Now at Broken Frontier is the latest edition of the digital magazine, The Frontiersman. In it is, well a bunch of stuff, including a review by me of the first TPB collection of Image Comics’ fun, fantasy series, Skullkickers.
Buy the issue here for just $1.49.
I did my first interview (on the other side of the keyboard for the first time) and now I’ve received my first review. How exciting. My monologue (performed by an actor) went down well and almost every night at His Majesty’s Theatre in Perth was sold out last week. It was a great honour to be a part of the theatre scene and although I didn’t win any of the 3 awards, just being a finalist and having my words coming out of someone else’s mouth on stage was very exciting. Here’s my first and only review of my monologue, Nut Job.
Nut Job by Kris Bather. Actor Nick Candy bounced his way through this often hilarious work about a very dark subject; testicular cancer. The pace was relentless and the double entendres and witticisms were reminiscent of a Seinfeld episode. Even more so when our hero moves to New York. Bather developed the plot extremely well – there was pathos as well as black humour and a clever twist to the love interest angle in the story. A gentle warning to men in the audience was a subtle touch with which to finish.
Yep, my name in lights. Kinda.
Mladen (the hairy one) and me. Your Extra Sequential podcast hosts.
54 mins. We shall not let minor technical issues stop us from talking about comics! No sir! Gianni joins us again to form the geek trio in our special on comics related to video games and other pop culture products. We discuss all the below, plus Boston Legal, CSI guest stars, how to be a “pack leader” and more.
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1: 15 NEWS
Kevin Costner as Pa Kent in the Superman remake
Marvel’s deal with Starbucks
Wonder Woman’s shiny new TV costume
The new DC Nation TV show to be shown on the Cartoon Network
12: 05 WHAT WE’VE BEEN READING
Kris watched Battle Los Angeles and read the TPB of Image’s fun fantasy series Skullkickers and Erik Larsen’s amusing Herculian one-shot.
Gianni’s been reading the Dead Space mini-series based on the game as well as the new Mass Effect.
Mladen has been watching The Dog Whisperer. Yes, we laughed at him too. He also read Asterix and the Falling Sky, and Price Valiant Volume 3.
25:30 THEME-TIE-IN COMICS
Phew. Tomb Raider, Sonic the Hedgehog and more have been produced over the years, and continue to be made, for video game fans to become comic book fans, and vice versa. There have been many more video game tie-ins recently too, such as Dante’s Inferno, Prototype, Infamous, Halo, God of War, Batman: Arkham City, World of Warcraft, Warhammer 40, 000 and more. Plus, anime and novel tie-ins and movie adaptations, including Tron.
Both are alien invasion films based in American cities with a young and relatively unknown cast. Both are centred on one place with glimpses of cities around the world and both are also extremely disappointing.
Battle Los Angeles stars Aaron Eckhart (Two-Face in The Dark Knight) and Michelle Rodriguez (Lost, Avatar) as its big name actors, with the rest of the cast filled out with characters who are quickly forgotten and possess no remarkable traits. Really, they should’ve cut the cast in half to retain a sharper focus. Most of the characters add nothing but bland dialogue, and yes, if you’ve read any reviews of this film, you’ll know that describing the dialogue as bland is being kind. It really is laughable at points with the kind of jingoistic action man talk we’ve heard of in many bad films from the early works of Van Damme or Seagal.
It wants to be an American version of District 9, but has none of that film’s charm, and it offers no surprises. It starts well, with the Staff Sergeant played by Eckhart running on the beach as he’s soon passed by a group of much younger men. Facing his retirement and discussing life and purpose with an old friend is a good way to start a film that focuses on humanity overwhelmed by alien invaders. However, that potential is gone within 10 minutes and then the shaky camera work, rather unthrilling action and lack of characterisation begins. The aliens look interesting with their bio-mechanical features and like Skyline, we know nothing about them, other than that they’re probably after our water.
