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Knights of Reignsborough Season 2 is coming…!
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My comics reading has a definite super hero bent. If I go off book, my tendency is to head towards fantasy or science fiction. The crime genre really isn’t even on my radar when I am browsing at my local comic shop.
I have to thank Aron for changing my perspective on this. He provided me with Volume two of Thief of Thieves.
Before the howls of nerdrage begin, I am aware I am not starting at the beginning. I have never had the need to start at that point. My gestalt is strong enough that I fill in the blanks to make the reading easy. When I go back to the beginning, I am pleasantly surprised when things I had filled are true or handled even better.
This story arc begins as Conrad’s son, Augustus, has been rescued from several jobs gone wrong. He is not as good a thief as his father. Their first section of the story is entitles Free but not clear. We get to watch as the botched job just keeps coming back to haunt Augustus. The cops make sure they know they are watching him. The cartel he was working for want their money and are willing to make him pay dearly for it. Conrad is struggling to make his retirement stick. The problem is that all the effort to keep his son free means that lots of people are owed. Their price is to keep him in the game.
Asmus’ storytelling flows very well. He utilizes flashbacks sporadically throughout the story. Through these flashbacks we are given a better understanding of Conrad and Augustus. They illustrate the build-up of a very hostile relations between father and son. You get to see Conrad struggling to keep his son out of the business and failing miserably. They also illustrate how Augustus landed in the hot water that he is in currently. The tension just keeps ratcheting up as Augustus continues failing to fulfill the demands of the Cartel eventually placing his girlfriend in danger.
Shawn Martinbrough’s art and Felix Serrano’s colors are magnificent. The lines are quick and clean conveying a sense of vibrancy that I did not expect from a crime story. I loved the cool feeling that the colors give each panel and his shading technique is atmospheric without being heavy handed. There is one particular page that I kept coming back to enjoy. The two thugs have his girlfriend on the phone talking to him. It is set in a high-rise with a a backdrop of the city skyline at sunset. You get the sense of urgency from the characters in this one page while still feeling the languid splendor of where this horrible tableau is occurring. Excellent!
The protagonists of this piece are not nice people. The story goes to some length to make sure you understand this. Despite this I still wanted to see their story unfold and had a definite desire to see a good ending come out of it for them. There are plenty of twists and turns in this tale that I was riveted. I devoured the book in well under thirty minutes. I then went back to take the time to savor the gorgeous art as well.
When I start in the middle of a series, my highest for of praise is that I want to pick up the beginning. I plan on checking out my local comic shop for volume one this evening.
Give us a call at 972-763-5903 and leave us your thoughts. If we use your voicemail, you’ll win an Ideology of Madness SurPrize!
Knights of Reignsborough Season 2 is coming…!
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J Michael Straczynski.
A name to conjure with in comics.
the list of cool things he has created or had a hand in are lengthy. He created the popular sci-fi show Babylon 5. He has wrote both for Marvel and DC with definitive runs of both Spiderman and Superman. He had his own imprint at Image comics as well. Joe’s Comics is where he created such projects as Rising Stars and Midnight Nation.
Straczynski has returned to his own imprint at Image with a book entitled Ten Grand. He answers the question, “What would you endure for just five more minutes with the one you love?”
Before I talk about the story, I have to tell you about the tremendous cover done by Ben Templesmith. It features Joe, the main character of the book, staring out at the reader from his booth in a bar. It has a dirty and decrepit feel to it that definitely permeates the image. You get the feeling of a terrible weight is hanging about Joe as he sits there and stares out at you. Templesmith has added so much gravitas to that gaze that it just sucks you in. It seems to say, “Follow me. You won’t like what you see but it will still be worth your time.” Powerful.
