What's Happening

It’s been a while since my last blog post – longer than I ever intended – and I feel like I owe you loyal readers an explanation. In short, I’ve been insanely busy these past couple of weeks in ways that are both tangentially and directly related to my writing. If you’re at all interested in learning why, read on:



To put it mildly, my writing career – and I admit calling anything I’ve done so far in my 28 years a “career” is a stretch – has taken two unexpected yet interesting turns of late.

Thoughts on DC Animation's Dark Knight Returns, Part 1

The name Frank Miller has popped up a lot on this blog in its relatively young lifespan, which I suppose shouldn’t be a surprise even if I didn’t really set out to focus on him much when I launched this humble little home for my writing about comics. The man is a venerable Titan of the art form, and his vision and work has influenced nearly every mainstream comic from the past twenty-five years in some form or another. Whether it’s his integration of manga sensibilities into western comics, his reinvention of Batman into the emotionally tortured, Dark Knight avenger who has since starred in ninety-five percent of the Batman stories to follow in the wake of Year One and Dark Knight Returns, his sense of design and storytelling or any of the other myriad innovations he brought to the form, Miller’s touch can be felt everywhere in today’s comics.


Which I guess is why I find myself writing about him and his early comics so often, and why to this day I’ll buy, read and/or watch any project with his name on it even if he has gone more than a bit nutty in his old age. Even recent works like his highly controversial anti-terrorism polemic, Holy Terror, the insanely bizarre All-Star Batman and Robin and, yes, even his film bastardization of Will Eisner’s Spirit are worth watching if only as reminders that there’s still some artistic genius living in the eccentricities that have so clearly ballooned to cartoonish proportions in his later years. He remains an Artist in every sense of the word – one of the most important to ever work in the medium. And I’ll be damned if he’s still not one of the most interesting.

My love for Miller and his work, coupled with my general appreciation of anything produced by DC Entertainment’s animation division, made me eager to watch the animated adaptation of the Dark Knight Returns – the project that first established Miller as a comics master – from the moment it was first announced as two feature-length movies. Part 1 hit stores, online retailers and video-on-demand last week, and I recently sat down to find out whether the filmmakers succeeded in effectively capturing the revolutionary spirit of the original comics miniseries. My thoughts after the jump:

Back to The City: Rereading Transmetropolitan by Ellis and Robertson

I’m a huge Warren Ellis fan. He’s one of my favorite writers working in any medium today, and lucky for us his medium of choice often happens to be comics.


Terrifyingly intelligent, insightful and scathingly hilarious, Ellis’ voice shines through whether he’s writing about technology, futurism or the craft of writing, or in genres such as hard sci-fi, horror, superheroes, political satire, black comedy, neo-noir, detective fiction or blockbuster action (often, as in the subject of this blog, he’s tackling all of the above). And although there might be better, more polished Ellis works out there, there’s no doubt in my mind that Transmetropolitan, his and artist Darick Robertson’s cyberpunk/gonzo-journalism mash-up, encompasses everything that’s great about the writer more so than any of his other projects. Transmet is quintessential Ellis, which is why it’s right up there with his and John Cassaday’s Planetary as one of my favorite comics of all time.

This being election season, when bullshit spews from both sides of the political spectrum with a nauseating intensity, I figured now was the perfect time for a Transmet reread, and another immersion into series hero Spider Jerusalem’s particular brand of Truth.

Frank Miller's Goddamn Justice League Movie

A good portion of comics fandom is currently up in arms thanks to this little piece of rumor and innuendo from the comics internet’s premier home for rumor and innuendo, Bleeding Cool. Apparently, a couple of poorly disguised market researchers wandered into a local comics shop asking the clientele various questions meant to gauge general geek interest in prospective big screen adaptations of DC Comics. One of those questions concerned the prospect of a Justice League movie with Frank Miller’s name attached to it in some capacity. Now, I touched upon DC and Warners’ crippling incompetence and overall inability to successfully adapt any of their iconic properties not named Batman to the big screen in my post about the company’s mishandling of Superman, but this episode – if true – might just sum up their overall ineptitude in that area even better than such laughable film missteps as Superman Returns and Greens Lantern already do. Why do I find this story so funny?

