Blue jeans with a face

Today Laura Hudson wrote about a feud between Daily Cross Hatch and Rob Liefeld based on the fact that DCH's Brian Heater interviewed Liefeld at NYCC and made a statement in the post that perhaps Liefeld does not have the piles upon piles of fans that he once did. Liefeld said "NUH UH HOSER" (or something like that), because raararraaarrrar.

The Liefeld drawing of Captain America that Laura included with her post was, as all Liefeld drawings are, breathtaking (meaning that I imagined all of that weight on my chest and panicked and could no longer breathe). This prompted Aaron to direct me to Progressive Boink's 40 Worst Rob Liefeld Drawings, and I am now crying and hyperventilating from laughing so very hard, so I just thought I would recommend it on the off chance you haven't visited. I've never met the man, and so I will admit to forming my opinion of him based only on the evidence accumulated on the internet, which, you know, could be an unfair charicature (unfair charicatures being something about which Liefeld is quite knowledgable, I'm pretty sure). But as Laura says in her post, it's sort of nice when people save you mental energy by meeting all of your expectations, and I think those expectations are excellently summed up by the Progressive Boink guys thusly:

The man is a pair of blue jeans with a face. He has on a backwards cap, and when he turns it around, it's still backwards.

UPDATE: Laura actually linked to Progressive Boink in her post as well, I was just too stupid to notice. Anyway.

OH COME ON

This is PREPOSTEROUS. And three times? This is the laziest porn ever, Billy Tan.

ABC Podcast, Episode #35 and visual aids

This episode of Awesomed By Comics is brought to you by Learning to Be Silent, a zen koan that we will never learn in a million years. We say goodbye to birds of the Prey and Robin varieties, get our Coraline on, and can't help giving a laugh-out-loud award to Jeff Parker's sort of mean joke in Mysterius the Unfathomable. Big wins to Guardians of the Galaxy and X-Factor, which we do not spoil, you're welcome Peter David.

Download/subscribe to the show in the right sidebar, and leave an iTunes review! Tell us what you think in the comments, or visit our show forum.

Cover(s) of the Week

Aaron's pick, from Guardians of the Galaxy #10, cover by Clint Langley:


Evie's pick, from Spider-Man Noir #3, variant cover by Dennis Calero:

Panel(s) of the Week

Evie's pick, from Mysterius the Unfathomable #2 by Jeff Parker and Tom Fowler:


Aaron's pick, from Guardians of the Galaxy #10 by Dan Abnett, Andy Lanning and Brad Walker (this wins primarily due to monster with mouth on top of his head):

The Goobles Find Atlantis!!!

Imperius Rex, people! Google Earth has found Atlantis. Google denies this, of course, but they are big fat primary-colored liars who want all the winged-footed hotties for themselves.

Go buy Comic Foundry!

The latest (and final, SNIFF!) issue of Comic Foundry hit your local comic shop yesterday, so go buy it! There are lots and lots of reasons (Bryan Lee O'Malley, Matt Fraction, Grant Morrison, it's rad), but one of them, as I've mentioned, is that Aaron and I contributed a Valentiney feature that will make you think of candy hearts in a whole new way. Just ignore the fact that it's a few days after Valentine's Day, love is always in season.

Happy Awesomedversary to Us!

God, doesn't it seem like just yesterday that I was like OMG LUKE AND JESSICA!!1!11! in Awesomed By Comics' very first post? Well, it was just yesterday, if days were in fact years. The point is, this blog launched a year ago today, yay! Apparently, we share a birthday with Daily Cross Hatch, which is completely coincidental but totally cool.

I started this site not because the world needed another goddam comics blog, but because outside of the writing I do for my day job, I had been blogging aimlessly for five years and wanted to focus on an actual topic that excited me other than, like, "breakfast". In the past year, I've met a bunch of wonderful comics people both virtually and in person, launched the ridiculously fun and increasingly downloaded ABC Podcast with Aaron, started writing about comics for a variety of publications, and generally found a lot more to love (and sometimes hate, but that's what we do right!) about the medium. Oh and we got married, but that's unrelated (except that we took our guests to see Iron Man, on Free Comic Book Day, but that was sort of a coincidence).

