Mother Box gets new tattoos!

For those of you new to Ich Liebe Comics! that don't already know, my car's name is Mother Box (after a Jack Kirby New Gods Fourth World device and because, well look at the shape of my car!). Today she got some new tattoos courtesy of my friend, Evan, from art drawn by another friend, Ron Horsley.
Now I officially have the coolest Scion xb in town (well actually I wish the color of my car was bright yellow or neon green, but those colors weren't available when I bought Mother Box back in November of 2005 - just realized that she's five years old!)!

The Adventures of Unemployed Man

A couple of weeks ago, The Adventures of Unemployed Man, a new satirical graphic novel that is great, but I hope it becomes dated in short order. The Adventures of Unemployed Man is written and created by Erich Origen and Gan Golan (they wrote the New York Times bestseller Goodnight Bush) and is drawn by comic giants such as Ramona Fradon, Rick Veitch, Michael Netzer, Terry Beatty, Joseph Rubenstein, and Tom Orzechowski, in full color for only $14.99.

The Adventures of Unemployed Man is great for people who have just dabbled in reading comics, but it plays especially well with anyone who has read a lot of superhero comics, with characters such as: Unemployed Man's sidekick, Plan B, Supercharge, Cobra (that health care operation), Plaztik, Kollectus, Free Marketeers, Wonder Mother, and Master of Degrees. Unemployed Man used to be The Ultimatum, but that was before the Firing Squad got to him. The Adventures of Unemployed Man isn't just a collection of cute names, it is a biting satire of the current economic situation and how things have gotten to where they are and even though the subject matter is depressing (especially if you are unemployed or feeling the effects of this bad economy), but it still manages to be entertaining and informative.

Picture This; Lynda Barry

Lynda Barry is one of my very favorite cartoonists and her 2008 graphic novel, What It Is, was my favorite book of that year. So when I saw that her follow up book, Picture This The Near-Sighted Monkey Book, was coming out this week, to say that I was excited would have been an understatement. Well upon starting to read Picture This last night I was shocked that I didn't immediately love it. I didn't think this was due to my not being in the mood for what Lynda Barry is doing with Picture This, rather part of my initial diminished enjoyment was due to overly inflated expectations of what the follow up to What It Is was going to be and the other part is that Picture This doesn't really have a narrative.

Fortunately I picked up Picture This again this morning and gave it another chance to woo me. Even though I had (and still do to a lesser degree than last night) reservations about Picture This in terms of "story", Lynda Barry's art is as wonderful as it's ever been, especially in glorious color as it is here and in What It Is. Basically Picture This is a sequel / extension of What It Is. What It Is and Picture This can be looked at as being motivational graphic novels for artists and the lapsed artist in all of us.
Picture This is subtitled The Near-Sighted Monkey Book because Picture This features this character, the Near-Sighted Monkey, who is Lynda Barry's new cartoon representation of herself. And even though I wasn't "wowed" by Picture This as I was by What It Is, Picture This is worth the price just for Lynda Barry's charming, kid-like (I say this in a positive way) art, because just to look upon her art can't help but bring a person to a happy place.

Lynda Barry's premise in Picture This (like that of What It Is) is that everyone has an inner artist that wants to be put upon paper, but for most of us, we've abandoned this artistic voice after childhood. Barry postulates that people over think things when approaching a blank piece of paper or canvas, so she suggests just putting pencil (or whichever artist tool you're using) to paper and do some simple stream of consciousness things like drawing circles or making lots of dots. So while Picture This will speak more to people who are looking to re-awaken their artistic self, it's also a great graphic novel that will make you fondly remember artistic things (even "simple" things like coloring or tracing an image) you did as a child that took you to a magical place.

Vertigo Resurrected

One of the biggest releases today, in terms of content and value, is Vertigo Resurrected, which costs only $7.99 for 92 pages, featuring stories and art by Brian Bolland, Brian Azzarello, Essad Ribic, Bill Willingham, Garth Ennis, Jim Lee, Steven Seagle, Tim sale, Peter Miligan, Eduardo Risso, Bruce Jones, Bernie Wrightson, Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely. Vertigo Resurrected would be worth the price for half of these creators!