Skyline is a lot more derivative. War of the Worlds, Aliens, Independence Day seems like obvious inspirations in key scenes and like Battle Los Angeles, it has aliens that don’t speak and whose origins remain mysterious. They do seem to like stealing brains though, which is almost laughable in a 1950s sci-fi film manner. Skyline has a more streamlined cast and although it’s generally all set in one huge, fancy apartment building it remains visually impressive, though the CGI creatures and vehicles are more realistic in L.A’s movie, though the designs are better in Skyline, as is the interplay between the characters, though it offers no real surprises.
Both films champion spectacle over plot and unfortunately both have done well as they are ‘turn your brain off’ movies. To see sci-fi with plot and interesting characters, see District 9 or Moon.
This (mostly) awesome one-shot from Savage Dragon creator Erik Larsen came out at the start of March, but I only just got around to reading it. Herculian is slightly bigger than a regular comic (see photo to the left), in a similar size to 27 and Viking and with it’s thicker paper stock, ’70s-styled Marvel cover and slightly browned paper, it’s a throwback to the kinds of comics Larsen, and many others, grew up reading.
A 48 pager with a collection of short, complete stories it is whacky and often, though not always, funny. You can read an interview with Larsen about the genesis of the book here, but essentially it shows a few weird tales without a certain finned hero in sight. The best, and longest, in these pages is Guy Talk. I finished reading it yesterday and immediately gave it to a non-comics reading mate and he absorbed it all and laughed even more than I did at the punchline. A 24 page tale that was Larsen’s contribution to the annual 24 Hour Comic Day (in which you have to complete a comic within 24 hours) it is dark approach to romance. A man meets his grouchy and jaded brother in a diner to tell him of his new lady love. His head over heels status and firm belief in the power of love makes his sibling sick, as he’s been there, done that and has the heartbreak, selfishness and immaturity to prove it. Throughout this raw discussion (that wouldn’t be out of place in an early Kevin Smith film) there are two silent, unnamed combatants fighting each other in the streets. Neither of the brothers acknowledge this battle, but Larsen creatively uses some of their dialogue to overlap the fight in key moments. It’s a highly entertaining story that whizzes by.
The rest of the tales aren’t as funny or long, but are just as strange. There’s a 6 page black and white story called Cheeseburger Head that follows a man who wakes up and freaks out upon realising he’s..yep…a cheeseburger head.
Bacon Mummy, Carl Cosmic, Don Drake (who surprises his blind date with his duck face) and others show up here, and most are 1 or 2 page stories. 7 silent one page gags of the motionless Reggie the Veggie show the legless character in a series of similar panels in tales such as High Tide and Snow Day suffering from bad weather, and Mickey Maus adds to the political incorrectness by putting Mickey Mouse in the concentration camps of Art Spiegelman’s classic Maus.
Like all anthologies, some pages work better than others, and in fact some of the punchlines here are just odd rather than funny, but it’s worth buying for the lead feature, Guy Talk. Some stories are new, some have been seen in Image’s Popgun anthologies, but they all have a zany vibe to them.
Larsen’s work, and lettering, here is cruder than his usual charming sketchiness and the colouring is plain, but with the benday dots for tone it really does look like a long lost comic from decades ago.
Superman #709. I dropped the Superman monthly series last year when writer J. Michael Straczynski began the Grounded storyline, in which the Man of Steel walks across America. Yes it’s as boring and controversial as it sounds. Now that JMS has stepped back to focus on the sequel to the popular OGN Superman: Earth One, other writers have been taking over with his notes, and thankfully elevated the action and interest and all but dropped the boring bits.
