When I read a Marvel Comic now, it’s wonderful to discover one of those missing pages. In this video I also explain why the Dutch publisher didn’t publishes these pages originally.
It looks like he used a special technique to create the background-image. Maybe McFarlane simply used a photograph and put in the background, but maybe the background was drawn just like the rest. I’m not sure how he made this, so I made this short video in the hope one of you guys can shed some light on the subject.
I especially like the old school artwork of Jim Mooney (1919-2008). An artist who worked a lot in the Silver Age of comics and is known for drawing Supergirl and Spider-Man. He also inked a lot of Spider-Man comics, such as Spectacular Spider-Man, and the work of the young John Romita Jr. when he worked on Amazing Spider-Man in the early eighties.
In this video I explain what makes it so great.
Also, here’s the link to Comic Tropes Top 10 Comics of 2018.
Every Comic Book lover has a moment in which he or she was first introduced to the wonderful medium of comics. I wanted to tell you my story and at the same time tell a bit about myself, so we can get to know each other a little better.
It was published in 1984. A wonderful issue in which the true nature of Spider-Man’s black costume is revealed. Let’s take a closer look and discover why this is such a great cover.
By the way: welcome to my channel. I am a Dutch freelance journalist who writes about popular culture and comics. I’ve been a content creator on YouTube for a while now, but decided to start this channel for vlogs about comics in English. This way, I can communicate with more YouTubers and comic book geeks out there, since not a lot of people speak Dutch.
Here’s the intro:
It may seem that Marvel’s focus on diversity and representation is a recent development, but that’s not entirely true. From its early days, the Marvel Universe has had a diverse cast of characters. Black Panther, Luke Cage, Falcon, Sunspot, Danielle Moonstar, Karma, Storm, Blade, Puma, Daredevil and Rocket Racoon (shouldn’t genetically engineered animals be represented as well?), have been around for quite some time. And let’s consider The Vulture, one of Spider-Man’s deadliest foes, as an example of an old guy who is still energetic and kick-ass. The same goes for Peter Parker’s aunt May and many other supporting characters in Marvel stories.
In recent years Marvel added characters like America Chavez, Ms. Marvel, a female Thor, a Korean-American Hulk, a black Spider-Man and a black Captain America and so on. Not that all these efforts at diversity have been successful; a lot of solo titles with non-white and/or feminist characters have been cancelled after a relatively short run.
Still, representation matters. A lot. When you check the letter pages of America for instance, the comic revolving around America Chavez, Marvel’s first Latin-American LGBTQ character to star in an ongoing series, readers express how happy they are to finally read about heroes that look like them, that have to deal with the same stuff as they do. As Nathan Hinojosa writes: ‘I have to thank y’all for representing Latinas, and giving me a character that my daughter could one day look up to and admire.’
However, ‘America’ has been cancelled after only 12 issues because of poor sales. According to some detractors, this has everything to do with poor writing and the comic being too preachy.
Personally I find minority superheroes that are a direct rip-off of existing characters a sign of a lack of creativity. The black superhero Sam Wilson, who played Captain America for a while, comes to mind. And the female version of Thor. Wilson was a great character in his own right as the Falcon. I find these solutions rather insulting to the reader. I’d rather see NEW superheroes with a diverse background and sexual orientation rather than those lazy, non-creative variants of existing heroes. People who feel they need to be represented more in fiction deserve better. And frankly the same can be said for all readers.
Come on, Marvel! Introduce new interesting gay, lesbian, transsexual, asexual and whatever characters instead of ripping off existing characters. Marvel doesn’t call itself ‘The house of ideas’ for nothing. Those words are better worth something! Thankfully, a lot of times those ideas are pretty good as you can see by this short list of great Marvel characters.
Read my top 5 on SubmarineChannel.com
So I asked him a question about him being a blogger.
This thick and funny diary by the one and only Kevin Smith came out ten years ago. This is a first printing from 2007 I read from cover to cover.
Smith is one of the funniest guys around, but more importantly, a lot of his films have brighten my days and inspired me to write my own books. Like My Buddy Spider-Man that came out a few months ago (only in Dutch -so far). Anyway, thank you Kevin Smith for showing this little fucker from Amsterdam that one must follow one’s own nerdy path and thank you for making Clerks, Clerks 2 (one of if not the best movie on male friendships), the wonderful Chasing Amy (one of the best flicks about love and male-female relationships) and Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back – that last one because who’d thought that flick was even a possibilty and for Carrie Fisher as the non that almost got eaten out by Jay.