All of the stories by the creators I've listed above have appeared elsewhere, but this was some time ago and they've never been represented until now, so I'm going to guess that these stories will be new to most people. The only new story, the lead John Constantine story titled Shoot, isn't really new in the sense of just having been recently written and drawn, it's new because it was written by Warren Ellis and drawn by Phil Jimenez years ago, but never saw publication. Shoot was written and drawn and was going to be released as an issue of Hellblazer, but then the Columbine shootings happened and because Ellis and Jimenez' story was about school kids shooting other school kids, DC / Vertigo didn't think it would be a good idea to release that story at that time. Sadly, Shoot isn't dated at all and is definitely a powerful story (no pun intended).

7 Psychopaths

7 Psychopaths collects the mini-series by Fabien Vehlmann and Sean Phillips that was originally published in France three years ago. The premise is quite simple: Seven men (well one of the seven is a women) are gathered to assassinate Hitler. The first thing that one thinks of when they hear this premise is of the movie Inglorious Basterds, but since 7 Psychopaths was released three years ago, it predates the release of Inglorious Basterds (even though Tarintino worked on Inglorious Basterds for years before it finally hit theaters).

Why are seven crazy people gathered to perform this mission? Well because they're too crazy to think about the odds on being successful. The primary entertainment of 7 Psychopaths (beyond the great art of Sean Phillips, of Criminal fame) is watching (reading) this group come together. Published by Boom! Studios, 7 Psychopaths is in full color for only $9.99 - a better deal you won't find!

Vegas Valley Comic Book Festival 2010!

The annual Vegas Comic Book Fest, held the first Saturday of November for the last few years, is just three weeks away!! Held at the Clark County Library (1401 E. Flamingo Road - basically right behind Alternate Reality Comics' new location on Maryland & Flamingo) on Saturday, November 6th from 11am-4pm. Attendance is free and so are the panels and movie screening that will be happening throughout the day.

This year, for the first time, local comic creators have banded together to create an anthology comic called Tales From The Boneyard, which will be on sale at the show, with Pj Perez (who spearheaded the production and is a contributor and creator of The Utopian, which he recently completed) and many other of the cartoonists featured within also appearing at the festival. The image here is of course the cover of Tales From The Boneyard, painted by local artist Danny Roberts.

Some of the other comic creators that will be at the Vegas Valley Comic Book Festival 2010 are: Keith Knight (K Kronicles and Knight Life), Eric Shanower (Age of Bronze and writer of Marvel's Oz comic books), Ryan Claytor (And Then One Day and other self published comics from his Elephant Eater line of autobiographical comics), the Fillbach Brothers (Roadkill, Werewolves On The Moon Versus Vampires - they also live here in Vegas), and Laurenn McCubbin (another local cartoonist, she recently drew an issue of Madame Xanadu), Derrick, of Comic Oasis (a great comic shop on the Northwest side of Vegas), is bringing in cartoonists Sean Galloway, and Adam Beechen and Ryan Benjamin (the creative team of the new Batman Beyond comic). In addition to Galloway, Beechen, and Benjamin appearing at the Vegas Comic Fest on Saturday, they'll also be at Comic Oasis on Friday, November 5th.

As if the above mentioned guests isn't enough excitement, this year the free movie screenings will be for Tron, Star Wars The Empire Strikes Back, and the documentary, Comic Book Literacy, as well as several free anime screenings, free panel discussions and creator spotlights, artist portfolio reviews, creator signings, and this year in addition to the local comic book shops (such as Alternate Reality Comics, natch!) that'll be setting up, there will also be a couple of food trucks that have become really popular.

Closing out the Vegas Valley Comic Book Festival 2010, will be a free live performance by Kirby Krackle and as anyone who loves either of their CD releases would tell you, I couldn't think of a better topper for what is sure to be a really fun day! Hope to see all of my wonderful Ich Liebe Comics! readers on Saturday, November 6th at the Clark County Library!

1969 in 2011!

The second volume of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen Century, titled 1969, will be out in 1969. The extra time for production is needed to find only the best LSD tabs for inclusion with every copy, so remember to put this title on your pull and hold lists at your favorite comic book store (Alternate Reality Comics in Las Vegas, cough, cough, nudge, nudge, wink, wink!)!