This issue, co-written by JMS and Chris Roberson, with art by the reliable Eddy Barrows is an entertaining tale. I’m still wary of dedicating myself to this title again, but it’s full of promise once more. Supes, after trying to get a hold of his wife Lois, runs into The Flash (Barry Allen), after seeing the town he’s in quickly become a historic Kryptonian area, while parts of Krypton’s past ring in his ear. The Man of Steel realises it’s the Scarlet Speedster at the centre of all this, and saves him by lifting a golden headband off his forehead. The Flash admits that the headband fell to earth and his curiosity got the better of him, and he was all pretty much mind controlled when he put it on. Superman reveals that it’s a Kryptonian artefact, the two heroes go to a diner for a superspeed chat, (all in a second or two, while a waitress falls, but they save her after their discussion of course) about their respective proteges and who runs faster, and the headband situation disappears. I don’t know if its origin will be revisited in future issues, but this is a good story even without it.
There’s a flashback to a young Clark and Lex Luthor in detention (Clark was there for skipping school to save a burning town and Lex was there for stealing 40 cakes. Um…yeah, but it must be a reference to this classic kids’ book). That scene is unnecessary really, but at least it has one of those Superman quotes I’ve never forgotten, as spoken by Pa Kent – “There is right and wrong in this universe and the distinction isn’t hard to make.” I can’t recall when I first read that quote in a Superman comic, but it summarises what the Man of Steel is all about.
This was always going to be an ish with controversy, as Supes and Flash race (kind of) and it had so much that The Source, DC’s official blog had to disallow all comments from now on to try and stop the hate! Fanboys are passionate about such superhero matters.
Batman #708. Taking over from writer/artist Tony Daniel, David Hine and Guillem March do their thing in this 3 part tale that crosses over with Red Robin #22, before finishing in next month’s Batman. Titled Judgement on Gotham, it has ex-cop Michael Lane, who’s the new Azrael calm down his new protégé Crusader, who has no nose, a scarred face and a knack for shouting Biblical passages. The third Robin Tim Drake, (Red Robin) and Catwoman showing up to help Dick Grayson (the new Batman) confront the zealot, and save some civilians who he almost purged with fire. With Dick Grayson suffering from side effects from Azrael’s burning sword in a previous ish, he sees false memories about childhood beatings, and gets fed up with the judgmental stance of Azrael and Crusader. It seems like this is a turning point in the relationship with the Bat family and the concept of Azrael as a righteous warrior.
March’s work has always dazzled me. I first saw it in Gotham City Sirens and I’ll grab anything that he’s involved with. More wispy and elongated than most superhero comics, March infuses his pages with the kind of dramatic emotion that Neal Adams can do so well, but with a P. Craig Russell-like sense of design. There’s a delicate approach when needed combined with a great sense of urgency and movement in the action scenes.
Iceman and Angel #1. This was such a fun read, which is no surprise really, as it’s written by Atomic Robo’s Brian Clevinger, who also put his comedic spin recently on Avengers and the Infinity Gauntlet mini for Marvel. I’d like to spoil the jokes but I won’t as it’s so much fun to discover. Set in the First Class days of the X-Men, it has Iceman and Angel going on a holiday before a naked monster shows up looking for his son. Who’s in college. Hijinks, and great dialogue follow. Clevinger proves that superheroes don’t have to be all serious all the time and Juan Doe’s art is breezy and cool. Get this one-shot. It’s a refreshing change of pace from spandex melodrama and since it’s a done-in-one tale, it’s perfect for superhero newbies too. It has the best Namor cameo ever and some truly funny zingers.
Chew Script Book. Exactly what it says, but rather disappointing. It offers the entire script from the first issue and some sketches and that’s it. No insight into the origins of this hit Image series, no look at the initial proposal, just a script with a few pics thrown in. Grab this only if you’re a Chew completitst, or have no idea what a comic script should look like.
Then again, I’m neither and I bought this.
67 mins. Joined by our buddy Gianni we discuss the how, why and when of the coolness of comics and their popular acceptance. Also, the correct pronunciation of Ben Affleck, replacing beer with soda pop and the differing meanings of the word jocks. Plus, as an added bonus after the end song, hear some Skype shenanigans.
