The Comics Super Blog!
Plus: ‘Revolutionary Girl Utena’ returns, Red Planet opens in Albuquerque, Melanie Gillman, Alex Segura, Harley Quinn and more.
The Wonder Woman movie has lots of people looking at the history of the character and how she has evolved over the years. The Fresh Toast has a great interview with Trina Robbins, the first woman to draw Wonder Woman and a pioneering underground comics artist and comics historian as well. She’s a delightful person who has had a fascinating life, and this interview is a great way to start off your week.
Continue reading “Comics Lowdown: The woman behind Wonder Woman”
If you read the Eisner-nominated High Crimes, you know Christopher Sebela has a talent for turning crime stories on their head, setting them up in interesting places with compelling characters. With Short Order Crooks, Sebala leaves Mount Everest behind and heads to Portland’s food truck scene, enlisting the talented George Kambadais and Lesley Atlansky to help cook up a story with equal parts comedy, crime and cooking.
With eight days left on the timer, Short Order Crooks passed its funding goal yesterday on Kickstarter. As they look ahead to their stretch goals, I spoke with both Sebela and Kambadais about the project, food trucks and more.
Continue reading “Smash Pages Q&A: Sebela & Kambadais serve up crime in ‘Short Order Crooks’”
The former Gorilla Comics title could finally be completed, with your help.
Back in 2000 several creators whose names most comic fans will recognize came together and formed their own imprint, Gorilla Comics. Although the imprint didn’t last long, several of the titles that originated under it went on to find new life — Mark Waid and Barry Kitson’s Empire, for instance, ended up at DC, while Tellos by Todd Dezago and Mike Wieringo was Published through Image Comics (which initially published all the Gorilla titles).
Karl Kesel, the Eisner Award-winning inker who also has written comics like Fantastic Four and Harley Quinn, teamed up with Tom Grummett (they created the 1990s Superboy together) to create a six-issue miniseries called Section Zero for Gorilla Comics. Only three issues were completed, however, as Kesel had to step away for personal reasons. After a brief return in 2012 as a webcomic, Kesel and Grummett have turned to Kickstarter to “help us finally finish what we begun.”
Continue reading “Kesel and Grummett’s ‘Section Zero’ returns via Kickstarter”
Two members of the newly formed collective discuss their current Kickstarter campaign as it nears its completion date.
In January, a new comics imprint, Imminent Press, took to Kickstarter to raise funds to bring their graphic novel anthology, titled Terminal, to life. The campaign failed.
But more importantly, they didn’t give up.
The second time’s the charm, as they dusted themselves off and retooled their project and campaign. Now with less than a week left, they’ve hit their funding goal for the first issue of a Terminal miniseries, with hopes that they can earn enough to publish the second issue as well. Contributors to the project include a mix of veteran and emerging comic and webcomic creators, along with several names you might recognize from the comic press — one of whom is even our former boss.
I spoke with two members of their “board,” Steve Ekstrom and Troy Brownfield, about Imminent Press, Terminal, their Kickstarter campaign and more.
Continue reading “Smash Pages Q&A: Ekstrom & Brownfield on Imminent Press and ‘Terminal’”
Retrofit Comics has just announced a Kickstarter to fund their spring line. Here’s the lineup:
Continue reading “Retrofit/Big Planet announces Spring line and new Kickstarter”
Kickstarter for a new collection of Bill Mantlo and Jackson Guice’s classic Epic Comics series funds in under 24 hours.
Dynamite Entertainment is looking to bring Bill Mantlo and Jackson Guice’s Swords of the Swashbucklers back into print, and they’ve turned to Kickstarter to do it. And less than 24 hours into their campaign, they’re already 100 percent funded.
If the name doesn’t ring a bell, Swords of the Swashbucklers began life as a graphic novel from Marvel back in 1984, followed by a a series that ran for 12 issues under their Epic Comics banner. It’s about a teenage girl whose parents are kidnapped by an alien empire, so she joins up with a crew of space pirates to try and save them.
Continue reading “‘Swords of the Swashbucklers’ sails again”
New 28-page “rom-spense” Western comic available via Kickstarter for one week only.
During March, Kickstarter has been actively encouraging an initiative they call “All in 1” — “a creative sprint to help you bring something new to life, simply and swiftly. Run a one-week project so you can get right to the fun part — creating.”
Cuzak Bailey and Jen Vaughn have done just that, creating a 28-page “rom-spense” comic called Deadwater, available via the crowdfunding site for one week only.
Continue reading “Pony up $6 to support Bailey and Vaughn’s ‘Deadwater’”
Successful Kickstarter by Fabian Rangel Jr. and Javier Caba finds a publisher.
Fresh off last year’s successful Kickstarter campaign, Fabian Rangel Jr. and Javier Caba’s Blood Brothers has landed at Dynamite Entertainment.
New comic + RPG features a Golden Age superhero team transported to today — and they don’t like what they see.
Stray co-creator Vito Delsante has returned to Kickstarter with artist Carlos Cabaleiro to fund The Golden Guard, a 48-page comic with back matter that includes its own roleplaying game.
Continue reading “Delsante, Cabaleiro kickstart ‘The Golden Guard’”
New volume includes comics by Sally Jane Thompson, Cecil Castellucci and more.
The romance comics anthology Fresh Romance returned to Kickstarter this week, courtesy of the book’s new publisher Emet Comics.
Maytal Gilboa, CEO of Emet Comics, emailed backers of the first volume (of which I am one) on International Women’s Day to announce the new volume. “Fresh Romance was a romance anthology founded by Janelle Assellin in 2015 as a way to promote female and LGBT creators, and to showcase diverse stories about love,” she said. “Fresh Romance Volume 1 was a huge success, being published by Oni Press, and selling over 3,000 copies to devoted readers. When Janelle retired last year, she gave us her blessing to continue the series, and we’re doing everything in our power to make good on the promises that were made to everyone who rooted for this series to succeed.”
Continue reading “Second volume of ‘Fresh Romance’ hits Kickstarter”
The prolific writer of ‘Doc Unknown’ talks about his newest Kickstarter campaign for a graphic novel with artist Javier Caba.
Fabian Rangel Jr. has been building up a strong portfolio of comics work over the last few years, both as a self publisher and for various companies. In addition to working with places like Stela and Black Mask Studios, he’s taken crowdfunding to heart, and recently kicked off his fifth campaign to fund a new graphic novel called Blood Brothers.
Rangel is working with artist Javier Caba, letterer Ryan Ferrier and editor Jim Gibbons on the new supernatural/pulp story, which features two brothers solving mysteries in a city populated by monsters from myth and fantasy. Oh, and one of the brothers is a glow-in-the-dark luchador, which was enough to win me over.
I spoke to Rangel about the project, the appeal of Kickstarter and the recently formed Two Headed Press, an imprint he helped found with Ferrier, Chris Sebela, Ed Brisson, Curt Pires and Tini Howard.
Continue reading “Smash Pages Q&A: Fabian Rangel Jr. on ‘Blood Brothers’”
The creator talks about her SPX debut from last year, “Baseline Boulevard,” and more in an interview from last year’s show.
Emi Gennis does short comics on fascinating topics, usually quirky stories from history. I first discovered her work when I picked up her minicomic on trepanation (warning: includes graphic images of people drilling holes in their skulls) at TCAF last year. Her other work includes The Radium Girls, about women who were exposed to radium while working in a watch factory in the 1930s; and Franz Reichelt: The Flying Tailor, the story of a man who invented a parachute suit and died testing it on himself. The latter is one of Gennis’s comic adaptations of stories from Wikipedia’s list of unusual deaths.