Cosmic Slop: Thoughts on Marvel's Cosmic Universe and the Guardians of the Galaxy film

Hall H in the San Diego Convention Center is in many ways a microcosm of the pop-culture geek orgy that San Diego Comic Con has become over the past decade: a gathering of movie and television enthusiasts packed on top of one another to celebrate and scream at news and sneak-peek footage of Hollywood’s latest blockbuster film or television project. In other words, it’s exactly the sort of place us devoted comic fans avoid when we attend SDCC purely out of an interest in actual comic books (we still make up a meager percentage of the 100,000-plus who attend each year). And while I steered clear of the notorious Hall H each of the four years I attended the exhausting pop spectacle that is SDCC from 2006-2010, a small, sick part of me still would’ve loved to have been in the hall this past year during Marvel Studio’s presentation of their upcoming slate of movies, if only to hear the crowd’s reaction change from orgasmic cheers to general bemusement when the announcement of a planned Guardians of the Galaxy film followed the highly anticipated confirmations of Marvel’s planned sequels to Iron Man, Thor, Captain America and The Avengers.



Since the Guardians of the Galaxy aren’t exactly the most popular characters amongst even diehard Marvel Comics fans, it’s probably safe to assume a good chunk of the crowd in Hall H had little idea who the characters are, let alone why Marvel chose to give the Guardians the big screen treatment ahead of more recognizable properties like, say, Dr. Strange, Luke Cage, Iron Fist, Black Panther or even sequel/spinoff treatments to the Hulk, Hawkeye, Black Widow and/or Nick Fury. But there are plenty of damn good reasons why Marvel tapped their team of interstellar misfit adventurers to follow the original Avengers onto the big screen, and those same reasons will likely lead the Guardians film to enjoy the same crossover, mainstream success as the rest of Marvel’s billion-dollar film franchises despite their low profile. In short, the cosmic realm of the Marvel Comics Universe is an awesome, weird, incredibly fun place filled with endless story possibilities. If Marvel Studios gives it and the Guardians the same accessible yet faithful-to-the-comics treatment it gave its other properties, those Hall H fans, as well as the rest of mainstream moviegoers, are in for a hell of a treat.


What follows is a background and appreciation of Marvel’s Cosmic Universe and thoughts on the exciting potential of a Guardians of the Galaxy movie.

Prejudging Marvel NOW!

After spending time last week to weigh in (and mostly tear down) DC Comics’ New 52 relaunch, it’s now time for me to turn my attention to the other massive, line-wide comics overhaul coming down the pipeline in a matter of weeks: Marvel NOW!, the publisher’s campaign to slap a shiny new #1 on many of its series while cancelling some titles, launching many others and in general shifting its top writers and artists onto franchises they’ve never before touched.



If you listen to Marvel’s editorial brass and publicity department in their promotional pieces regarding Marvel NOW!, the initiative is in absolutely NO way just another gimmick to boost sales with new #1’s OR any sort of response to the sales success of DC’s line-wide reboot, but anyone with either half a brain or the slightest familiarity with Marvel’s publicity tactics should know that’s a crock of bullshit. Like DC, Marvel is perpetually guilty of telling fans their latest publishing move has nothing to do with the competition when in reality the exact opposite is most likely true. Regardless of the possible reactionary nature of Marvel NOW!, however, I figure now’s the perfect time to take a look at how Marvel is approaching their latest overhaul and what that approach says about the publisher’s strengths and weaknesses over the past few years compared to DC’s.


What follows is a series of snap judgments on Marvel NOW! based on their publicity campaign and how they’ve approached their publishing line in recent years.

From the Vault: The Joker's Greatest Stories

So a gigantic storm blowing through my neck of New York has my electricity going in and out, which means I haven't had a continuous block of time - one not interrupted by my power dying and me screaming profanities - to write up tonight's blog post. Rather than risk losing any work, I figure I'd post something from the vault of the old IGN days. In this case, with Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo ready to unleash their highly anticipated Joker story, "Death of the Family," it seemed like the perfect time to revisit my article on the greatest Joker stories of all time for IGN's Ultimate Bookshelf feature.   Keep in mind that the article is a a few years old at this point, and I'd probably add Morrison's Batman RIP onto this list if I were to update it.


Anyway, Enjoy.  We'll resume our regularly scheduled programming tomorrow.

Judging DC's New 52 One Year Later

After spending much of the night kicking around possible topics to tackle for tonight’s post, I sat down to read Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo’s Batman #0 (it’s good!) and realized, hell, DC’s New 52 relaunch is exactly a year old this month, so why not finally sit down to address what I think about the bold new publishing initiative? Just be warned: various aspects of the New 52 bugged me the minute the news of the relaunch broke, and those areas of concern have only widened and become more apparent in the twelve months since the first issues hit the stands. In short, I am not a fan of the New 52, so this post will hardly read like a celebration of the relaunch.