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2:00 NEWS
David Slade set to direct the Daredevil reboot
Australia’s Supanova convention is not far away
Batman: Arkham City game trailer
The wispy Conan teaser
14:40 WHAT WE’VE BEEN READING
Mladen’s been reading Metabarons and likens it to Dune. It has nuns that fly in whales. So there.
Kris has been reading Superman/Batman #81. It has an armoured Superman, a bad future and Detective Chimp, who is a character who is exactly that. He also read Venom #1 starring a legless former Spider-Man bully.
Gianni saw Matt Damon and Emily Blunt run around in The Adjustment Bureau.
35:00 THEME-COMICS ARE NOW COOL. DISCUSS.
Which we do, despite me dropping off Skype occasionally.
70 mins. One of our most fun episodes yet, filled with rambling asides and pop culture recollections. Our brief theme this week is all about buying habits, ie, how, where and why we buy our comics. It’s more interesting than it sounds. Also – Jerry Maguire, singing actors and the street cred of How I Met Your Mother.
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3:13 NEWS
Charlie Sheen gets his own biographical comic.
Amazing Fantasy #15 solds for a record $1.1 million.
Not the Spider-Man musical again?! Yep, director Julie Taymor has left the show.
Rombies, from Perth publisher Gestalt, is just about to launch and your face can feature in its pages!
21:00 WHAT WE’VE BEEN READING
Thorgal, and The Chimpanzee Complex Volumes 1 and 2 from Cinebook
The disappointing All-Star Superman animated film
35:30THEME – BUYING HABITS
Mladen and I have different comic purchasing habits. We look at how ours, and others, have changed over the last few years and talk about digital distribution.
The quality and quantity of Christian comics has been steadily increasing over the last few years, and this little gem can be added to the growing list.
Heaven Forbid Volume 1: Not Getting Religion is a collection of writer/artist Dan Conner’s web comics which poke fun at the day to day adventures of average Christians, and let’s face it, if there’s one thing we don’t do enough of at times, it’s look at ourselves through humorous eyes. Collected from his Crazy Good Comics which Conner updates with new material every Monday, Wednesday and Friday.
This volume begins with a guy and girl discussing an upcoming church potluck dinner and although it’s not necessarily a hilarious introduction, it does ease the reader into the narrative flow. The storytelling is very charming and smooth, making the whole volume easy to digest all in one sitting. There are cute asides that reveal what the characters are really thinking, and although in the potluck dinner, we don’t get proper introductions until about a third of the way in, it does work well as a realistic representation of formal gatherings. The dialogue is never mean, but is youthful, sometimes thought provoking, and often humorous.
As one of the men says in perhaps the book’s funniest line, he’s a bachelor who lives by himself, so he “shouldn’t have the same expectations as everybody else.”
At times the dialogue and zany conversations even reminded me of nerdy sitcom, The Big Bang Theory. After the potluck-centered story, the next few pages are filled with mainly shorter multi-page gags that range from Christianity’s hijacking of pop culture for its own ends, as seen in the great Transfarmers: Farmers in Disguise ad for a Bible school, to a discussion of mythical creatures from Scripture to wearing merchandise of Marvel Comics superhero Thor. There’s even a strip that explains the title of this collection, plus a look at the power of forgiving a pet cat, conversations about the phrases, “Ask Jesus into your heart,” and “Jesus is my co-pilot,” the point of nativity scenes, and more. It’s a great reminder to us Christians that we sometimes do exist in our own world, and hopefully amusing reminders like Heaven Forbid, will wake us out of our occasionally insular thinking.
The main group of characters, such as the aforementioned Charles, and Chelsea and the guitar novice Carter (who joins the delightfully named band The Turkish Delights) are the focus of this book, but there are extras, such as one which focuses on Chelsea’s pet cat and mouse, Purby and McDeermid.
Conner’s art is simple, to be sure, but that’s what gives it its charm. Rendered in black and white, the faces are always expressive, and although it’s a dialogue heavy comic, the difficult comedic rhythms of sequential art are splendidly achieved in these pages. It’s real, relatable, and funny.
