52 at First Glance, Part Three

9. The Savage Hawkman
Writer: Tony S. Daniel
Artist: Philip Tan

I don't know the writer or artist. I'm not sure I've ever read any comic that featured Hawkman. I remember him in the Justice Society of America. He was like the gruff old man who just wanted to beat everything up. Unless that was all of them. I also had the action figure. It had a pretty sweet mace. Yeah, I said sweet.

Another cover with simply the hero prominently displayed flying out of the comic from some center point wormhole.

I wouldn't have picked this one up. Even with the cover telling me that this isn't the old Hawkman! This is the Savage Hawkman! And you remember how gruff he was before! Well, look out!

Forget it!

10. Mister Terrific
Writer: Eric Wallace
Pencils: Gianluca Gugliotta
Inks: Wayne Faucher

I don't know the writer or the artists. Hell, I don't even know the character! I mean, I recognize him. And I knew he was black even though he didn't call himself Black Mister Terrific for some reason.

I really have no idea where he came from. I think I should know and I just forgot. But that doesn't make me want to read the book any better. "Oh yeah, I read all about him and BORING, forget it all!" Perhaps I only know of him from the 52 Trade Paperback. But I don't remember much of that either except the one thing that would be such a major spoiler that I won't mention it! Oh, and that Infinity, Inc. comes back but under the control of Lex Corp.

I wouldn't have picked up this title. The cover shows some guy dancing in a night club or something.

11. DC Universe Presents Deadman
Writer: Paul Jenkins
Artist: Bernard Chang

Is this comic going to be about Deadman? Or is it going to be a bunch of short stories featuring different DC characters? I'm not really very clear on that part. But no matter which one it is, I would have picked up this comic. I like Deadman. I like just about any Magick or Supernatural character in the DC Universe. And if it's only a few issues of Deadman and then they move on to someone else, that's pretty cool also. Heck, with Deadman, they can just have him control every Character they spotlight. Hmm, maybe that's the point!

I don't recognize the writer or the artist.

12. Action Comics
Writer: Grant Morrison
Pencils: Rags Morales
Inks: Rick Byrant

Normally, I wouldn't bother with a Superman title. Unless it was Superman teaming up with a random person each month like the old DC Presents. Hey, that's kind of like that Deadman title! Maybe Deadman is going to partner up with different people each month?

But back to the Superman title. He just never struck me as interesting because he can do so much. But if Grant Morrison is writing it, I'll be reading it. I recognize the name Rags Morales but I can't remember what he's done. Perhaps that was just the name of an old friend's pit bull.

The cover of Action Comics is possibly the first one with some actual action taking place! Unless Mister Terrific's dance party counts. This one has Superman flying through the sky leading a team of angry police into battle! Or the police are angry at him for exposing their horrible corruption and improper use of broom handles.

52 at First Glance, Part Two

5. The Flash
Writer: Francis Manapul
Artist: Brian Buccellato

I don't recognize the artist or the writer and the cover isn't anything even close to special. Look! It's The Flash running right at me!

The Flash never interested me much. Although he does seem to be behind all of the big problems in DC Continuity! You know, I don't think I've ever seen The Flash and Ambush Bug in the same place! Hmm.

With this cover, I never would have picked up The Flash. What interests me in The Flash is his Rogue's Gallery of villains. He's got some of the best and I'd name them here if that wouldn't contradict what I just said. Grodd? Captain Boomerang? Captain Cold? Mirror Master? Pretty lame bunch. Except they're some of the most entertainingly written villains. At least as I remember it! Plus, I once threw a Captain Cold themed costume party. I was Captain Cold and the house was my, um, Cold Lair? Lair of Ice?

6. Captain Atom
Writer: J.T. Krul
Artist: Freddie Williams II

I don't recognize the writer or the artist! Captain Atom is too military for me. See? He's a captain! I think he was some sort of military pilot or something as well. Like Hal Jordan! Unless I'm thinking of Hal Jordan.

I remember Captain Atom was in one of the Justice Leagues. I remember Captain Atom ended up in prehistoric times with some major cross-over villain. Was that villain The Anti-Monitor? Was Captain Atom a big player in Crisis? Man, why don't I just Google this crap!

