Madman Summer Fun

My latest geek-cred comics-related order:

Make the most out of those warm summer days this year with the Madman Summer Fun Playset. Features the huge ( almost 3' x 6') heavyweight Madman Beachtowel together with two different sets of Madman Magnets. Be the coolest dude out on the beach this year with Madman at your side.

I don't really intend to take this to the beach (mainly because of the lack of beaches - or summer- in the UK), but this will make an amazing full-wall poster/decoration on my wall. Plus, MAGNETS, you can never go wrong!
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Clowning Around

Source: The Boys #17 (Dynamite Entertainment)
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Panel of the Week Voting Weeks 12-15 2008

...aaaaand we're back!

After a long weeks absence, POTW returns on a regular schedule. Last time we polled, there was a two-way race between Captain America's Resurrection Poll and Wonder Woman's Grotesque Memorial, both finishing at around 30%.

Catching up, these are the select panels from weeks 12-15 (March-April 2008):

CoolWebPoll

Panel ADr D. & Women (Mighty Avengers #11)


Panel B
It's true what they say (Simpsons Comics #140)


Panel C
Damsel In Distress Ennui (All-Star Superman #11)

Panel D
Censorship $£"%^s (Wolverine Origins #23)

Panel E
Fan Service: Mary Marvel hitting Donna Troy on the head with Kyle Rayner. (Countdown to Final Crisis #2)

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Eye Of The Tiger - Marjane Satrapi

Marjane Satrapi sings Eye of the Tiger in the most ridiculously ludicrous scene of Persepolis.

Oh, yeah, and here's the proper trailer:



with a LYSAD rating of 10/10: a must see movie, and the pinnacle of stylish animation.
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Herculean Homages

Is it a swipe if you're homaging yourself, in a way -and character- someone has already homaged you earlier that year?

Meet mr Jim Steranko. He is an unquestionable talented creator and a comics, famous for his bold compositions, his striking covers and creating a standard that artists have adhered to and often homaged for decades even to this day!

Exhibit A:

King Size Hulk Special #1/v.1 Annual #1 (October 1968, Marvel Comics)

Cover artist: Jim Steranko. The original cover that set the trend. Hulk dominating the cover from edge to edge, straining to hold the weight of his own name/logo like a monstrous Atlas. The massive feat is accentuated by the cracking of the ground/letters that Hulk is standing on. The title is made of solid rock, crumbling away as Hulk with his enormous strength clasps at it with his arms. A very claustrophobic cover that has stood the test of time, very evident by the amount of homages to it even in the last decade:



Exhibit B:

The Incredible Hulk v.2 #34 (November 2001, Marvel Comics)

Cover Artist: Kaare Andrews. Kicking off the then celebrated run by writer Bruce Jones, Kaare makes a tribute to the Steranko original, keeping the same composition but using a painted/computer illustrated technique.



Exhibit C:

Incredible Hulk Herc(ules) #113 (February 2008, Marvel Comics)

Cover Artist: Arthur Adams. With the closing of World War Hulk, Bruce Banner is in custody, there's a new monthly (adjectiveless) Hulk title launching, and the Incredible Hulk title is passed over to classic Marvel hero Hercules. To commemorate the first issue of the name switch, Arthur Adams cleverly homages Hercules (a Greek demi-god like Atlas himself) bulking under the weight of the Hulk's title which he has now inherited, with his own name sprayed on top of it.


Exhibit D:

Hercules #2 (announced June 2008, Radical Comics)

Cover Artist: Jim Steranko. Coming full circle, Steranko returns to comics and cover artwork with the new ongoing Hercules series from Radical Comics, following the adventures of Hercules - now a warlord leader of a mercenary team- in Ancient Greece after the completion of the Twelve Tasks. Steranko replaces the hulk of his classic cover with the new Radical Hercules.