So, many thanks to all of you for your visits, support, linking, recommendations, blahbitty blahbitty all that good stuff. I have to go do a thing right now, but hats off to you and the start of year two.

Good news

Well, this was a delightful way to end the weekend, re: this. Now that I've made the top 30 percent, I just have to beat the 1-in-8-or-so odds of the final cull, which is much less likely (by definition, even!). Needless to say, I will be here in two weeks.

ABC Podcast, Episode #34 and visual aids

This week's episode of Awesomed By Comics is brought to you by Cheeseburger Facts, whereas last week's episode was not brought to you at all by orthomyxoviridae. Demons dominate with awards for Hellcat and Hexed, and Neil Gaiman makes everyone happy again. Aaron and Evie recap New York Comic Con ever so concisely and rave about the animated Princess of Paradise.

Download/subscribe to the show in the right sidebar, and leave an iTunes review! Tell us what you think in the comments, or visit our show forum.

Cover(s) of the Week

Evie's picks, from Batman #686, cover by Andy Kubert:


And from Vixen: Return of the Lion #5, cover by Cafu:


Aaron's picks, from 3 Geeks Slab Madness #2, cover by Rich Koslowski:


And from G.I. Joe #2, cover by Adam Hughes:


Panel(s) of the Week

Aaron's pick, from Captain Britain and MI13 #10 by Paul Cornell and Leonard Kirk:


Evie's pick, from Hexed #2 by Michael Alan Nelson and Emma Rios:

Oh right, I forgot

Best line overheard on convention floor:

"Hey, let's go over to that place I was telling you about, Don Henley's Universe or whatever."

SO OKoffkoffhackhookkaffAY!

O HAI. So the Con-SARS/plague/crud/deathbeast/whatever hasn't gone away, but I was back at work today, and after a few gallons of Starbucks Berry Chai (good tip, Heidi) and several dozen rounds of "Sunny" on repeat (seriously, it's like 2 minutes and 43 seconds of DayQuil a pop), I'm ready to share some tales!

1) My official round-ups of several Marvel/DC panels are here, the second, third and fourth news bullets. They're briefer than the Newsarama/CBR play-by-plays, but it's a different audience. And you've probably already read those. I'm not going to go into them here, beyond what I already said about DC Nation below, which has so far been the universal assessment. Marvel pretty much won this one hands-down, except I will say for the news that the Rucka/Williams Batwoman comic I was so worried would be some kind of placating mini is actually going to be a big long starring run in Detective Fucking Comics. So let's all raise a big hallelujah to that action.

2) The beard has definitively replaced the goatee in fanboy facial fashion. Which of course was replaced by bare skin in non-fanboy facial fashion about ten years ago, but you know whatever. Ok I take this back. With heightened awareness I did a little anthropological observation on my commute today, and unless 85% of the 25-42 year-old males in Manhattan read comic books, beards are apparently making quite a comeback in general.

3) Did I mention the Wonder Woman movie? Yeah, go buy it on March 3. It's tremendous.

4) The Beat's Art of Storytelling panel on Sunday was fascinating, especially for those of us who consider ourselves creative in some ways but do not at all get the kind of ideas that come to the minds of gifted creators (note I am speaking for myself, not Aaron--he gets those ideas all the time, he just needs to write one down some day). Moderated by Heidi MacDonald, it featured Marv Wolfman, Jim Lee, Carla Speed McNeil, Ben Templesmith and Terry Moore, so you know, people with big, crazy, awesome story brains.

5) Alright Lost is on now and I'm coughing up my spleen, so I'll give you the rest in some not-very-artful pictures:

Who chalks the Chalkmen!


The endlessly prolific Greg Rucka giving an interview to iFanboy's Ron Richards (whom I've spent more time talking with about Morrissey worship than comics, which is saying something)

Yeah you know I had to get Firestar's picture for Aaron, stat. She even has a Ms. Lion doll! (And did you hear? Ms. Lion is going to be a Pet Avenger!)