Anyway, I would not have normally picked this up. And not with the cover of his big face and he seems to be doing something nuclear and I think he has a mohawk. Nuklon?

I'm starting to think the editors just told the cover artists for all the issues #1s to "Highlight the heroes!" and that was all the direction they received.

7. The Fury of Firestorm, The Nuclear Men
Writer: Gail Simone
Pencils: Ethan Van Sciver
Inks: Yildiray Cinar

I used to like Firestorm in the cartoons. That's because if a guy could make anything he wanted with his imagination, I liked him. I liked the randomness of him. Batman could be counted on for this as well since he always had some weird Bat-something to get him out of a fix. Like Bat-lube. No. Seriously.

But I hated that he was some young kid who merged with his professor and his professor just basically lost himself in the process. Oh boy! He gets to think at Firestorm and give him advice but he can't do anything else. Meanwhile, he's probably got dishes to do at home and his cat is hungry and who's going to take his sweater vests to the dry cleaner?

The cover of Fury of Firestorm seems to show three Firestorms. And the comic is subtitled the Nuclear Men instead of, I think, the old title of Nuclear Man. So there's a twist right there! I probably would have skipped this title as well.

I've seen the name Gail Simone. I believe she may have been starting out right about when I quit reading comics. I could be super wrong about that. Maybe that's my super power! Placing things incorrectly in historical context! But she made Batgirl hip or groovy or something. Unless it was Catgirl. Or Robgirl.

I don't know the artists.

8. Green Arrow
Writer: J.T. Krul
Pencils: Dan Jurgens
Inks: George Perez

I read some Green Arrow when Kevin Smith was writing it. Okay, yeah. DC lured me in with that trick. Big deal! I'm only human! Unless that history thing is a real power and then I'm only super human!

I believe Green Arrow is anti-corporate. He is green! So he must fight for the environment. Plus he uses arrows. That's environmentally friendly. So I'm going to guess that this Green Arrow is totally corporate! And they hire him to infiltrate places like Greenpeace and, um, Greenpeace at Sea!

I don't know the writer.

It seems weird to me that they have Dan Jurgens being inked by George Perez. DC's contracts must state that each writer or artist or writer/artist must work on so many titles each month. So Dan is off writing JLI and drawing Green Arrow while George is writing Superman and inking Green Arrow. And maybe other stuff.

Also, who knew George Perez was still alive? And while bagging my comics, I noticed Keith Giffen replaces Jurgens on a later episode. Yay!

I probably would have skipped Green Arrow.

52 at First Glance

Here are my first thoughts about DC's new titles after just looking at the title/cover, artist, and writer. Although I have actually read a few of the comics (Suicide Squad 1-4, Justice League 1-4, Justice League International 1, Aquaman 1, Wonder Woman 1, Flash 1, and Captain Atom 1), I'll try to remember what I was expecting when I first encountered the title and crew.

I'll do these four or five in a post.

1. Justice League
Writer: Geoff Johns
Pencils: Jim Lee
Inks: Scott Williams (I might get some of the pencillers and inkers mixed up since I'm only looking at the inside flap of The New 52 Trade with all the #1s. I'm just assuming they list penciller first and inker second).

I might have picked this up, at least for a few issues, if I was being discriminating about my comic book picks. I find it interesting to have a team with all the heavy hitters just to see what kind of challenging situations they get them into. How can anything go wrong when you've got Superman and Flash together? Both of these guys seem like the kind of hero that only villains with something to prove as well as daddy issues go up against. And of course, Green Lantern backing them up with anything he can think of, Wonder Woman in a battle frenzy and Batman looking on grimly, they can't lose! I'm not sure why they stuck Cyborg on this team.

I think I'll miss Martian Manhunter being on the team (I see him over there in Stormwatch). He always brought some heart and vulnerability to the group. They just don't seem like a family without him.

I'm not a big fan of Geoff Johns or Jim Lee. Jim Lee's characters always look too, too...I don't know what. Posed? Determined?

