"No-one can destroy the metal / The metal will strike you down with a vicious blow"

Comics are a tremendously varied and expansive medium, as I have rambled on about multiple times in the past on this blog. The variety of genres and types of comic-books being produced today is at the widest it has been in the United States since the short period in the 1950s when the Superhero genre was nearly dead and the Western, Pirate, Romance, Horror, War, and Humor genres were allowed to breathe for the first time in a long time.

Today in serialized comics, we have: anthropomorphic dragon-men police officers as well as sarcastic twenty-something slice-of-life magical-video-game-style romantic duelists, alternate-future war photojournalists, and now semi-mythological period-setting politically and violently warring vikings.

Actually, we very likely have eclipsed the variety of the 1950s entirely. And some creators are refusing to stop here!

Brian Wood's (@brianwood) latest blog post, titled "Northlanders as Metal", about upcoming issues of his comic-book "Northlanders", shows how it is possible to stretch your imagination about what comics can be. With issue #30, he will begin incorporating Norse mythology into the series (which has previously only included mythology as "casual superstition") and the new story-arc will be titled "Metal". Yes, "Metal". Now my understanding of metal is entirely confined to the hilarious music of Tenacious D, random musings of our very metal friend Seth, and episodes of Adult Swim's "Metalocalypse", but as Wood himself wrote:

"Heavy metal and Vikings go hand in hand ... I’m taking what I’m able to take from the musical genre and apply it to comics. This is not a story about music, but a story that taps into the same dark mythology and nihilistic worldview that inspires the genre. This is radically different from anything that’s come before in the last 30 months of this series."

This could be a whole new genre for the Comics world: Metal comics.

(Okay, there was "Black Metal", but that was a pretty tongue-in-cheek kind of Metal comic. As opposed to a serious borrowing of the imagery and subjects of Metal.)

Check it out on July 21st at your local comic shop. I'll be looking for it.

And so here to send you off and to welcome a new direction for Wood's "Northlanders" (and possibly a new genre for the entire medium) is the full song lyrics of my favorite metal/humor song from Tenacious D, "The Metal":

"
You can't kill the metal!
The metal will live on!
Punk-Rock tried to kill the metal!
But they failed, as they were smite to the ground!
New-wave tried to kill the metal!
But they failed, as they were striken down to the ground!
Grunge tried to kill the metal Ha, hahahahaha!
They failed, as they were thrown to the ground!

Aargh yaow!!
Aargh yaow!!

No-one can destroy the metal!
The metal will strike you down with a vicious blow!
We are the vanquished foes of the metal!
We tried to win for why we do not know!

New-wave tried to destroy the metal, but the metal had its way!
Grunge then tried to dethrone the metal, but metal was in the way!
Punk-rock tried to destroy the metal, but metal was much too strong!
Techno tried to defile the metal, but techno was proven wrong!
Yea!!

Metal!!
It comes from hell!!
"

I love Tenacious D. They crack me up and rock me hard at the same time.

Happy comics reading folk!

~ @JonGorga

John Cassaday's Superman Covers Are Just Killer

When are you going to start drawing comics again, John? I miss you!

The Fantastic Four Have Always Rubbed Me the Wrong Way...

...but with Steve Epting doing the art, it might be too hard to resist.

(via CBR)

In Which I Discuss Captain America Comics Again.

I have a confession to make. I haven't read an issue of Captain America in months. I bought all the issues, and I'm sure that, some day, I'll go back and read them but, upon their purchase, I wasn't all that interested.

I'm not quite sure why. It was after that big Captain America tea-partier blow up back in February, so that may have had something to do with it. Maybe I was just a little tired- I've been living with these comics for a long time now. I've read them, re-read them, parsed them, wrote about them; I'm sort of surprised that I didn't burn out a long time ago. This week's issue #606, however, was the start of a brand new story line, featuring the return of Baron Zemo to the pages of Captain America, as well as the beginning of a new art era for the book (with Butch Guice taking over pencils from Luke Ross), and so I decided that it was, perhaps, time to return to the pages of my favorite comic book.

I was not disappointed.