Hey, aren't pictures of panels the best? Greg Pak and Joe Quesada agree.

The girl in the Jessie outfit handmade these Team Rocket costumes (even though Team Rocket doesn't have a Furrett), and they made my day.


If you're going to go to karaoke at Sing Sing, get there early so your song wait time isn't three hours, which is too much. Laura knows this, and well. (From left: Popgun Vol. 3 co-editor Adam Knave, a girl whose name I didn't catch so sorry, the ubiquitous Jeff Newelt who took a knock-out turn on Shaggy's "Angel," Laura Hudson of Publishers Weekly/Comic Foundry/MTV.com/etc., Laura's friend Valery which I keep wanting to type as Valkyrie, Popgun co-editor Mark Andrew Smith, oh hi, Image Comics PR/Marketing emperor Joe Keatinge, who came down with the plague that Aaron and I are just now getting over about an hour after this picture was taken on Thursday).

Villain of the Week

It's this little guy right there.

That there is the common cold, at least according to the goobles. It's also what's set up shop in your hosts' heads, at least according to the mountain of gross we have both been creating.

And unfortunately, while I had "I am sick as hell" as an excuse not to cram myself into an enclosed area with tens of thousands of strangers in the height of cold/flu season - Evie did not, until it was too late, and she had already volunteered to attend approximately 45 panels. So now I'm on the mend thanks to a weekend of relative rest, but our beloved hostess is down in the pits of sinus hell, and making noises that if I were to hear a barnyard animal making, I would advise the farmer to get whatever animal was responsible for them checked out. (see title of her last post. Evie loves onomatopoeia.)

So here's the problem.Not only is Evie sick as all hell, she was too busy cavorting with tens of thousands of strangers in an enclosed space during the height of cold/flu season to read all the books we got last week - and I've forgotten what happened in practically all of them, because I was too sick to pay that much attention when I was reading them.

Now here's what we're going to do - next week, bonus extra super show! Or maybe just a longer than usual one with our stray thoughts from this week. Or maybe the same length because we'll still be sick. Either way, we promise we'll be back next week. Except no promises. But we promise. No we don't.

GUUHHHHHHHHH

So many millions of apologies, but the podcast will be late this week... I am dying with a 102-degree fever, which is coming on top of already being behind on this week's books from being at NYCC all weekend--I would have crammed but then this is all on top of the fact that I have coverage to file. We will do our very best to have it in the next 48 hours, but I do so hate letting you down.

Some NYCC stuff!

Ok, I'm running out the door to the convention center, but since I didn't get to post after yesterday, wanted to tell you these things:

1) If you are going to NYCC at all this weekend, please be sure to stop by the Comic Foundry booth in Artist Alley--I forget the number but it has an orange table cloth, a "2008 Eisner Award Loser" sign and is across from Peter David--and pick up the $1 16-page preview of the next (and last, sniff!) issue of the magazine, out Feb. 18. Not only does it have lengthy interviews with Bryan Lee O'Malley and Grant Morrison, but Aaron and I wrote the first story, a Valentine's-themed ditty that you will probably enjoy. And you can imagine how much fun we had coming up with those candy hearts.

2) Saw the new animated Wonder Woman movie last night (produced by Bruce Timm, co-plotted by Gail Simone), and HOLY HERA was it fantastic. In general I'm a pretty big Timmverse junky, but I didn't much like the recent Superman Doomsday movie, and Wonder Woman certainly could have gone wrong. But it was pitch perfect, so satisfying. It's on DVD March 3rd, three days before Watchmen is out, so you know, whatever.

3) Marvel very much would like you to think about the fact that Hope, the messiah mutant baby currently being raised by Cable, has RED HAIR AND GREEN EYES, and that she will cause Cyclops to have a VERY COMPLICATED YEAR. Not to spoil anything of course.

4) Dan DiDio spent most of the DC Nation panel apologizing. But Greg Rucka proved an eloquent spokesman, and he could probably convince me to forgive all of DC's implementation issues if he were so inclined. But he also seems to know what's worth defending and what isn't.

