Everyone loves comic strips. And that’s probably a good thing because they permeate much of our popular culture. Whether you read them in the daily newspaper, as a web comic, or see them shared on Facebook, comic strips are hard to avoid.

I love comics and have since an early age. I remember laughing hysterically at collections of Garfield comics in elementary school. This fascination with comic strips and cartooning has stayed with me my entire life. When a film documentary on the subject hit Kickstarter, I jumped at the chance to become involved. I plunked down 20 bucks and waited.

Fast forward exactly a year and the Stripped movie was placed into my hands. Well, placed in my digital inbox to be exact.
Read More

I was genuinely surprised by the ending to the first volume of Snowpiercer.  What seemed like a fairly typical post-apocalyptic tale wound up on a note that I didn’t see coming at all.  So when the second volume of the comic was recently released by Titan Books, I scooped it up so I could find out what happened next.

Unfortunately, the second volume doesn’t continue the same storyline.  Instead, Volume 2 picks up with a different hero on Snowpiercer 2, a completely different train.   Wait, what?  You’re saying there are two never-stopping, socially stratified trains that harbor the last remnants of humanity to keep them from dying in the harsh arctic environment?  What’re the chances?
Read More

I follow a ton of comic artists on Twitter, Tumblr, Instagram, and via RSS. It’s not hyperbole to say that none of them entertains me more than Joey Ellis. For my money, Joey’s tremendous art and hilarious comic sense are without equal.

Money is what I gladly gave to his Leaky Timbers project on Kickstarter. Leaky Timbers is Joey’s hardcover comic book starring a trio of monster brothers led by Wolfie. They live in an apartment complex named Leaky Timbers.
Read More

As an American, I can’t say that I was familiar with Battle, Battle Picture Weekly, Battle Action Force, or any of the dozen of variations on the title of the long-running British war comic book until Titan Books came a’calling and asked if I wanted to review Battle Classics, a new collected edition of select stories from the series’ run.  But now that I’ve given the book a chance, I wouldn’t mind digging a little deeper into the Battle canon to see what other treasures I might find.

Read More

If you’re a film fan like me, you’ve probably heard about the brouhaha stirring over director Bong Joon-ho’s sci-fi thriller, Snowpiercer, based on the French graphic novel, Le Transperceneige.  If you’re not familiar, the acclaimed South Korean filmmaker’s latest movie was purchased for distribution in the U.S. by the Weinstein Company who, as is often their custom with foreign films, is cutting about 20 minutes (!) of footage and requiring voice-over narration in order to, in their minds, better suit an American audience.  In other words, we’re too dumb to appreciate the film like the rest of the world.  Naturally when there’s this kind of buzz about a film, it makes me curious to check out what all the fuss is about.  So I was very happy to hear that Titan Books is releasing all three parts of Le Transperceneige under the more tie-in friendly title, Snowpiercer, over the course of 2014, with the first volume available as of January 28.

Read More