As for the cover, I'd just like to say: Nice placement on Green Lantern's Gun. And what are they all exploding out of? (Since I already read the first few, I'm gonna guess a Boom Cube!) Only Cyborg looks happy.

2. Justice League International
Writer: Dan Jurgens
Pencils: Aaron Lopresti
Inks: Matt Ryan

I have high expectations for this one. Didn't Jurgens do JLE? (I guess I could spend the same amount of time as it took to write this to just Google that answer) It's basically the same squad from the 80s minus Blue Beetle who I think died? He died, right? At the hands of Maxwell Lord, maybe?

I don't recognize the artists. As I get further into these comics, most of my posts will be 'I don't recognize the writer/penciller/inker.'

The cover is another big splash page with all the heroes coming out of some hole at the center of the page. They all look slightly miffed except for Godiva. Ugh. Godiva.

3. Aquaman
Writer: Geoff Johns
Pencils: Ivan Reis
Inks: Joe Prado

Not a huge fan of Aquaman. I sort of pretended to be into him during his four issue fifteen minutes of not being a douchebag fame back in the eighties but mainly because everyone had a copy of that mini-series. I don't even remember if I read it.

I also didn't care when he ran around with long hair and a beard and lost his hand.

(And since I've already read issue one of this, let me say: finally interested!)

The cover looks like Aquaman is angry at the reader and trying to stab him. Which very well could be what they were going for since everyone knows Aquaman is a joke. You know, I'm even slightly embarrassed saying that because everybody knows it so well already! I feel like I should be hip and cool and write some giant paper about how everyone is wrong and Aquaman is a true hero and worthy of his own title instead of a guy who plays with fish. Yeah, yeah! He's super strong and resilient on land due to living in the ocean depths or something. I think a great first issue would be Aquaman coming up to the surface and he explodes due to his internal pressure pressing outward against his skin.

4. Wonder Woman
Writer: Brian Azzarello
Artist: Cliff Chiang

Except for learning new things about my changing body while watching Linda Carter on television, I never really got anything out of Wonder Woman. But I also never really tried. Sometimes I'd pick up an issue and glance through if she was fighting an interesting villain. But I never bought the comic.

So now Brian Azzarello is writing it and I'm excited. Should that have ended in an exclamation point since I was excited? Maybe I'm too tired to be that excited. I'm looking forward to seeing what Azzarello does with the Amazon. As long as Wonder Woman doesn't find an attache case in the first issue.

I've never heard of Cliff Chiang. But remember! I've been away from comics, for the most part, for about 8 years. So a lot of artists and writers will be new to me.

The cover shows, scientifically, how Wonder Woman can block every single bullet or arrow or cream pie thrown at her.

I'm Back into Comics

I first started reading comic books seriously in 7th Grade. Before that, I was reading Elfquest in the giant collected color volumes. I didn't know that Elfquest came out regularly in Black and White chapters at the time. Daniel Something in my 6th grade class told me it was released that way but I didn't believe him. And then between the Third Color Volume, Escape to Elf Witch Mountain, and the Fourth Color Volume, North To Alaska, the Elfquest Roleplaying Game was released. I bought it and ripped it open on the ride home and quickly had several key plot points spoiled for the Fourth Volume because the Manuals were using images from the Black and White Comics.

Well, damn. I managed to get myself to a comic book shop. Brian's Books on Calabazas in Santa Clara or maybe Sunnyvale CA. A whole store dedicated to comic books as opposed to a well-read stack in a rack at the local convenience store? It was interesting. But I was there for one thing. Elfquest. Which I guess I picked up. And eventually picked up all of the Black and White issues.

Anyway. Back to seriously reading comics. Not girly comics like Elfquest! But manly comics where well-muscled men ran around in tight fighting tights! And women ran around in almost nothing at all! My friend, Aaron Crawford, who sat across the table from me in Science told me about some thing DC was doing. Some enormous, crazy thing. Some disaster called Crisis on Infinite Earths.

Now, when I watched the Super Friends, I (and probably most everyone else) especially loved it when they ran episodes with the Legion of Doom. Because now you got to see all of the Super Friends in one episode! And all of the villains as well! So Crisis on Infinite Earths featured ALL the comic heroes by DC ever? And the villains too?