Seeing as this is Conner’s first solo comic, after working on Pirates vs Ninjas for Antarctic Press and Graphic Horror: Dracula and Graphic Shakespeare: The Tempest, for Abdo Books, he can only improve in his storytelling abilities.
Connor has a unique, and strong, voice and I hope to see more of it in print.
Heaven Forbid is a 112 page collection and is 3available from Lamp Post Publishing and Amazon.
70 mins. Good and bad horror flicks, Star Wars and our look at characters travelling to new worlds.
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1:07 NEWS
Frank Miller’s DKR art auction
Diane Lane is Superman’s earthly mother in the reboot film
Floyd Gotfredson’s collected Mickey Mouse
Kabbom’s Peanuts film adaptation
X-Men anime trailer
Aussie Oscar winners
Oni Press Mixtape by nerdcore rapper Adam Warrock
14:05 WHAT WE’VE BEEN READING
Evil Dead II
Killzone 3
The Making of The Empire Strikes Back book by J.W Rinzler
Brightest Day #21
The work of French artist Caza
The similarities between Image’s Carbon Grey #1 and Resident Evil: Afterlife
The excellent Ryan Reynolds stuck in a coffin film, Buried
37:50 THEME-STRANGERS IN A STRANGE LAND
We look at some of our fave comics in which characters discover new, and surreal, worlds.
Tintin, and Asterix and The Great Crossing
Air from G. Willow Wilson and M.K. Perker
Neil Gaiman’s The Books of Magic
Doug TenNapel’s Earthboy Jacobus
Guy Delisle’s Pyongyang: A Journey in North Korea
For only $1.49 you can pick up the latest issue of the fortnightly digital magazine from myself and the crew at Broken Frontier. Details below.
The Frontiersman #20
Joe Casey Hits Where It Hurts with ‘Butcher Baker’
Joe Casey has had a very diverse career that has evolved over the years, and despite his impressive superhero resume, he’s really dabbled in a bit of everything. He’s worked on indie and mainstream comics, in animation through Man of Action, and last year even wrote and directed a movie. No s***.
This month, he’s adding a new balls-to-the-walls comic series to his résumé, as he teams with Mike Huddleston on the new Image Comics ongoing Butcher Baker: The Righteous Maker. We interview Casey about the book and profile his career thus far. Oh, and we’ve got an action-packed exclusive preview of Butcher’s first issue too.
That all? No siree!
· A Bad Cop Everybody Loves: Axe Cop, the webcomic ‘written by a 5 year old and illustrated by his 29 year old brother’ starts its print career in earnest this week with Dark Horse’s Axe Cop: Bad Guy Earth. The miniseries is bound to be his biggest epic yet.
· Spotlight on the Top Comics for March 2, including but absolutely not limited to Bendis and Oeming’s Takio GN, Secret Six #31, and Carbon Grey #1.
· The Uncanny Com.X-Men: You know them from 45, Cla$$war and Razorjack, but the 2011 line-up of British publisher Com.x will be the company’s strongest thus far. Eddie Deighton, Ben Shahrabani and Jon Sloan, discuss their publishing business and what’s in store for the next year.
· High Adventure on the High Seas: Charles Vess, Mike Mignola and Gerard Way are some of the big name fans of Jeremy Bastian’s Cursed Pirate Girl. It’s a wonderful book indeed, and we want to make sure you feel the same way.
· Guest Feature by Terry Moore: The sensational creator of Echo and Strangers in Paradise delivers his State of the Union for 2011. Guess what? It’s all about digital, and how the comics industry should cope with this scary, scary beast.
· Exclusive preview of Radical Publishing’s After Dark #3, the series created by Antoine Fuqua and Wesley Snipes and dazzlingly executed by Peter Milligan and Leonardo Manco.
The Frontiersman #20 is available on Graphicly for $1.49.