Cap's had a little bit of a rough patch since the mess that was Reborn started, but I'm glad to see it's over- everything about this comic is pitch-perfect and spot on. Ed Brubaker is writing this book brilliantly again. That Brubaker has managed to seamlessly integrate Steve into the book as a supporting character is a feat on its own- he used to be the star of this book, remember. He plays Falcon off of Steve and both of them off of Bucky in a way that almost makes me wish that Ed had given us a whole issue of the three of them sitting around talking in a bar- this is how superheroes should interact with each other, out of costume. This is how superhero comic books should be written.

Brubaker's return to form was not very much of a surprise- he's done nothing but write brilliant comics for years, so a misstep or two was to be expected, sooner or later. What is something of a surprise is Butch Guice's art. My only previous experience with Guice was his inks on Reborn, and to say that they left something to be desired would be a significant understatement: Bryan Hitch's art was bad, and the inking didn't do it any favors.

Here, though, Guice proves that he knows his Captain America- at its best moments, the art references both Cap co-creator Jack Kirby and the artist responsible for perhaps the most famous Captain America page ever, Jim Steranko. This art is cartoony, kinetic, yet also impossibly realistic, which is the Kirby influence (I think there's even some Kirby Krackle in there!) and the design and surrealist elements are full-dose Steranko. Butch Guice does for Captain America's art what Ed Brubaker did for his writing- he is reexamining Cap's history, radically retelling it, in order that we may understand his present, his future. I'm in love with the technique in both art and writing- this is a hell of a book, if you like great comic art.

There's only one page that's kind of silly, and that's the oddly placed Steranko-style page near the beginning; it's not that the art's bad, it just doesn't make very much sense.

If you're looking to get into Captain America, now's a good time. If you're looking for something new? This is a good choice for that, too. This is a damn good comic book- I wish they were all this good.

Paolo Rivera, Gentleman Artist!

I had the unique pleasure of meeting the truly amazing artist Paolo Rivera a few weeks ago at a signing event at Jim Hanley's Universe in Manhattan! Rivera has done a great deal of excellent work for Marvel over the past few years including his very cool origin-retelling project with writer Paul Jenkins: "Mythos".

The sketch he's holding is preliminary work for the covers he did on "The Amazing Spider-Man" issues #615-616, which I reviewed a few months ago here!

Meeting people who have a 'public face' for the first time is a strange experience. You 'feel' like you know them, even though you know you don't. Mr. Rivera was generous with his time and his work: He was sketching for a number of fans while chatting with many others. There were three of us standing there flipping through the sketches he had placed on the table... and talking about them. In front of him. I realized suddenly that although we were just saying "Paolo Rivera is awesome!" we were rather rudely talking about him in the third person. In front of him.

So I apologetically said as much and he immediately said that hearing us right there talking about him was kind of cool as it was at least a sort of physically immediate feedback. Sort of like hearing his blog's post comments read out loud. Like I wrote in the title of this post: Paolo Rivera, gentleman artist.

Let that be a lesson to you: Don't be an idiot like Gorga was, engage with these people at cons and signing events. Treat them with respect but not a damn religious reverence, just like you would anyone else.

Rivera is the artist on the upcoming big (possibly huge) Spider-Man story written by Joe Quesada to run in "Amazing" #637-640 in July of this year. We Spidey fans are dreading it, but for reasons completely unrelated to his art. It's another chance for Joe Quesada to change his mind/give the fans what they want/make sense of a two-year-old groaner of a story. Whether he takes that chance (he's had several already), is yet to be seen. Quesada was interviewed about it here on ComicBookResources.com. We're not holding our breath. At least it's going to look gorgeous!

A dynamic figure artist with a sensitive color palette, Rivera really is one of the best talents making comics in the mainstream today! Do not pass up a chance to look at his stuff, read his stuff, or meet him! His bloody brilliant art can be seen on his blog The Self-Absorbing Man!

~ @JonGorga

EDIT (11/28/2o1o):
Oops. "One Moment in Time" was in "The Amazing Spider-Man" #638 #639 #640 and #641.