Any more homages to the original that I've missed? Reply below :)
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March '08 H-O-T Grade

1. CRIMINAL v.2 #1 (ICON)
   
   
2. GHOST RIDER #21 (Marvel)
   
   
3. SUPERMAN BATMAN ANNUAL #2 (DC)
   
   
4. CASANOVA #12 (Image)
   
   
5. WOLVERINE #63 (Marvel)
   
   
6. ULTIMATE SPIDER-MAN #120 (Marvel)
   
   
7. CROSSING MIDNIGHT #17 (Vertigo)
   
   
8. LOCKE & KEY #2 (IDW)
   
   
9. TEEN TITANS YEAR ONE #3 (DC)
   
   
10. MADMAN ATOMIC COMICS #7 (Image)
    
    
11. PROGRAMME #9 (Wildstorm)
12. X-MEN LEGACY #209 (Marvel)
13. FABLES #71 (Vertigo)
14. SECRET HISTORY AUTHORITY JACK HAWKSMOOR #1 (Wildstorm)
15. YOUNG LIARS #1 (Vertigo)
16. DARK IVORY #1 (Image)
17. COMIC BOOK COMICS #1 (Evil Twin)
18. WOLVERINE ORIGINS #23 (Marvel)
19. BOYS #16 (IDW)
20. THOR #7 (Marvel)

Very late posting these, but just done catching up. Going from the standard top 10 into top 20 mode from now on, as I just feel too bad leaving quality stuff out of the Grade!

There were no clear-cut favorites this month, and the top 7 could really go in any order. Criminal 2 #1 gets the honors because I was late in discovering the gem it is, and the new volume deserves mad props!

Rundown: 7 Marvel titles, 3 Image, 2 IDW and 2 DC, although the latter share grows if we include all imprints to an equal 7.
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Rock 'n' Roll Heaven

Source: Simpsons Comics #140 (Bongo Comics)


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My First Newsarama Interview!

Nothing like some self-hype to get our day started!

I did an interview with Barry Levine - the publisher of Radical Comics- for Newsarama. It was an amazing experience, and makes for a great read as Barry goes in great detail about Radical's publishing plans. You can read the full interview here.
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The Case of the Seven-Breasted Hermaphrodite Priapic Reptilian God/dess

WARNING: Graphic depictions of British men slashing the nutsack off a ginormous reptile penis, and the establishing shot of the monstrous seven-breasted hermaphrodite God/dess it's attached to.

Or as my friend Tyler wisely said last month: 'Warning: panels written by Warren Ellis' should suffice.

(Spoilers from Gravel #1 after the jump)




(yes the nutsack apparently contains pearls, while the God/dess has a man suckling on her tit. Didn't I already establish it's written by Ellis?)

Source: Gravel #1 (Avatar Press)
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Panel of the Week Voting Weeks 8-9 2008

Gorillas in Heat topped the poll with a 35% in the last installment of POTW!

The past few weeks have provided a wealth of funnies, with Cable&Deadpool and Jack of Fables alone providing a huge wealth of material! But can someone explain everyone's fascination with genitalia?

CoolWebPoll

Panel A
Herc's doped-up reminisces (Incredible Hercules #114)


Panel B
Written by Jenna Jameson, that's saying a lot (Shadow-Hunter #1)


Panel C
Deadpool's meta commentary on Brand New Day (Cable&Deadpool #50)


Panel D
Make a Wish, any Wish (The Many Adventures of Miranda Mercury #295)


Panel E
Humpty Dumpty's Woes (Jack of Fables #20)
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February '08 H-O-T Grade

1. AMERICAN VIRGIN #23 (Vertigo)

2. WOLVERINE #62 (Marvel)

3. ULTIMATE SPIDER-MAN #119 (Marvel)

4. UMBRELLA ACADEMY APOCALYPSE SUITE #6 (Dark Horse)

5. CROSSING MIDNIGHT #16 (Vertigo)

6. GRAVEL #1 (Avatar)

7. X-MEN LEGACY #208 (Marvel)

8. FANTASTIC FOUR #554 (Marvel)

9. LOCKE & KEY #1 (IDW)

10. IMMORTAL IRON FIST ORSON RANDALL GREEN MIST DEATH (Marvel)

Lots of new entries this month, paired with some sad goodbyes. American Virgin and Umbrella Academy are wrapping up their runs (along with near top 10 misses Cable&Deadpool#50, and Gail Simone's last All-New Atom with #20). X-Men: Legacy is Mike Carey's new start on the ongoing title, and Fantastic Four #554 sees the debut of new creative team Millar with Hitch. Gravel was a usual impressive Warren Ellis debut, but none of these could overcome the sheer fun of Bendis' Ultimate treatment of Spidey& His Amazing Friends.
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Spirit #12

The new Spirit, that is, not your daddy's spirit. Although with each issue it's proving to be every bit as beautiful, diverse and daring as the original.

