There was a time when Batman arrived at our house every month wrapped in plastic. My older brother was a Dark Knight obsessive, so while I got to read his monthly subscriptions, I always had to treat them with utmost care and respect. This was back in 1987, when Batman was still rocking a blue…
Via Comic Book Resources, according to the press release, announced the day of the much-anticipated season finale, “Richard Castle,” the author and titular character of ABC’s Castle, is fulfilling a lifelong dream by putting his own fictional protagonist Derrick Storm into a graphic novel, under hardcover, to be released in late September by Marvel, now…
Crime novel critic Kiyoshi Kasai focuses in his books on “orthodox” detective novels, which refer to the Golden Age detective novels in the Christie-Queen-Carr tradition. He identifies three distinct “waves” in the development of the orthodox detective novels in Japan , the first (1920-1940s) being the one represented by Edogawa Rampo, while the second is…
And another slice to go. Brian Fuller, creator of Pushing Daisies (and Dead Like Me), recently posted a tantalizing 2-page preview of the “forensic fairy-tale” graphic novel on twitter. Unfortunately, production of the comics has been delayed for months already with no word on release date still. For a highly acclaimed show, nominated for 17…
If Ed McBain wrote a comic book, it probably would have been a lot like Gotham Central. You recognize the city name, of course. It’s Batman’s stomping grounds. It’s the town where all the wackos come out to play, wreak havoc, and then go home to Arkham Asylum. And, aside from Commissioner James Gordon or…
Normal people are boring, even in comics. For the last seventy years, comic books have been the playground of super-heroes and super-villains. Nearly all of theme wear colorful costumes and wreak havoc on the lives of normal people. There have been some notable titles where “normal” people interact with meta-humans, namely Marvels from Marvel Comics…
Happy Friday the 13th! Ready for something weird? Check in for a psychiatric evaluation and check out some spreads from the latest issue of Batman: Odyssey #6. With anticipation already building up over the Dark Knight Rises, scheduled for July 2012 release, I can’t help but wonder what a movie based off of this issue would be like.…
A supervillain walks into a bar and orders a drink. When the bartender says to him, “We don’t serve your kind,” the villain and his brother are cornered by government agents, one dies, and the other is severely injured and placed in witness protection. Or something like that. In Incognito, the brainchild of Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips, there…
. . .and not just for Mark Valley’s forearms. Human Target has been on FOX for two seasons now. I barely got to watch the first season due to a fussy baby. This past season the baby was old enough to have a set bedtime and more or less comply with it. The show was hard…
Can you imagine Don Draper, from AMC’s Mad Men, as a cold-blooded killer? No? Well, I can’t either, but Jon Hamm’s character and that of Darwyn Cooke’s Parker could come from the same family. When their respective stories open, they are, essentially, a blank slate. Nothing is known of their past, and the only conclusions you can…
