The Walking Dead is a long running horror comic series. Image Comics has recently released a $1.00 special issue to entice new readers to the story. It’s called Image Firsts The Walking Dead. It worked. I’m enticed.

Often I only have a cover in the post but I wanted you to see some of the innards of this one. It is black and white, and fairly “comicy” styled, but the pacing and flow of the images rivals anything I’ve seen in the “new” Creepy. Plus it has ZOMBIES! (YAY!)

I am not a big fan of people ripping off the cliched “standards”, such as zombies and vampires, simply because they are selling. I consider it to be a whore-like and lazy substitute for creativity. It took all my strength not to bitch about the vampire comic I just wrote about yesterday.

Vampires have been done to death. (hee hee)

And the saddest part is that vampires have now been mutated from cold, ancient, horrid, life-sucking, degenerate unearthly abominations, to young cool nifty wonderful things that girls want to have as boyfriends. And what annoys me most is instead of them bursting into flames and dying horribly in the sun, they “sparkle”. Blecch!

Ok, so zombies are cliche. But if you’re going to do them, do them right.  Look at that inside shot. That is a great illustration. And anyone who can get away with WHUMP! and OOF!, both with exclamation points and both in the SAME PANEL certainly deserves my money.  The guys who wrote and drew this thing definitely did it right. (That would be Robert Kirkman and Tony Moore, by the way.)

I would love for you to buy the dollar special, but it’s kinda’ sold out.  My link points to a page that has the TP collections on it (at a discount of course). And back ordering the $1.00 one (for $.80) is possible. Or you could wait till it becomes in stock again.

You could also wait till I get one of the collections then review it. That may take a while but I will get around to it eventually.

That’s all for today, now I have to get back down to the cellar before my thing rips its chains out of the floor…

again.

PS-Whump!  Oof!   …I love it

Hellboy in Mexico is the latest issue of some incarnation of the Hellboy comic book series. In today’s post I will be telling you what I think about it and where to get it cheap.

Hello and welcome to Monday. I usually never mention the day in the post. This is because I  write these posts, one day and edit them a different day and by the time they get up on the blog it might be several weeks. But today, in light of my new shorter, more frequent posting policy and the fact that I’m putting all my time into the newsletter instead of the blog, I can crank this thing out and post it in a short time.

I have never read Hellboy. I didn’t see the first movie. And I have yet to see the second movie. I want to see it, but haven’t.  So I came to this comic, knowing nothing about this character. Not counting the few details that I may have gleaned by watching the trailers for the movies.

So why, you may ask, did I suddenly haul-off and buy a Hellboy comic? Especially one as bizarre and specialized as Hellboy in Mexico (which by the way is subtitled “or, a drunken blur“).?

I have only one excuse. One of the credits on the cover is Richard Corben. As many of you may know, I am an ancient fan of Richard Corben.

I first discovered Corben’s work in the pages of the now defunct Eerie and/or Creepy published in the 70′s by Warren Publishing. (yes this is the Creepy Dark Horse’s new publication is supposed to be a resurrection of, or remake, or continuation, or whatever you call it when they re-do a comic) So, when I was in my early teens, Corben comprised half of my favorite artists. The other half being Bernie Wrightson.

Interesting story here. I didn’t know that one of my favorite artists was Bernie until much later.  I remembered seeing Corben stuff here and there and his name in the magazines Creepy/Eerie. It wasn’t until more recently, when I decided to revisit them that I realized the art that I really loved the most was Bernie Wrightson. (okay, maybe it’s not that interesting).

Other people may remember Richard Corbin as the creator and artist responsible for Den, a long running storyline in the old  Heavy Metal magazine. It even made it into the Heavy Metal Movie as one of the animated stories.  He was very prolific in Heavy Metal magazine, back when it was still good. ( Again the 70s and 80s.) (Interesting note…Bernie Wrightson’s work also made it into that same movie. ) Richard Corben painted the cover art for the Meatloaf album Bat Out of Hell . (And not too surprisingly, he was  enlisted to paint the cover for Bat Out of Hell II.)

But I digress…

The point to all this is I’ve read the comic. I have no idea how the story compares to other Hellboy stories. But the art is very nice, of course. It has humor, and I will be keeping an eye out for other Hellboy titles. In the meantime, I would certainly suggest you buy it or if you know someone that has it, steal it from them.

As is my new policy, you can get to a place to buy these comics by clicking on any mention of comics in my posts.  Oh!  If you buy through the vendor  I link to, you get a discount off the cover price of these things.  For example, I got my copy from the local comic shop.  I paid $3.50 plus tax.  But through my links you’re connected to a vendor from whom you can buy these things for 20% off. Which makes this $2.80.  There is also a variant cover which lists for $5.00, but you can get it for $4.00 through my link.

That’s it for today, come back soon for the next exciting installment, I have absolutely no idea what I’m going to be talking about.  I’ll probably just pick something at random out of a pile I have laying here.

American Vampire is a new and exciting horror comic, which simply by looking at the cover seems as though it’s a vampire story set in the American old West. The contributing talent to this book includes Scott Snyder Raffael Albuquerque and Stephen King. Inside the book, Scott Snyder is listed as the writer. Rafael Albuquerque is listed as the artist. And then the miscellaneous credits include Dave McCaig- coloring and Steve Wands did the lettering. Rafael Albuquerque cover art editor Mark Doyle. American vampire created by Scott Snyder. All of which makes me wonder how Stephen King fits into all this.

After the story, which runs the usual 24 pages. There is an editorial by Scott Snyder, entitled On The Ledge There is also a list of other comic books, and titles available from Vertigo. Vertigo is the publisher of American Vampire. And this one I hold in my hands is issue number one. The date on it is May 10 with a cover price of $3.99 as you can see from the picture, the cover art is pretty. The inside art is a bit quirky, and I like it. It has good use of color and highlight. The ads in the magazine break it up at just the right points. Overall it has a good look and feel, very solid and very well done.

I haven’t read the whole thing yet. This isn’t a review of the story. It’s a review of the comic itself. I would absolutely recommend anybody buy it. (this assumes you like vampire comics) You can do it by clicking on any mention of the title in this post.

Stay tuned in a soon-to-be future post. I will do a review of the actual story(s) and/or a more in-depth study of the art stylings and such. It also has a preview of Area 10 as a bonus. That looks cool.  I will have to get it. If it’s any good I will let you know.

That’s all for today. If anyone has anything to add, feel free. (or feel freely, whichever makes you happier)

PS-Actually this thing is into multiple printings now. So I’m guessing it’s fairly popular.

PPS-And I have been told that Mr. King created the storyline. If anyone actually knows, tell ME about it will you? Thanks.