Strange Surfer

Yesterday, the above preview from Strange Tales II accompanied an interview with writer/artist Frank Santoro- suggesting that at least some of the stories that we'll see in the second iteration of the anthology will be serious rather than comic. Santoro had this to say about his Surfer story:

It plays into my fascination with romance comics and this sort of romantic, universal idea. The other thing I was really interested in doing, and I don't know if I pulled it off or not-I don't know about you, but whenever I look at a Surfer comic, it never really looks like he's surfing through space. There's always this splash page or big panel where he's got an arm forward; he's surfing in a way that you would never really surf. If you ever look at people surfing, they're barely moving their bodies. They're sort of just lilting with it, you know? They might duck down, but they're not posed with their arm forward and their leg back. Usually there'll be this one big panel in the spread, but there's no real sense of motion. I never get the feeling that he's soaring through space. Maybe for that one panel, but it's too over the top. I was trying to have a more quiet approach to it, and I hope I pulled it off. Hopefully people will agree. My intent was to show that motion, to show how he could move across the spreads. And I only had four pages, so it was like, "Do I have two two-page spreads? Do I have one spread with a right side and a left side?" I bookended my story-you'll see what it is-so that it's a Moebius strip, honestly. It just goes in and out. With four pages, you really have to pare it down, so hopefully it worked.

Read the rest of the interview here.

Thursday's Most Exciting Announcement...

...is Fred Van Lente's upcoming Power Man and Iron Fist mini-series, spinning out of the Shadowland: Powerman mini that begins next month.

Van Lente is a hell of a comics writer, and he's among the few people I trust to bring a modicum of the glory that was The Immortal Iron Fist back to the character. It's no secret that I hold the sixteen issues of that series that were written by Matt Fraction and Ed Brubaker and drawn mostly by David Aja in high esteem, so FVL is going to have some high standards to live up to... but I think he'll probably be up to it, provided that he doesn't go too far down the buddy comedy route. In his interview with CBR about the project he sells it as sort of a fun street book and he talks about the way Fraction thinks of the character, which are both good signs.

It helps too that Van Lente's done some of the best comics work out there in recent years, from The Incredible Hercules to Comic Book Comics- Marvel is handing the reigns of one of my favorite characters to an excellent writer and, while I do hope that Fraction and Brubaker return to Danny Rand some day, I have high hopes for what FVL can do.

The runner-up announcement is pretty cool too. While Jon and I had mixed feelings about the first Strange Tales anthology, the list of talent (which includes Kate Beaton, Rafael Grampa, Jeff Lemire, Jhonen Vazquez and the late, great, Harvey Pekar) is mind-boggling, as are the possibilities.