Taking a Bite out of The Walking Dead TV Series

I like to believe I’ve matured past being the sort of comic book fan who immediately decides a movie or television adaptation is automatically inferior to the original simply because it diverges from the source material or, god forbid, dares to bring anything new to the table. I’ve been around long enough and have seen enough dramatic adaptations in my life to know for every Superman Returns, Green Lantern and Elektra film that completely misses the mark of the original, there’s a Godfather, Jaws or Kick-Ass (just to name three very different examples) that surpasses the quality of the source book.

And if Batman Begins taught me anything, it’s that even a source mythology as thoroughly explored as the Batman legend offers the space and freedom for a talented storyteller to blaze exciting new ground while keeping faithful to the spirit of the original. By and large, I’m willing to judge an adaptation and its source on their own merits while allowing them both to exist as separate entities, and as long as an adaptation sticks to the spirit, tone and basic intent of the original work I enjoy, I’m rarely bothered by specific inconsistencies between the two.

All that being said, whenever I hear someone praise AMC’s The Walking Dead television series as some sort of extraordinary achievement in entertainment, I can’t help but revert to my worst Simpson’s Comic Book Guy voice while pointing out that not only is the phenomenal comic series vastly superior to the adaptation, but the TV show isn’t even all that good to begin with.

Don’t get me wrong – at times, as in its near-perfect pilot episode and fleeting moments spread out across its first two seasons, The Walking Dead is great. But there are far more times (and for reasons I’ll get into in the body of this post) when it’s downright awful and exceedingly difficult to watch. And it’s because of that jarring inconsistency that the show is by far one of the most frustrating television serials I’ve ever stuck with for any significant amount of time.

(I’ll do my best to avoid spoilers or specific references to plot points for the rest of the post, but if you’re not caught up on the show I’d still tread carefully if I were you.)

Sick of Supes: Garth Ennis' The Boys

My comics reading and consuming habits have changed drastically since my time at IGN ended, a reality I describe in detail in my initial two blog posts for this humble little dumping ground for random ideas I call External Underpants. Go back and read those posts if you haven’t already and are interested in learning just how those habits have changed, but suffice it to say the number of superhero comics in my weekly reading stack shrunk almost immediately the minute I found myself no longer responsible for reviewing and keeping up with the regular occurrences of the DC and Marvel Universes.

Between the haphazard nature of DC’s New 52 reboot, Marvel’s never-ending cycle of event-driven storytelling, the editorial-dictated nature of both Big Two publishers, the lack of any sort of consistent artistic/visual presence on so many superhero books and the disturbing over-reliance of Marvel and DC on artificial gimmicks to drum up interest in and sales of their books, it didn’t take long for me to realize that the majority of superhero books were simply no longer worth my time, attention or money. And with my frustration over the way superhero comics are written and sold reaching unprecedented heights, I figured now was as good a time as any to revisit Garth Ennis’ The Boys, a series that ups the ante on taking the proverbial piss out of the superhero concept like no comic in history.

Superman: Recommended Reading

After spending last week railing against DC and Warner Bros’ mishandling of the Superman franchise over the past twenty years and then pointing out arguably the most egregious case of DC’s editorial department missing out on an opportunity to revitalize The Man of Steel for a modern market, I suspect it’d be easy for a reader of this blog to assume I haven’t been a fan of any Superman project released during the past two decades save for Mark Waid’s Birthright and Grant Morrison’s All-Star Superman, the only two actual published stories I positively mentioned in either of my previous two Superman-related posts.

That’s not the case, as I’ve thoroughly enjoyed quite a lot of modern Superman comics despite the fact that the forgettable, mundane and/or terrible books have greatly outweighed the ones that get the character “right.” I figure, after ranting in such detail about how Warners and DC in particular have gotten the character wrong, it’d only be fair to give them credit for their genuine successes in the modern era, and in doing so perhaps illuminate more clearly why I think the character remains one of the best superheroes ever created, and one that surely deserves a level of success on par with Batman, the X-Men, the Avengers and every other superhero property to enjoy mainstream popularity without having to be tinkered with drastically every five or so years.

