THAT COMIC SMELL: Dinosaur comics

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"In a distant time (earlier this year) 4 friends embarked on a Skype journey to chat... Dinosaurs!
Come and listen to us prattle on about bloody dinosaurs. There’s no deeper meaning here. No messages of any kind. Just a good long look and talk about comics that have kool dinosaurs in them.
This and all the usual comics chat on…
That Comic Smell!
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Boring (Noah Van Sciver)
One Dirty Tree (Noah Van Sciver)
A Matter of Life (Jeffrey Brown)
Calvin and Hobbes (Bill Watterson)
King-Cat No.80 (John Porcellino)
Eye of the Majestic Creature Vol.2 (Leslie Stein)
Blat! #1 (Mat Greaves)
Crossover Classics (Various Marvel and DC)
Bravo for Adventure (Alex Toth)
Jurassic Park (Gil Kane, George Pérez, Walter Simonson)
Tyrant (Stephen Bissette)
Dark Horse Classics Godzilla (Randy Stradley, Art Adams)
Creature features (Art Adams)
Ray Bradbury Comics (Richard Corben, Al Williamson)
Gon (Masashi Tanaka)
The Flash #269 (Cary Bates, Irv Novick)
The Cartoon History of the Universe (Larry Gonick)
Devil Dinosaur (Jack Kirby)
Steve Ditko Reader
Cretaceous (Tadd Galusha)
The Avenging Spider-Man in the Savage Lands (Cullen Bun, Gabriele Dell'Otto)
Predators (Various Accent UK Creators)
Tommysaurus Rex (Doug TenNapel)
Dinosaurs for Hire (Tom Mason)
Dreadlands (Andy Lanning, Steve White, Phil Gascoine)
The War that Time Forgot (Bruce Jones)
Tor (Joe Kubert)
2000 AD: Flesh (Pat Mills, Carl Critchlow)
The Real Prehistoric Beasts (Mike Sedakat)
Marvel Fanfare (Michael Golden, Chris Claremont)
Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur (Amy Reeder, Brandon Montclare, Natacha Bustos)
Axe Cop (Ethan Nicolle, Malachai Nicolle)
Cadillacs and Dinosaurs (Mark Schultz, Craig Elliot)
Dinosaur Comics (Ryan North)"

SUPER-HEROES TALK PPT

An enjoyable job I decided to do recently was give a talk to a book group of 8-11 year olds on the subject of super-heroes. I like to use the wider interest in the movies to lead them back to the comics.

I thought I'd post the powerpoint I used. It might be helpful to anyone out there wanting to do a similar thing.

They're in alphabetical order. The text was also cut back to bullet words when I gave the talk.

Fortuitously, the first one up - Ant-Man - was also the most recent. The kids were on board right away. The format is comic image on the left; movie image on the right.

The Avengers covered a lot of the Marvel heroes they had heard of. Another thing I wanted to get across to them was how old these characters are. Between 50 - 80 odd years. Long enough for adults; an unthinkable eternity for these youngsters.

Why 'Batman: Year One'? The comics images were chosen by the criteria that they were titles that were available to loan in the library.

The movie images were chosen in the main to be the most recent iteration of the characters. I told the group I hadn't seen the most recent Fantastic Four movie. 'It's not good' opined one kid. Oh dear.

I like the similarity between the Flash comic and TV show images here. And I couldn't resist putting that groan-worthy comment at the end.

I made sure to point out the distinction of The Incredibles not being from a comic.
One of the children at this point put his hand up to tell me that he had a DVD of The Incredibles and the first disc was very good but the second was boring. It just has people talking on it. I enjoyed that interjection.

During discussion of Spider-Man, the laptop shut down altogether for an update. Thank you, Microsoft.
It allowed me to steal more time with the group and answer their questions though.

Always got to reference the mountains of cash a few comics like the first Superman appearance sell for. It gets an 'oo' and an 'ah' from the adults too.

The photo above (chosen for its dramatic qualities) caused some immediate intrigue, and the question 'Wait, has Wonder Woman been in a movie?'
I mentioned the possible connection between the lie detector machine and Wonder Woman's lasso of truth.

X-Men were the last characters chosen by me, then I wanted to give the kids a chance to mention their favourites with this:

Many suggestions followed, including Firestorm, Doctor Who and Jedi Knights. Some lateral thinking there. Why not? They have super-powers.

An enjoyable talk for me, and the group were very engaged and appeared to like it.

R.I.P. CARMINE INFANTINO

Another great artist has died.
Infantino was the regular Star Wars artist when I was growing up:

I also got a Marvel Team Up he drew. Steven Grant wrote this story featuring Spider-Woman and the Hulk:
 
Detective Chimp. No credits on this one, so I don’t know who wrote it. Possibly John Broome. Not sure when it was first published either, as I read it in the British Superboy Annual 1967:
Howard the Duck written by Steve Gerber:

Star Lord written by Chris Claremont. This was spookier than the regular Marvel comics. It appeared in the black and white magazine format aimed at older readers:

Infantino is famous for revamping The Flash. What a great character when you’re a kid. “The Fastest Man Alive!” I always loved the way his costume shot out of his ring and expanded. This character is very indicative of Infantino’s style, all those speed lines. This page from "Mystery of the Human Thunderbolt" written by Robert Kanigher:

He did Batman too in the 60s. No credits here either, probably written by Broome again:

I have to admit there was a bit of a lump in my throat at this news. My gran bought me his comics.

R.I.P. Carmine Infantino.