The War (of the Independents) continues

OK kids, here is very exciting news I (finally) got a-hold of my copy of The War of the Independents #3, and guess what? Your humble blogger was listed as the furslinging editor!

Yeah, yeah I totally knew that it was happening. I've been helping out Dave Ryan throughout the book’s run whenever I could, with marketing & Pr as well as helping him compose the blurbs that run in Diamond’s Advanced Preview catalog. In fact, Dave had me read through his script and do some copy editing and formatting, as well as proofing before the book went off to print.

Heck, I’ve sat his table at a couple of cons in NY & Philly (seriously, how cool, eh?). Well, anywho, I just finished reading issue #3 and I wanted to wax poetic about it for a bit. To be sure, I’ll post a full review of it later on over the weekend (and come back here to provide you all with a link so you won’t be deprived of my deathless prose).

In the mean time, I’ll clue you in to the following — my beloved characters Hope & Grace (the Wülf Girlz) appeared in the big crowd scene at the end of issue #1 and will pop up again (to actually help fight the bad guys) in issue #6 I believe.

Oh, wait, I almost forgot to tell you, issue #3 has two (yes two!) covers. The front cover is masterfully done by Todd Nauck (Wildguard: Image Comics), and the back cover was rendered by the amazing Chris Giarrusso (G-Man, Mini Marvels). The War of the Independents is available for the low, low price of just $2.99 (American), and would be a steal for twice that!

If you want a brief preview of the book go here and check it out, but then hurry off to your local comicbook shop and buy a copy (or three) straight-away!

Well that’s about it for now, more as it happens!

Now for the wicked-cool stuff! The Wülf Girlz from issue #1:

Along with a close-up of the Girlz (sorry it is so bury, but trust me — it is them!):

And now here is my editor credit in #3

Total awesomeness. eh?

Chris Giarrusso is Back!

Hey kids, if you (like me) are a fan of Chris Giarrusso’s über-fine work (Mini Marvels, G-Man), then you’ll want to rush right out and score a copy of Image United #0 as Chris has a four-page back up in that issue, that is worth the cover price.

Yeah, you heard me right, Chris’ work is just that good.

This (all-too-brief) tale is Chris taking a comical whack at the whole Image United story, and he does it in his own inimitable style.

As for the up-front tale of Image United itself, well, I’ve been following this series, and well, it reads just like I remember Image Comics reading back in the ‘80s.

(Feel free to interpret that last comment as you wish.)

G-Man totally Rules!

Well, this is it kids, G-Man The Cape Crisis # 5 is out (well it’s been out for a week, but I just got a chance to read it today) and man-o-man was it a fun read! As you all know, I’ve been singing the praises of Chris Giarrusso for quite some time, from his hilarious work with the Mini-Marvels to his work here with his own characters. The series is populated with young heroes who have gotten themselves into a situation because of Great-Man’s gread (and yeah, stupidity) regarding the magic cloth that makes up his belt and his brother’s cape. The cloth not only gives them both the ability to fly, but it is the source of their powers and strength.

As you recall, last issue that power was spread so thin that the cloth literally exploded robbing both them (and all the others who were in possession of parts of the cloth) of their powers. Now the boys must go off to the mythical Sky Mountain to locate Krios to get back their powers.

Still, what really makes this series work is the delightful dialogue as well as the interplay between all of the characters. In this issue there is a particularly witty exchange where the school’s Principal reprimands G-Man for fighting because of his superpowers. G-Man says that he lost his powers and the other student has been picking on him. G-Man leaves the office only to have the kid call him out yet again, this time in front of the Principal. G-Man refuses the challenge, and the Principal tells G-Man to stop taunting the bully.

These kinds of exchanges occur all the way through this issue (throughout the entire series, actually). It is as if G-Man is the only rational person surrounded by a host of dim-witted morons. I’m telling you that this stuff is hysterical, Giarrusso, has a great ear for dialogue, and utilizes it to his advantage. If you aren’t reading this comic, you should.

G-Man Rules!

Yeah, you heard me, Chris Giarrusso’s G-Man is the coolest comic here these days! I’m totally loving his Cape Crises mini-series. It offers so much of why I read comics in the first place. It is entertaining, tells a readable story, keeps me guessing as to what is going to happen next, makes me want to not only turn the page to get to the rest of the story, and pick up the next issue.

Yep, this is truly a very cool comic. The premise of this whole series is that Great Man and his brother G-Man both wear capes made of magic cloth which gives them the ability to fly and super strength. Only Great Man is cutting up the cloth and selling bits of it as flight bands to anyone who has the cash. Although he has been warned that doing this will split up the power and weaken the magic, he keeps doing it, which leads to all sorts of trouble.

