CHRISTMAS COMICS: Spider-man

Here is a lovely painting by Bob Wakelin published in the Marvel UK Spider-Man Christmas Special 1984.



Have a Merry Christmas!

CHRISTMAS COMICS: Prison Funnies

Yippee! It's nearly Christmas. Here's a festive four page tale by Chip Zdarsky. This is from The Collected Prison Funnies, published in 2003. Click for the larger versions...

CHRISTMAS COMICS: Doomlord

Heading towards Christmas, so I've scanned a festive cover and story featuring Doomlord, from a December 1983 edition of Eagle.

Doomlord began as a photo strip. In the early 80s, Eagle had a few photo strips alongside its drawn ones. These were in genres such as football, western, etc. Doomlord was sci-fi made with photos of someone in a rubber mask.

It was witty though, and dealt with moral and philosophical issues. It was also popular which meant when the photo strips were done away with, Doomlord continued with artwork from Eric Bradbury and Heinzl among others. The scale of the science fiction action could be expanded outwith having to photograph it.

Alan Grant wrote both the photo and drawn versions, so there's a real continuity to the entire series.

So anyway, here's a Christmas themed pause in the earth-shattering main storyline.

COMICS STAMPEDE 5: DC Comics

This lovely set featuring artwork direct from the comics was released in 2006. The set is split into covers and images.


The strange thing is I have precisely one Aquaman comic, purchased in the late 70s, and its cover is the image used for his stamp. There must be thousands of Aquaman comics out there.

TRANSFORMERS CLASSICS UK

In the interests of full disclosure, I must write that I was involved in a small way during the production of this book. However I would have written favourably on it even if I hadn’t been. This book is a collection of comics which were produced by the Marvel UK office in the mid 1980s. I enjoyed the initial run at the time, as mentioned here.

As well as the stories themselves, with terrific artwork from John Ridgway, Geoff Senior, and many others, there are really fascinating behind the scenes articles. These include photos of the offices, and new interviews with most of the artist and editorial staff involved. Lots of artwork produced for poster, sticker and transfer giveaways is reproduced.

It was interesting to note that so many of the team producing the comic were practically novices, learning their craft on the job. Amazing, when you consider the big success Transformers quickly became, and the all-conquering multimedia franchise it has ended up as.

It’s also amusing to see British pop culture explained for an American audience. Hence the description of British annuals as being hardback books that come out close to Christmas and bear the following year’s date on them.

One gripe I would have is that as someone that read the original comics, I am used to seeing these stories in their original dimensions, as opposed to their new smaller size here. I imagine this shrinkage wouldn’t bother you if you hadn’t seen them before in the first place.

The volume is sizable, just shy of 300 pages. A lot of love has gone into the production, as evidenced in IDW editor James Roberts’ introduction. A terrific volume.

IT'S CERVANTES IN THE BOX


I've been reading Rob Davis' adaptation of Don Quixote. The original is one of my favourite books.



I was struck by the page shown here. It's near the start of the book. Cervantes is talking to the reader to introduce the story. It's a nice page, and artistically done. It does read like an afterthought though. The page could easily have been inserted once the book was finished. I wonder if it was? It's as if Davis is worried that readers really would not understand that the narrator was the person speaking in the boxes. Is it a subtler version of the guide to comics grammar as seen in the Evanovitch book?

Interesting times when comics are explaining themselves to readers who may not know how to read comics.

COMMANDO 50th ANNIVERSARY - and Doctor Who in Comics.

The University of Dundee has an exhibition on of artwork from Commando comics, currently in its 50th year of publication.





Ian Kennedy gets his own frame with four covers.



The covers are certainly impressive. So are the pages themselves.



There are also scripts on show.



A piece that struck me was Jordi Penalva's "Noose for a Hero" cover. I already liked it, but to see those vivid red clouds in the original painting was impressive.



The exhibition runs until 19th November and is well worth a visit.

There's another on at the National Army Museum in London too, which has huge Ian Kennedy banners outside.

I also recently visited the Doctor Who in Comics 1964-2011 exhibition at London's Cartoon Museum. They have terrific John Ridgway and Roger Langridge pages. John Ross' work was interesting - he doesn't use any black space at all on the artwork itself. I was especially impressed by a fully painted Ron Turner page. I love his Journey to the Stars stories from Speed comic.

I haven't been to the Museum before so the regular material on show was all new to me too. Highlights for me were pages of Frank Hampson Dan Dare, David Lloyd V For Vendetta and Joe Colquhoun Charley's War. It was also interesting to see the Charles Schulz original, with all its erased pencils under the inks. He really worked hard at making Peanuts look effortless.

HOW TO READ A GRAPHIC NOVEL

Here is a preface to Troublemaker by Janet and Alex Evanovich. Like comics work from novelists such as Denise Mina, James Patterson and Ian Rankine, Dark Horse Comics (or Dark Horse Books as they refer to themselves on the spine of this work) publish work by these authors in an understandable and laudable attempt to attract readers who would usually not read comics. It's the first such crossover book to include an instruction manual on how to follow a comics page though.

It does seem kind of ridiculous, especially to someone such as I who has read comics all my days, but I think they may be onto something. I have seen people look at comics pages and just think "No, I don't want to deal with this". This "comics are too difficult for people to read" argument has rumbled along for at least a couple of decades, and I've heard plenty of skeptical views towards it from learned comics individuals.

But consider this: I think it may be similar the disconnect felt when Yoof TV show Network 7 started putting words running along the screen in one or more places while a presenter was talking. The mix of looking and reading was confusing! It's now the norm and difficult to remember what was so jarring about it.

SCOTLAND IN COMICS 10: THE JOCKS AND THE GEORDIES

This story is from #1929 of The Dandy, published in November 1978. It's one of the oldest comics I have. More specifically, it's one of the oldest I have that I got when it actually came out.


I liked The Jocks and The Geordies at the time, along with all the other strips in the comic. My enjoyment was very innocent - I had no idea what a Jock or a Geordie was at the time of reading.

I don't know who wrote or drew this, due to D.C.Thomson's policy of giving no credits.

The Dandy continues to come out after 74 years. The latest issue is #3539.

Click on images for larger versions.

STAR WARS BLU-RAY

There's another release of the Star Wars movies imminent, this time on Blu-ray. There have been more changes made to the films and also included is a selection of deleted scenes. Posted online is an alternative take of Harrison Ford and Carrie Fisher on Hoth. Watch it here. I checked it out and realised that I was familiar with the deleted dialogue. A lot of it was in the comic adaptation from 1980. These comics took a long time to do, and so the writer Archie Goodwin and artist Al Williamson would work from scripts and reference photos, so as to have the comic ready at the same time as the movie was released. By this time, dialogue had changed and scenes had been cut, but they were still in the comics. I remember there was much more to Luke's training with Yoda in the comic, for instance. This black and white artwork really shows up Williamson's work nicely. The writing at the bottom, "Next week! Re-Enter: Obi-Wan Kenobi! Miss it not!" is there because this page is from the UK weekly reprint comic. As six pages had gone by, it was time for a break until the next issue. I can still remember the anticipation for the next instalment. The arm bursting through the wall at the end is a wampa monster, in a scene that was cut from the movie but is also in the deleted scenes now offered.