One of my first works featuring the lovely Black Widow..
I’m trying to recreate the feel of one of Lichthenstein’s piece merged with an old communist constructivsm style poster. Added a Lenin quote at the end (no… I did not come up with that myself…) because I thought it was appropriate.
I think that on some level it worked, because it’s the first piece I did that got some recognition… Third place in a community vote on deviant art!
It’s a start… so, Joy!
We’ve known for some time now that DC will be following up on the year long “Blackest Night” Saga with another year long Saga entitled “Brightest Day”.
This would be a reference to the Green Lantern Oath of “In Brightest Day, In Darkest Night…”
The funny thing is that now, Marvel are announcing their next big event after Dark Reign. It’s entitled “The Heroic Age”
Hmmm… Just some food for thought, but…
BLACKEST Night – DARK Reign
BRIGHTEST Day – HEROIC Age
Is it me, or does someone else see a strange similarity here?
With no real Blackest Night installment this week, I was pretty convinced that this would finally be the week for Wednesday Comics (WC). WC is a new anthology that comes out every Wednesday (REALLY), or in sunny home town, Thursday featuring many one page stories of (relatively) popular DC heroes… much like the 1 page comic strip serials seen in the newspapers( think Prince Valiant, Dick Tracy, etc…)
The cool thing about WC is that they have a truly hardcore stable of creators which translates to some (wet) dream pairing up of writers and artists working on hugely established characters.
Exhibit A: Post 100 bullets (something I should definitely blog about) Azzarello and Risso working on a noir-ish Batman murder mystery. Hot dames, check. Wittily punny (or is it punnily witty?) dialogue, check. Hard talking, smooth dealing men, check. Batman? Check! Check! and check!
Exhibit B: Neil Gaiman (yup, HIM again) and Michael Allred in an almost trippy Metamorpho adventure. Neil Gaiman, check! Michael Allred, check!
The whole comic is consistent in keeping with the tone of the newspaper strip. The dialogue is accessible (meaning comic nerd will not be the only ones who will understand the speech) and a lot of this is because, like all Sunday comic strips, the stories does not carry the baggage of continuity. EVERYONE can just hop on and be entertained. We have Agatha-ish mysteries, Last boy on Earth fantasy adventures, War stories and of course, Super hero tales. There really is something for everybody.
And did I mention the art? The deliberate news paper-ish lettering and adding of color half tones to the images to make the strips more vintage looking really brought on a wave of nostalgia… in a VERY good way
Sample art. Un Photoshopped
The reasons why WC is not top of the pops this week?
1. It’s an anthology. For every cool Busiek Green Lantern story, there is one lousy and confusing Wonder Woman one. Having a book with something for everybody means everybody has something not to like in the book. Though the average quality of the book is good to rock your heart out superb, there are still some jarring tales that just does not sit very well with you (I’m looking at you Wonder Woman)
2. Three words. Brian Michael Bendis with his Secret Warriors.
The Group that Fury built during Secret Invasion finally come of age. With the addition of a new kick ass member and the return of the Howling Commandos, the Secret Warriors are slowly shaping up to be the prickly thorn in Osborn’s backside. It’s like watching the growing of the Rebel movements in Star Wars.
Finally. Reason number 3.
And the top reason why Wednesday Comics is not the king of the hill THIS week.
Post Secret Invasion, we’ve seen this team take a beating week after week after week. We bemoan the lost of the darkly humored Thunderbolts and silently, we think that this incarnation of Thunderbolt is just gonna be the forgotten step sister to the Dark Avengers.
I mean… villains masquerading as good guys that save the world for personal gains. That’s basically the premise of Thunderbolts since its conception. So with the Dark Avengers around, who need the Thunderbolts?
The final page of #134 throws that question right open. The final reveal shows the huge and intricate web of deception that has been built around the readers. We’ve been played for WEEKS. And this normally means 2 things.
1. The old direction for the book is not working and the editors decide to take creative liberties and give a big twist in the tale to bring it in a whole new direction (think soap operas)
or
2. It was planned for all along. (Much like George Lucas planned his Star wars to be part of a nine-0-logy. It’s all bout the money, it’s all bout the dum dum de de de dum) (think soap operas)
Either way, consider me gullibly swindled due to the smoothness in the handling of the twist.
Without giving too much of a spoiler away, I’ll say this image of a future cover of Thunderbolts says it all…
It begs the question… WHO are the Thunderbolts?
And for those not afraid of a spoiler, I would say this lil minx will be getting a LOT of exposure in the coming year.
Oh, I forgot to include the context…
Clones are people two 