After two meet-up issues, Wonder Woman and The Bionic Woman are back in their 1970s TV action mode in the DC Comics/Dynamite Entertainment crossover series Wonder Woman ’77 Meets The Bionic Woman, Issue #3, hitting comic book shops today. And Max, the bionic German Shepherd, joins the team.
Writer Andy Mangels (Star Trek & Star Wars) and artist Judit Tondora (Grimm Fairy Tales) have at last tapped into that 1970s nostalgia fans of classic superhero TV shows have been looking for. Today the duo takes on fembots, and the series reintroduces characters and plot points footnoted to specific episodes of the original TV shows.
The series features great covers and variants by artist Cat Staggs, Alex Ross, and others. Check out some past and future covers from the series above and after the break, followed by a preview of Issue #3:
Less than one month away, San Diego Comic-Con returns to the San Diego Convention Center full of writers, artists, publishers, TV and movie studios, and vendors with representation from every major property and franchise. Legos, Sideshow, Super 7, Mattel, Funko, Mondo, and more. Already distributors have begun previewing convention exclusives–those sought-after rare collectibles usually available only at the show, but sometimes available afterward in small quantities if all of the inventory from the show isn’t pre-ordered or purchased on-site.
We think it’s time to share some of the best exclusives scheduled to be available at San Diego Comic-Con this year for those of you who are attending or have friends attending that can pick up items for you. Just can’t decide what to spend your money on? Check out the SDCC 2018 website for even more information from the vendors and more collectibles. There’s too much for anyone to be able to see everything at the big Con, so we’ve listed booth numbers so you can make sure you don’t miss out on those toys, posters, and comic books that you simply must have.
These aren’t all the exclusives you’ll find at SDCC 2018–we’ve selected a sampling of some of the best items from popular vendors who have previewed their items with still three weeks until the convention.
Now on to the exclusives.
Gentle Giant is releasing a variety of exclusive mini-busts, plus this large-scale version of the classic Kenner Star Wars action figure. You’ve seen Boba Fett from Gentle Giant here before–the original was borg.com‘s favorite toy of 2012 and one of the best action figure re-creations we’ve seen.
This exclusive provides one more chance to get this figure, this time reflecting original packaging from Return of the Jedi (sorry, no firing backpack).
From Alex Ross Art (Booth #2415) pick up limited prints and comics, including these new variant covers for Amazing Spider-man, Issue #1:
This year marks the 75th anniversary of Mighty Mouse, who first appeared in short animated films from Terrytoons for 20th Century Fox throughout the 1940s, including one that was nominated for an Academy Award. So what better time to bring back the powerful mouse who can protect Pearl Pureheart from Oil Can Harry, and maybe even save us all? Dynamite Comics is answering the call with a new monthly series beginning today with an initial story arc that deals with bullying.
Mighty Mouse was created by Ralph Bakshi (known also for Fritz the Cat, the animated The Lord of the Rings, and the Kim Basinger flick Cool World) and Paul Terry, whose cartoons with sound beat Walt Disney’s Steamboat Willie to cinemas in 1928 (one of the first animators to use cel animation). Mighty Mouse would appear as part of the Saturday morning cartoon line-up in various versions in each of the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. A rather odd update, the 1980s version would feature a crossover episode with Bakshi’s Mighty Heroes characters, a group of middle-aged lawyers that included a superhero called Diaper Man, and comedian Andy Kaufman would make famous for another generation the Mighty Mouse theme song in a skit for Saturday Night Live in the 1970s. Marvel Comics produced a 10-issue comic book series in 1990-1991.
Today, writer Sholly Fisch and artist Igor Lima are bringing the classic mouse to the 21st century. It’s a book for kids of all ages–the kind of comic book to introduce young kids to the medium. A boy is getting bullied in school, and he’s a young artist and fan of the classic Mighty Mouse cartoons. As he is watching television, a portal across dimensions interferes with his show, and with the characters within the television. The third wall is breached as a boy meets his hero.
Our borg.comBest of 2017 list continues today with the Best in Print. If you missed them, check out our review of the Best Movies of 2017 here, the Kick-Ass Heroines of 2017here, and the Best in Televisionhere.