66 mins. We make beautiful music together. We talk about the unique intersection between comics and music and also discuss which of the Friends we resemble, William Shatner singing and True Romance.
LISTEN TO IT BELOW, OR ON ITUNES OR DOWNLOAD IT HERE
2:22 NEWS
BOOM! Studios gets the Peanuts licence, DJ Caruso set to direct Preacher adaptation, Telltale Games brings the world Fables and Walking Dead games, writer Dwayne McDuffie dies
11:50 WHAT WE’VE BEEN READING
Captain Wonder 3D
DMZ Volume 9
The Devil’s Trail #1 from Creator’s Edge Press
Burgerforce #4 and 5
26:30 MUSIC AND COMICS
Comics written by musicians such as Gerard Way from My Chemical Romance, Anthrax’s Scott Ian, Claudio Sanchez from Coheed and Cambria, Ghost Face Killa. Also comics based on Neil Young’s Greendale album, Alice Cooper, Prince, KISS , The Archies and Aerosmith.
Comic Book Tattoo based on the songs of Tori Amos
Belle and Sebastain anthology
27 from Image Comics
Paul Sizer’s B.P.M about a DJ called Roxy
Com.x’s hopefully upcoming Passions Requiem
Phonogram by Kieron Gillen and Jamie Mckelvie
Poseur Ink’s Side A and Side B
Matt Madden’s work
Mondo Urbano
20th Century Boys
Alan Moore’s work including League of Extraordinary Getlemen
Kid Koala
The Amazing Joy Buzzards
And for the education of your auditory inputs, here are the songs in order as heard throughout this episode.
Like most fans of foreign films, I watch Hollywood remakes with one eye closed, in order to lessen my inevitable disappointment. I generally watch the US attempts though, as sometimes they get it right (The Office) and sometimes they don’t (the recent The Experiment starring Adrien Brody is overshadowed by the superior German original). Let Me In, based on the 2008 Swedish film and book Let The Right One In, is the best adaptation yet. The original blew me away with its low burn pace and atmosphere and the US version directed by Matt Reeves (Cloverfield) largely keeps the same focus. However, the attacks by Abby and the torment of Owen’s bullies are much more visceral. The friendship between the vampire girl Abby and Owen (played superbly by Chloe Moretz and Kodi Smit-McPhee respectably) is thankfully intact and keeping it set in the ’80s is also a wise move. It looks more like an arty indie film thanks to its great cinematography and is a great new entry for the resurrected Hammer film studios.
Roman Polanski’s The Ghost Writer stars Pierce Brosnan as a former Brit Prime Minister and Ewan McGregor as the new ghost writer hired to write his memoirs. Amid accusations of Brosnan’s Adam Lang sanctioning the torture of suspected terrorists, plus the mysterious death of his previous ghost writer all add up to a great drama, and that’s what it is, with touches of a thriller film. There’s no action set pieces and even the car chase is methodical, but it all works well, though the ending is a downer. If you like Alfred Hitchcock’s films, check this one out.
Based on Robert Harris’ novel, it also stars a bald James Belushi, and Kim Cattrall with a convincing English accent, this is a well rounded film with great performances.
Exam is one of those films like Cube, in which a few people go into one place and not all of them come out. Directed by Stuart Hazeldine, and written by him and Simon Garrity it features a few recognisable British actors and is all set in one room. It’s one of those films that is sold on its intriguing central concept and great performances alone. It’d also make a great play.
Basically, 8 people (4 men and 4 women) all enter a sparse room for a job application and told that only one of them will get the dream job. They are given a few basic instructions and then must spend the next 80 minutes looking at the bare paper before them to figure out the one answer. However, the question is just as mysterious. With great dialogue and excitement that is bigger than the only room, it’s rather mesmerising.
Now at Broken Frontier is my review of this great new spy thriller with a twist series from Nathan Edmondsn and Tonci Zonjic. There’s also a creator commentary with Edmondson at MTV Geek.
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