§ Nice art: People on my twitter feed were excited by this tweet!
So…I’ve illustrated a Star Wars Little Golden Book and it’ll be available in July AHHHHH!!!! https://t.co/BwZQss26BB pic.twitter.com/ySLmQQHbAn
— Eren Blanquet Unten (@ErenUnten) April 17, 2017
Heroic Rey and cheerin’ Chewie! Who wouldn’t like that?
Artist Eren Unten has done quite a few modern Little Golden Books and she has the classic style.
§ People were also excited by THIS tweet from artist Keezy Young from a few weeks back:
https://twitter.com/KeezyBees/status/845070921392046080
Lion Forge has been keeping its publishing plans pretty close to the vest but this book looks great. Young also draws the webcomic Yellow Hearts on Tapastic. She’s good – another piece of art below. Where are all these good young cartoonists coming from! So many!
§ Book Riot’s Swapna Krishna and Preeti Chhibber got excited when they went to Star Wars Celebration and stalked Mark Hamill but they wrote a very charming story about it called Lukeing4Luke.
§ Krishna and Chhibber also do a podcast called Desi Geek Girls and they just launched as Patreon for it.
Desi Geek Girls is a podcast about being a geek and fandom, from Star Wars to Star Trek to Harry Potter, with a little Bollywood thrown in. We’re so grateful for all the positive feedback and have set up a Patreon to help with hosting costs.
Support these voices!
§ David “Sktchd” Harper has also launched a Patreon for his Off Panel podcast and hints he might go back to a little longform writing.
But all that work is entirely funded by yours truly. And not only am I looking to offset costs for the show, I’m looking to beef up Off Panel and improve the overall quality of it, while also expanding the audience as much as I can. I’m also planning on getting into writing more longform articles that look at comics in the way I’ve done in the past through varying outlets. Both can be expensive activities, either in actual money or simply time put in, and I’m looking to defray that however I can.
Defray away, David!
§ Ray Sonne interviewed Warren Ellis for The Guardian and got into the “Transmetropolitan is really happening” thing a bit.
No matter what happens, Warren Ellis is never without his sense of humour. “You remember that bit in the last series of The Thick of It, when Malcolm Tucker orchestrates a political coup and says: ‘Thank God, I’ve been so fucking bored for the last three years?’” he says. “I have to consider the possibility that I’m just a horrible sociopath, because I’ve been so fucking bored for the last few years and now everything is insane and I’m loving it.”
§ Marvel Studios held a majestic junket on Monday and let journos get a look at some upcoming movie stuff, including a look at Ryan Coogler’s Black Panther that had Vulture’s Kyle Buchanon firmly on board:
As we watched dailies of Oscar winner Lupita Nyong’o ably somersaulting through a Black Panther action sequence, D’Esposito beamed. While the fight choreography was straight out of the Marvel playbook — you could imagine Scarlett Johansson’s Black Widow going through many of the same motions — as Nyong’o flung herself into the scene with steely commitment on her face and a vivid green shroud wrapped around her body, the footage carried with it an undeniable X factor. That’s exactly the sweet spot the studio hopes to hit with Black Panther: The film has to be familiar enough to fit into Marvel’s ever-expanding cinematic universe while also offering enough spark to jump-start its own singular franchise. A tricky task, but to judge from some of the stunning things that D’Esposito and his colleagues showed off last night, it looks like Marvel is on the right track.
Marvel making crowd pleasing movies. What a time to be alive.
§ Some junketeers were just as awed by Marvel’s offices:
Inside Marvel’s offices, the first thing that stands out is just how Marvel-ized the entire environment is. Movie posters and props are common for production companies, but a recent renovation took Marvel’s offices to a different level. In the lobby, three Iron Man suits stand proudly for visitors to look over while waiting, and nearly every wall in the facility features a giant mural portraying the studio’s cinematic characters in action. A general meeting area just off the lobby contains a ping-pong table, plus models of a Helicarrier and Disneyland’s Main Street. A coffee table nestled between the room’s couches is adorned with a tiny Baby Groot, standing silently under a bell jar.
Elsewhere in the facility, there’s a huge wall of shelves containing seemingly every Marvel comic currently in print, and props and costumes await around every turn. It all underscores one major point. This is a studio driven by visuals, both the ones it’s created, and the ones it’s drawing upon.
§ Some of us veteran show watchers were fretting that Marvel would skip Comic-Con this year because there’s a D23 the week before – Disney’s own little Comic-Con at Disneyland. Marvel has been known to hold their announcements for the home Disney show but not in 2017! While he was junketing, Marvel Studios czar Kevin Feige let it slip that Marvel would be showing things at SDCC. With Thor Ragnarok, Black Panther, Ant Man and the Wasp and more coming, they’ll certainly have a lot to tease. Also, WB has been leaving it all on the field at Hall H in recent years, and I suspect Marvel relishes the head to head panel competition.
§ Comics Alliance’s Kieran Shiach has reëmerged at Polygon – Yay! I don’t know if this is his first piece, but his run down of all the drama of Secret Empire, both on the page and behind it, is well worth reading:
While most of the criticism of Marvel lately has focused on the ill-conceived idea of a Hydra takeover led by Captain America, it’s easy to forget that the first big wave of controversy came from Fox News — more than a year ago. In October 2015, Marvel published Captain America: Sam Wilson #1. It was the first issue of Captain America to be written by Nick Spencer, and the writer wound up rocking several boats by pitting Cap against the Sons of the Serpent, a outwardly racist organization that had found a new calling in vigilante action as a border-patrolling militia.
§ Back at the ranch, Nick Gazin is back with a new Comic Book Love-In and this time he’s loving toys as well as comics. Who doesn’t?
