Category Archives: Things I Like

I am sure I've done "Comic TWART" in my Saturday "Things I Like" segment before, but this is "Minimalist Week" and I absolutely love everything they've done. It's well worth a few minutes of your weekend browsing time to check out their creations.

My favorite is probably this "Minimalist Fantastic Four" by Tom Fowler:

All of them inspire me to want to come up with something similar of my own. If you have a creation you think would qualify as "super-hero minimalism", I'd love to see it! Post a link in the comments and we'll all have a jolly time that's exactly the bare amount of jolly and time needed to establish jolliness.

Kaldath was kind enough to send along the following:

This Coming Wednesday Disney XD will be premiering a brand new Avengers Cartoon series. Last night and this morning, they showed a BOAT LOAD of 8 minute Long micro episodes setting things up for the premier. These Micro Episodes are on Youtube, and I thought you might like to see them, so here is a link for you.

One of my long-standing aggravations with my "out in the boondocks" Internet access is that watching streaming video is incredibly painful. So while I haven't yet been able to wait the requisite hours to actually watch one, I definitely like the idea of an Avengers cartoon, so I'm putting it up in the "Things I Like" file with the understanding that I can withdraw my provisional liking should the show actually, you know, suck.

Here's mini-episode 1:

I have to admit, I'm a little dubious about this. Just from the stills, it looks like Marvel's continuing to go with the traditional Japanese animation style, which I've never cottoned to. DC's animation studios in my opinion have always been much more successful than Marvel's, the exact opposite of their movies.

What makes DC's animated shows great is that they pick a unique visual style and go for it, combining it with great storytelling and a solid take on the characters. It started with Bruce Timm's Batman and hasn't slowed down, even as they abandoned that style for Darwyn Cook's "New Frontier" or the Kirby-like "Brave and the Bold". Marvel hasn't ever managed that same level of visual or storytelling success, in my opinion.

But a new day dawns, and hopefully "The Avengers" will right the ship. I'm curious to hear what you all think of the shorts.

The Jack Kirby Museum's YouTube page has some great footage of the King discussing his various creations. In light of the upcoming film, I thought you might enjoy hearing from the man who helped create him had to say about the (re)invention of "Captain America":

What strikes me whenever I hear one of the greats talk about the early days of the industry, as Stan Lee did at Dragon*Con this year, is how inseparable this great creative enterprise is from the relentless drive of free enterprise. I remember Stan saying something like "If I didn't have someone telling me we needed a new character, I'd never have come up with a single one." Or Kirby, here, saying basically that he needed a job. These guys worked for a living!

I think later generations of comic book creators and fans have a somewhat fuzzy-headed, idealistic view of what the entire process is like. We focus on the "artistic" ideal too much, putting the artists and writers at some kind of higher plane of existence, living in ivory towers thinking lofty thoughts and being struck by the Muses to pass along the rarefied fruit of the gods, as if what they do is so pure and incredible that it should be completely unsullied by the mundane and crass concerns of everyday life.

Baloney!

Yes, Kirby and Lee and the rest wanted to do something creative, but mostly they needed to put bread on the table. And they got paid not by how lofty their motives, but how successful their products were commercially. Kirby cranked out more pages and more ideas than almost anyone else in comics history. To call him prolific is like saying the Pacific Ocean is a bit damp. But he wasn't a tortured genius driven by inner demons, he was a guy trying to make a living the best way he knew how.

Stan Lee was the same way. By his own admission he wasn't really an "out of the blue" idea man, with concepts just bursting into his brain. He had to have an assignment, a "job" to do. And he did it incredibly well, but it was driven by the need to produce income.

Gil Kane loved cowboy comics. That's what he grew up with and what he wanted to do more than any other commercial art. But super-heroes are what was selling, so that's what he did. I'm glad for it, because his Green Lantern made me fall in love with the character, and we all benefit.

Legendary Batman artist Neal Adams is a working illustrator. He does everything from roller coaster design to toothpaste commercials. He draws Batman because he's good at it and it pays well, but he's a commercial artist.

I think fundamentally that's what is at the bottom of some of the disdain the art world has for comics creators. As an art form rooted first and foremost in the world of capitalism, I think they feel it's sullied or dirty somehow, not worthy of being "real art". Such an attitude is as misinformed as it is foolish. That these great innovators needed to put food on the table no more makes their comics "just" commercial art than the fact that Michaelangelo got paid to do the Sistene Chapel makes it a billboard.

Phew! Didn't mean to rant on like that, my apologies.

Go watch some Jack Kirby videos, dammit, and have a good weekend!

Another fun entry in Mr. Hartwell's ongoing "Kirby Villains" sketch of the week series:

If you've not seen it yet, you definitely owe it to yourself to check out the whole album, it's a lot of fun. Great work, sir!

For anyone interested in the mechanics of telling a story in comics, Scott Eric Kaufman has a great post up on "Lawyers, Guns, and Money" (the rest of the site is all about politics, so be warned!) from his freshman composition course that explores examples of classic transitions:

First I provide the McCloud:

Then I follow it with an example from their text, in this case Craig Thompson's Blankets:

Read the whole thing, as they say.

I highly recommend McCloud's "Understanding Comics" as an insightful, revealing, educational, and fun (if you like that sort of thing) introduction and thorough exploration of what we mean when we say "Comics", and how the medium works from the inside out. I'm glad Dr. Kaufman does these posts, they're a great way to bring an understanding of the medium to a larger audience.

Superhero Coco recently had an invitation for people to submit illustrations of mythology-themed redesigns of the Nova character, and I really liked the way some of them turned out. I thought this one in particular was really cool:

The site in general is great for people interested in character costume design, so if you're looking for a way to knock out an hour or so browsing around this weekend, definitely check it out.

They appear to be running a new theme due October 3, as well -- Nightwing! So if you're artistically inclined, and want to reimagine Nightwing as a musical personality, give it a try and by all means let us know here what you've done, I'd love to see it.

If you enjoy the Daily Random Panel here at HeroMachine.com, you'll love Comically Vintage, a Tumblr feed featuring similar out-of-context panels from various comic books. As they say on their site, "a virtual wellspring of sex, drugs, violence and poor table manners". What could be better on a lazy Sunday?!

Here's a sample:

Enjoy!