Trev says: Hey folks, this weeks comic left me with a bit of a conundrum. at 10 panels with was pretty dense, but cutting it in half would mean you’d have to wait a full week for one page’s worth of payoff.

With that in mind, I split the page in two at the last minute* and this week there’ll be two updates. Check back Wednesday the 8th for part two of this page or follow us on twitter and i’ll remind you all!

*so last minute i haven’t told Jen yet, sorry for breaking your page Jen.

Trev says: A trend that’s been occuring on the interwebs recently is artists mapping out their influences in what is referred to as an influence board. Using only squares it’s an eay way to identify big and little influences. With that in mind i thought i’d knock one out for you. Click on the pic to see a bigger version.

While i’ve talked about Smith a bunch a lot of these guys I don’t speak about and if there’s any interest I might go into more depth in the future about some of these guys and also some really inspiring people I had to leave off this board.

Trev says: I hope you’ve all enjoyed this Emelia arc. It’s was a lot of fun to both write and draw and renewed my admiration for the hard work Jen does crafting a story.

I approached this story more with an idea to frame a few fun ideas: An Indy tribute and Emelia giving a bit of ball crunching retribution to the Royal Adventurer’s Society and really this story isn’t much deeper than that.. but even then it required some thought on how to structure and pace the pages to sell moments. It means if/when i tell another story I’ll be better prepared so thanks for the test-run folks.

Cheers

I know i’m EXTREMELY late to the party on this but just started collecting the Fables series, starting with a stand-alone tale “1001 Nights of Snowfall” and really enjoyed it. Based around the 1001 arabian nights tale it sees the legendary Snow White travel to the Middle East and is forced to tell tales to the king. The stories she weaves are varied but tell us why the Big Bad Wolf is so big and bad, What happened to Snow’s marriage to the Prince Charming and more about the Frog Prince. I love these stories with a nice framing device. I means the narrative can cover a lot of story ground in a way that would otherwise take 4 or 5 books and you’d be forced to decompress the story.

It was a great introduction to the series and highly recommend it.

Trev says: Hey folks just thought i’d share some of the comics i’m reading at the moment. Most are pretty old and i’m merely playing catch up but who knows they may give insight into something… or whatever. I’m reading cool comics is the point.

Criminal. Actually pretty much anything Brubaker and Phillips put out will have me slamming down my hard earned cash. The Criminal books are pitch perfect noir books from the classic noir of the 40s to a more rough and ready 70s style that leaves you expecting Lee Marvin to rise from the grave just to play a part in any Criminal film in the making. Phillips art is phenomenal and my studio contains a few of his originals because I just adore it. Their new collaboration Fatale begins in the same vein as Criminal but adds a new layer of Lovecraftian horror.

Hellboy. I’m still powering through this. I’m up to volume 12 now and the stories which have so far seemed unrelated are starting to hint at the bigger arc that Mignola wants to take this character on.

Atomic Robo. Waaaay before Robo was a comic there was a great blog i used to read about the character. It was told in first person form from Robo’s point of view as he navigated 80 odd years of being an adventuring scientist/atomic powered sentient robot. I picked up the first trade when it first came out but my finances at the time meant i didn’t get the others. Now i’m making amends and loving it. These stories as just FULL of grand scale pull adventure with a massive dose of fun. Exactly the kind of story that makes Indiana Jones, Back to the Future or The Princess Bride films i could watch again and again and since this is a comic the action sequences have an unlimited budget!

Ex Machina. I picked the first three of these trades up in a discount bin after hearing a lot of good things and wasn’t disappointed. It’s about the Mayor of New York being a former super hero who talks to machines. The overarching arc is being hinted at all the time but the trades are great stand alones blending nuanced politics with some heroics to keep things lively.

Batman. 7 months on from the DC New 52 and only one book is keeping me impressed. Snyder and Capullo are blowing my socks of with this. Never having any desire to read a Spawn book i’d never seen Capullo’s art but it’s great. It has shades of Jim Lee’s highly detailed scratchly look but then there’s these wonderfully cartoony elements that he brings to it that just add to the fun. Snyder meanwhile killed it before the New 52 and he’s pushing ahead almost ignoring the relaunch instead deciding to win fans over just by telling great stories. The villians of the peice “The Court of Owls” are creepily ominous with their history dating back to Gotham’s founding it reminds me how violated you feel after being burgled – “someone was in my space uninvited”. For a character like Batman who thinks of Gotham as HIS it’s a massive blow.