This was too good to be true. So I picked up some issues at the local 7-11. But they didn't have all of the issues! I remembered Brian's Books and that was that. I was immersed.

Those days were pretty weird. It seems hardly believable that a comic book shop could exist. I remember walking in to the shop and Brian would always be behind the counter, reading or doing who knows what. He was cordial but didn't really say much unless you engaged him. And he was an adult and I was shy and, well, I didn't talk to him as nearly as much as I now think I should have. Especially since his store was always empty!

So I began reading comic books. This was probably 1983 when I started. Twelve years old. With limited funds, I decided that the Marvel Universe sucked eggs and stuck with DC. I'm pretty sure this is how every child coming into comics chose a side. Whichever company's comic he first fell in love with, that was the company he would support. Shoot, if I had the cash, I would have given equal time to both universes.

I remember my friend Philip Newby reading the Wolverine/Kitty Pryde comic which, even though it was Marvel, looked interesting.

But even as a DC reader, I could only read so many titles. So I read Blue Devil. And I read Teen Titans. I read The Outsiders. Soon my favorites were Keith Giffen's Justice League and John Ostrander's Suicide Squad. I still hold these titles up as shining examples of what Super Hero comics should be.

Of course, I eventually began reading things like Doom Patrol and Shade the Changing Man and Sandman. I discovered Cerebus around the time Sim was writing the chapter called Flight.

Some time in the late 90s, I began following writers instead of titles. Warren Ellis. Mark Millar. Alan Moore. Garth Ennis. And some time after 2000, many of my favorite writers headed over to Marvel. So I did as well. Finally, I was reading a little something from both companies.

But comics started to feel too expensive for too little payoff. I was beginning to lose track each month of what the storyline from the previous month was. Perhaps I was reading too many! Whatever actually happened, I always felt that I would stop reading comics when Cerebus ended.

Which is what I did. Except I didn't completely stop. I would still pick up trade paperbacks from time to time. I kept up with Bill Willingham's Fables and Robert Kirkman's The Walking Dead. I also intended (still do, so intend?) to eventually finish up, through trade paperbacks, Azzarello's 100 Bullets, and Warren Ellis's Planetary. I'm sure there are more.

But I stopped collecting monthly comics. Until this year. While in Phoenix, my cousin Jay and I went all over town searching for RPG game shops. We also found a few comic shops which we killed some time in. And I found 52.

Now, I'd already read the 4 trade paperbacks of 52. But I didn't realize DC was going to do what they did. Release 52 #1 issues and begin 52 regular comics titles. And I may have just let it go past me except one of the issues they began again was Suicide Squad. And it looked cool.

I picked up the four issues of Suicide Squad when I got back to Portland and enjoyed them. And I got to thinking. Maybe I'd enjoy more titles! So I made a short list from the list of 52 titles inside Suicide Squad #1. But as I walked to my old comic book store the next day to pick these up, I started to think about how I always wanted to read the entire line of comics that a company puts out. I could keep track of all of their super heroes and their exploits! And 52 was telling me right there how many that was! And they all came out each month with the next exact same number! How easy would this be to do? Read them all, Jeff! Read them all!

And so, that's what I'm going to do. As an adult who owns his own business and can afford it, I'm going to do it. Read all 52 titles. Of course, I have to buy them first. And most of them are already on issue 4!

So time once again to get back in comic hunting mode. I forgot how much I liked the routine.

Next post will be about the different titles in 52. Which ones I'm really looking forward to. Which ones I normally wouldn't even give a second glance. And which ones I have no idea what the hell they're about!

And in subsequent posts about my return to comics, I'll discuss the comics themselves. I think this will also help me to remember what is going on in each storyline as the months go by. So, warning now, these will definitely involve spoilers!

Dwarf Lover Director's Cut: Grummok's Plan, Ep. 2

Grummok's Plan

With the publishing of Grummok's Plan, the web comic had actually begun. The Beginning was a series of short moments published on NA!P in conjunction with the storyline developing in the Exploits of a Dwarf Lover Blog. Grummok's Plan really began the adventure.

