Artistic Torture

This amazing page comes from Strange Tales #2 featuring Cloak & Dagger, published by Marvel Comics in 1987. The script was written by Bill Mantlo and the page was illustrated by Bret Blevins. It's one of my all time favorites.

Look at all those panels on that page. Count 'em... That's a page with eighteen panels! What's amazing is even with all that dialogue, the page still flows and works pretty damn well.

I love showing this page to my friends and the artists I work with. My hope is it'll scare my co-creators into producing work lest I try to write a page like this in my scripts someday.

So far it hasn't worked.

Captain America: Winter Soldier

I've never been a huge Captain America fan but from time to time I would pick up the title to see what was going on.

The last time I ever really bought a solid run of the book was in the 90's when the government took the costume and shield away from Steve Rogers and gave it to another man. Steve simply became "The Captain" during that time and wore a black costume and had a black shield.

It wasn't until a little over ten years later that I decided to pick the book up again.

Ed Brubaker and Steve Epting re-launched Captain America in 2004 and I picked it up for a solid six issues then dropped the title and sold the small run on ebay.

Now I wish I hadn't.

Since 2004 my tastes have changed in comics and I've started to get into Crime and Spy fiction more and more. Ed Brubaker, creator of Criminal from Marvel's Icon line of books, has become one of my favorite writers in recent years. The fact that he's the man that killed Captain America got me wanting to go back and read his run on the book.

With amazing art by Steve Epting, Brubaker has managed to weave a hell of an interesting espionage thriller in the pages of Captain America. In his first year alone, the Winter Soldier story arc, he manages to bring back the Cosmic Cube, kill the Red Skull, create a new villain with ties to Captain America's past, mess with Cap's mind, and bring back one of the characters comic fans thought was untouchable, Bucky Barnes, as a Russian assassin code-named the Winter Soldier. What impresses me just as much is that Brubaker does all this while playing ball with the rest of the Marvel Universe by taking part in Bendis' House of M story arc for an issue and later making sure Nick stays in hiding once Bendis put him there.

This is an arc I can't recommend enough if you like your superheroes mixed with a little bit of a thrill and continuity thrown in for good measure. You can get the collections just about anywhere but for those that want everything to date, Marvel is releasing an Omnibus edition later this year with Issues #1-25 plus the 65th anniversary issue and the Winter Soldier one shot. Retail is $75 but I'm sure several websites will have it at a discounted rate.

Till then...

Fourth of July Blues

Just a quick entry today...

I'm stuck at work on the Fourth of July with nothing to do. It's about 9:30 am and I can't escape until 2pm at the earliest.

There hasn't been too much going on. Everything is slow going project wise but there will be some new art and new ideas coming so please stay tuned. Until then I'll keep posting some fun reviews of books I read and think you should give a try.

Till then...