So let’s get going. Here are our selections for this year’s Best in Print:
Best New Edition of Previous Published Work – The Wind in the Willows, Kenneth Grahame, David Petersen (IDW Publishing). David Petersen’s artwork was the perfect excuse to get Kenneth Grahame’s wonderful classic The Wind in the Willows into the hands of new readers. The new edition from IDW Publishing was the perfect storybook, and Petersen, known best for his Mouse Guard series, showed his understanding of these characters and their natural world full of wonder through his fantasy images.
Best Read, Best Retro Read – Forever and a Death, Donald E. Westlake (Hard Case Crime). Not every good idea comes to fruition. Not every excellent project gets off the ground. Not every great book gets published. The Hard Case Crime imprint of Titan Books came through again, seizing the opportunity to take a lost, never before published work of Donald E. Westlake--Forever and a Death--and brought it to life. And what a great adventure! Originally the story commissioned to be the James Bond film Tomorrow Never Dies, the projected was shelved, and only now do we get fantastic characters (like environmental activist and diver Kim Baldur) in a very Bondian situation–destroying Hong Kong as payback for China taking it back from Great Britain. Honorable mention for Best Retro Read: Turn on the Heat,Erle Stanley Gardner, and Dragon Teeth, Michael Crichton.
Best Sci-Fi Read – Slaves of the Switchboard of Doom: A Novel of Retropolis, Bradley W. Schenck (Tor Books). Imaginative, new, and fun, Schenck took us into a timeless world full of nostalgia and classic science fiction. Great tech, and a sprawling story. Interesting characters and great world-building, this novel will be a great surprise for sci-fi readers. Honorable mention: War for the Planet of the Apes: Revelations, Greg Keyes.
Best Fantasy Read – An Alchemy of Masques and Mirrors, Curtis Craddock (Tor Books). The plot of this debut novel is labyrinthine and action-packed, full of assassination attempts from all quarters, courtly intrigue galore, grandiose philosophies, and a cast of characters anchored by the strong, smart, resourceful, and eminently likeable heroes. Supporting everything is Craddock’s strong, confident, often-funny, and sharply observant writing that goes from heart-wrenching to hilarious on a single page without missing a beat. A dazzling debut.
Best Genre Non-fiction – Middle-Earth: From Script to Screen, Daniel Falconer (Harper Design). We wish every genre franchise had such a magnificent, thorough, monumental guide. Falconer’s guide to Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit trilogies is full of interviews at all levels of the creative process, and supported by concept art, photographs, maps, and so much more. Worthy of the six films it covers, it’s the ultimate fan book and a model for any franchise attempting to put everything fans could want into a single volume.
There’s much more of our selections for 2017’s Best in Print and more, after the jump…
At first blush it’s hard to wrap your head around, after decades of seeing (and buying) variant comic book covers, learning that the first goes back only so far as 1986, with DC Comics releasing two covers for the first issue of The Man of Steel. Variant covers–those alternate editions of a comic book where the only difference is one or more optional covers are made available for that issue, the economics behind them, and a high-quality look at many of the often rare artistic works that DC Comics has published since it created the idea, is the subject of a giant, over-sized, coffee table book coming your way this month. DC Comics Variant Covers–The Complete Visual History offers up many full images of the artwork that became variant covers over the past 30 years, printed on the type of thick paper with vibrant ink reproductions that may prompt some to (carefully) pull out pages and frame them. It’s like a book full of frame-worthy art prints.
Comic book and film writer Daniel Wallace has tackled the task of selecting highlights from DC Comics’ long run of variant covers–the “Complete” in the title is about the scope and range of variant projects that the publisher has taken on. He opts to show large images, often full-sized and even double-page spreads of many pieces of cover art, instead of an edition with hundreds of thumbnails of every DC Comics variant that’s seen print. Compiled in a single book, it will make many a variant collector shudder at the thought of just how many variants exist from all the comic book publishers. But the images, many familiar, some rare and sought after in comic book form, and some not-so-rare, get their own showcase here, most reflecting the artwork without the title, logos, and other text and branding. As readers will learn, variant cover collecting has become its own niche for collectors–some books have been bought and sold for thousands of dollars. Readers will also learn the types of releases that determine rarity and why DC Comics has evolved its strategy for variant covers over time.