This issue was highlighted to me by LYSAD reader Gregory Guity who submitted the third of the following panels for the POTW voting. As I usually tend to go for funny (deliberately or not) panels in the votings, I didn't feel the panel would fit in, and there was this feeling of... something missing from the little one panel story. Having finally read the story today, I've figured you need all three panels to grasp the full strengh of the last one:
The same page offers what could be the essential Spirit panel. It's an acclaim for Darwyn Cooke that he packs such intensity and iconic essence in a single panel of a six-panel grid page, and generally invests so much energy - thought into making every panel in his Spirit comics worthy of framing and studying on a gallery wall.
And since we're in the process of killing bandwidth, a brilliant wallpaper from the issue's opening splash page:


The issue follows The Spirit tracking down his childhood sweetheart Sand who has fallen in with the wrong crowd and become involved in the sale of a new lethal substance. Sand apparently originates from Will Eisner's Spirit stories, and Darwyn Cooke went as far as approximating Eisner's palette and ground-breaking page layouts for the sake of the flashback sequences detailing the story between Sand and Denny Colt.

While the plot feels confined in the single issue format, the story still packs an emotional whallop, culminating in the first three panels in this 'review'. A must read.

9/10
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January '08 H-O-T Grade

Each month, the H-O-T Grade is my absolutely subjective view at what you absolutely can't miss reading:


1. Y THE LAST MAN #60 (Vertigo)

2. ULTIMATE SPIDER-MAN #118 (Marvel)

3. ASTONISHING X-MEN #24 (Marvel)

4. THE SPIRIT #12 (DCU)

5. THE TWELVE #1 (Marvel)

6. THE ORDER #7 (Marvel)

7. UMBRELLA ACADEMY APOCALYPSE SUITE #5 (Dark Horse)

8. CROSSING MIDNIGHT #15 (Vertigo)

9. TEEN TITANS THE LOST ANNUAL (DCU)

10. PROJECT SUPERPOWERS #0 (IDW)

Bendis' Ultimate Spidey is the big surprise this month, starting off the tribute to the Amazing Friends line-up with a light-hearted high-school reunion sort of crossover with every Ultimate title! It still wasn't stellar enough to overthrow the long-awaited conclusion to Y the Last Man, while Whedon's dependably excellent Astonish X-Men closes up the Top Three.

The Order, Crossing Midnight and Umbrella Academy are regular contenders every month, while other faves Wonder-Woman and X-Men were pushed out of the ten by a narrow margin. We'll be talking more about the new arrivals The Twelve and Project Super-powers soon.
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Locke & Key video trailer

Great job from IDW Marketing. This video features more sneaky info concerning the premise of the book than the comics previews in the back of their titles. I'm definitely intrigued at this point

LOCKE & KEY by Joe Hill and Gabriel Rodriguez, IDW Publishing
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December '07 H-O-T Grade

At the close of every month, LYSAD will be putting out the absolute and final word on what was H-O-T in comics.


1. ACME NOVELTY LIBRARY VOL 18 HC (Drawn & Quarterly)

2. SHIRTLIFTER #2 (Drawn, Out Press)

3. BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER #9 (Dark Horse)

4. UMBRELLA ACADEMY APOCALYPSE SUITE #4 (Dark Horse)

5. WONDER WOMAN #15 (DCU)

6. X-MEN #206 (Marvel)

7. CROSSING MIDNIGHT #14 (Vertigo)

8. IMMORTAL IRON FIST #11 (Marvel)

9. THE ORDER #5-6 (Marvel)

10. WORMWOOD ONE SHOT (Avatar)
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Panel of the Week Voting 04.01.08

Happy New Year and a return of the ultimate LYSAD favourite!

It's been a while since we've done the POTW voting, so let's catch up with the last 6 weeks' worth of panels for your voting pleasure!

Vote for the panel of the week month

CoolWebPoll

PANEL A
S stands for Spam - (WORLD WAR HULK: AFTERSMASH)


PANEL B
...or at least a thong and fishnet stalkings, eh? (JLA #15)


PANEL C
Speed-y & Pot (GREEN ARROW/BLACK CANARY #3)


PANEL D
Atom dreams of electric >BEEP< (ALL NEW ATOM #18)


PANEL E
Frogzilla & the Statue of Sexual Liberty (CAPTAIN CARROT #2)

PANEL F
Dave Sim, Jungle King (JUNGLE GIRL #3)
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Holiday Roundtable: Looking forward to 2008

Welcome back for the last part of our Holiday special!

What are you most looking forward to, for 2008?