I bow to you, sir.
The lord of the Underworld got his own ongoing series after a three issue limited series in 1999 and lasted for 75 issues that ended in August 2006. Mike Carey wrote all issues. Lucifer Book One collects issues 1 -13 and the limited series. The stories are illustrated by Peter Gross, Ryan Kelly, Dean Ormston, Scott Hampton, Chris Weston and James Hodgkins.
All these artists have their own distinguished styles and strengths, though I am particularly fond of Warren Pleece’s peculiar drawing style and the painterly quality of Scott Hampton’s illustrations.
The book begins where The Sandman, Vol. 4: Season of Mist ended, with Lucifer Morningstar as the owner of Lux, an elite piano bar in Los Angeles. Lucifer has resigned as the Lord of Hell and subsequently loses his wings. He’s basically enjoying retirement until Heaven recruits him on a quest to stop a group of gods that were ruling humanity before God came around. These old gods feed on people’s desires and grant wishes to mortals. Because this will lead to disaster, it is up to Lucifer to put a stop to these gods. However, the Devil wouldn’t be the Devil if he doesn’t want something in return for his troubles.
It would be no fun to tell you more about the plot, but rest assured that Lucifer has a large scheme in mind to come out on top and ruff the ol’ mighty God, risking a war with Heaven without breaking a sweat.
Lucifer Book One contains numerous adventures that are all connected and form one big narrative that lead to the apocalyptic confrontation between Heaven’s Angels and Lucifer. Along the way Lucifer comes across, recruits and uses interesting characters that all have their part to play in his elaborate scheme. I especially liked the plot revolving the teenagers Elaine and Mona. Elaine is able to talk to the dead and has lively conversations with deceased grandmothers. When Mona dies, her ghost turns up in Elaine’s bedroom. Together they figure out how Mona died and discover she was killed. Elaine risks her own life trying to bring the killer to justice.
Honestly, the narrative sometimes gets pretty dark and Carey has no problem showing the dark side of humanity, nor the ruthlessness of Angel Amenadiel who represents Heaven’s rule and is Lucifer’s antagonist. The egotistic Amenadiel doesn’t shy away from making thousands of mortal victims in a charge against Lucifer as long as in the end Heaven prevails.
Lucifer’s big beef against God revolves around the fact that in God’s rule there is no such thing as free will and all is predetermined by God, even rebellion and sin. This means that the damnation of sinners is also pre-planned by his royal Highness. Lucifer in this case represents free will and rebels against God’s totalitarian and dictatorial rule. Mike Carey says in the introduction that this is a what-if story in which Lucifer is God’s son; a classical conflict between father and son sits at the heart of this tale.
At least, that’s what I got out of reading this tome that’s almost 400 pages thick and seems to be only the beginning of the Lucifer’s story. I thought Lucifer Book One was a very interesting read, with the writing and art work filled to the brim with fantastical and wonderful details. So much so that it will be worthwhile and necessary to give it a second read somewhere in the near future.
Moreover Lucifer is also the main character in the eponymous TV series that premiered on Fox in January 2016. Since I haven’t seen an episode, I can’t tell whether or not the series by Tom Kapinos is truthful to the character or not. Nor do I really care, for I’ll be busy catching up reading the other four collections of the comic book series that have already come out, so I haven’t got the time to watch any television for the next couple of weeks!
This review was written for and published on blog of the American Book Center.
The Fifth Beatle is a captivating, layered and sometimes poetic biography about the manager of the Beatles, who tragically died of an overdose of sleeping pills at the age of 32. (You can read my review on the book here.)
Tiwary wrote it, and the splendid artwork is by Andrew C. Robinson, with a small section illustrated by Kyle Baker. Tiwary is both a fan of, and an investor in, Valiant Entertainment. He has written a story for the Harbinger comic series. And he’s a lover of comics, counting writers like Chris Claremont (X-Men), Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird (Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles), Neil Gaiman (Sandman) and Hergé (Tintin) as his heroes. So, its not surprising that the scribe was a guest at the Dutch Comic Con in March earlier this year. Vivek did panels and signing sessions at the booth of the American Book Center, and was kind enough to sit down and have a chat with us between sessions.
Why did you want to tell the story of Brian Epstein?
