 #13 - Still haven't read 12 but it's on the "next" pile

I'm sure my shop will be delayed on some, but I'm fine with putting it off a little, I'm delayed anyway. Well that's it for me, what are you pulling?

What happens when two comics artists ‘meet on the page’ to explore the tragedies of the Israel-Gaza war? Art Spiegelman, best known for his Pulitzer prize-winning Holocaust memoir Maus, and Joe Sacco, author of bestselling graphic reportage Palestine, grapple with the ongoing crisis

This expansive collection, published by Dark Horse, includes The Complete ElfQuest Volumes 1 - 7, The Final Quest, and Stargazer’s Hunt. Celebrate 45 years of ElfQuest, and support World Central Kitchen with your purchase!

cross-posted from: https://sh.itjust.works/post/32876527

As a child of the 80s, it is a real treat to add this to the collection. “Wings of silver. Nerves of steel…”

Acclaimed comic book creator Brian K. Vaughan has commented on the renewed success of his prescient 2015 Image Comics series We Stand On Guard. Given the present political tensions between the United States and Canada, Vaughan though grateful for the book's comeback, hopes its premise firmly remains fiction.

Set a hundred years in the future, We Stand On Guard follows a heroic band of Canadian civilians turned freedom fighters who must defend their homeland from invasion by a technologically superior opponent, the U.S. Vaughan (Y the Last Man, Saga, Paper Girls) collaborated with renowned artist Steve Skroce (Wolverine, Cable, storyboard artist for The Matrix) for the series that has had its six issues collected for the release by Image Comics. "Many of my proudest collaborations have been with Canadian creators, and it was a particular thrill to finally work with legendary artist Steve Skroce," the writer said. "So I'm grateful that readers have been revisiting our nightmarish war story, which we hope remains fiction."

...

According to Image Comics, orders piling up this week for We Stand On Guard, available in trade paperback and hardcover, exceeded the total sales for the title in 2024. The limited edition deluxe hardcover is almost completely sold-out at the distributor and copies of the paperback are flying off the shelves at record speed.

We Stand On Guard debuted in 2015, with the first issue selling over 78,000 copies. The sixth and final issue sold over 35,000, and while it was the least-selling throughout the run, the limited series remained in the list of top 75 books sold in a month. We Stand On Guard's deluxe edition earned a spot on The New York Times hardcover graphic books bestseller list for June 2016.

Dark Horse Comics will publish acclaimed Spanish comic book creator Alex Vede's original graphic novel, Riptide, in English for the first time. The book will arrive on August 20, three months after Vede's first graphic novel with the publisher, Yucatan 1512, debuts in May.

...

Dark Horse Comics' Riptide synopsis reads, "The secretive NARWAL organization is hiding powerful secrets during the most contentious point of the Cold War. One marine biologist, Max, is drawn into the mysteries surrounding whale communications that mention the legendary Ceto—an advanced underwater civilization believed to be a myth. If Max is forced to choose between his loyalty to humanity and the opportunity to bring about peace with the last inhabitants of the lost city of Atlantis, will he risk everything and save both species?"

Broken Frontier strives to be an inclusive platform reflecting and celebrating the diversity of the form and its practitioners. Our internal coverage policies are designed to prioritise diverse voices and work that spotlights marginalised communities wherever possible. You can read our team statement on this here. To that end we are also building up relevant resource lists of comics that communicate those stories.

This is a work-in-progress so rest assured that there are a number of other resource lists currently being worked on to be added here at a later date. Click on each title below to access the relevant list.

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