The various characters that populate this series are unique, and, well, fun to read. I’m hoping that Chris does well enough with this series to not only continue it, but to convince Marvel that they need to produce more of Chris’ Mini-Marvels (another good read from Chris that could do with better publicity).

G-Man has a couple of back-up shorts which are contributed by buddies of Chris (including the guys who are producing Marvel’s X-Babies). I’m telling you that this book is so good even the back-up stories are fun to read.

If you are not reading G-Man, you should be, go out and get yourself a copy now!

G-Man is in Greensboro, NC!

I just heard that Chris Giarrusso along with several other cartoonists (Art Baltazar, Jacob Chabot, Brian Smith, and Gregg Schigiel) all of whom have back-up comic strips in Chris’s on-going Image Comic, G-Man will be signing special variant issues of G-Man #2 in Acme Comics on October 24 from 10 A.M. – 7 P.M. (Acme Comics is located on Lawndale Drive in Greensboro, NC).

G-Man is similar in structure to the Mini Marvels that Chris does over at Marvel (and is perhaps best known for), only G-Man is his own character, and has been appearing in back-up strips in Image comics.

If you haven’t been buying G-Man, you really should. It is one of the coolest comics currently being published.

Oh yeah, and if you love the Mini-Marvels, and want to collect them all in one place, then you are in luck, as Marvel just announced a new collection of Mini Marvels, that is due out in December ($19.99).

The book is all-ages fun that features the wild and crazy kid counterparts to Marvel’s greatest heroes! Featuring Spidey, Wolverine, Iron Man, Hulk and more Marvel favorites! ALL your favorite Mini Marvels adventures collected in one hilarious and action-packed collection! Plus: Spidey gets in over his head when he babysits Power Pack, but he gets by with a little help from his AMAZING FRIENDS Iceman and Firestar!

G-Man Flies Again!

OK kids, yesterday I received my very own copy of Chris Giarrusso’s wicked-cool Image comic, G-Man: Cape Crisis. (To be sure, I purchased it through my funnybook retailer.)

I have to say that this is easily the most entertaining comic I’ve read in a dog’s age (OK, OK, I really like the Franklin Richards: Son of a Genius series by Chris Eliopoulos, and Marc Sumerak). Still, this stuff is a hoot-and-half. Chris, as you all know, is the talent behind Marvel’s Mini Mavels. This five-issue mini-series is done in the style of those Mini-Marvels, and picks up on the story of G-Man that ran in Image comics (collected in its own comic late last year).

This first comic has G-Man and his older brother dealing with a crowd of kids from their neighborhood who feel that they should have the right to possess some of the magic fabric that turned our two heroes even though mst of the kids are jerks and never really liked G-Man before he acquired his powers.

The dialogue is hip and story itself is light and breezy. It is exactly what comics should be. Further it is a perfect introductory comic for young readers, and I strongly urge all retailers to scoop this comic up and highly promote it.

It is the sort of comic that will ensure this industry readers for years to come. I kid you not.

Taco Bell Comics

As you all know, and as I’ve indicated a number of times, I’m a big fan of a) freebie/giveaway comics (who isn’t) and b) fast food tie-ins (especially when they are comicbook related) So you know that I’m going to be a big fan of the new set of Marvel giveaway comics that are currently being issued by Taco Bell. Well you are right. the set consists of The Fantastic Four (co-staring the Hulk), The (original) Avengers (vs. Ultron), Thor (& the Thing against the Wrecker), and Captain America (and Nick Fury & SHIELD) going up against Hydra.

In fact, my biggest complaint is that there is no Spider-Man comic, or appearance in this set. Still, that is just a personal bias, so I’m going to let it slide for now. All four of the comics are new stories, and only 11 pages long with a Chris Giarrusso one-page Mini Marvels back-up.

First up is Cap’s tale, and yes, this is Steve Rogers working alongside Nick Fury who is the head of SHIELD, and they are going up against Hydra, so it is about as old school as you can get. The story is short and to the point (not much subtlety you can get in 11 pages). A mobster who is using his mob activities to subsidize his Hydra cell is kicked loose due to lack of evidence. This angers Cap, who is told to calm down by Fury. Needless to say, the crook shows his hand and captures Cap, and plans to unmask him on TV. Cap breaks loose, turns the tables on his attackers and does his Sentinel of Liberty thing.

The next comic still has Don Blake as Thor and doing his Dr. thing in disaster areas along with The Thing who is there for his celebrity appeal. They are alerted to the appearance of the Wrecker and as the Thing heads off to stop the super-powered thug from wrecking numerous tourist attractions throughout the U.S. Black taps his cane turning himself into the Thunder God and the pair set out to confront the villain, which they do in short order. (Turns out Wrecker is PO'ed over being “ripped off” at these sites when he doesn’t get what he thinks he paid for at each site.