Grummok and the Kobolds come from the 3rd Edition D&D Monster Manual as do all of the other characters. In the last post, I stated that some may have come from the Player's Handbook but I was wrong. The reason Brennan was a female elf instead of a male elf is because there was only a female elf in the MM. If I'd had the Player's Handbook at the time the comic was started, Brennan would have begun as the male figure he later chooses for himself and a large part of the storyline would have been different.

Duke Suetir's character is from the MM entry, Shield Guardian.

Okay, back to Grummok. The throne, cage, and stalagmites (unless they're stalactites!) are all scanned from Elquest Book Three. Incidentally, here is why I can never remember how to differentiate stalactites and stalagmites. Way back in ancient times, there was a Frank and Ernest Sunday comic in which they discuss ways to remember which is which. So one of them says something like, "The ones hanging from the ceiling are stalactites because they stick tight!" And the other guy says something like, "I thought those were stalagmites because they might fall!" So, fuck you Frank and Ernest for messing with my head. (Also stuck in my memory from that comic was this rule: "I before E except after C or when sounded like Aye as in neighbor or weigh. Except for a few weird exceptions." Or something like that.

Okay, back to Grummok! Venger is from the Dungeons and Dragons Cartoon. The idea of a series of villains each trapped and needing the help of the next villain was the main thrust of the plot I'd decided on. This along with the 13 Ghosts of Scooby Doo idea that would allow me to take the adventurers through a baker's dozen of Old School Dungeons and Dragons Modules.

Even though they adventure in D&D Modules and many references are to D&D, the characters and the game they are playing is actually Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay. This is because that game was much more fun and open ended with fewer rules to pay attention to. So it's the game my friends and I played the most. But I still loved the idea of the D&D Module, especially the old school ones that didn't really have much plot to them. Warhammer modules (the ones that did exist) generally were railroad story lines that I didn't find very interesting.

On page two, Venger thinks back to what I like to think of as Season Four of the Dungeons and Dragons Cartoon. Venger has managed to kill Hank, Bobby, and Uni. And Sheila and Diane make out. Which is something that apparently dozens of artists at Deviantart really wanted to happen.

The arrow piercing Uni was scanned from a Green Arrow comic book. I'm not sure where the axe is from that is taking off Hank's head. I really like Dungeon Master's broken look on this page as he watches the kids he pulled in to his world to help get killed one by one. What did he think was going to happen? If not their deaths, by Season Six they would have been either hating Dungeon Master for only ever giving them each one magick item for the whole campaign or they'd be total munchkins and Dungeon Master would be actively trying to kill them himself.

Being that Grummok is an orc and this is the characters' first adventure, it all takes place in B2, Keep on the Borderlands. More on that in subsequent Director's Cuts.

Dwarf Lover Director's Cut: The Beginning

The first episode of Dwarf Lover.

The Beginning

A title which points to the fact that I had no idea where I was going with this thing. I knew I wanted it to be complex. I wanted it to be epic in scale. So epic that I had no actual plans for finishing it. And seeing as how it took 10 years to actually get to the end of the 2nd Chapter of, probably, 13 Chapters, it doesn't look too good for the finishing thing.

But I did take a six year long hiatus where I worked on other projects. But at the beginning of this year, I really felt like revisiting the comic. I felt like, at least, getting these poor losers out of the Tomb of Horrors. And that'll be happening in less than a month. So, yay?

Back to The Beginning. The comic first appeared on my (our: Me and two long-time friends from high school) website, No Apologies! Press. No Apologies! was a chaotic jumble of anything that came to our minds. It was a nice place for a writer who cared more about the initial ideas of a project than the long term project itself. A place for lazy people with lots of creativity. It was wonderful!

