Coming Soon To A Spinner Rack Near You: Paul Hornschemeier


From Paul Hornschemeier's blog:
What’s inside? Some of the contents will be from upcoming projects, projects that fell through the cracks, discussions of various processes, and interviews with nonexistent people. There will be scripts, short stories, gags, enlarged arms, and links to secret things you otherwise won’t get to see. Probably there’s a fart joke in there somewhere. Maybe a philosopher or two. 

Wednesday's New Thing: Saga! Hickman! Hickman!

1) Boy oh boy, Saga is back. I sort of like that Brian K Vaughn and Fiona Staples take a break every six issues. I understand that it gives the time to do better work, but what I mean is that I like it from a reader's perspective-- the six months on two months off schedule gives the book the feel of a real serial, reinforcing the idea that this potentially infinite story comes in finite chunks, each one with its distinct beginning, middle, and end. It's a neat sort of way of taming the series, inflicting the one benefit of a collection on that section of the reading public too enamored of Saga to trade wait it. Preview here.

2) One of Jonathan Hickman's many ongoing projects, East Of West is flawed, a little hard to follow. My hope is that this opacity is purposeful, and that all will be revealed in time to the readers who are paying close enough attention. It may be that each issue East of West is more rewarding on the second read than on the first; I haven't tried rereading any of them but, lest you be scared away, Nick Dragotta's art should be enough to keep you satisfied on that first go round.

3) Speaking of Hickman, today sees the release of the first issue of his Infinity crossover for Marvel. Given the fetid mediocrity that was Age of Ultron, I'm keeping my expectations for this one low; with that said, and although the last issue of the otherwise sterling New Avengers was basically incomprehensible, I figure that, if anyone can do this well, its Hickman. It'll be interesting to see how he pulls together the unrelated impending destruction of the world threads from Avengers and New Avengers, and what Thanos has to do with it. That Jim Cheung's on the art here helps, as does the setup of the series, which only asks me to buy three books outside of my normal pull list, and those over the course of only two months. Preview here.




Chatter: Nick Dragotta


For a while I drew my comics and over-acted everything. Wide eyes, open mouths, everything was over the top. Now I think it’s much better to use that sparingly and let the reader inject themselves into the character by trying to draw more of a subtle emotion. Do the eyes have a soul? For me that’s were I try to start, and then over time the characters will just start to come alive. Comics visually speak a universal language, add to that just the right words and you can feel it in the gut.
--Nick Dragotta, talking to Robot 6