So after the jump, let’s dive right into a few of my picks for Superman’s best modern comics stories, which will hopefully give you an idea of my take on the character’s vast potential and the elements DC and future Superman writers should focus on in order to capitalize on his appeal.

Brian K Vaughan interviews Jason Aaron on Scalped

Off to a gig tonight, so in place of a proper post, here is Brian K Vaughan (Lost, Ex Machina, Y: the Last Man) interviewing Jason Aaron about Scalped courtesy of Comic Book Resources. A worthwhile read. I always love reading one great writer interview another.

We'll return to our regularly scheduled programming tomorrow.

Superman 2000

Any discussion of DC and Warners’ varied attempts to revitalize Superman for a modern market wouldn’t really be complete without at least some mention of Superman 2000, a now famous (or, depending on how you look at it, infamous) 1998 pitch by writers Grant Morrison, Mark Millar, Mark Waid and Tom Peyer designed to overhaul the Superman comics franchise. Their proposal, which you can read here, is forward-thinking yet faithful, immensely engaging, well thought-out, filled with promise and in general a pleasure to read and contemplate. And of course, keeping with their recent history of playing it either too safe or stupid (or both) with the Man of Steel, DC editorial of course turned it down at the eleventh hour.

DC and Warner Bros' Superman Problem

DC and Warner Bros’ have a major Superman problem, and no, I’m not talking about the possibility, however small, that they may still losethe rights to the character back to the families of his original creators,Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster. No, the Superman problem I’m referring to is the ongoing and very obvious struggle of DC Comics and their parent company Warners to fix, update or tweak Superman so as to make him more appealing to modern audiences, this despite the fact that Superman is arguably their most iconic character (yes, ahead of even Batman) and undoubtedly one of the most recognizable fictional creations on planet Earth.

For the past two decades, some very talented people who obviously care a lot about the character have been in charge of crafting his adventures in comics and on both the big and small screens, yet it should be obvious to anyone who has followed The Man of Steel’s history over the past twenty years – a period marked by several reboots, re-imaginings of his origin story, failed attempts to relaunch a film franchise and/or make him “grittier” and more in line with the moral ambiguity of modern times – that the corporate entities charged with stewarding the character have very little idea of what to do with him.

It’s clear to anyone paying attention that DC and Warner Bros have been locked in a constant, near desperate effort to “fix” Superman and make modern readers/audiences care about him, a struggle that most recently has led in part to DC relaunching its entire line of comics with the New 52 and the latest misguided attempt to steal headlines by making Superman and Wonder Woman make out in the most recent issue of Geoff Johns and Jim Lee’s Justice League, the publisher’s flagship title. The problem, of course, is that Superman isn’t broken, probably never was, and almost certainly doesn’t need “fixing” in any real sense. What needs fixing is DC and Warner Bros’ failure to understand the character and what makes him so important to so many people on this planet and this country in particular. 

Back to The Rez: Thoughts upon Re-reading Scalped

 

Scalped, one of my absolute favorite comic series of the last decade, wrapped up its sixty-issue run this past Wednesday, and as planned I spent this weekend rereading the first 45 or so issues before taking in for the first time the climactic 15 installments. Naturally I have a lot to say about this brilliant, gut-churning series, but I’m going to do my best to keep the discussion as spoiler free as possible while still attempting to pinpoint why I think Jason Aaron and company created one of the best, most badass crime stories you’ll find in any medium. Keep in mind that at this early juncture, the modest but loyal readership of this blog seems to be made up of equal parts casual comics readers and diehard, longtime enthusiasts, so I want to do my best to service both parties’ interests moving forward. Without further ado, after the jump is my thoughts on Scalped, a series I really can’t recommend highly enough:

Neil Armstrong: (August 5, 1930 – August 25, 2012)

Here's to the first real Starchild -- Neil Armstrong. 

Hard-Boiled Comics, and Why I Love 'Em

This past Wednesday saw the publication of the final issue of Jason Aaron and R.M. Guerra’s noir masterpiece Scalped, reminding me 1) I really need to get off my ass and catch up on the issues published over the past year; and 2) I’ve yet to really rant about my love of crime fiction on this nifty new blog of mine.

The first concern I plan to remedy this weekend, one of the only quiet ones I’ve had in a long time. As for the second, we can take care of that right here and now, and maybe even throw in a few recommendations for you fellow noir enthusiasts looking to sample the best hard-boiled crime fiction the comics medium has to offer.