The best sections ofDC Comics Variant Covers–The Complete Visual History spotlight the covers of Darwyn Cooke (it’s incredible to marvel at six of his images over-sized in the late artist’s bright color palette), Ant Lucia’s DC Bombshells, homage series featuring Mad Magazine, movie posters, Looney Tunes team-ups, convention and store exclusives, and many variant covers from Alex Ross, Frank Cho, and Frank Miller. Some of the most eye-popping images reprinted include cover art for JSA Classified #1 featuring Power Girl, by Adam Hughes, Batman (Vol. 2) #51, and Superman, #33, by John Romita, Jr. and Klaus Janson, Wonder Woman (Vol. 5) #1 by Frank Cho, and Batman ’66 Meets Steed and Mrs. Peele #1, by Cat Staggs.
Dynamite Comics delved into its recent series that have incorporated the popular pulp character The Shadow and compiled select images into a hardcover edition to be published later this year. The Dynamite Art of The Shadow will feature 320 images from the past four years from Dynamite works featuring the character. Dynamite is also releasing the trade paperback edition of one if its titles featuring The Shadow tomorrow, The Shadow: The Last Illusion. We have previews of both for you below, after the break.
Key artists you’ll find in The Dynamite Art of The Shadow include Alex Ross (his cover is pictured above), and pictured below, the works of Francesco Francavilla, Howard Chaykin, Alex Ross, Matt Wagner, Darwyn Cooke, and John Cassaday, among dozens of other artists.
A foreword will be provided by noted Batman movies producer Michael Uslan. “If you go with the radio version, he was invisible and had the power to cloud men’s minds,” said Uslan in his foreword. “If you prefer the pulp version, he mastered the art of stealth in the shadows. Either way, what a challenge to artists to attempt to bring this character to life in a visual medium like comic books! But without a Shadow of a doubt, the deed was done and the coup was pulled off by generation after generation of artists from the 1930’s to today, building a legend of contemporary mythology in the process and making The Shadow one of the most widely known characters in pop culture history. With a line-up of interior Shadow stories by top, cutting-edge graphic storytellers, Dynamite was able to hit home run after home run with its choice of cover artists, ranging from the top painters to top traditional comic book artists to top cartoonists.”
What if every comic book cover artist also created the artwork inside the cover? It’s a rare thing. Cover artists tend to get discovered and begin churning out great cover work for a good rate and find less time for interior work. Once in a while Alex Ross will take on a labor of love and work the interiors as with the Masks and earlier works like Kingdom Come and Justice. Same with Frank Cho, as he did with a surprise Savage Wolverine series a few years ago and Mike Mayhew with his The Star Wars series after his cover work became more and more popular.
Adam Hughes is well known for his cover work, especially his DC Comics women renderings. His Before Watchmen: Dr. Manhattan mini-series, a rare event featuring his own interiors, was probably the high point of the series. This summer fans of his artwork and classic Archie Comics characters are in for another rare treat.
Hughes will be scripting and illustrating interiors for a new Betty & Veronica series. Best friends and classic rivals Betty Cooper and Veronica Lodge will be at each other again, this time over the fate of Riverdale’s hangout, Pop’s Chocklit Shoppe. Hughes has said he is attempting to make the characters timely and relevant. It shouldn’t be too hard, as the duo is certainly timeless as seen in the updates–and retro inspired designs–of the characters on the variety of covers. The standard cover will be by Hughes, featuring the two girls in his distinct style. Thirteen covers will be supplied by women comic book artists. And none of them chose the look of the gals from the classic series.
Five years ago today, Elizabeth C. Bunce, Art Schmidt, Jason McClain, and I had already spent a few months talking through the technical details for the launch of borg.com. What should it look like? What should we write about? How do we get to there from here? Then it all came together on June 10, 2011, and I sat down and just started writing. Should this be a weekly thing? Once I started I just couldn’t stop and we cemented borg.com as a daily webzine. And readers started showing up every day. Soon we had hundreds of followers, and hundreds of thousands of visits per year.
