Tag: comic strips

‘Spencer & Locke 2’ takes aim at all the comic strips

David Pepose and Jorge Santiago Jr.’s hard-nosed cop and his imaginary friend return this Winter.

One of last year’s pleasant surprises in the comics world was Spencer & Locke, David Pepose and Jorge Santiago Jr.’s re-imagining of Calvin & Hobbes by way of Sin City. Now a Ringo Award-nominated series, Spencer & Locke is getting a sequel that will introduce their take on other comic strip characters. The villain, Roach Riley, may look familiar to fans of Mort Walker’s Beetle Bailey.

“We’ve told fans from the beginning that there was a much larger universe for Spencer & Locke to explore — and we’re excited to expand their world further with their latest adversary, Roach Riley,” Pepose said. “Half The Deer Hunter, half Heath Ledger’s Joker, Roach is only the beginning of Locke’s latest gauntlet, as every classic comic strip from your childhood will be fair game for parody in our action-packed sequel.”

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Comics Lowdown | Chinese authorities crack down on Rage Comics

Censorship: The Chinese government has banned rage comics (Baozou Manhua, or Baoman) channels from a number of online platforms, claiming violations of the recently enacted Law on the Protection of Heroes and Martyrs. In addition to the censorship, the article discusses how rage comics migrated from 4Chan to Chinese youth culture and why this is important: They are now a big-money business.

Besides the shutdown of the various social media channels, the closure of the baozoumanhua.com media empire is a huge blow to its fans and creators. The website’s founder Wang Nima’s net worth is estimated to be around 4 billion yuan (±US$628 million), according to Daily Economic News (每日经济新闻).

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Smash Pages Q&A: Maximilian Uriarte on ‘Terminal Lance’

The cartoonist and Marine discusses his ongoing strip about the military and its recent collection.

Maximilian Uriarte began making the comic strip Terminal Lance when he was still an active duty Marine. He continued making the strip while in art school and since. The strip has become a phenomenon, but Uriarte gained a larger audience with the publication of his 2016 graphic novel The White Donkey.

Little Brown has just released Terminal Lance: Ultimate Omnibus, which collects much of Uriarte’s strip along with notes and commentary. The strip skirts the brutal realism of The White Donkey and is instead strange and surreal, funny and weird. It’s easy to see why the strip became so popular. So often marines are portrayed in very one-dimensional ways, but what runs through all of Uriarte’s work is the desire to show them as human. This is not propaganda, this is not a recruitment tool; rather, in both the comic strip and the graphic novel, Uriarte seeks to be honest above all. Sometimes it’s funny or absurd, sometimes disturbing, sometimes brutal. I spoke with Uriarte about the strip and the collection.

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Smash Pages Q&A: Rick Stromoski on ‘Soup to Nutz’ and more

The cartoonist discusses his syndicated strip, a graphic novel he’s working on, how he works and more.

Rick Stromoski’s comic strip Soup to Nutz has been running on the comics pages since 2000. He had been syndicated before, but was better known for his illustration work, gag cartoons and greeting cards. He has won multiple division awards from the National Cartoonists Society over the years and has served as the organization’s president.

Soup to Nutz has its own sense of design, and it stands out on the comics page for the sense of humor, which has much more of an edge than other family strips, and for the character of Andrew, who remains unique. Stromoski has also been working on a graphic novel drawn in a very different style than the strip. Based on his mother’s life, this has been a project of many years that he’s close to finishing. We spoke recently about his strip, his graphic novel and how working digitally changed the way he’s able to work.

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Archie Comics announces new ‘Dick Tracy’ series

Michael Moreci, Alex Segura, Thomas Pitilli and Dee Cunniffe team up to bring the yellow-clad detective back to comic books.

Hold on to your fedora — Dick Tracy will return to comic books next April, courtesy of Archie Comics.

The series will be co-written by Roche Limit and Hoax Hunters writer Michael Moreci and Archie Comics co-president (and crime novelist) Alex Segura, with art by Thomas Pitilli and colorist Dee Cunniffe.

“Dick Tracy has always been a character that stands shoulder to shoulder amongst the best–Superman, The Shadow, Conan the Barbarian, Spider-Man, you name it,” Moreci said in a press release. “There’s been so many great Dick Tracy stories over the past 75 years, and that’s such a testament to his versatility, his amazing–unbeatable–rogues gallery, and what he represents.”

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Comics Lowdown: ‘Jem and the Holograms’ wraps, Alex Hallatt on World Oceans Day

Plus: La Borinqueña, Gemini Comix, ‘Fu Jitsu,’ San Jose comic shops and more.

The End of Jem? Jem and the Holograms comes to an end with issue 26, but writer Kelly Thompson and artist Gisèle Lagacé still have a lot to say, and a new Jem/Misfits crossover series, Infinite, will be launching at the end of this month. At CBR, Thompson and Lagacé talk about what it’s been like working on the critically acclaimed series, and what we can expect in the future.

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Lynda Barry climbs ‘through the circle’ to join ‘The Family Circus’

The same weekend she receives the Milton Caniff Lifetime Achievement Award, Barry finds herself immortalized in the long-running comic strip.

Lynda Barry received the Milton Caniff Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Cartoonists Society over the weekend, but that wasn’t the only honor she received — she was also immortalized with a special appearance in one of her favorite comic strips, The Family Circus.

The May 27 strip featured Jeffy introducing his dad to his new friend Lynda:

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