In this first issue of Ten Grand, we are introduced to Joe and the world that he lives in. Joe was an enforcer for organized crime. When someone needed killing, he was the man for the job. His last job is what turns his life upside down. Instead of another enforcer, it turns out that his target is somehow involved with the dark arts and demons. Instead of completing the job, he and the love of his life, Laura, are murdered. Before he shuffled off the mortal coil though, an angel offers him a deal. Laura is going to heaven and he is not. If he takes the deal, he will be returned to life and expected to die righteously doing the work of the angel. If he does this, he will be given five minutes with Laura in heaven and then returned to life to start again until all his sins have been righted and he can spend eternity with Laura. He says yes without hesitation.
The story is a mix of hard-boiled detective fiction and Richard Kadrey style urban fantasy. There are angels and demons mixed with seedy bars and strip clubs. All of this is united by the thread of doing these horrible things to help those in need and getting to be wit the one you love, no matter how brief the time. One of the touched I liked was the antagonistic relationship between Joe and his angelic handler. He needs to contact them and does it at a strip club in an effort to show what little defiance he is capable of. This one thing is both epic and pathetic all at once and puts a nice bow on the life of Joe.
Ben Templesmith’s art is a fine compliment to the story. He provides a gritty feel that compliments the hard-boiled edge of the story. In the opening panels, he paints us a picture of Laura. The words tell us about how she is beautiful. The panels are filled with white and she has a warm golden tone to her. A beauty though, she is not. The art very much communicates that she is beautiful Joe and that is enough. Once again, very strong stuff.
The art and writing on this book are stellar. It has me hooked and I am looking forward to seeing where Stracynski takes this. I just hope that there isn’t a long walk-about for no apparent reason.
Your Funnybooks hosts attended Fear the Con in Missouri this past weekend. It was the sixth year for the annual gaming convention coordinated by the hosts of Fear the Boot (a show about table-top roleplaying games and a little bit more). Fear the Con kicks off with a social event, World Wide Wing Night followed by 24-hours of games over a two day period.
It is always a good time with great people.
This episode features Aron, Paul, Andrew and Thistledown John plus a few others chatting over drinks after the first day of gaming. Many of the games we played at FtC will be available here on Ideology of Madness.
If you want hear previous year’s FtC con games, check the links below:
We return to our regular format next week.
Give us a call at 972-763-5903 and leave us your thoughts. If we use your voicemail, you’ll win an Ideology of Madness SurPrize!
Knights of Reignsborough Season 2 is coming…!
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Free Comic Book Day is one my favorite geek holidays. All the local comic shops get their groove on and put on a show for the crowds. The objective is to bring new readers to the hobby, energize those of us that read comics, and create new fans of both comics and comics shops.
I am not going to deny the fact that this is a marketing angle. As a lover comics, it is one that I appreciate. It not only exposes new readers to the delights of these stories but also exposes current readers to new types of comics as well. There were well over fifty-two different titles on offer at my local comic shop. They ranged from offerings form both DC and Marvel to a book by Graphic India. This is quite range of tales being told and it made me happy to see such a diversity of options.
Free Comic Book Day has a very festival feel to it. At my local shop, Comic Book World, they put on quite a show. They had the Pickled Brothers Circus there swallowing swords to the amazement of the audience. There were Roller Derby Women signing autographs and showing off their bruises. Also, no Free Comic Book Day would be complete with out a comic celebrity which was filled ably by David Mack.
I had no time to enjoy the day. Other commitments made it impossible for me to spend more time than picking up my comics and seeing the festivities begin. The turnout was good for the start of the day as it took me a bit of time to get through the crowd to pick my five free comics and the one comic I missed from Wednesday. MY haul for the the day was Ramayan 3392 AD, Judge Dredd Classics, The Waling Dead, Atomic Robo, and Infinity.
I, like everyone else here are Ideology of Madness, am a big fan of Ron Marz. I saw that Ramayan 3392 Ad was done by him which made it a an easy choice. This book from Graphic India is a re-imagining of the myths and legends of India. It plugged easily into my love of mythology of any sort. Marz’ deft hand with story easily introduces the various players in this sprawling drama. He takes the exotic and alien and makes it accessible. Each vignette is illustrated by a different artist with my favorite being Luke Ross. He did the story Seeta. Despite being only three pages, his art captures the energy and vibrancy of the story and makes it jump from the page. The last page is sheer beauty and well worth just contemplating for awhile. I want to pick up this book going forward.