5) I did not slap Joe Kelly, but I did get a chance to tell him how lovely I Kill Giants was, and that was very nice.

Alrighty, I'm off!

G the Magazine

This morning I checked into NYCC for a brief Publishers Weekly meeting, and stayed to see Art Spiegelman's keynote address at the ICv2 Graphic Novel Conference. He said a lot of funny and interesting things, of course, but my biggest take away was learning that "Goethe was the Oprah of his time." (Also, heads up: if you have a lot of liberal-artsy friends, posting a nugget like this to your Facebook page is a little like throwing the first tray of potatoes in a middle school cafeteria).

Pros and Cons

Maybe you've heard, New York Comic Con starts tomorrow, and that's pretty jazzy. I'm very much looking forward to seeing/meeting a bunch of people that I mostly/only communicate with over the onlines or phone interviews or what have you, plus conventions are just a big fat fun nut farm. Aaron and I decided we'd be too busy/poor to get a table in Podcast Alley, but I'll be spending a shift or two at the Publishers Weekly and Comic Foundry booths, trying to get to many panels and just generally running around with a tape recorder and some sweet little Awesomed By Comics, uh, "business" cards that Aaron got printed up. I know for a fact that we'll be camping out to get into the Wonder Woman animated movie debut on Friday night, and I also plan to hit the CBLDF party Thursday night, which is nowhere near the convention center but very close to my office. I realize that's not a very helpful "come say hi" schedule, but I will be wearing a press pass that I assume will have my name on it (maybe? I forget how they do them), so it's not an impossible feat. Haven't decided if I want to have my laptop with me, probably will not unless it turns out I need it for a specific story, but I'll try to post when I get home at nights. And if I don't, you can assume I'm in jail for slapping Joe Kelly.

We Regret The Error

Corrections from Episode 33:

Item: Rich Johnston of Lying In The Gutters reports that 1st/last winner Legion #50's writer "Justin Thyme" was not Jim Shooter writing under a pseudonym (due to his being upset over the book's cancellation and not being able to finish his story the way he wanted, as Aaron speculated) and seems in fact to have been several other writers/plotters/scripters.

Item: Terry McGinnis and the various incarnations of Bruce Wayne are not, in fact, Evie's only two cartoon crushes. A third (and her first) was Goemon Ishikawa XIII from the Lupin III anime.





Item: When Evie compared Final Crisis to a David Lynch movie, Aaron said it was more like a David Lynch movie stuck on fast forward. What Aaron should have said was that it is like several hours comprised of 30-second clips from different David Lynch movies.

ABC Podcast, Episode #33 and visual aids

This very special episode of Awesomed By Comics is brought to you by Hilarious Reasons That It's Better To Be a Woman than a Man, am I right ladies? Abnett and Lanning hit one out of the space park with Nova #21, we say farewell to the Legion, Terry Moore quietly excels and Wonder Woman makes a move. Last but certainly not least, DO NOT miss our EXTRA SPECIAL EXCLUSIVE interview with the God of Sea Mammals of Comics, who answers ALL of your undoubtedly many, many, many questions about Final Crisis #7.

Download/subscribe to the show in the right sidebar, and leave an iTunes review! Tell us what you think in the comments, or visit our show forum.

Cover(s) of the Week

Aaron's picks, from Runaways #6, cover by Humberto Ramos:


And Greatest Hits #5, cover by Glen Fabry:


Evie's pick, from Legion of Super Heroes #50, cover by Francis Manapul, John Livesay and JD Smith (note: in the podcast I say something idiotic about not knowing who "Livesay" is, but that's because I didn't look two lines up to see that he was the inker for the book and in fact does have a first name. This is one of about six incredibly idiotic things I say during this episode, it's one of those days):


Panel(s) of the Week

Evie's pick, from Wonder Woman #28 by Gail Simone and Aaron Lopresti:


Aaron's pick, from Daredevil #115 by Ed Brubaker and Michael Lark