 

From the Vault: Why Planetary Rules the World

While I catch up and get this blog ready to operate on a regular schedule, here's an IGN article I wrote a couple years ago about one of my favorite series of all time, Warren Ellis and John Cassaday's Planetary. Enjoy.

One of greatest comic book series of the 20th Century debuted in 1999, but had the majority of its issues see print between the years 2001 and 2007, with the last hitting stands in October 2009. For those who have experienced the wonder of Warren Ellis and John Cassaday's Planetary for themselves, that statement might not need much explanation. For those who haven't, allow me to explain.

Although there's certainly no shortage of respected comic book voices loudly proclaiming the greatness of Planetary, the fact that Ellis, Cassaday and company took a whole ten years to complete their 27-issue opus seems to have kept it off that universally accepted short list of mainstream comic book masterworks composed of the likes of Watchmen, Dark Knight Returns, and Alan Moore's Swamp Thing. Now that the series is finally complete and collected in two beautiful Absolute Editions (available on stands now), that omission is no longer acceptable. Because make no mistake about it: Planetary is the greatest mainstream comic of the last twenty years, and, for a number of complex reasons, might just be the best of the last century. At the very least, it's my favorite. Here's why:

While I'm Not Working, Here's Wally Wood's 22 Panels That Always Do

I'm back from an epic weekend of music at the fifth annual Equifunk Festival, where the Frank Stalloners had the honor of sharing a bill with such tremendous acts as Galactic, Dumpstaphunk, Sister Sparrow and the Dirty Birds, The Pimps of Joytime and many, many more. Suffice it to say I'm absolutely beat. Throw on top of that the fact that I have my weekly Tuesday Night Jam gig tonight and that I owe my artistic partner in crime, Tom Travers, some script pages for the new strip we're working on, and it means I don't have the time to knock out a decent blog post tonight. So while I'm not working, I figured I'd share with you legendary artist Wally Wood's 22 Panels that Always Work, an invaluable tool for any comics creator interested in making even the most mundane dialogue panel visually interesting. Check it out if you haven't already, then take a look at modern master Michael Oeming's take on the same rules. 

Sorry again for the delay. We'll be back on schedule tomorrow.

Joe Kubert - 1926-2012

One of the true greats. Made a gigantic impact on comics as both an artist and a teacher. He'll be missed.

Getting Others Started on Webcomics

With mainstream comics publishers finally catching up with the digital revolution after years spent either denying its existence or hoping to God it would go away so they could hold onto their old, outdated publishing models, I notice that some professionals and fans alike are now grouping webcomics alongside digital distribution as some sort of wild frontier that’s only now being explored in a meaningful way. On the contrary; while the process of distributing comics on the web for purchase through sites like Comixology and iTunes might still be in its infancy, webcomics have been going strong for years thanks to the hard work and dedication of some very talented and daring creators.

If you’re anything like me, though, and still find part of yourself clinging to some notion that a “real” comic is the type stapled together in 22-page bunches and sold at specialty stores on Wednesdays, it can be easy to generalize and dismiss all webcomics as being gag-based, single-page strips similar to the type you’d find in a daily newspaper. Having spent a good chunk of the past month exploring the world of webcomics for myself, I can tell you that this is not the case. If you look in the right places, you’ll find that webcomics can and do offer everything a print comic has to offer and, in many ways, more.

The purpose of this post is to recommend three webcomics that will help traditional, brick-and-mortar print fans take the plunge into the vast world of entertaining webcomics out there – to soften the transition, so to speak. All three of these serialized webcomics are written by A-list print comics creators (and thus offer the safety-net of a creator you trust), designed similarly to print comics and are, most importantly, absolutely free. And while they might not showcase all the groundbreaking innovations being made in webcomics these days, they do demonstrate just how effective this new medium can be when it comes to serialized storytelling. Try one or all of these recommendations out, and you’ll probably find yourself a little more open-minded about web-based comics.

Following Creators Instead of Characters

Having spent the past month or so diving back into my love of comics and again thinking long and hard about what I love about this medium, I’m ready to without any doubt state the following truth about my reading habits moving forward: my days of buying a comic based on character(s) alone are long, long behind me. I’m not judging those who choose to buy every Batman or X-Men comic just because their favorite character(s) are on the cover; I just cannot justify that purchasing rationale for myself any longer.

