Read Comics In Public Day and and!

Huge, huge day today at ye olde location of Alternate Reality Comics! Today is International Read Comics In Public Day, a promotional push that was started to increase the awareness of how cool and great comics are. I already know that Ich Liebe Comics! readers and the lovely patrons of Alternate Reality Comics read comics in public regularly, but I'd like to issue an official challenge for you to do this today and have a friend and or loved one take a photo of you doing so (and then you can swap comics with that photographer and snap a pic of them as well). Today is Jack King Kirby's birthday and he would be really sad if you didn't do this. Email me your photos at: ralphmathieu@gmail.com as I'd like to assemble them and doing something cool with them!

Today is also the LAST day of Alternate Reality Comics at its present location of 4800 S. Maryland Pkwy. #D, Las Vegas, Nevada after what has been a glorious 16 (!!) years finding great homes for great comics and graphic novels. I knew that I had won the lottery when I became the owner of Alternate Reality Comics in 1995 (which from 1987-1994 previously was called Dungeon Comics and was owned by Steve and then Blake and managed by my friend PJ that entire period) and I've LOVED every day of these past sixteen years interacting with people who love this wonderful medium. I look forward to the next sixteen years of Alternate Reality Comics new location starting Wednesday, September 1st, at 4110 S. Maryland Pkwy. #8 (Maryland & Flamingo intersection next to Buffalo Exchange, behind Long John Silvers) and I can't wait until everyone sees the new space!

I'd like to again thank everyone who has ever shopped at Alternate Reality Comics, everyone who includes comics and graphic novels as an entertainment choice, and for those of you that read Ich Liebe Comics!

Ich Liebe Comics and Ich Liebe All Of The Wonderful People I've Met Through Alternate Reality Comics!

How cool is this!?

Driving to Alternate Reality Comics new store space this afternoon to do some more set up type stuff before the BIG move this Sunday and Monday and this vehicle was in front of me (click on photo to enlarge) - it has to be a sign, right!? Notice the license plate and the gangsta bike with the gun on the frame - that's got WIN written all over it!

A swan song toast to Alternate Reality Comics last four days at the 4800 location!

I hope everyone can make it by for what will in four days be the old location of Alternate Reality Comics (4800 S. Maryland Pkwy. #D, for the past 16 years!) as I'll have free sodas, tree top juice, and water to drink a goodbye toast with! Thanks to everyone who has ever been to my store at 4800 S. Maryland Parkway these past sixteen years - I hope to see you all next Wednesday, Sept. 1st, for the exciting, bigger new location of Alternate Reality Comics at 4110 S. Maryland Pkwy. #8 at Maryland / Flamingo, right by Buffalo Exchange, behind the Long John Silvers!

Top Cow; Artifacts, Magdalena, & Velocity, and...

Top Cow is an imprint of Image Comics that was started by Marc Silverstri (Cyberforce) and their titles featured many fan favorite artists such as Michael Turner, Brandon Peterson, David Finch, and Joe Benitez. Top Cow comic titles were known for the longest time as being THE place for fans of hyper stylized art, with the characters all looking like super models. But for the last three or so years, Top Cow, in addition to still having a very stylized art style in their books, they now have writers on their titles, such as Phil Hester, David Hine, and Ron Marz, who are bringing more substance and richer characterizations to the Top Cow universe.

Consider one of their newest titles, Artifacts, which will be a thirteen issue series uniting a lot of their characters and titles. Artifacts is written by Ron Marz and drawn by Michael Broussard, with inks by Rick Basaldua and Sal Regla. Witchblade's daughter, Hope, gets kidnapped, and this coupled with a villainous quest to unite the thirteen artifacts of power from different characters within the Top Cow universe, serves as a great introduction of what the Top Cow universe is about. A person could read the first issue of Artifacts, without having ever read a Top Cow title previously and in addition to giving a new reader everything they need to know, also packs a lot of story and intrigue in its twenty-eight pages.
Another Top Cow character, Magdalena, also recently was relaunched as an on-going title, and like Artifacts, a person doesn't have to know anything about Magdalena before reading the first issue, because writer, Ron Marz, brings the reader up to speed and by the last page you'll know if Magdalena is going to be the kind of book you'll want to read regularly. Magdalena is a protector and warrior for the Catholic Church, but one doesn't have to have a religious background to enjoy this series, and like Witchblade, Magdalena is a legacy character, meaning there have been previous women that were their time period's Magdalena. The art by Nelson Blake II and Sal Regla has a stylized quality to it, but it doesn't have the house style that one usually thinks represents a Top Cow book (not that that's a bad thing).
Velocity is a speedster character (think of a female version of The Flash), and is also written by Ron Marz. The first issue of this new Velocity series was a lot of fun (I can't decide if I like Velocity or Magdalena more) and Ron Marz is really good at thinking outside of the box in regards to what it would be like to have speed powers.

I also read a recent issue of Witchblade (issue #131) and Angelus #1, both also written by Ron Marz (what does he think Top Cow is - CrossGen!? - grin) and while they weren't really my speed, I thought they had great art by Stjepan Sejic and I think that people who liked the fantasy comics Crossgen did, would like these titles. I highly recommend people take another look at Top Cow comics, especially if you haven't picked up one in a while (or ever), I think you'll be surprised at what you see and read (I was, pleasantly!).

Scott Pilgrim movie is all that and more!!

A friend was asking me on facebook last night what I thought of the Scott Pilgrim movie and although I commented on my store facebook page after seeing it midnight Thursday night that I LOVED EVERYTHING about the movie, I'd forgotten that I hadn't blogged about it (for my loyal Ich Liebe Comics! readers that don't facebook).

No spoilers following:

As I mentioned above, I loved the Scott Pilgrim movie, it has it all; a great cast, is funny, has a lot of heart, great music, and compresses the six Scott Pilgrim graphic novels in a way that isn't hurried and doesn't lose the charm and kinetic energy of the comic (my favorite character is Todd the Vegan, of course!). Like the Kick Ass movie, the Scott Pilgrim movie has some differences from the graphic novel, but that just makes both experiences fun unto themselves. Seriously, go see Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World because you may have heard it didn't "perform" that well at the box office this past weekend and if people don't support movies like this that aren't just cut out of the same mold as most Hollywood movies, well then we'll just get more generic movies. I definitely will be seeing this again in the theaters!

And as a reminder for those of you who haven't seen my earlier entry a few weeks ago about the Alternate Reality Comics facebook page, it doesn't cost anything (grin), so just go do a search for Alternate Reality Comics, Las Vegas in the facebook search field and you'll be directed to said page!

Red Moon - a fantastic new indy graphic novel!

Red Moon is a 200 page graphic novel written and drawn (and self published) by David McAdoo, about Mox, a schnauzer and Daeden, a stray blue heeler and the adventure they have trying to unravel visions Mox has and what they mean for the fate of the world. Just about all the characters in Red Moon are animals, who communicate through a kind of animal telepathy. This is a great adventure story, with a lot of suspense, and great characters with a lot of heart.

As anyone reading this Ich Liebe Comics! entry can see, Red Moon also has great art (black and white, with the color red used sparingly to great effect throughout).

I don't think that Diamond Comics Distributors carries Red Moon yet, so you may have to search for it or order it directly from David McAdoo, the cartoonist (if you don't live near Alternate Reality Comics here in Las Vegas). David McAdoo stopped in my store right before the San Diego convention and sold me some copies of Red Moon (which I was sold on just flipping through this graphic novel). Go to www.redmoongraphicnovel.com for a lot of great photos of David McAdoo with Red Moon at the San Diego convention last month (also has lots of photos of people cosplaying).

Past Lies

A couple of weeks ago, Oni released a great neew mystery / suspense / crime fiction hardcover graphic novel called Past Lies, written by the Christina Weir and Nunzio Defilippis and drawn by Christopher Mitten. Weir and Defilippis also wrote the excellent graphic novels Skinwalker and Three Strikes, for Oni, so I was pretty sure that Past Lies would deliver.

The central character of Past Lies is Amy Devlin, an aspiring unlicensed private eye, who is very good at unearthing aspects of a crime that others have overlooked. Past Lies has a lot of mystery and suspense, takes the reader through some great twists, with great dialogue and pacing and has great characters that aren't unbelievable as some main characters can be in a lot of works of crime fiction. The art by Christopher Mitten, who also draws Wasteland, isn't anything real stylized like Darwyn Cooke or as atmospheric as Sean Phillips, but it perfectly moves Past Lies along and is pleasant to the eyes.

If you were thinking of picking up the first graphic novel by New York Times best-selling author Janet Evanovich, called Troublemaker, published by Dark Horse about a month or so ago, don't - that was one of the lamest graphic novels I've read in some time. It certainly didn't seem in the crime fiction genre that it was purported to be in, the characters were so undefined and not interesting that I was only glad that it didn't take me very long to read Troublemaker (and with that in mind, Troublemaker also is not a good return for its harcover price). I've enjoyed Troublemaker artist Joelle Jones previously (You Have Killed Me and Spell Checkers), but her art here just looks annoyingly cute (I guess it mirrors the vapidness of the story though).

Anyway, I just went a long way to say a lot of negative things about Troublemaker, when basically I should have just said avoid the over-hyped Troublemaker and pick up Past Lies (which should have gotten the attention that Troublemaker got before its release - and I've never read any of Evanovich's best-selling novels so this just might be a foul ball on her part, because it's true that you're not going to hit it out of the park every time at bat).