The FF are at home (yes, in the Baxter Building) and Thing and Torch are up to their usual shenanigans of torturing each other as Reid and Sue are about to go out to dinner for their anniversary. Needless to say, just prior to them walking out the door, a news report indicates that The Hulk in in NYC trashing the place. So the team puts personal issues aside, and goes to the rescue. Each attempts to bring the emerald brute down by themselves, but is unable to do that solo. True to the nature of the team, they are only able to stop the raging beast’s rampage when they combine their powers into a single, concerted effort.

Finally, is the Avengers, which unites the initial, classic line-up of Cap, Iron Man, Thor, and Ant Man who are confronted by a seemingly-reformed Ultron who wants to become an Avenger. As insane as it may sound, they actually allow him (it) to try out. As can be expected it is all a (not so) elaborate trick to get them to drop their guard so that he can destroy them. Of the four stories, this one is the weakest as it simply doesn’t hang together in any logical fashion. In fact, I honestly couldn’t believe that this story was even approved, as it is so unbelievably badly done.

Still as a set they are fun to have, and whatever shortcomings that the main story may or may not have, the single-page Chris Giarrusso, Mini Marvel story at the end makes the addition of these comics well worth the addition to your collection. I highly recommend them all (yes, even the Avenger one, only not so highly as the rest). When talking to one of the managers of my local Taco Bell she informed me that they were having a tough time giving them to the kids as they didn’t seem to wan them, which I found incredulous.

So if there is a Taco Bell near you, I suggest that you hustle out and acquire a set (and make arrangements to buy up all the remaining copies at the end of the promotion).

Funnybooks @ Taco Bell!

Yep, that’s right I went to Taco Bell yesterday and I found a complete set of the (four) Marvel Comics. The set consists of four brand new, full-sized 12-page comics featuring four Marvel characters or teams (Thor, Captain America, Avengers, and the Fantastic Four).



Each comicbook features 11 pages of a main story, plus a 1-page back-up by cartoonist Chris Giarrusso. Chris is perhaps best known as the guy who produces an on-going — if irregular— feature running through many Marvel comics called Mini Marvels. The Mini Marvels are kid-like incarnations of the main marvel characters in, well, silly adventures. Many of these stories have been collected into digest-sized books and re-issued. If you can find any of them I highly recommend you pick them up.

Another dip at the Marvel Well

Sometimes it is heard for us here in the States to remember that Marvel is a multinational corporation, that is ti say, that it publishes comics all over the world. Well, sometimes, even those of us who know that are often surprised by the appearance of non-US-based stories. Well, that is precisely what happened when I discovered Marvel Europe last month.

The comic contains three previously-unpublished stories staring Spider-Man, Wolverine, Captain America, Daredevil and Captain Britain. The Wolverine story has our clawed mutant running around in Brazil fighting a new mutant presence, Cap and DD team up in NYC to fight Mr. Fear on behalf of S.H.I.E.L.D. While Spider-Man and Captain Britain team up to fight the Red Skull that came out of the pages of Marvel's British offices.

All three stories were very interesting, and I hope that the sales of the comic do well enough for it to precipitate the publications of other non-US stories. I think it is only fair, all of our comics get reprinted overseas (eventually), so having some of their comics reprinted over here just seems to make sense to me.

Another Marvel comic I want to talk about here is the newly-released Marvel Assistant-Sized Spectacular. This anthology comic purports to be helmed by the assistant editors who finally get the chance to strut their stuff. there is a second volume of this series that is due out later this month. I really liked it quite a bit (unfortunately, at first I thought that it was being done in the spirit of the previous outing in this venue, in that 12 years ago the assistant editors all published a one-off comic in the regular lines of their respective titles, that were supposed to be goofy.

These stories weren’t (to be sure the one silly story was Chris Giarrusso’s Mini Marvels). Given that I personally can’t get enough of Chris’s work, I would have loved it if the whole book was his work. Still the other two stories (staring D-Man and American Eagle) were also quite good. Truth to tell, I’m not a big fan of D-Man, but this story was a good read (even if I found the art to be sub-par). On the other hand both the story and the art on the American Eagle story were quite excellent. While Chris’s story was up to his usual most-excellent standards

Again, I’m not only looking forward to the second installment of this two-shot, but I hope that they issue another version of it again next year.

And now, for something completely different...

If you were to have been following this blog for the past week or so, you might think that I only read Independent comics (written by my friends). Truthfully, I tend to read more Marvel Comics (sorry kids, it is a long-standing addiction that I’m simply unable (and unwilling) to completely kick). I’ve been reading them since ‘62, and regularly purchasing them since ’71. Unfortunately, these days, I’m admittedly not having as much fun reading them as I did even a few years back. Still, there are (every once in a while) comics that do rise above the fray, and are worthy of mentioning. Off the top, I want to mention Marvel Adventures: Spider-Man which I regularly review for SpiderFan.