I also no longer give a shit about either the Marvel or DC’s Universes respective status quos, how one of their upcoming events or reboots is going to change everything in radical new ways, how certain characters or aspects of continuity have been retconned out of canon, or any other sort of questions I used to have to worry about as part of my job covering DC and Marvel comics for IGN. In short, I am now exclusively interested in reading and purchasing comics I find entertaining, well-crafted and interesting. And in terms of mainstream superhero comics, that means I am now pretty much only concerned with reading comics by creators whose work I enjoy, preferably those who have the freedom to spend a lengthy amount of time on one title or franchise.

If you think back to every memorable, acclaimed superhero run over the past four decades, almost without fail those runs came about from a very specific set of circumstances: Marvel or DC placed a character or franchise into the hands of one creative team and then allowed said team the freedom to tell an extended, serialized story or set of stories starring that character with little interference from editorial or the rest of the shared universe. 

Curiosity, NASA and Orbiter by Warren Ellis and Colleen Doran

I’m not sure when exactly I fell in love with science fiction and the idea of space exploration. It could have been when, around the age of ten or so, I’d stay up past my bedtime and curl up next to the ten-inch television in my bedroom to watch midnight reruns of Star Trek: The Original Series on WPIX. It could have been when I saw Star Wars for the first time. Most likely, though, I was no different than every other kid on Earth who immediately fell in love with space the minute they realized there are people whose jobs it is to explore the galaxy.

The fact is I’ve been a science fiction fan and galactic dreamer as long as I can remember, and there have been no shortage of factors leading to who I am today – a twenty-eight year-old sci-fi nut with a bookshelf filled with Asimov, Clarke, and Heinlein; a DVD collection dominated by shows like Star Trek and Battlestar Galactica; and a downright obsessive love for Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (quick note: while an undergrad I wrote a forty-page thesis on the movie for a voluntary post-grad film class that didn’t count towards my degree).

Although I don’t have the most complete recollection of my time in college (go figure), one memory I will never forget is sitting with friends watching live as the Space Shuttle Columbia disintegrated upon reentry over Texas. Neither I nor my friends had been to bed yet that early morning when the news started to break that something had gone horribly wrong with our latest shuttle mission, and I’ll never forget the sick feeling in my stomach as we all watched the disaster play out. Even then, watching the events unfold, it was clear the tragedy of lost human lives would quite possibly be as great as the potential tragedy of shelving the risky shuttle program after one too many disasters, or worse, shit-canning manned space travel as a whole. For a sci-fi nut and NASA enthusiast, those thoughts we nearly as upsetting as the loss of life.

Deadlands: A Comic By Dan Phillips and Tom Travers

As promised, here is the very first original comic I ever created alongside my pal and frequent artistic collaborator, Tom Travers. It’s called Deadlands, it’s a ten-page post-apocalyptic short, and as the first bit of sequential storytelling we ever tackled, I think it’s not too shabby. Hopefully you enjoy it.

A little background on the creation of Deadlands for those interested: the story was originally conceived as an open-ended vehicle for Tom and I to cut our teeth on, kind of like a loose chord structure for musicians to jam over and practice their chops. I came up with a general outline for the story’s world, conceived the set-up and then Tom and I just dove right in with reckless abandon. The idea was to keep going with ten page installments until Tom and I grew bored with the story and/or decided to move on.

As it turned out, neither Tom nor I ever grew bored with Deadlands (we even got about 98 percent through a second installment), but life, day jobs and scheduling did catch up to us, and by the time we were able to get back together to collaborate again, we decided to leave Deadlands as it stands: a delightfully weird, violent little short we came up with when we were too young, naive and ballsy enough to know how hard it was to churn out a serialized comic book. Even though it ends on a cliffhanger, I still think it stands on its own pretty well – kind of like one of those 2000AD or Heavy Metal serials that were canned before they even got past a couple installments.

Obviously, this being a product of two younger, less experienced versions of ourselves, there are a few things about the mechanics of this story that make me wince when I look back at them today. But that’s the nature of creativity. If you ever look at something you did a few years ago and don’t see the mistakes, it’s time to pack it in. Anyway, without further ado, here’s Deadlands. Again, I hope you dig, and as always, pass it on to your friends.

WARNING: Being new at this blog thing, I couldn’t quite figure out how to post the pages at a reasonable size while making sure they were still readable. After screwing around with blogger for a while, I figured the best solution was to just post each file at their actual sizes and resolution. The result isn’t ideal, but it will allow you to read the pages on a desktop or laptop. You might be shit out of luck if you’re on a mobile device. Sorry. I’ll figure this fucking technology thing out eventually. Anyway, expect things to get BIG after the page jump.