‘In 1991 I found myself in the Wharton School of Business in Philadelphia. I was on a track to join the family business, which operates in food products and finance. That’s what was expected of me as a young Indian kid, and if I wasn’t going to do that, I was expected to be a doctor or an engineer. I was very stressed out about this because those weren’t my dreams. I wanted to write comic books, produce Broadway musicals, do those sorts of things. Wharton in 1991 didn’t have a lot of resources for people with such interests, so I took it upon myself to do my own studies. Being a lifelong Beatles fan and thinking that the Beatles and their management team kind of wrote and rewrote the rules of the pop music business, I thought I’d study the life of Brian Epstein. I knew he discovered the band when they were an unknown Liverpool entity, playing in basement clubs, smoking and drinking on stage. I wanted an answer to these questions: How did Brian come up with the suits and haircuts? How did he get them a record deal when no one wanted to sign the band? How did he convince Ed Sullivan to book them when a British band had never made an impact in the United States? As a young business student, these were the stories I was chasing.
And as I researched them, they were inspiring and fascinating…’
But that’s not the whole story of Brian Epstein, is it?
‘Ironically, what struck a deep, deep chord for me was the aspects of Brian’s life that hadn’t anything to do with the Beatles: his personal life. I was very moved to learn that he was gay in a period in which this was literally a felony. He was Jewish, in a period of time with incredible anti-Semitism and not a lot of Jews working extensively in the music industry. He was from Liverpool, and prior to the Beatles, this was a port town without any cultural significance. So, he was the ultimate outsider. And he believed that this rock ‘n roll band was going to be bigger than Elvis, and that he was going to help the Beatles to elevate pop music into an art from. And that to me was incredibly inspiring. If a gay Jewish kid from Liverpool could change the world through music, why couldn’t a scrawny Indian kid from New York’s Lower East Side like me write a comic book about a rock and roll manager, or put a punk rock album like Green Day’s American Idiot onto a Broadway stage? So that’s why I wanted to tell Brian Epstein’s story. The message of the Brian Epstein story is that no dream is too impossible and no person too unlikely to realise that dream.’
When did you decide to make a comic book about this story. I mean, your forte is producing these big Broadway musicals…
‘I started to research it for personal inspiration, but ten years later, I decided I wanted to tell this story, but I didn’t see it as a Broadway musical. I am a lifelong comics fan; I grew up reading them. My earliest memory of reading is sitting on my mother’s lap reading Tintin comic books.’
Tintin comics? That is quite extraordinary for someone who grew up in the United States…
‘My mother grew up in Guyana, which was a British colony at the time, and she spent her formative years in London. So that’s how we got the Tintin books. Anyway, as I was writing The Fifth Beatle, I decided I wanted to focus on the years Brian spent with the Beatles. I use exposition, dream sequences and flashbacks to tell a little about Brian’s past. This way we learn what makes him tick, but the story really focuses on the time he spends with the Beatles. So it starts off in Liverpool in 1961, which I thought was very depressing, grey and rainy… So I saw it in my head as being very black and white. The story ends in 1967 in London, and this is the dawn of the psychedelic era. It’s the Summer of Love. There was literally an event in the UK called A Technicolor Dream, so I thought as a creator, the arc of the Brian Epstein story mirrors the arc of the movement from black and white to colour. And I believe that the two media that most powerfully use colour in their narrative are comic books and film. And that’s why from the beginning we set out to do both. As you look at it, the first few pages are black, white and blue. The first time we see the band in the book, we add a burst of orange, red and yellow, and we slowly add more and more colour. That’s why I wanted to do it as a comic, you know…’
The book starts with Brian getting beaten up violently because he’s gay. It’s quite a statement to begin your story with…
‘Well, most people who’ll pick up this book will be Beatles fans, and they’ll expect the story to be about the band, and when they see this first scene, they’ll realise this is not your typical Beatles story.’
How would you describe Brian Epstein as a person? What did you discover about him?
‘I think he was an incredible passionate person. He was restless. In his earlier years he tried fashion designing, he went to acting school, he was in the army for a brief stint… He was very driven. And he didn’t find his calling until he discovered the Beatles. In the Beatles he found this group that had a great message of love to share with the world. And – not to be too cheesy – but because he was a gay man he had to hide his own love away, to quote a Beatles line… So the Beatles were also a form of vicarious living for Brian. Through them he was able to spread some love into the world. He was also very insecure because of his homosexuality and the persecution he faced because of that. So he also had something to prove, and that was what he was doing by working with the band. He was fulfilling his dreams but he was also proving to the world that a gay man could excel at something that is closely tied to love. I find that incredibly moving.’