Cecil Castellucci: More NORTHLANDERS by Brian Wood. All of the new MINX books (including Emiko Superstar, NY Four, Burnout, Token, All Nighter, and of course my own Janes in Love!) THE GOOD NEIGHBOURS by Holly Black. CHIGGERS by Hope Larson. RAPUNZEL'S REVENGE by Shannon Hale. And anything SUPERMAN.





Cliff Chiang: Just getting more issues of GREEN ARROW/BLACK CANARY under my belt!




Paul Cornell: I'm most looking forward to the rest of DAN DARE, Gail's WONDER WOMAN, and Marvel's big event.





Nate Cosby: The football season. Mississippi State's winnin' EIGHT this year, baby!!!!!
Oh, you mean comics? Huh. Well, I hope the IRON MAN movie's good. And DARK KNIGHT. I don't really know what's coming out as far as non-continuity stuff, so I couldn't tell ya what I'm excited about yet. That's the nice thing about reading comics that don't tie into other comics: You can go to the store, see a cool cover, open it up, just start reading without having to catch up on the lore.

Oh! Mike Kunkel's SHAZAM'll end up being good, I bet. That guy's awesome.





Jason Aaron: Reading NORTHLANDERS from Vertigo and '76 from Image.
Writing more SCALPED and getting my hands on GHOST RIDER.





Nicola Scott: Whatever's next.



Mike Carey: THE BLACK DOSSIER, which I haven't managed to pick up yet. I know, I know, that's an evasive answer. How about SECRET INVASION?




Manolis: Thanks again to Mike, Tom, Nicola, Christo, Paul, Cecil, Cliff, Nate, Heidi and Jason; and a Happy New Year to everyone from me and the Comics Nexus team!
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Holiday Roundtable: Creators' Best of 2007

Which stories and titles stand out as your favourite from 2007?

Jason Aaron: THE IMMORTAL IRON FIST, DMZ, CRIMINAL, CASANOVA, ALL-STAR SUPERMAN, FEAR AGENT, SENTENCES: THE LIFE OF M.F. GRIMM, LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN: THE BLACK DOSSIER.



Cecil Castellucci: I loved ALL-STAR SUPERMAN. DMZ. Y THE LAST MAN. ASTONISHING X-MEN. THE ARRIVAL. ROBOT DREAMS. CURSES.






Cliff Chiang: SCALPED, DMZ, GREEN LANTERN, any of the SHOWCASE editions





Paul Cornell: This year I particularly liked: The AVENGERSs titles; CAPTAIN AMERICA; Gail Simone's ATOM (and all her work); Morrison and Dini's BATMAN books; 52; DAN DARE.




Nate Cosby: Hrmmmmm…hang on, I gotta check what came out this year. SPIDERMAN FAMILY #7 was really good (Chris Eliopoulos' Frog Thor!). Everything Jeff Parker did (X-MEN FIRST CLASS, his issues MARVEL ADVENTURES AVENGERS), everything Fred Van Lente did (MARVEL ADVENTURES IRON MAN - FANTASTIC FOUR - SPIDER-MAN, SUPER-VILLAIN TEAM-UP, FANTASTIC FOUR/POWER PACK). THE SPIRIT was REALLY good. Hmmmm…oh! ULTIMATE SPIDER-MAN keeps being good.





Christos Gage: I'll mention five that I really enjoy and think should be getting more attention: I think CROSSING MIDNIGHT from Vertigo is an extremely well done horror/fantasy book that should be on more peoples' radar. JONAH HEX continues to be top-notch, as it has been since it began. WELCOME TO TRANQUILITY is something every fan of Gail Simone should check out; it's up there with her best stuff, and you don't need to follow any other books to enjoy it. Ed Brubaker's CRIMINAL is bringing hard-boiled crime back to comics in a brilliant way. And Oni's RESURRECTION is off to a very promising start. There are many more, but I've only got so much space!






Nicola Scott: Gail's start on WONDER WOMAN and Grant Morrison's Seven Soldiers of Victory, particularly the ZATANNA and KLARION stories lines.






Mike Carey: I got a lot of pleasure out of CIVIL WAR. If you're going to do big event comics, then you should do them like this: really huge and epic, and with a real-world significance hiding behind the super-heroics.

I was blown away - as most long-term BUFFY fans were - by Joss Whedon's triumphant continuation of the Vampire Slayer's story in season eight.

I read a weird, haunting, silly but poignant manga called THE CLARENCE PRINCIPLE that I liked a lot. And I loved the first volume of the re-released Parasyte.


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