Comics | ChinaShop

Geek In A ChinaShop Get Schooled With Geek Crash Course!

November 7, 2011 - 10:31 am

You’re a geek, and you know everything there is to know about everything that is sci-fi, fantasy, comics, or horror.

Except Doctor Who.

Never fear! Geek Crash Course is here to help brighten your geek blind spots! Love anime, but know nothing about comics? Are you a gamer who’s never read the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy? Diana Dekajlo and Michael Nixon host a web show designed to cater to geeks looking to improve their geek cred as well as non-geeks looking to learn about all these comics, shows, and films that seem to be getting a lot of attention lately. Each episode is devoted to a single character, show, book series, film, or comic, and gives you a basic 101 lesson in what it’s all about. They introduce each topic as if the audience has never heard of it before, and explain the premise or basics of the topic, while including some insider references for fans. Since shows like Doctor Who or Star Trek, as well as long-running comic books can have such an epic history, it can be really intimidating for a first-time watcher or reader to get into them. Geek Crash Course makes these properties more accessible to someone just starting out.

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Geek In A ChinaShop Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark (Review)

by Teresa Jusino

June 21, 2011 - 8:06 am

Even if you’ve never picked up a comic in your life, it’s likely that you’ve heard of Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark. Most Expensive Broadway Show Ever! All those injuries! And when will it get out of previews and actually open? After much brouhaha, lots of money, and big changes in the creative team (namely, the dismissing of Julie Taymor and the hiring of Marvel writer, Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa, to remedy a flawed book), Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark has finally officially opened on Broadway!

And?

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Art Artstar: Colleen Doran

by Molly Crabapple

June 13, 2011 - 10:12 am

Legendary comics creator Colleen Doran has worked with everyone from Ann Rice to Neil Gaiman, all while spending decades on A Distant Soil, a massive space opera epic that she started drawing when she was 15. Here, me and Colleen talk about makeup, the web, murderous witches, and the value of speaking up.

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Comic Books Comics To Hide From Your Parents: R. Crumb

by Richard S. Chang

May 19, 2011 - 10:52 am

There was a long line outside the door of the Society of Illustrators in the Upper East Side of Manhattan that stretched to the corner subway station.

The attraction was a retrospective for Robert Crumb, the gangly pioneer of the underground comix movement. Crumb produced his first comic book, Zap #1, in 1968, selling them on the streets of San Francisco; later books were sold at head shops.

Crumb drew and wrote about the hippie lifestyle, chasing women and sex, and marketed his comic books for “intellectual adults.” They were an instant hit.

Also known for living on his own terms, Crumb, who once turned down an offer to illustrate an album cover for the Rolling Stones because he hated the band, now lives in the south of France with his second wife, Aline Kominsky-Crumb, with whom he is working on a new book.

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Comic Books Geek In a ChinaShop: Tony Trov and Johnny Zito Prove That Philly is a Comics Force to be Reckoned With!

by Teresa Jusino

May 17, 2011 - 10:28 am

Tony Trov and Johnny Zito have been garnering attention for their collaborative efforts in comics since their Harvey Award-nominated webcomic Black Cherry Bombshells, which was first published by DC under their Zuda Comics imprint back in 2008 and won Zuda’s competition that year for Best Comic. Now, with Bombshells, The LaMorte Sisters, D.O.G.S of Mars (which is being developed into a film by High Treason Pictures), and the recently-released Moon Girl (Red 5 Comics) out in the world, their company, South Fellini seems to be setting the stage for global domination.

I had the chance to speak with Philadelphia natives Trov and Zito about their plethora of projects, why they are so drawn to female protagonists, and how sometimes, starting a company is entirely dependent on finding the merchandise first.

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Art/Design Gallery Angouleme is the Anti-San Diego

by Molly Crabapple

February 7, 2011 - 8:30 am

What do we know about big American comic cons? We know they are held in convention centers, deafening places filled with bright lights and berber carpeting. We know they are dominated by huge media companies. We know they are filled with socially awkward fanboys.

Well, Angouleme International Comics Festival, the largest comics con in the Western hemisphere and the crown jewel of the French bandes-dessines scene, is nothing like that at all.

Picture if you will a charming medevial town, filled with cheese, fine wines and sexy fire-eaters. In this town there are a number of comic-filled tents. And the comics they showcase are the most experimental, badass, lavishly printed, dirty, existentially questioning, silly and odd comics in the world. Except for one tent filled with superheros, which is tiny and sort of shoved into the corner. That’s what Angouleme is like.

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Film Fridays Film Fridays: The Top 5 Superheroes/Supervillains That Shouldn’t Be in Movies

by Jeff Nau

January 14, 2011 - 5:45 pm

5. Color Kid: A DC Comics superhero, Color Kid wasn’t quite good enough to be in The Legion of Superheroes, so they made him a member of the Substitute Legion of Superheroes. It’s a little like substituting Go-Bots for Transformers, or Hydroxes for Oreos.

POWERS: Can change the color of anything. ANYTHING, you hear? Specifically, switch the color of the ground and the sky to confuse his flying opponents. Take that.

Why he shouldn’t be in movies: I changed my mind, he should. According to his online biography: “In the 1985 Legion of Substitute Heroes comic, he was temporarily known as ‘Color Queen’ after being exposed to Granderian Gender-Reversal Germs.”

Read on for the last 4…

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Comic Books Featured Dark Horse Comics Launches a Revolution

by Shop Keeper

October 12, 2010 - 10:22 am

Dark Horse Comics, the publisher that revolutionized creator-owned comics announced a new and ambitious digital publishing plan that’s set to do the same for sequential storytelling in the digital medium! By creating and managing its own digital publishing program—the Dark Horse Bookshelf app—Dark Horse Comics has eliminated third party fees on its digital editions. Not only will readers be able to enjoy Dark Horse comics at lower prices, but comic creators will receive a greater percentage of each digital sale. In short, readers pay less for their comics and creators make more money.

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Art/Design Artstar: Cynthia von Buhler

by Molly Crabapple

August 24, 2010 - 9:41 am

When I first met Cynthia von Buhler, I was topless and covered in white paint. As a cash strapped nineteen-year-old, I stumbled upon her ad on Craigslist hunting for human statues, and soon I was posing as Pauline Borghese at the most debauched absinthe ball of my life. In many ways, Cynthia von Buhler could be credited as setting me down the road of Professional Naked.

Raven haired von Buhler has had a career so broad, and glamorous, as to defy description. While von Buhler is best known as an award winning fine artist and illustrator, she has also danced in music videos as Bettie Page, ran experimental record labels, run galleries, and sold pieces of herself (literally) in a fine art vending machine that has toured the globe. Most recently, she’s been hard at work doing the art for Amanda Palmer and Jason Webley’s “Evelyn Evelyn” book project, as well as focusing on her own children’s book series “Who Will Bell the Cats?”

Von Buhler was kind enough to share insights on technique, career diversity, and how she came to live in a castle.

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Moody Mondays Moody Mondays: Eisner-Nominated Ben Templesmith

by Zoetica Ebb

July 26, 2010 - 11:08 am

Ben Templesmith is an Eisner-nominated Australian comic book artist, known for many things, among them Fell, written by Warren Ellis, and 30 Days of Night, written by Steve Niles. He’s also known for his love of tentacles, zombies, and making very special faces in photos. I spoke with Ben at the Image booth while he was hard at work on a sketch for someone’s future tattoo, and asked him for his top five songs for a Moody Monday.

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