Tag: Three Count

Three Count | Roachmill, George Pratt, Kevin Conroy

Here are three things in comics to support, to see and to watch today.

1. To support: Roachmill returns from It’s Alive!

The 1980s saw a huge explosion in the number of comics coming from independent comics publishers. It was mainly driven by a couple of factors, one being the creation and growth of the direct market, and also by what’s known as the black-and-white comics boom (and subsequent bust) that was sparked by the creation of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and fueled by a speculator’s market of low print run, and often low quality, B&W comics. But there were certainly some gems amongst the garbage.

One of the companies in the mix back then was Blackthorne Publishing, a company born when Pacific Comics closed down, who would go on to be quite successful for a number of years publishing 3-D comics, comic strip reprints, licensed comics and original stuff. One of those originals was Roachmill, by Rich Hedden and Tom McWeeney, which was definitely a gem.

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Three Count | UNBANNED, Humble Bundle, DC Pride

Here are three things to read, to support and to watch today. Happy Pride Month!

[Image above: Heathen cover by Natasha Alterici]

1. To read: Vault announces “UNBANNED” initiative for Pride Month

June is Pride Month, as you’ve probably noticed if you’ve visited any corporation’s website or social media account this week to see that they’ve updated their logo with a rainbow flag. Some companies are doing more than that, though, including three comics-related ones that I wanted to draw attention to today.

First is Vault Comics, who today announced UNBANNED — “a Pride month initiative to give away free queer books to everyone, everywhere.” If you’ve followed the news over the last few months, you know that there’s a very orchestrated campaign going on right now against books with LGBTQ+ themes (among others) as politicians attempt to win points with constituents. Vault is not only making some of their titles by LGBTQ+ creators available for free on their web store all month, but also shared a very heartfelt message with LGBTQ+ readers in doing so. I try to keep these Three Things posts “press release free” and just share things I’ve discovered organically, but hey, what are rules made for if not to be broken? Here’s the press email they sent out today in full:

Banning books is nothing new to the world of comics and literature, but in recent months we’ve seen an unprecedented uptick in new bans across the country. These bans have targeted many queer books and creators. And while politicians and extremist groups may be working hard to erase LGBTQIA+ voices, we at Vault Comics continue to maintain that this space, our space, has always and will always be safe — but more than safe, it will be loud, proud, and unapologetic.

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Three Count | Outlaw’s Apprentice, Woodland Creatures, They Can Talk

Check out three things to see, to support and to read today.

1. To see: Chris Schweizer teases Outlaw’s Apprentice

Over the past few months in various online places like his website, on Facebook and through his Patreon, Chris Schweizer has started to share artwork for a new project — Outlaw’s Apprentice, a “high-adventure fantasy series in the spirit of some of my favorite types of stories: swashbucklers, episodic westerns.”

It looks fun as heck:

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Three Count | Gogor, Steeple love, Mary Marvel’s eyes

Here are three things to support, to buy and to know today.

Three Count spotlights, as the title suggests, three things from comics today. It’ll be three things with links, no more, no less. No. 5 is alive.

1. To support: The Book of Gogor by Ken Garing

Gogor was a five-issue miniseries written and drawn by Ken Garing and released by Image Comics back in 2019. I was looking through our archives to see if I ever wrote about it beyond the initial release announcement from Image, and it doesn’t look like I did — which is a shame, because I remember enjoying it a whole bunch. So did my son.

Garing created a really interesting fantasy world ruled by a bunch of jerks called the Domus. A student named Armano awakens this mythical champion called Gogor to fight them, and together they go on an adventure across the many islands that make up their world, which float in the sky vs. the water. I remember what I really liked about it was the world-building, as you could tell Garing put a lot of detail and thought into it, even the parts that didn’t make it onto the page.

Image collected the first five issues but the story never continued beyond that — until now. Garing is crowdfunding a follow-up story, The Book of Gogor, which will offer a definitive conclusion to the one he started.

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Three Count | Anders Nilsen, Johnnie Christmas, Maia Kobabe

Here are three things to buy, to watch and to listen to today.

Three Count spotlights, as the title suggests, three things from comics today. It’ll be three things with links, no more, no less. This is the fourth one in the series, collect them all.

1. To buy: Tongue #5, the yearly series by Anders Nilsen

Anders Nilsen, the award-winning creator of Big Questions and Rage of Poseidon, has released the fifth issue of Tongues, his self-published comic that features Prometheus, Teddy Roosevelt and a whole lot more. It’s … kind of hard to describe, actually, but it’s a labor of love for the creator, with emphasis on the labor.

In a post on his blog, Nilsen details how much work and time went into this fifth issue — and into every issue — and he reveals that he has about five more issues left to complete. For the process junkies, he also goes deep in how the sausage gets made…

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Three Count | Tinto Press, Greg Smallwood, Uncle Jerk

Here are three things to support, to read and to watch today.

Three Count is a new column that spotlights, as the title suggests, three things from comics today (or yesterday or whenever). It’ll be three things with links, no more, no less. It’s also the third edition, so, y’know, three is the magic number and all that.

1. To Support: Tinto Press kickstarts its 2022 line-up

Small press publisher Tinto Press is crowdfunding its 2022 line-up, which includes new books by Mike Bender, Denis Kitchen, Karl Christian Krumpholz and Julian Brier. The Colorado-based publisher has released a wide variety of comics since 2012, and I believe this is their second time to turn to Kickstarter.

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Three Count | Steve Lieber, ‘Griz Grobus,’ newts

Here are three things to know, to read and to support today.

Three Count is a new column that spotlights, as the title suggests, three things from comics today. It’ll be three things with links, no more, no less. This is the second one, and a big bwahahaha to everyone who thought I’d only ever do one of them.

1. To Know: Steve Lieber’s alt.text skills are unparalleled

Earlier today DC revealed that the Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen: Who Killed Jimmy Olsen? team of Matt Fraction, Steve Lieber, Nathan Fairbairn and Clayton Cowles have reunited for a new story featuring Perry White as part of a one-shot that’s coming out next month.

While you can visit my original post from today to see what the final cover will look like, Lieber took to Twitter to show off an alternative cover he had created for the issue:

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Three Count | Ed Brubaker, public domain Dr. Seuss, Evan Cohen’s ‘Life’

Here are three things to read, to back and to buy today.

Three Count is a new column that spotlights, as the title suggests, three things from comics today. Or yesterday, or last week, or whatever. It’ll be three things with links, no more, no less.

[Image above: Reckless: Follow Me Down promo image by Sean Phillips]

1. TO READ: Reckless, the graphic novel series from the award-winning team of Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips, gets the spotlight in this feature story by the L.A. Times. Jim Ruland, author of Corporate Rock Sucks: The Rise & Fall of SST Records talks with Brubaker about ‘80s L.A., mining his personal history for the story and updating the lurid detective series his father used to read for the new century.

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