§ High Moon, the werewolf/cowboy comic by David Gallaher and Steve Ellis is back. After running on DC’s Zuda webcomic site (remember that?) and seeing a print edition, four new pages will be posted every Monday, in a mobile responsive interface, and available on Tapastic and Comixology as well. Nerdist has a preview , and artist Ellis, who’s also drawing the Better Call Saul comics for AMC, did a Reddit ama yesterday. The story involves bounty hunter and Pinkerton agent Matthew Macgregor investigating the spooky goings on in a Texas town seeing hard times while trying to hide his own supernatural secret. This is a good looking comic!
§ Broken Frontier examines Six UK Small Press Creators to Watch in 2015, namely Rozi Hathaway, Jess Milton, Danny Noble, Emma Raby, Alice Urbino and Adam Vian. I didn’t know any of these creators but now we know who to watch for!
§ Multiversity’s Small Press Spotlight month has wrapped.
§ The comic-Con experience is coming to every corner of this nation of ours. The second Camden Comic Con takes place March 7 at the Camden Rutgers campus:
Camden Comic Con, an annual convention that celebrates the art and culture of comic books, returns to Rutgers University-Camden for a second time on Saturday, Mar. 7. This year’s event will feature nearly 100 vendors and a host of special guest comic creators, artists and writers, such as Dave Bullock, Bryan Glass, Shawn Martinborough and Mark McKenna. Get ready to geek out on a full day of workshops and forums. There will be demos and workshops on comic art, lettering and character design, as well as special effects make-up.
….and there’s even a Fargo-Moorhead Comic Con for North Dakotan fans:
Graphic novel fans won’t have to wait months to get their fantasy fix as the Fargo-Moorhead Comic Con delivers this weekend. Illustration fans can check out vendors selling books, games, videos and more, like a costume contest for kids and adults. The fun runs from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., then again from 7 p.m. to midnight on Saturday and 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Sunday at Baymont Inn & Suites, 3333 13th Ave. S., Fargo.
§ Various tish and tosh over the superhero tedium evinced at the Oscars. While everyone was turning up their noses at the way superhero films have taken over Hollywood, even as NINE of the 20 acting nominees have played roles in superhero films. James Gunn, who has taken his place as the nerd auteur, was first to spring to the defense.
Whatever the case, the truth is, popular fare in any medium has always been snubbed by the self-appointed elite. I’ve already won more awards than I ever expected for Guardians. What bothers me slightly is that many people assume because you make big films that you put less love, care, and thought into them then people do who make independent films or who make what are considered more serious Hollywood films. I’ve made B-movies, independent films, children’s movies, horror films, and gigantic spectacles. I find there are plenty of people everywhere making movies for a buck or to feed their own vanity. And then there are people who do what they do because they love story-telling, they love cinema, and they want to add back to the world some of the same magic they’ve taken from the works of others. In all honesty, I do no find a strikingly different percentage of those with integrity and those without working within any of these fields of film.
Badass Digest also pointed out the hypocrisy:
It was destined to be an awards season heavy on superhero hate when Birdman became the front runner. After all, this movie starring some people who were bankable enough to get the film made because of their work in superhero movies was all about the idea that the bad side of Hollywood – the blockbuster side – was killing art. Or something. I’m not really sure what the movie was trying to say about that stuff, except that it’s bad. Superheroes are bad, and Birdman proves it by making one of its best scenes an action battle and another a flying sequence.
But Sujay Kumar at The Daily Beat ponders How Superhero Movies Lost Their Humanity while suggesting Sam Raimi’s 2004 Spider-Man 2 was the highpoint of the genre and it’s been callow thrills since then.
To be honest, SM2 WAS a highpoint, and since then the Marvel Studios formula which dominates the genre has evolved into a fairly generic stylistic mold, even while allowing for some genre departures like Guardians of the Galaxy and The Winter Soldier. Entertainment is entertainment, but Kumas has a point that I’ve often made here as well: Spider-Man 2 was about a young man trying to keep his girl, while superheroics kept intruding, while every current MCU movie is about saving the world/universe. It’s kind of refreshing to switch now and then to the Fox/Mark Millar formula that involves more personal angst.
At any rate, I think most of this anxiety stems from the 20-30 superhero movies coming at us from now until 2020. That is plenty of time for the spandex set to overstay their welcome.
§ In such a milieu, it is refreshing to leave them wanting more, and that’s just what happened with Agent Cater. After an 8-episode run that gained a very fervent following—and blew Agents of Shield out of the water for quality—the show’s future is uncertain. an who’d like to see more are urged to follow the instructions in this post. Myself, I’d rather see another quality 8 episodes mini season than water it down with universe saving.
I went to last year’s Camden event. It was a fun time, lots of good cosplay and vendors seemed to have brisk sales. It was free so a lot of people took their kids.
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