And our day of free Top Cow goodies concludes with the inaugural chapter of the “War of the Witchblades,” from Witchblade #125.  This is the storyline that introduced the character Finch, and made Danni Baptiste the Angelus, essentially setting up all that’s happening in Top Cow’s Universe right now.  Witchblade Vol.8 is available today, and collects the entire storyline:

The biggest storyline in Witchblade to date is finally collected!
Don’t miss your opportunity to find out what all the excitement was about. Sara Pezzini gives in to the dark side of the Witchblade and only Dani Baptiste can bring her back into balance. And with an ambitious Angelus Lieutenant and an Angelus force without a host circling, neither Sara nor Dani may survive the battle.

Collects Witchblade #125-130 including the bonus story “Augury” from issue #125.

Read the first full issue from the trade after the jump! (continue reading…)

I’m a huge Linkin Park fan.  Since the release of Hybrid Theory, I’ve followed their releases with huge anticipation, whether they be new studio albums, remix albums, live albums, DVDs, etc.  They’re a great multimedia band, and they are always willing to try new things…even if it means alienating some of their core fan base.  I know many fans of their original album who haven’t cared for their albums since (especially the most recent, Minutes to Midnight).

I’m not sure how I feel about their new single, “The Catalyst,” off of their forthcoming album A Thousand Suns.  Originally announced as a concept album, I’m not entirely sure if it’s still intended to be.  Listening to “The Catalyst,” it does feel like it could be a small part of a larger whole.  First time I heard the song, I wasn’t sure what to make of it – after repeated listenings, though, the song has definitely grown on me.  I look forward to seeing how it fits into the larger album, which I hope is more consistent than Minutes to Midnight, which just seemed to alternate between hard songs and soft songs for the entire CD, with very little flow to it.

Remember Joe’s Comics?  J. Michael Straczynski’s run at Top Cow produced some really great material, including Rising Stars and, especially, Midnight Nation.  Available today is the new printing of the Midnight Nation trade paperback, featuring writing from Straczynski and art from Gary Frank (Superman: Secret Origin).  This is a MUST READ book!  What’s it about?

Midnight Nation is a thought-provoking story with religious overtones about a police officer in limbo who goes on a cross-country search for his soul but encounters some mighty obstacles along the way. When it first came out in 2000, J. Michael Straczynski’s (Superman, Wonder Woman) provocative storytelling and the fantastic art of Gary Frank (Superman: Secret Origin, Supreme Power) captivated readers with its mix of action, horror and drama built around a message of hope, loyalty and sacrifice.

Want to give it a shot? Read the entire first issue after the jump! (continue reading…)

Trying to decide what to spend your hard earned cash on today when you hit your local comic shop?  Well, why don’t we make it easy for you?  Top Cow is releasing a ton of great material today, including:

• Witchblade, vol. 8: War of the Witchblades
• Midnight Nation Trade Paperback
• Magdalena #3
• Angelus #5

As someone who’s read all the material listed above, I can honestly say…it’s all worth buying!  But don’t take my word for it.  All day, we’ll be giving you the chance to read a ton of awesome Top Cow material – the full issue of Artifacts #0, and the first full issues from the Witchblade and Midnight Nation trades!

Read Artifacts #0 and find out how to get a copy of Artifacts #1 after the jump! (continue reading…)

Note: portions of this review originally appeared in March, 2009.

It’s an absolute travesty that The Spectacular Spider-Man animated series has been canceled in favor of an Ultimate spider-Man reboot.

Remember when we, as fans, compared the live action 90’s Batman movies to the Batman animated series, and the movie, Mask of the Phantasm, and found out they were far inferior?  How the movies seemed to scrap the essence of the character, but the animation perfectly captured everything we love about the character and still bring us something we’d never seen before?  It’s hard to do that with a character as old as Batman, and just as hard with a character a little younger, like Spider-Man.  I loved Marvel’s reboot of Spidey in the Ultimate Spider-Man comic when it first started, but I lost interest real quick.  I don’t know what it was missing…but it was just missing something.  To this day, I still haven’t been able to get back into it, even with it’s manga-styled relaunch.

The Spider-Man movies, and I know many will disagree with me, are sorely lacking.  Even though I loved Spider-Man 2, I can’t go on record saying that it’s the perfect Spider-Man movie (mostly due to the casting).  However, what I will say is that, even though Spider-Man has been blessed with some pretty decent animated interpretations over the years, the absolute best is Spectacular Spider-Man. (continue reading…)

At GenCon I had the chance to play the totally un-trad game Mecha. In fact I got to play in a session run by the game’s creator Chris Perrin, one of my roommates at the con. What follows is an interview with Mark Reed of Heroic Journey Publishing, Mecha’s publisher.  I will be following this up shortly with a review of Mecha and hopefully an interview with Chris if I can ever get it emailed out.

How did you become involved in RPG publishing?

There are 2 halves to this story. The first started in 2004 really. I had just moved to the Twin Cities area and being a gamer I started looking for other gamers. I found The Source, the Midwest’s largest gaming store, Inside I posted or replied to a gaming flyer, I know what you’re thinking “You’re one of those guys?” but what was a guy to do with no friends no family and basically no connection outside of a job going to do? So after a few weeks of setting up times to meet and getting about 4 or 5 of us together, we all got together. And then we met Michelle Nephew of Atlas Games. We invited her to join our group, she had a free night and while I don’t have very much free time, that group has met almost every week since then. Now that led me to do work on my first set of RPG books, D20 Northern Crown. This plus my first visit to Gen Con in 2005 really started me down the path I am on. So fast forward 3 years. The only real work I have done since is some playtesting for Atlas. I had talked about wanting to publish but nothing really was ever finished or done to let me break in. That’s when a friend of mine, told me about Bounty Head Bebop, he had been trying to publish it for the last year or more but couldn’t find the time or know how to self publish, so he offered it to me if I could. That day Heroic Journey Publishing was born Nov. 23 2008 with BHB being released in PDF and then Later in December in Print. Then came other books and finally Mecha 2 years later.   (continue reading…)

Art from the upcoming ongoing, Batman Inc.