You also depict him as someone who thinks that whatever he’s doing, is never enough…
‘I am not a psychologist, but I think that at his core Brian really wanted to be loved, to belong… the most basic of all human things. The trappings of success were a mask to hide his insecurities, I think. And as a result of that he had this great deal of success but he discovered that this really didn’t make him any happier. So as a result of that he thought he needed to be more successful, and then that didn’t make him happier. And so on and so on… And so it was never enough, there was always some way that if the dream could be bigger, the success could be grander. These were worthy goals in and of themselves, but the great irony is that as he achieved these goals, it didn’t actually make him any happier. In the end he stil felt alone.’
As your first outing as a comic book writer, how did the writing go?
‘It was so much fun. When I was growing up in New York City I went to every single convention that passed through town, comic conventions, horror conventions, Star Trek conventions, and I would wait in line patiently to get autographs by the comic creators that I was a fan of. These people were my heroes. So writing a comic is a dream come true. And I’ve been very humbled by its success. It won all the major comic awards like the Eisner, two Harveys, its even been added to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.’
How did working with Andrew C. Robinson go and what does your script look like? Is it more of an Alan Moore kind of script in which every panel is described in detail or do you use something like the movie script form and let Robinson do his own thing with it?
‘My script was a bit of both. There were moments in the script in which I very much knew what I wanted, and I broke it down panel by panel. And I gave Andrew photo references and I said “This is what the clothes should look like; what Liverpool should look like; here’s the camera angles and the lighting I am envisioning”. Andrew is an amazing artist, and very so often he would suggest something else and I would always be open to that. That was one of our back-and-forths. But there were also sequences where I would give Andrew just the dialogue, the tone and what was going through the characters’ minds, and he would translate that into sequential art. He would do that, run with it and come back with brilliant ideas.’
There are elements in this comic that feel rather like a musical number, like from a Broadway show… So I could imagine this story becoming a musical as well.
‘You know, theater is certainly in my blood, and I think that everything that I do will have some sort of theatrical flair. But theater was also in Brian’s blood, him coming up with the suits of the Beatles, the Sgt. Pepper clothes – all that is tied to his love of theatrics and also his love of bullfighting.’
Speaking of show business, let’s talk about the scene with the famous Ed Sullivan talking through a ventriloquist doll. Did you make that up or was he really that crazy?
‘I made that up. But, it’s been one of those things … When Brian first met with the Ed Sullivan team to negotiate this deal, he met with an underling. A son in-law or a nephew, somebody who was loosely connected to Sullivan. This guy was really just passing the buck, he kept saying to Brian: “That sounds great, but I need to check with Ed. And I can’t really do anything without his approval.” Brian has said that at times he felt like he was talking to a puppet, because this guy was basically useless. He couldn’t do anything or make any decision. So I thought, if Brian thought he was talking to a puppet and I’m trying to tell a story with visuals, why not do it as Ed Sullivan talking through a ventriloquist dummy? So even though I made this up, I think the poetry is accurate.’
What’s the status of the television series based upon your graphic novel?
‘We’ve just closed a deal with Sonar Entertainment. They’ve produced thousands of shows and have been around for a long time. They’ll be financing and producing the show with me. I am staying on board as writer, so I am literally working on the pilot script. I submitted a draft yesterday, hours before I got on the plane to the Netherlands. We are targeting high-end cable and streaming and the plan is to shoot later this year, hopefully. It’s going to be an event-series, that’s what they used to call miniseries. The reason they don’t call them miniseries anymore is because they are not small and mini tends to suggest small. And television always wants to think as big a possible, so with The Fifth Beatle we’re actually contemplating it to be the first season of a larger series tentatively called ‘On the Shoulder of Giants’. The idea is that the series would explore the unsung visionaries from the music industry, people who were the architects of modern pop culture, but who’s stories are largely untold. Season two will be about Colonel Tom Parker, the man who discovered Elvis Presley. The third season will be about Peter Grant, the manager of Led Zeppelin. With The Fifth Beatle we are discussing six one-hour episodes, could be more.’
So besides the television series, what are you currently working on?
‘I am also writing a novel for young adults, called Asha Ascending. It is a novel that’s going to be heavily illustrated by Sara Richard. She’s an amazing Eisner-winning artist. On most Young Adult novels, if they have art work at all, the art is done after the fact. The illustrations are the last step and very often if you are a writer without any cloud, you have not much to say in who the artist is. Sara and I are approaching this much like a comic. I will send her the first draft so she can come up with art ideas. And often times her ideas will change my draft, change the story. We are really going to create it together. The art will really move the narrative forward. (Check out the first chapter at readasha.wordpress.com.)