Dwarf Lover began as a blog by our fictional friend, Chris Davenport. Yes, yes. He is fictional. Sorry to spoil the illusion for any Chris Davenport groupies. Except his image wasn't fictional and I think I should apologize to the real life person Chris was. His name may have been Cyrus. Or Cyril. Or something like that. He may have gone to Santa Cruz University. I used to have a link to his school webpage but that has been lost in time and multiple computer changes. His image got a little bit of fame over the years. He appeared on Mulletsgalore in its heyday. He appeared on How Fresh is This Guy. He also appeared in a Maxim Guide to the Web pull-out I still own (so proud!) featuring the How Fresh site and that page I just linked to.

Chris Davenport was partly based on Doom Bunny from No Apologies! Press. Partly, because it might be mostly in my head! But I seem to remember Doom Bunny playing Dwarves (or Dwarfs?) an awful lot because they little tanks. Perhaps that was our friend Roy I'm remembering too. Anyway, Dwarf Lover and the man who needed to defend Dwarfs at all cost, was born.

I'm not sure where the Dwarf Lover blog became a comic. Maybe I thought it would be easy to do. "Oh, I just scan a few pictures and it'll take no time at all!"

Even for the simple style of the comic in its early days, that was completely wrong. Just photoshopping the scans into useable pictures is tedious. Everything about the process is tedious. But I love seeing the scenes come together. And I still have a lot of story to tell.

So, about The Beginning. Probably not a lot to tell. I thought I would make it sort of Noirific. That didn't really keep but I revisit the Dwarf Narration every now and again. And make a point later on to show that Kohk is actually keeping a journal of his travels.

The initial scene is comprised of characters scanned from the 3rd edition Dungeons and Dragons Players Handbook. I think. This must have been back in 2000 or 2001 when I started. The window is from Dave Sim's Cerebus, as is the mug and the table. The table I colored myself in Photoshop! Amazing! The characters that aren't from the Players Handbook are from the Monster Manual, same edition.

The story basically retells what was going on in Chris Davenport's Blog at the time. He and deranged elf fan, Larry Pressfield (Upright from NA!P), had begun a war of words between the two clans. I decided that was spiraling out of control and a summit of some kind was needed. A summit that was being role-played.

Looking back on this comic, I like the set-up. The collage art is actually pretty decent for just getting started. I think I'd had some practice with some other NA!P features by then. And my favorite line still calls for a shirt or mug or mousepad: "Go fist a dryad!"

Attribution, Sprite Comics and Collage

I often wonder while making Dwarf Lover whether or not I should be making mention of every place I take a picture or every artist I can find that created the pieces I'm using. I imagine at some point I'll go through the comics one by one and try to remember all of the sources. Sort of like a director's cut except over here instead of over there with the comic.

And since I'm on the topic of using other art to create a comic, I thought I'd define Dwarf Lover as I see it. It often gets called a Sprite Comic which is both a neutral general term to describe a comic that doesn't use original art (usually a sprite comic because it uses the graphics from a video game) and in a derogatory sense because, well, the comic doesn't use original art.

Dwarf Lover, as you may have noticed, does not use original art. Well, not true. It generally doesn't use original art. My art is peppered through the comic where needed but this comic, The Journal of Kohk Korunch, is completely my work. Except for the initial hand.

But Dwarf Lover is also not a Sprite Comic. It's more of a collage. It takes images of every kind from many sources. The web, comics, gaming manuals, video games, movies. And the majority of the scenes and characters have been painstakingly reworked. All of the major characters have been pulled apart, torn limb from limb, and rebuilt so that I can move their parts around and put them in whatever poses I choose. Most of the backgrounds need to be turned into a blank and each individual set piece pulled out so that I can manipulate it to my will.

It takes a lot of work to put together an action scene in Dwarf Lover.

In the beginning, I wrote a lot of 'talking heads' episodes because it seemed easier. It was also boring. So I began writing the comic without thinking about the effort each page would take in Photoshop. I found I liked this best of all. Sometimes I wouldn't notice how difficult a page would be to shop until I started the actual work. But often, I'll write a page and just shake my head, thinking, "How in the world am I going to put THAT together?" And then I do it.

But since it still isn't my original art, it will always be looked down upon by the jerkier nerds on the internet. If people can look past that aspect and realize what I'm doing is art in and of itself (yes, art can have dick jokes), they might be pleasantly surprised at the story taking place on this obscure little place on the web.