Another comic that always gets me smiling, is anything by Chris Giarrusso. in addition to his own work (G-Man) Chris produces the Mini Marvels. These are usually one-page humorous takes on the heroes from the Marvel Universe. As a rule, they tend to follow a theme for a period of time, and then are collected in a digest-sized comic. With the recent release of Mini Marvels Secret Invasion, Chris tells an alternate version of the Secret Invasion. All things considered, I prefer Chris’s version. In addition to the Secret Wars are broad swipes at Civil War, Spidey, and the whole Green Hulk/Red Hulk (Blue Hulk) storyline.

Chris also likes to pick on Hawkeye, and does so with gleeful abandon. As stated, another favorite target is Spidey himself, whom Chris loves to posit a young Spidey who is a paperboy for The Bugle, and regularly goes up against the Osborns (who are customers) and Venom (a competing paperboy). Again, all of this is done in good fun, and it never fails to bring a smile to my face. I strongly suggest that — even if you have read all of the Mini Marvel stories in the various Marvel Comics in which they have appeared, you spring for this collection. You’ll be very happy that you did.

Here is a fun Spidey comic that my buddy James Rodriguez brought back with him from his trip to South America. It is a copy of Spidey in , well, Spanish. I have a few of these foreign language comics in my collection, and I always love getting them.

I want to also talk about The Amazing Spider-Girl. This comic ran a single issue of What If, 100 issues of Spider-Girl, 30 regular issues of Amazing Spider-Girl, plus a 0 issue and an annual, not to mention assorted issues of various other “M2” titles. I went on record several times (once in person to writer Tom DeFalco) how much I enjoyed this title. It always reminded me of being 15 again and the thril I got every month reading Spidey at that time. I’m sorry to see the series go, but I understand that it will continue in Amazing Spider-Man Family and on-line ion Marvel’s ecomics. Now while I’m not so happy about the ecomic version, I am pleased that it will still continue in print in ASMF.

Anyway, Issue # 30 of ASG was easily one of the most moving issues of this series. I could tell that DeFalco really loves this title and these characters, and really pulled out all of the stops to deliver one of the most emotionally moving stories that I have ever read. Too bad all the Spider-titles couldn't be written this consistently well.

This story proved to be quite a nice coda to the run of this title, as well as a delightful wrap-up to the final arc of this series. I truly enjoyed what Tom did in this story, and I truly have to say that I completely didn’t see the big reveal coming, even though I was looking for it.

Personally, I’m looking forward to reading the new series.

G-Man Rules!

Anyone who has been reading this blog has probably heard me wax enthusiastic about cartoonist Chris Giarrusso wonderful work on the Mini Marvels. I first discovered Chris’ work in a series of comic strips that ran on the Marvel Comics Bullpen Bulletins pages. Those strips grew into full-page comics, and then to multi-page back-up stories, to digest-sized reprint comics.

Personally, I couldn’t get enough of his stuff, Well, last weekend when I attended the National Comic show, I finally got my chance to actually meet him and tell him how much I have been enjoying his work (I have been corresponding via-email for a bit, but meeting him was fun). During our chat, I picked up a copy of G-Man, his own character (done Mini Marvel style).

G-Man and his brother Great Man are a pair of pint-sized superheroes who run into all sorts of very entertaining adventures (including crossing paths with Eric Larson’s Savage Dragon — the adventures of G-Man have been running in the back of Savage Dragon for some time, apparently). I have to say that I enjoyed G-Man every bit as much as I have enjoyed Mini Marvels. Chris still knows his stuff, and you should check out his web store and buy him out of all his cool stuff — Including downloads, Icons, and Avatars, as well as on-line comics.

Looking back, I recent picked up The most recent Marvel Mini digest and (looking forward), we can expect at least one more Mini Digest that spoofs the Secret Invasion. (The following announcement comes direct from Marvel’s on-line catalog).

Been craving more Mini Marvels since their hit first collection flew off the shelves? February brings you the "Mini Marvels: Secret Invasion" digest! Your favorite tiny heroes face off against Skrull invasions of their own, with awesome cuteness to spare. Also check out a slew of Secret Invasion collections starring the likes of the New Avengers, Captain Britain and MI13, Hercules and more, all out this February!

While the weather outside is chilly, the "X-Men: Inferno" hardcover will surely warm the hearts of '80s aficionados and X-fans alike when it brings the entire crossover together in one edition large enough to knock any late night burglar unconscious! Plus "The Death of Captain America Vol. 3" concludes the trilogy and "Invincible Iron Man Vol. 1: The Five Nightmares" while classics like the original Cloak and Dagger limited series or the Guardians of the Galaxy's first appearances get new hardcovers!

So what are you still doing here? Go visit Chris!