‘Besides these two projects, I am still working with Alanis Morissette to adapt her album Jagged Little Pill for the stage, Hopefully in the next couple of months we are going to announce the writer for that and the development schedule. We hope to have something off the ground by the end of next year. If people want to keep tabs on me that can do so via tiwaryent.com.’
So, final question. You didn’t become a doctor or lawyer, like your parents wanted you to. Instead, much like Brian Esptein, you found your own path. So, were your parents okay with that in the end?
‘This is something I think about a lot, because my parents unfortunately passed away, but they were very supportive of my dreams. My mom died in 1997 and my father a few years before that… My mother saw me work at Mercury Records, so she began to see I was carving a path for myself in the arts space, but unfortunately she never got to see me producing Broadway shows or write books or any of that sort of stuff. I like to think they’re both looking down on me fondly, from wherever they are. But I don’t know. I do however come from a close-knit Indian family, so my aunts and uncles, people of my parents’ generation really treat me like a second son, they have been very proud and supportive of my work. I like to think that vicariously my parents are supporting me. And to give my family their due credit, they have been great.’
This interview was written for and published on the wonderful blog of the American Book Center.
Right off the bat, Hexed: The Harlot & The Thief starts on a great note: the young and resourceful Lucifer breaks into a museum and encounters three highly-trained and well-equipped thieves. Since they’re after the same painting as she is, a confrontation is inevitable. Lucifer cheekily remarks that the guys look like Space Ninjas and are pretty over-equipped for this kind of job, since the museum is only guarded by a security guy named Bob, who takes the stairs to lose some weight since his engagement and will take a while to reach their floor. Apparently, Lucifer is a thief who does her homework, and only brings what she deems necessary to do the job. Although one of the guys points a gun at her and threatens to kill her, Lucifer seems hardly impressed. She relaxes against a wall, carves some kind of symbol in the apple she was eating and conjures up an enormous snake-like creature to deal with the ninjas, while she deals out some punishment herself.
But it gets even better. Bob walks into the room, but before he can stop Lucifer, the poor guy gets a heart attack from all the stairs he’s been taking. To save Bob’s life, Lucifer temporarily puts him inside the painting she came to steal! She takes it to Val Brisendine’s art gallery, Val being the woman Lucifer was stealing it for in the first place. When Lucifer steps back into the painting to get Bob out, she accidentally unleashes a very bad guy that was being held captive inside it as well. This sets up a very entertaining story in which Lucifer not only has to try to stop the bad guy, but she also has her life threatened by the woman who put him in the painting, meanwhile dealing with the Harlot and traveling into The Shade to save a colleague’s soul. (The Shade is a kind of way station for souls. When you die, you pass through it on your way to whatever afterlife awaits you.)
From the moment Lucifer put Bob into the painting, my curiosity about this character and her world kept growing and growing. I like stories with a magic-realistic touch. And the action in Hexed… contains quite a few elements that are not of this world, but are highly entertaining to read.
Lucifer and the other characters were introduced in the mini-series collected in the trade paperback Hexed, published a couple of years ago by Boom! Studios. Lucifer, full name Luci Jennifer Inacio Des Neves, is a creation by Michael Alan Nelson, who also wrote this volume of Hexed: The Harlot & The Thief. Lucifer is a supernatural thief-for-hire, stealing wondrous objects from the dark denizens of the netherworld for her mentor Val Brisendine. She’s also the heir of the Harlot, the powerful magic witch that looks like Helena Bonham Carter on a bad day. If a live-action adaptation will ever by made out of this comic-series, Bonham Carter would be the only choice to play the Harlot.
I liked Lucifer’s cheeky and smart voice-over dialogue, which reminded me of typical inner voices by detectives and the smart-mouthed characters from Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Also, it’s a woman’s world: Nelson presents interesting female leads. Lastly, what I really liked about the art work by Dan Mora is the fact that every time the characters are inside a painting, everything we see is rendered through the art-style of that particular painting.
The only problem I had while reading this story is paradoxically also the magical element of this tale: magic seems to solve everything and Lucifer seems to be quite invulnerable; even being dead for a while doesn’t really bother her. So I never had the feeling the danger she was in was insurmountable.
But maybe that will change in the following installments of the series. Hexed: The Harlot & The Thief is only volume one, containing the first four comics. Volume 2 is out this month, and volume 3 is slated for August.
This review was written for and published on the wonderful blog of the American Book Center.