Miller's Daredevil: Part 2 - Essential Reading

When last we met, I was gushing about how Frank Miller transformed Daredevil from a derivative Spider-Man stand-in to the complex, tortured and very hard-boiled hero we know today. That whole first post was a long version of stating a simple truth: in the same way you can break all Batman stories into two distinct periods, pre-Miller and post-Miller, you can do the same with Daredevil. But I stopped just short of actually talking about and recommending specific Miller Daredevil stories, which I plan to do now. So let’s jump right into it.

Thoughts on Daredevil: The Man Without Fear (Part 1)

I’m going to hold off on adding my voice to the ever-growing chorus of people analyzing The Dark Knight Rises until I at least see it a second time and the urge to engage in hyperbole is a little less. Those of you who know me know that my love for Batman is such that the character’s mythology is pretty much religion to me, so you can probably imagine that I have a lot to say about Christopher Nolan’s third and final Dark Knight film as well as the trilogy as a whole. Stay tuned to this space for that post, which is sure to be long and intense.

For now, I want to talk about arguably my second favorite superhero character of all time behind Batman – another street-level, noir-based hero whose modern adventures also happen to be based on the visionary early work of Frank Miller. I’m talking, of course, about Daredevil: The Man Without Fear. As will be the case with pretty much everything comics-related I write about on this blog, I’m going to deal with why I love the character as well as where to start reading if you’re interested in what he has to offer.

Random Shit: A Grab Bag of Miscellanea to Get You through the Weekend

Between periodically patting myself on the back for actually getting this blog up and running, I spent much of last night brainstorming a list of the topics I want to tackle in this blog over the next few weeks. Believe me when I say there’s a ton of them.

That said, as much as I want to dive in and pontificate about my love of The Dark Knight Rises, Daredevil, Scott Snyder’s Batman or the potential of creator-owned Grant Morrison comics – just to name a few of the posts coming down the pipeline – I figured I’d hold off on anything too in-depth until after the weekend. For now, here’s a couple links that’ll give you a better idea of who I am, what I like and how I think about comics:

Leaving the Comics Shop, Digital Comics and the Question of Pricing

I struggled for a while to think of a topic for my first official post following my big introduction, and I eventually figured it’d be most fitting to continue on the topic of what I’ve been up to this past year, specifically how it relates to my reading habits:

2011 was a tumultuous year for me on many levels, one filled with more changes to my life, lifestyle and habits than I care to count. Among other things, 2011 saw me leave IGN, my writing home for five years, as well as my actual home of eight years for one a few towns over. After my brother Matt, lead guitarist extraordinaire for The Frank Stalloners, moved to Denver to start a family of his own, 2011 also saw me throw myself headlong into a new band and musical project, The Greens Family Band, for the first time since the birth of the Stalloners almost an entire decade ago. I won’t bore you with the other radical changes that shook my life to the core last year, but trust me when I say they were many.

Perhaps most pertinent to the subject matter of this blog, though, is the fact that 2011 was the first year since at least 2004 in which I never once stepped foot in a comic book store. For someone who has been reading and collecting comics since the age of eight with only a brief hiatus from the hobby in high school, that’s a big fucking deal.

Welcome! Or, Where the Hell I've Been and What I'm Doing Now

As you’ll be able to tell by glancing over at the ‘blog history’ section of this site, I set up this blog in 2010 with the intention of making it a home for my various and sundry musings about comics and the comic industry, only to let it languish untouched for two whole years without writing a single damn post. That’s pretty bad, even for me, a serial procrastinator and all-around lazy ass known to bite off way more than I can chew. But now I’m back and rededicated for a number of reasons I’ll get into later on in this long-delayed and long-winded initial post, which you can consider part bio, part statement of intent, and part explanation of what the hell I’ve been up to in the year-plus since I last had any sort of consistent presence on the web.

For those of you who don’t already know, my name is Dan Phillips and I’m a writer, musician and miscreant with serious delusions of grandeur. Many of you know me from my time writing for IGN Comics, where I contributed reviews, interviews, feature articles, columns and podcasts from 2006 to 2011. Others might know me as the singer of my two NY-based funk-rock bands, The Frank Stalloners and The Greens Family Band. A few of you might even know me personally, in which case I apologize for my behavior that time and thank you for letting me crash on your couch.