Judge Dredd Classics was a nice little surprise. As the title implies, this is not a new story. Instead, IDW treats us to the Story of Judge Death. It was nice to see this story again as I had not read it in quite some time. The only difference between this and the original was that the art had been recolored. A nice trip down memory lane though I am not sure if it is a good introduction to Judge Dredd though.
I will admit that only picked up The Walking Dead because they had a limit of one per customer. I am not a fan of the zombie genre but was pleasantly surprised by this book. I am unfamiliar with the these characters but found the vignettes to be captivating. From listening to people talk about the books prior, it seems that these may not be stories that are continuing on but have happened in the past. I am more likely to pick up the first trade and start there than to pick up the next issue.
Atomic Robo from Red 5 comics was simply amazing. The story was new to me and very fun. Once again Robo has to stop a runaway experimental robot. The action is fast and clean with the witty banter that I have come to expect from Brian Clevinger. The art us chunky and dynamic. It captures the feel of a science action story wonderfully. The Bodie Troll story is pure, unadulterated cuteness.
I also picked up Marvel offering, Infinity by Hickman and Cheung. The first part of this book is a an introduction to the coming six issue event of the same name. Cheung’s artwork is superb. The alien feeling of the setting is carried well by his efforts. The story itself was OK. I never really understood what was going on outside of the fact that a planet had the crap kicked out of it and was further brutalized. Oh, and the next planet on the agenda was Earth. there was also a reprint of the Thanos story “Last Flower” and a brief introduction to Marvel’s first Original Graphic Novel, Avengers: Endless Wartime. Overall, I was unimpressed and do not see myself picking up either Infinity or the Avengers OGN.
I also made sure to spend some money to show a little love to my local comic shop and picked up Gail Simone’s The Movement. I have not had a chance to read it yet but look forward to seeing what she has in store for me.
What if the Manhattan Project had been just a front? What if it hid a whole host of more unusual projects that were better left unknown? What if everything went wrong? These are the questions that are answered in the pages of The Manhattan Projects by Jonathan Hickman and Nick Pitarra.
I will admit that I did some eye-rolling when I picked up this book. I have not read the previous issues and had my doubts that I would be able to jump right in and enjoy it. I am a geek and seeing Enrico Fermi and Oppenheimer as characters in a comic certainly plays hard on those heart strings but I had no clue what direction it would take me.
Fuck, this was a good book!
This issues deals with Enrico Fermi, Harry Daghlian, and the success of the Manhattan Projects. The book opens with a conversation between Fermi and Daghlian about food. It quickly goes off the rails to a broader discussion about efficiency versus abundance. After wheeling about these philosophical heights, it is brought back to reality with the point that Daghlian just wants some ice cream. Hell, he even calls Fermi an ass for being so long winded and off topic when he just wants some food. Funny and poignant all at the same time.
This issue looks at these two characters both in the past and the future. We get to see how Daghlian became a radioactive skull and his relationship with Fermi.
Despite the super science and weirdness that goes on it stills stay ground in the humanity of the characters. While showing us what happened to Daghlian, Hickman talks about love and fear as universal constants and how despite this they are no match for the atom. On the page it is handle with such simple elegance. Just a few small boxes in the corner of each panel adding dramatic weight to these powerful words. We are given a glimpse of how their friendship formed while Daghlian adjusted to his new state of being. His friendship with Fermi frees him being a prisoner in a small concrete cell to someone that can go out and interact almost like normal. Once again, a very human moment showing the power of friendship among the super-science weirdness that is the Manhattan Projects.
Hickman’s writing is just fantastic on this issue. He juggles the human elements of friendship, love, and fear in perfect timing with questions of ethics, science, and progress. Where one would think these would be difficult topics to blend, he does it with skill and panache.