Damn right!  I’m profanity laced tonight, so you know what?  Bruce Wayne may be the goddamn Batman, but now he’s just one of two!  There’s also the mutha-f*ckin’ Batman, Dick Grayson!

What, you say?

Yup…you know how we always get pissed when, just as we’re getting used to the replacement in a character’s suit, they bring back the original dude, and the new dude gets the shaft?  Screw that!

From DC’s The Source: Starting in November, DETECTIVE COMICS, BATMAN and BATMAN AND ROBIN will feature the ongoing adventures of Dick Grayson as Batman, with Damian as Robin. Meanwhile, Bruce Wayne will take center stage in the pages of Grant Morrison and Yanick Paquette’s BATMAN INC. and writer/artist David Finch’s BATMAN: THE DARK KNIGHT.

If you’ll remember, I was pretty peeved about the reason for two brand new Batman ongoings.  But, ya know, it actually kinda makes sense.  Except that I still am not sure the reason we need THREE Dick Grayson titles, and TWO Bruce Wayne ones.  But at least they all seem to be distinctive.  I guess this does answer what’s gonna happen to Sirens of Gotham and Streets of Gotham though.

Which ones are you gonna buy?

You know, demos are the new video game rentals.  I don’t like paying the high prices of video game rentals, and places like Gamefly seem to always be out of stock of the games I want to rent until they’ve been out for a while.  It seems to me that many video game companies are getting smarter about releasing demos to whet the appetites of gamers for their upcoming releases (though some, oddly, don’t release the demo until the game has already been released).

I’ve been playing a ton of game demos (not just for big releases, but trial versions of downloadable games as well) this week, and some have really blown me away with how good they are!  (continue reading…)

And there came a day, a day unlike any other, when Earth’s mightiest podcasters found themselves united against a common threat. On that day, Funnybooks with Aron and Paulie (and Their Amazing Friends) was born — to fight the foes no single podcaster could withstand!

• Paul’s been robbed!
• Aron saw The Last Exorcism
• Green Arrow #3
• Justice League: Generation Lost #8
• Time Masters: Vanishing Point #2
• Superman/Batman #75
• Wonder Woman #602
• Avengers#4
• Dark Wolverine #90
• Fantastic Four #582
• Ultimate Comics Mystery #2
• X-MEN CURSE OF THE MUTANTS UPDATE:
  • X-Men: Curse of the Mutants: Blade One-Shot
  • X-Men: Curse of the Mutants: Storm and Gambit One-Shot
  • X-Men: Curse of the Mutants: Namor The First Mutant #1
• INDY SPOTLIGHT
  • Invincible #74

Here’s the link to the Marv Wolfman episode I promised.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

The current Batman Beyond mini series ends with issue 6 in November.

So, announced this weekend at Baltimore Comic Con, the current Batman Beyond comic series being published by DC Comics looks to be turning into an ongoing.  Four months ago, I’d be doing backflips at this news.  But the first three issues of the current Batman Beyond mini series have left me so wildly conflicted, that I’m not sure how I feel about this news.  I love the Batman Beyond universe, and think that some of the best animated stories of Batman were told in the Beyond universe.

But the current Batman Beyond mini series has suffered from not having the right “feel” to it (discussed at length on Funnybooks).  The characters are there, the references are good…but the characters don’t sound like they should.  Terry McGinnis doesn’t feel like the Terry we were left with at the end of Return of the Joker (which the series takes place after).  Bruce Wayne (if it is him – he’s just referred to as “Mr. Wayne” in the comic, which is another thing that bugs me) doesn’t act like the Wayne we’ve gotten used to in that universe.

So, with the announcement of the ongoing, I hate to say it, but I think Adam Beechen may not be the right guy for the job.  I think the only reason sales on the mini are good is that fans have been dying for some Beyond goodness, and are willing to forgive the issues in writing for 6 issues, but won’t be so forgiving for an ongoing.  So how would DC make an ongoing Batman Beyond series a best seller?

• Pick a damn universe.  In Batman #600, we’re introduced to Terry McGinnis…under the tutelage of an elderly Damian Wayne, not Bruce Wayne.  I’m assuming the Wayne we’re seeing in the current Beyond miniseries is Bruce, given the references to Hush.
• Pick a solid creative team.  Every bone in my body wants to see a Batman Beyond book from Paul Dini and Dustin Nguyen (who does covers for the current mini), but with Nguyen getting the job of doing Batgirl monthly, and who knows what going on with Paul Dini (again referenced in this last week’s Funnybooks), I’m hoping for consistency.  Lack of consistency will KILL a new series straight out of the gate.  Paul Levitz, who did such a great job on the Superman/Batman Annual featuring Batman Beyond, would be a great choice too.
• If you go with the Damian Wayne Batman Beyond universe, start fresh – don’t make references to the animated series.  If you go with the animated canon, then don’t try to make it intersect with the regular DC universe (like bringing Hush into it).
• Keep Dustin Ngueyn on covers … even if he’s not doing the interior art.
• Have back-ups/co-features done in the animated series style.  I get that the series itself won’t be done in the animated style (or else they’d be doing it on the mini), but people miss that style, and a co-feature would justify a $3.99 price point, and be a kick to see.  What are Rick Burchett and Terry Beatty doing nowadays?

What would you guys like to see in a Batman Beyond comic?