#geeksverse

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Kickstarter alert: Lonnie Mann’s Thoughts from Iceland

Cartoonist Lonnie Mann is looking for help to get his digital comic book travelogue, Thoughts from Iceland, out in print. Learn more about the project by watching the video below:

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Two Guys, One Script: A visual comparison of G.I. Joe #61 and G.I. Joe Special #1

We’re going retro on y’all with our latest feature article on the Geeksverse, an annotated, limited page-for-page comparison of GI Joe #61 (cover date July 1987) and GI Joe Special #1 (cover date February 1995), two comics that—oddly enough—featured the same Larry Hama-penned script, but were illustrated by two very different artists (the former was drawn by the late Marshall Rogers, the latter was drawn by a young Todd McFarlane). 

Check out one of the side-by-side comparisons below:

Click here to read the full article and view the higher resolution page comparison images.

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Leonard Nimoy's Primortals, revisited

Over at TheGeeksverse.com, we take a trip down memory lane and look back on Leonard Nimoy's Primortals, a short-lived comic published by Tekno Comix back in the mid-1990s. Think it was just your bog-standard celeb-endorsed comic? Think again! Read the full article for the behind-the-scenes drama as the comics industry teetered on the verge of collapse!

An excerpt:

[Kate] Worley’s script for the first issue was anonymously and extensively re-written, something that did not sit well at all with the writer (this would not be the only case of a freelancer being mistakenly credited for an anonymously re-written Tekno Comix publication). [James] Vance also began to suspect that Tekno’s editors were not issuing editorial guidance on their own, but were actually serving as mouthpieces for Tekno executives and marketing personnel. Worse, word had come back that Nimoy, like Worley, hated the designs for the Primortals. Tekno Comix management, by now in full damage control mode, immediately took Worley off the book and brought on veteran fantasy author Lawrence Watt-Evans as an interim scripter before eventually settling on editor Christopher Mills as the title’s regular writer in time for the third issue...

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REVIEWS | Plunder, The Empty, and Mister X: Razed

Over at the TheGeeksverse.com, we've got reviews and preview pages for Lang and McKinley’s survival-horror comic Plunder, Jimmie Robinson’s allegorical science-fantasy The Empty, and Dean Motter’s Mister X.

Click here to read the whole thing. Want to read more of our reviews? Here's a handy link to our review archive.

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Sgt. Fury and his Howling Commandos: A retrospective

Get yourself edjumicated and hit up the mothership to learn about Sgt. Fury and his Howling Commandos, the Silver Age comic that saw the introduction of Nick Fury to the Marvel Universe.

Sgt. Fury and his Howling Commandos wasn't just another old World War II comic—it was also a somewhat unusual platform for Stan Lee's views on diversity and racial harmony. Here, have an excerpt:

It was with a combination of Lee’s bombastic dialogue and breezy approach to characterization, Kirby/Ayers’ distinct art, CCA-approved violence and gunplay, comedy, and just the right amount of tragedy that the title was able to find a sustainable niche in the National/DC-dominated war comics space. Sgt. Fury and his Howling Commandos entertained the teen and adult readers who were the traditional market for war comics, but perhaps more importantly, its caricature of combat was also accessible to readers who were too young to have any firsthand memories of the Second World War (or even the Korean War, for that matter).

That accessibility cut across more than just the generational divide. The Howlers, as the team was referred to in the comic, was a racially integrated unit that featured a black man, Gabriel “Gabe” Jones, on its roster, in clear contravention of the US military’s policy on race relations during World War II (since Lee, Kirby, and Ayers all served in the Army during the war, the choice to include Jones on the team is very clearly a deliberate one, and not simply a case of unfamiliarity with Army policy at the time). Gabe Jones wasn’t the first recurring black hero to appear in a nationally-distributed comic—he wasn’t even the first recurring black hero to appear in a war comic: Jackie Johnson, one of Easy Company’s machine gunners, played the lead role in the centerpiece story (“Eyes for a Blind Gunner!”) in Our Army at War #113, published in 1961. What made Gabe Jones’ inclusion in the Howlers’ roster so significant was his visibility: Jackie Johnson may have appeared in print two years before Gabe Jones, but it would be another four years before he would be seen again in the pages of Our Army at War. Because the Howlers was a squad-sized unit, Jones was, by necessity, always in the thick of the action in the pages of Sgt. Fury and his Howling Commandos, month in and month out.

Click here to read the full article.

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"Seraphim 266613336 Wings" reviewed

Over at TheGeeksverse.com, we've got a review of Dark Horse Manga's Seraphim 266613336 Wings, by celebrated filmmakers Mamoru Oshii (Ghost in the Shell, Jin-Roh: The Wolf Brigade) and the late Satoshi Kon (Perfect Blue, Tokyo Godfathers).

An excerpt:

There’s a surrealist bent to Seraphim 266613336 Wings, which features a dystopian future setting where an incurable disease dubbed the “Angel Plague” has decimated the earth. The Plague not only kills its victims, it drives them mad and transfigures them: The ill spend their final months paralyzed, transfixed by visions of heaven and their dead loved ones while they develop bony growths on their shoulder blades that look nothing less than angel’s wings. On top of this premise is a complex web of political intrigue involving the World Health Organization (which has developed into a paramilitary cult in Seraphim‘s future), a China that has fragmented into a mess of warring states, and the enigmatic Magi, a secret society that may or may not be interested in finding a cure for the Angel Plague.

That cure for the Plague may be held by the mysterious Sera, a seemingly mute, unaging child who is immune to the disease. The Magi have tasked what it calls its “Three Wise Men”—Yakob (code name: Melchior), a former Angel Plague research facility director; the elderly Professor Erasmus (code name: Balthazar ), a scholar and Sera’s unofficial guardian; and a preternaturally intelligent and strong basset hound (code name: Caspar)—to bring Sera back to her home in Mongolia, where they believe she will fulfill her as-yet unrevealed destiny. It’s obvious that Oshii and Kon are playing around with various Judeo-Christian motifs and themes, but the cast and narrative structure also hark back to Wu Cheng’en’s classic 16th century Chinese novel Journey to the West, with Sera playing the role of the monk Xuanzang and the Three Wise Men representing Xuanzang’s three companions.

Click here to read the full review.

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On Big Hero 6 and authorship

The impending home media release of Disney's Big Hero 6 has us asking questions about attribution and authorship when it comes to corporate-owned characters.

Click here to read the article.

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UFC fighter Benson Henderson talks comics

It's no secret that I'm a big combat sports fan, so I'm always pleased whenever I see my two interests crossing over.