Nick Pitarra’s art is a perfect complement to the story as well. The idea of scientist laboring in secret conjures up images in my mind and Pitarra’s pencils actually match that image well. The spaces that characters occupy are grand and filled with wonder. The characters themselves are rumpled and weird yet still believable. The panel that captured it best this issue was when our main character step into the meeting on the tranquility base. The backdrop is the surface of the moon with the earth looming large in space. The foreground are all the people taking part in the meeting. The character range from an ordinary gentleman in jeans and a t shirt to a cosmonaut in full suit and a brain in a jar for all intents and purposes. It comes across as both awe-inspiring and ordinary at the same time which, for me, is wonderful.
I loved this issue and look forward the next installment!
I will confess, I had never heard of Skullkickers until the guys on Funnybooks started talking about it a few episodes ago. They made it sound like a fun book that was full of tongue-in-cheek action. I have not a read a full-on fun book in quite some time. So, I gave The Might Skullkickers number one a try.
The humor that I heard about starts off immediately with the gorgeous cover and the title itself. The dwarf is front-and-center, wreaking havoc with the title of the comic itself. It is a beautiful homage to the Walter Simonson Mighty Thor cover. The subtitle for this story arc is eighty eyes on an evil island of which this issue is part three. Yes, you read that correctly, part three. For this story arc, they have done a number one for each issue with a different name. The first part was Uncanny Skullkickers followed by Savage Skullkickers. Zub and Huang are having a good time poking fun at the overblown titles that are found out in the comic wilds and are inviting us to join them in a good laugh at them. The jabs are never mean spirited though as the art on the overs are excellent renditions of these self-same comics. One of my favorite things from this issue is on the very first page where they point out this is part three and issue number one. They freely admit that they are horrible people which made me giggle.
the story for this issue is very straight forward. To enlist the aid of the talking gorillas of the island, our intrepid heroes must undergo the right of initiation to become part of the tribe. Once this is done the process of convincing the gorillas that Thool is something that must be address is undertaken. There is no new ground broken here in the story but the comedy and references fly fast and free throughout. Our hero must wade through the Pool of Great Reflection as his trial. He calls it a crock of crap. OK, he actually uses @#$%, as this is an all-ages comic, but you get the picture. The fantasy factoid, reminiscent of the factoids from VH1′s pop-up videos, explains that it is not actually a crock of crap but heavily enchanted so that it creates a mystic double of any who brave it’s waters. as is required in these moments, a fight between the hero and his double breaks out.
Scenes like this litter the pages of this book. There is even a panel copying Where the Wild Things Are. I was chuckling the entire time I read this book.
The art is wonderful as well. The style is very anime with the Kusia reminding me of the elf from Record of Lodoss war. Rex is drawn in such a fashion that he evokes memories of Tekken and Street Fighter. I just can not quite put my finger on which fighter he reminds me of the most. The action scenes are clear and crisp with a definite Saturday night kung-fu movie feel as evidenced by the many Double Dodge! and Pistol-Whippage! laced throughout the panels. Edwin Huang’s pencils are just plain fun and a joy to behold.
This book is filled with action, adventure, and a quirky sense of humor. It was a fun read and I am actually looking forward to the next installment.
Have you listened to this week’s Funnybooks with Aron and Paulie (link here) or last week’s Superman with Aron and Paulie (link here) yet? Well, you should – you could win free goodies! In addition to our usual Ideology of Madness SurPrize (call at 972-763-5903 and leave us your thoughts), we are giving away TWO Superman-related prizes!
You can see them at right, there are two prizes. How do you win them?
Both contests have the following rules:
Fear The Con 6!Give us a call at 972-763-5903 and leave us your thoughts. If we use your voicemail, you’ll win an Ideology of Madness SurPrize!
Knights of Reignsborough Season 2 is coming…!
Podcast: Play in new window | Download