The best part? Working with friends and meeting new ones each year.
We’ve had plenty of high points. Cosplay took off in a big way in the past five years. Elizabeth and I hit the ground running at San Diego Comic-Con in July 2011 with our Alien Nation/Chuck mash-up and you can find us all over the Web in photos taken by others at the show. Our years were dotted with the random brush with coolness. A retweet by actress Alana de la Garza, coverage of Joss Whedon visiting the Hall H line at 3 a.m. outside SDCC in 2012, Zachary Levi calling out Elizabeth for her cosplay at Nerd HQ, interviewing the stars of History Channel’s Vikings series, our praise for the Miss Fury series appearing on the back of every Dynamite Comics issue one month, tweets from Hollywood make-up artist family the Westmores commenting on our discussion of Syfy’s Face Off series, our Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (negative!) review featured on the movie’s website, that crazy promotion for the Coma remake mini-series, planning the first Planet Comicon at Bartle Hall and the Star Trek cast reunion, attending the first Kansas City Comic Con and the first Wizard World Des Moines Con, hanging with comic book legend Howard Chaykin, Rock ‘n Roll Hall of Famer Darryl McDaniels, cast members from Star Wars, The Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit, and Star Trek, bionic duo Lee Majors and Lindsay Wagner. And borg.com gained some well-known followers (you know who you are) along the way.
We’re grateful for some great Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, and other feedback over the years from Felipe Melo, Mickey Lam, Michael Prestage, The Mithril Guardian, Francesco Francavilla, Adam Hughes, Judy Bunce, Mike Norton, Jack Herbert, Mike Mayhew, Rain Beredo, David Petersen, Rob Williams, and Matt Miner, and for creators we interviewed including Mikel Janin, Penny Juday, Tim Lebbon, Kim Newman, James P. Blaylock, Freddie Williams II, Jai Nitz, and Sharon Shinn.
We amassed an extensive archive of hundreds of book reviews, movie reviews, reviews of TV shows, and convention coverage, thanks in part to the good folks at Titan Books, Abrams Books, Lucasfilm Press, Weta New Zealand, Entertainment Earth, Dynamite Comics, IDW Publishing, Dark Horse Comics, Image Comics, BOOM! Studios, and several TV and movie studios and distributors.
My own favorites? Sitting down to come up with my own five all-time favorite characters with the borg.com writing staff.
Thanks to my family, my friends, especially my partner in crime Elizabeth C. Bunce, Art Schmidt and Jason McClain, my support team, and William Binderup and the Elite Flight Crew.
Today we have another big sampler of comic book previews for books hitting comic book stores everywhere tomorrow, on Comic Book Wednesday.
We have previews today with something for anyone and everyone and we’re previewing many books that have been around for a few issues in case you missed them. It’s always easy to request back issues from your local comic book shop. So look for previews below from Dynamite Comics, IDW Publishing/Archaia, BOOM! Studios, and Dark Horse Comics.
Don’t miss out on Red Sonja/Conan, Star Trek, Big Trouble in Little China, Zombies v. Robots, Transformers v G.I. Joe, Barb Wire, The Shadow, Cluster, Broken World, and Swords of Sorrow. And don’t forget to look for the Adam Hughes cover art for Barb Wire and Alex Ross cover art for Red Sonja/Conan.
Without further ado, here are this week’s previews:
The sequel to one of the most successful independent comic book mini-series is coming soon from Dynamite Comics. Masks 2 continues the retro mash-up of classic characters began in the original Masks series scripted by Chris Roberson with interior art by Alex Ross. This time around writer Cullen Bunn and artist Eman Cassalos will be taking the adventures further with The Shadow, Green Hornet and Kato, Black Bat, Zorro, Miss Fury, and many others.
The Dynamite licensed characters from the comic book Golden Age will star in a story that will shift these superheroes through parallel worlds, with characters even meeting themselves in different timelines.
Several artists will provide variant covers for the mini-series’ first issue, including Sean Chen, Butch Guice, Robert Hack, Gabriel Hardman, Jae Lee, and Colton Worley.
Check out this preview of some of the interior art for Masks 2, Issue #1:
