Alternate Reality Comics - new sign & window decor!

After some huge turbulence with the first sign company I went through, I, just in time fired that company (Signs West) and went with a friend of mine, Evan, who did up the window perfs (they're like vehicle wraps) and Valley Signs & Lighting for my big lighted sign up top (with huge Epstein). Thanks to my artist / friend Ron Horsley (who also designed my website and provides other cool art for my store) for) the cool versions of Epstein (that's the name of Alternate Reality Comics' mascot) and to Evan, Camila, Michelle Irish, and Paul for installing my window perfs on a very long Sunday! Double thanks to Michelle for recommending Valley Signs for my other exterior sign - I couldn't be happier with how it looks! I hope Ich Liebe Comics! readers and present and future visitors of Alternate Reality Comics also approve! Please click on photo image to enlarge the photo, or better yet, stop by in the near future if you haven't already done so because I believe you won't get a true sense of how great these signs look until you've seen them in person!

Brightest Day #11

Although a lot of my favorite comics / graphic novels to read are of the non superhero variety, there really is a lot of good superhero comics out these days. One of the very best is Brightest Day, with the last two issues being especially good. I think the last two issues of Brightest Day (issues #10 and #11) are as good as they are because they don't try to feature too many characters, but at the same time there's a lot going on and really has a forward momentum that isn't just spinning its wheels or is just page after page of story padding.
















If you count Brightest Day, there are four Green Lantern titles: Green Lantern, Green Lantern Corps, and Green Lantern Emerald Warriors. I often say that there shouldn't be this many titles for one character or group of similar characters, but the Green Lantern titles are one of those exception to the rule, in that they are all very good, with top notch creative talent.

Just a look at these three pages and cover from Brightest Day #11, should show anyone who loves great epic superhero comics, that Brightest Day is just a fantastic looking book.
















If you've dropped Brightest Day from the comics you've picked up on a regular basis, I can understand that with the sea of titles out there tough choices have to be made, I just think you may want to look at Brightest Day again and give that hard cut to another title that you're maybe just getting out of inertia. And there's a couple of double page spreads in Brightest Day #11 that I haven't reproduced here that just have to be seen!

i zombie #6 & Metalocalypse Dethklok - two fun new comics!

The newest i zombie (#6) is a really fun self-contained issue that works as a good story unto itself, not requiring anyone to have read any preceding issues and works as a good issue to try i zombie again if you've left the title. I've enjoyed i zombie since the beginning, but it doesn't really have much of the forward momentum that I thought it would. I do think it will read better in collected form, but I'm such a big fan of Michael Allred's art that I do wish i zombie was doing better than it is.

i zombie #6 is titled I, Were-Terrier and is a great origin story / spin off of the werewolf lore. I'd recommend trying out this issue of i zombie and if it does nothing for you, then i zombie just isn't going to be the comic book for you.
Another fun comic that came out yesterday was the first issue of Metalocalypse Dethklok, published by Dark Horse. Dethklok is a very funny Adult Swim cartoon and the comic, like last years, Goon / Dethklok comic, does a great job of bringing the humor of the show to paper. This first issue is self-contained, but I'm happy to report that there'll be three more issues. And Dr. Rockzo, the cocaine-loving clown makes an appearance and I know all of my wonderful Ich Liebe Comics! readers love cocaine-loving clowns!

Richard Stark's Parker The Outfit; Darwyn Cooke

No spoilers following:

Darwyn Cooke returns with another Richard Stark Parker novel adaptation, this one titled The Outfit. Published by IDW in a handsome hardcover volume, like Cooke's previous Parker adaptation, The Hunter, The Outfit is just more of Darwyn Cooke showing off what an amazing sequential art storyteller he is.

As I started to read The Outfit, I'm thinking to myself "What if this isn't as good as The Hunter?", but that question / doubt is quickly thrown out the door because The Outfit is even better than The Hunter (how is that even possible?)! One doesn't even have to read The Hunter to get into the world of Parker, but you'll want to after reading The Outfit if you haven't already. Richard Stark and Darwyn Cooke's Parker is just top shelf crime fiction and anyone who does the quickest of page turns to see what Cooke does with his art, will appreciate right away that this Darwyn Cooke is a cartoonist at the top of his game. Darwyn Cooke is one of those creators who make other comic book writer / artists ask how does he do what he does so seemingly easily?

Seriously, make sure that The Outfit is the last book you read if you buy more than one comic or graphic novel, because everything else will just be anti-climatic. As you're reading The Outfit, you'll find yourself asking "How can this get any better?" and page after page it just does.

De: Tales; Moon & Ba

As regualur readers of Ich Liebe Comics! this past year already know, I've been really enjoying Fabio Moon and Gabriel Ba's Vertigo series Daytripper, so when this new edition of De: Tales (which I hadn't read when it originally came out years ago) was solicited I was eagerly awaiting reading some of their earlier work. De: Tales was originally published as a softcover volume in 2006, but a couple of weeks ago, Dark Horse produced a new hardcover version (with the cover art directly on the hardcover, not on a silly dust jacket like most hardcovers).
De: Tales is a collection of twelve short stories (well really eleven as one story gets two versions) with Fabio Moon and Gabriel Ba both handling the writing and alternating on the art. I think that I didn't read De: Tales when it first came out because usually short story collections have way more misses than hits, but now, having read De: Tales, I can say that there are no duds in this book. If you've enjoyed Daytripper and the themes that Moon and Ba explored within that series (and just great people stories), you'll enjoy De: Tales.

The Terrible Axe-Man of New Orleans; Rick Geary

Rick Geary has written several biographical graphic novels over the past twenty or so years in addition to several Treasury of 20th Century Murder graphic novels, of which The Terrible Axe-Man of New Orleans is his most recent one. Rick Geary's cartooning and narrative voice are unlike just about anything else being done in the comic book medium and all of his graphic novels are excellent.
In The Terrible Axe-Man of New Orleans, Geary examines the serial killing that happened mostly to grocers in New Orleans in the early part of the 1900s. I'm going to apologize by admitting that I don't have any praise to lavish upon Rick Geary that hasn't already been said or written about him, but I did want to write an Ich Liebe Comics! entry to give a heads up for one of this medium's greatest storytellers - and they make great entryway graphic novels to that person in your life that thinks comics are just of the superhero variety.

Sandman The Dream Hunters; P. Craig Russell

This week, the softcover trade paperback edition of P. Craig Russell's comic book, sequential adaptation of Neil Gaiman and Yoshitaka Amano's Sandman The Dream Hunters arrived to brighten up comic book and book stores shelves everywhere. The original Sandman The Dream hunters was a prose novella written by Neil Gaiman, with page illustrations by Yoshitaka Amano and was published in 1999.

P. Craig Russell first illustrated a Neil Gaiman story with the 50th issue of Sandman, and has gone on to do many comic book adaptations of Gaiman's work, with Coraline being one of the other more recent ones. As I've mentioned several times here on Ich Liebe Comics!, P. Craig Russell is one of my very favorite artists and Sandman The Dream Hunters is another fine example by this superlative artist. If you've never read Sandman, The Dream Hunters would serve as a great introduction to the kind of story Gaiman tells with Sandman.